We're all in this together
 

I have heard a lot of users clamoring and practically demanding that applications be ported or created for the 770. This same thing happened with the Apple Newton. People have needs, I know - they want to have everything their desktop has, in their pocket. Hey, who doesn't?

You know, personally I would love to sync Outlook to my 770, right this minute. And I am a software developer (it is my profession, not just a hobby for me), so people think - well, just write one!

I think people have to realize that every real software developer that I know already has a regular 9-5 job. My next-door neighbor is a lawyer; do you think I walk next door, bang on the door and tell her, "Hey, get out here, I want to sue somebody today!"?

Another thing about software development is that with the advent of Microsoft Visual Basic (or ‘VB’, and sometimes referred to as Virulent Basic), everybody thinks that software can be created in an afternoon. They also think it will be great, and it won't destroy your files, disable your computer, or expose it to mal ware. VB has given thousands of wannabe programmers the ability to create truly dangerous applications, which have already cost the world billions of dollars and incalculable productivity, with viruses and the like. It has also done some good things as well.

Sure, you can slop some code together in a weekend, (if you don’t have to cut the grass, or fix the shower, or move furniture or the hundreds of other “honey-do” things that come up). And then you will spend the next six months trying to get it right. There is no VB for Debian Linux, which is kind of a good thing.

I heard it before, with the Newton – “if somebody creates this software, I will even pay for it.” Yeah. Software is expensive to create. Hobbyists do it for free, and that’s great. If I can get something going on this Outlook sync in the next few weeks, I will give it away to the community, just because I want to.

Honestly, the best way for a developer to make any money on software for the 770 is to be the first to create something really great, and then just sell it to Nokia, so they can bundle it. Notwithstanding that, it is just a hobbyist effort, doing it for fun.

I have also seen people complain about free software. Hey, it’s free, as in beer. There is nothing easier to code for than an application that is specified completely, so if users want a program that does something, they should try describing it in great detail. If a developer can find a few hours here and there to create the application someone desires, and give it away, then great, everyone is happy.

I guess all I am saying is, understand that developers are people just like you, trying to make a living, learn a new language and platform and have fun.

Okay then we'll offer bounties.
I could hypothetically put up $100 via PayPal to the first person/team to create a GPS application with:

• Street-level moving maps
• Vector maps (fitting all of Phoenix on under 384M)
• Route planning
• Route recalculation
• Warnings about upcoming turns

That $100 isn't for the license when it's released... If it's GPL that's preferred but if it's commercial then the $100 is for the bounty and I'll purchase the software once I see that it matches the qualifications above.

Any takers? Anyone else want to contribute to a software bounty?

Michael: Great post. I'm stuck doing SQL development so I know about "Can't you snap your fingers and give me results in 3 seconds" syndrome or the dreaded "I need a favour" ("Yeah? I need 3 weeks to accomodate that 'simple' 'favour'"). I think the only comment I've made that could be construed as negative has been that it seems that the flow of new apps has slowed down. There are some that have been on the Maemo 'not yet ready' page for months and are gathering dust. There are also a lot in which they're done to the point where they're semi-stable but need to be Hildonized so the menus are legible... and then they get put on the shelf. It's frustrating to the end users but also probably surprising to them that someone hasn't picked up the project and continued. Also odd that games are the greatest volume of releases.

I think Deja PIM was one of the first non-widget apps that I've seen created directly for the 770. The rest were ports. I think in this capacity it's truly showing itself as a niche product, someone would have to be nuts (or really passionate) to spend umpteen hundred hours creating a native maemo app for a single hardware platform.

Sharp Zaurus all over again ? I hope it doesn't end that way, but there are similarities.

This is where toolkits like Python + pyGtk or pygame could really help. Faster prototyping and development, and your app runs everywhere from desktop to PDA to 770, with little if any modification. It actually works. Unfortunately, I'm not sure which is less of a niche, the 770 platform or the above tools :-)

I have to admit to finding it hard going at the moment. I just got an N70 which is a top phone - the email works fine, it synchs with Outlook and 3G connectivity is pretty nice (I got 1gig a month on a three month trial).

But for me, the HUGE problem is that I can't ready any of my eReader books on the 770, and there is no sign of this ever happening. If eReader/Nokia collaborated on this, I'd be sold for life but as it is I have a load of DRM'd books I can't read so I'm drifting back towards using my 4700.

