maemo.org - Talk - N900: The First Impressions Thread

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- Nokia N900 (https://talk.maemo.org/forumdisplay.php?f=44)

- - N900: The First Impressions Thread (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=34432)

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)

N900 seems to be raising lot of fear among iphone users.
They are desperately seeking "weak" points. Great sign!

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by sxr71 (Post 386325)

Well, for a resistive it's pretty good but when I put it down and pick up the iPhone, the difference is very noticeable. There's a reason why Maemo 6 is going for capacitive.

The UI has never made me feel like picking up a stylus though.

The iPhone UI or n900? With the n900 so far most developers have been following the advised UI (e.g. finger friendly) so far but I don't think all will. Plus there are things where you just can't expect to convert the entire UI. E.g. if someone ports OpenOffice, or if you were to do easyDebian or something along those lines on the n900. You'd be cursing at the existence of a capacitative touchscreen in those cases (if you were using those applications).

With the iPhone you have Apple controlling the gate so they won't let any programs that don't follow the UI guidelines through the gate.

Having used both, I can see the advantages of a capacitative touchscreen, but in the end I prefer resistive simply because you can still use your fingers and when you need to, a stylus.

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by sxr71 (Post 386343)

Trust me I would love it and I think the Nokia brand recognition could pull it off. However people generally won't make personal sacrifices for a greater goal. I need proper e-mail support and proper mapping support and I can make other sacrifices for the cause.

One thing that is you need critical mass to get commercial quality apps. Commercial quality apps are needed even on a FOSS platform. If I'm using a free app for a critical function and something goes wrong who do I call? So support is needed.

But I guess you have a very realistic perspective on what is most likely going to happen and you have needs that are different from the other 95% of people.

Absolutely! Free Open Source Software doesn´t cut it when joining the big boys club.

The difference is between having a guy, no matter how good of a programmer he is, doodling with this as his 3rd, 4th or 5th priority after his family, work, golfing, football, or having someone rely on this to pay his mortgage and food for his family.

I mean really. I love old cars, but how much time do I have left to play with my old car´s after doing my daily work for 9 hours, spending time with my wife and son and using my evenings studying. Not too many hours every week! Same goes for the amateur programmer.

It is a nice lofty goal to have knowledgeable amateur programmers which are willing to put their efforts into apps that don´t appear on the market, don´t have commercial value, or seek advice from when something goes wrong.

But if Nokia is going to make Maemo the cream of the crop, the amateur programmer just doesn´t cut it. And I am not using the word amateur in the meaning novice, but in the meaning someone who does it as a hobby in his spare time.

Regardless of whether it is a free application or paid for people still need to report bugs and suggest features to get their pet peeves added to applications. There is no difference between FOSS and commercial in that sense. But when something fails I´d rather go to someone who´s livelyhood depends on the application, rather than the friendly guy Jim who has to take care of his dayjob and family before he can look at the app.

Then when it comes to people that somewhat rely on the device and applications to work over 99% of the time, poor old Jim just doesn´t stand a chance and is completely unacceptable.

This is probably why the linux distro's are sidelined into a small corner of the pc market. The insistence on open source, and free, keeps the real world economics and usability out of Linux. It just can´t make it in the mainstream without having added balance between free and commercial.

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bratag (Post 386362)

Well yes - thats true if all you did was simply cross compile it to work on the ARM processor - not that it wouldnt work - and of course we do have the stylus - however I was thinking more of a proper port.

I have already said in another thread I may very well have a go at it. So perhaps now you might take your attitude and ram it directly where the sun don't shine :)

Yep, i'll definitely take my attitude from you when you produce the final working port... I'll even help you answer any C/C++ questions you may run into.

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by olighak (Post 386366)

You appear to be labouring under the severe misapprehension that FOSS is written entirely or even mostly by hobbyists. It's not. Most of it is written by people on the payroll of companies that make their money from it; either by selling support for Free software (e.g. Redhat, Novell, Canonical), or by selling hardware to run it on (Intel, AMD, Dell, HP, IBM, Nokia etc.).