Oh and as for browsing, well the new Opera for PocketPC/Windows Mobile beta looks very promising.

fpp: The Nokia 770 has a few advantages over the Zaurus:

Integrated WiFi AND Bluetooth
800x480 screen
Several years of ARM Linux application development beforehand.

That alone gets it out of the gate running.

You're one of those guys who literally plays with fire, aren't you!

Glad you're on board. I will help you with those Icon issues that you've been dealing with, mostly in the sense that I will connect them to some applications that are especially useful. I've only just ordered my first 770 today - I'll be reselling them - so when it arrives I'll be in touch. See ya around.

thoughtfix -- I should know, I have both :-)

I was speaking of the third-party-contributed software situation on both platforms.

More than hardware enhancements, I think the difference between the two will finally hinge between Nokia's open, international and community-oriented approach vs. Sharp's closed, domestic attitude and neglect of its hacker base.

But nothing is won yet : Nokia needs to push a lot of these babies to create an installed base (with enough of these in the hand of hackers and not just end users), and to play its strengths well. Within six months we need a new firmware with significant stability and performance improvement and a couple more killer apps (VOIP etc.), PLUS a surge in the nascent and still fledgling offering of third-party apps. If both don't happen, within a year the 770 could be just another famous curio in the history of mobile gizmos and suffer from intrenal politics at Nokia.

Literally plays with fire? Yes. I used to. I was a fire eater/breather/juggler for about 5 years. I can post pics if you'd like.

With all this going on, I can only offer "hacks" and "tricks" and "how-to docs." My skill doesn't permit me to offer actual CODE. That makes me sad. :o

I converted a few Perl scripts to shell for the OpenZaurus project WAY BACK WHEN, but sold my Z a couple years ago to have a Christmas budget. After all that - and now even owning a Nokia 770 - I still need a PDA. My life is too busy/hectic to live without one.

HOW TRUE! Sharp had VERY little communication and rapport with their hacker base which, by comparison, was probably much larger than Nokia's current base. Let's hope the former Z owners convert to Maemo.

On another note - I would like to see something like OpenZaurus get released for the 770. It'd be nice to have a fully open, user-built OS on the device - built ground-up by the hackers. We'll see.

What about bounties? I'm sure there's a LOT of people (myself included) willing to contribute towards a GPS project that will use vector maps.

Very good observasion - I like your analysis and would like to continue.

It is obvious that developing new applications for the tablet is not a simple matter. Just consider the number of things you are expected to be familiar with before you can produce something worthy of general consumption:

1. Gtk+ - if you have never programmed in Gtk+, here is about 2-3 months of evenings burned out to learn the toolkit.

2. Automake - there is a decent number of on-line manuals on the web, and yet, it is another 2-3 weeks for a novice to pick up the stuff.

3. Debian packaging - don't get me started, if you've never done it before, you would waste 2 weeks easily figuring out what's going on.

4. Hildon-specifics - I have spend good three days trying to figure out why my app would come up and be killed by dbus right away. A number of people have lived through the same thing (even yesterday, there was someone on the mailing list asking the same very question).

5. A bare minimum knowledge of d-bus and Linux file structure.

This is just for starters. Looking at the prerequisites list, you can notice that new applications written for 770 exclusively might be in the pipeline, but it would take them some time to come out.

Which leaves us with porting of what already exists in GTK+ app pool. Look at the Nokia's very own "Porting an existing application" HOWTO.
They pretty much suggest you to gut your application - you are going to end up with two different source trees to maintain. What Nokia developers should have done is to take a simple GTK+ application and illustrate how to modify it so that the changes would stay in the same source tree.

One thing that I have not figured out is how to setup $srcdir/debian files so that I can still use the same set to build .deb packages both for a desktop as well as 770.

If anyone knows the answer, please, let me know.

Enough of ranting - here is my small contribution to the brave new world of nokia 770 - if you are an aspiring developer you might find my personal notes useful:

Vlad's Nokia 770 Internet Tablet Notes

Let's together make 770 a replacement for all PDAs, iPods, $100 PCs and what-have-you out there!

I am an aspiring 770 developer, I just haven't actually got started yet :) I am a novice Linux user but I develop SW for a living (on Windows though) and I have done some Palm development in the past too. Getting started on the 770 is a struggle so hints and tips like your help a lot. Thanks!