Free software is all about freedom, and that's all it's about - it is not, and never has been about 'no-one gets paid'. If you want paid support for free software from someone who relies on it for a living, that's no problem, you can get exactly that. Indeed, one of the benefits of free software is that you can get that paid support from a variety of vendors, so you're not locked in to whoever supplied the software in the first place. With proprietary software, if you don't like the support you're getting, or you don't like the price, or the supplier drops the product, you're screwed. With freedom, you have options.

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by sxr71 (Post 386345)

Trust me it boggles my mind. Absolutely boggles it. I can't for the life of me understand what was going through their minds.

SR, comments like the above do not add any real value and they are tiring after you see them in every second post you make. So I'm asking nicely. Please leave that baggage over in HoFo*. Thanks.

*You've got dozens of pages going over in HoFo where you can, and do, preach endlessly about what idiots Nokia are. Do you really need to bring it over here?

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bratag (Post 386351)

Evolution, Sylpheed heck even Kmail are just a port away.

No, they aren't. Those won't be even remotely usable on the screen estate the phone has. Evolution is unusable on my 1024x600 Netbook, I cannot even fathom how it would look like on 800x480 (especially the 480 are a problem).

Same goes for thunderbird or *any* three-panel mail client. Look at the claws version which is available for the N8x0 - unusable, even with the stylus.

Devices like the n900 need a cleaner interface which isn't that cluttered. From that perspective modest looks usable, but somehow other things seem to have been forgotten in modest.

mutt and/or pine might be usable, though, as the device has a keyboard :)

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by olighak (Post 386366)

Regardless of whether it is a free application or paid for people still need to report bugs and suggest features to get their pet peeves added to applications. There is no difference between FOSS and commercial in that sense. But when something fails I´d rather go to someone who´s livelyhood depends on the application, rather than the friendly guy Jim who has to take care of his dayjob and family before he can look at the app.

I'd just like to meet *one* person for whom that ever has worked. Meaning that the commercial application is fixed faster than the open source one, just because the companies livelihood depends on the application. And mind: Open Source has *nothing* to do with amateur programmers. Neither has free software.

Apple for example sat on Quicktime *security* bugs for several weeks before updating Quicktime. Okay, maybe their livelihood doesn't depend on Software anymore.

Please check facts first, then rant somewhere.

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by olighak (Post 386395)

I see I´ve hit a sore spot.

Yes. Because you got it mostly wrong, see Ewan's post for more information.

Quote:

Much of the OSS seems centered around amateur programmers, people that are not paid for creating applications but paid for perhaps at best paid for something else such as creating hardware, and that hardware just happens to need some firmware. Many of them are programmers during evenings and weekends, and sometimes that can´t compete with the open.

Yes, that must be the reason why most of the internet runs on free software, because all of that has been written by people only running the net during the evening or on weekends.

Quote:

Well Apple does not depend on Quicktime for its livelyhood does it? I don´t remember being charged for downloading and installing it. How much of Apple´s revenue is generated by Quicktime?

Yes, but it is a commercial application, and then you can call someone to fix it and rely on them to do it, or wasn't that what you and others said before? The problem with that is that it does not work. Neither with Apple, nor with Microsoft and those aren't even the worst vendors regarding fixes in their applications.

It's not like I don't want to believe you, I just have seen how awfully long it takes most commercial vendors to even fix *small* things. No matter how much money you throw at them.

So I for one do not want to rely on commercial vendors to fix things.

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)

Quote:

Originally Posted by olighak (Post 386395)

I see I´ve hit a sore spot.

Much of the OSS seems centered around amateur programmers, people that are not paid for creating applications but paid for perhaps at best paid for something else such as creating hardware, and that hardware just happens to need some firmware. Many of them are programmers during evenings and weekends, and sometimes that can´t compete with the open.

FOSS is often misperceived to be centred around amateur programmers. The reality is that - just like closed source software - some is developed by amateurs and some by professionals. The idea that FOSS is not something engaged in by the 'big boys' is increasingly quaint, and doesn't survive any serious investigation of the current software market.