Thanks for such an insightful post, michaelalanjones. I had a Z too before the digitizer on the screen died, and it's definitely a familiar scene here with the 770. There is more interaction from the corporation that put out the product, but it's still fragmented and somewhat "unofficial"-- people get replies to their questions depending on how busy the developers are and so forth.

Most people spend a lot of time struggling with the platform-specific details instead of developing apps, much like Z; they always require more customization than you might think. Thus you end up with a handful of overworked, skilled coders maintaining some of the larger applications and a million unmaintained, semi-functional smaller apps. It also doesn't help that Nokia has taken the stance that a lot of the really exciting possibilities like BT keyboards, USB host, and PIM apps are not officially sanctioned (If you break it, you get to keep both pieces!). It would be great to see an official roadmap of sorts, kind of like the Mozilla team did as far as desired features, timelines for releases, etc. I'd really like to see some effort put forth by Nokia to try and make porting applications easier-- less Hildon/Maemo, more plain GTK/X. Silly things like not showing an icon for non-Hildon apps or having an esoteric approach to keyboard input really kill the enthusiasm when someone is trying to get up to speed on the platform.

My worst fear is that like all the other Linux PDA companies (Agenda, Sharp, etc.) we'll have a short window of active development before the corporate backing disappears, leaving us with an orphaned device and no clear path for progress. We then get to start all over again when the next vendor comes out with the Foo-3000 PDA-like device that runs a non-standard version of the Bar-Tk++ toolkit. The 770 has a lot of potential and I really hope that we can actually get a larger community of developers involved in spite of users flaming (You know who are) and the stability issues experienced. It really seems like a pivotal time to me now. People are starting to lose their enthusiasm for the device as the honeymoon period is over, Nokia's gone silent about any more releases in the short term, and the overall pace of development and discussion (Aside from complaining) has declined. I would hope that things will improve, but we really need some more feedback and interaction from Nokia.

Just my 2c,
Larry

I'm typing this while waiting for an application to build. A few observations -

The pace of development - quite a few packages released early on, less in the last few weeks. This may be more to do with folks sharing their personal "essentials" - I certainly appreciated ssh and Vnc - and some stuff that proved to be relatively easy ports. I'll admit to having some stuff on my 770, e.g. micro-emacs, that I probably should share. The more involved stuff is going to take longer, perhaps even requiring more than one person per port. So I doubt the pace has slowed, it's just not delivering installable packages at the same rate.

"Other Linux PDAs" - it's not just those that are in trouble, all PDAs have been in trouble for a while, because phones are now far more capable and because of the way they're sold seem cheaper to folks prepared to sign the contract. I guess that's part of why Nokia don't call the 770 a PDA. Anyway, without the software it isn't.

Anyway - my app has just built using my new approach, so the orginal source tree isn't modified at all, it just sits in a sub directory. So let's see if it installs and runs....

It's normal for open source projects. Sourceforge (and to extent even say Debian?) are full of that kind of software. 90% are too ambitious to get really anywhere. Sometimes years go by before somebody picks up the work, just ask some developers at #maemo :-)

Obviously we need more projects! Perhaps Nokia should market the device more aggressively to a narrow sector of consumers: the Linux user community.

It's funny - for a long time there was complaints that Linux/OSS was strong in internet/infrastructure, but we had no games... Perhaps the impression of the Linux developer community is just that the 770 is a 'geek toy', a device for your freetime.. and perhaps the developers have less experience of mobile platforms, and don't see the really useful everyday application ideas?

I understand your view and agree, but my personal experience over the past few days with the 770 suggests to me that the 770 will not make it in the mass market and not because some people are "expecting too much" from the 770. I for one only want to use the 770 to browse the net and , most importantly, to read my work e-mail on the web (since the e-mail client is poor and their is no citrix clent). As documented in this forum, however, the 770 has a problem with outlook web access, and the proposed solution, installing a proxy server, requires a degree in computer programing in linux. Further, I do not see any report that even this proposed solution fixes the problem with owa. I really do not want much from the 770 other than to browse, but, without outlook web access, I think I have no choice but to return the 770. It is really a shame too because the 770 probably CAN do what I want, but an average consumer like me cannot make it happen. This goes equally to the creation of the swap file that I have read about with great interest. An average user like me just cannot do what it takes to get the 770 into prime form. Ultimately, I cannot see a mass market for a device that leaves an average user in this position. Very disappointing because the news reader is excellent, and I was anxious to play with viewing movies on the device. DAMN OUTLOOK WEB ACCESS!!