Re: Ask Nokia
 

one thing Nokia indirectly already promised to achieve with media streamer- video streaming. Are we going to get that in N770?

Re: Ask Nokia
 

1) What are the plans for Bluetooth Headset and Bluetooth Audio support in 770 and/or N800? A BT headset is needed for VoIP, and the N800 with so much storage could be a great music/video player.

2) Flash is great for youtube etc. but not at 1 or 2 frames per second - Nokia may have been better off not providing it at all since this performance will result in negative press ("device not powerfull enough" etc.). Is the poor Flash performance going to be addressed in future updates? Can Flash 7 be ported to 770? What about Flash 9?

3) I have general concerns about 770 support. Ideally the 770 should be supported with updates for at least another year, and a version of OS 2007/Maemo 3.0 should be made available for the 770 if possible. It's possible that most 770 owners would not complain if support were dropped sometime in 2008, but with such little notice it kinda sucks (even MS doesn't end-of-life an OS without adequate notice!)

4) Video playback needs to be improved - Serge has done great work on mplayer but Nokia should lend a hand and fill in any missing knowledge gaps, eg. DSP work. Ogg Vorbis support would also be a great feature to add on a primarily open source device.

5) OT: Address the lack of Nokia and Community interaction, particularly in the area of Bugzilla reporting - this is mainly due to having internal and external bug tracking systems, the Nokia developers rarely use the external system giving a poor impression to the community.

Re: Ask Nokia
 

The Maemo-Page says OS2007 is not compatible with the 770; I don't see why it wouldn't be - except that Nokia, of, course, wants people to upgrade their hardware.

If they see Maemo as a platform, they sould keep compatibility between the devices.

So:
a) How does Nokia ensure compatibility across maemo-based devices, meaning that software written for the 800 will run on the 770 (if it doesnt use the webcam, that is :) )
b) What are the specific technical (!) reasons for not making the OS2007 available to 770-users? (If it's marketing only, they'll probably don't tell, but it would be easier to accept in a way.)

Thx.

Re: Ask Nokia
 

Will there be a NX client (Linux) or a rdesktop (Windows) client for OS2007 or OS2006 from Nokia some day?

Re: Ask Nokia
 

I'd like to chime in on the OS2007 issue as well. I realize that performance may not be "optimal" for running it on the 770 but it should still be supported. This device family is far too immature to start alienating the early adopters who helped create the community. Promising a "Maemo 2.2" release does not cut it as it clearly says that the primary support and development behind the platform will directed towards the latest version of the 3.x line. Having a 2.2 version means that there's just another branch of code to support, whereas a unified code base will mean all the fixes and newest changes will carry along the 770 users (and eventually the n800 users when the next device comes along).

Larry

Re: Ask Nokia
 

tirabosco: I certainly hope not: that's something the 3rd party community can provide quite easily. I'd rather Nokia concentrated on making the best platform for those third party developers.

I suspect that's close to what their answer would be, too.

Re: Ask Nokia
 

Well, I don't know if it's too late to ask, and it may be a little off topic as it doesn't really concern the OS related stuff, but:

- Is there any way for Nokia to make starting/setting up development for Maemo a little easier by offering a stand alone dev distro like an updated live cd for those that would rather not have to jump head first into a Linux installation? Or even those of us that are still "green" to Linux and don't want to have to spend hours (or days even) setting up the development environment, risking the possibility of incorrect/incomplete/unstable scenarios that could eventually leak into final applications causing various complications for users and developers alike?

- And how feasible would it be to provide a developer's edition of the 770/N800/etc. with a multi-boot setup and options for simply running the various OS binaries from the memory card without having to similarly risk lots of time and effort getting started in application testing?

Thanks again. I hope future development of these devices get to the point where more of the community are more comfortable with helping to continue building the mobile platform even further.rther.

Re: Ask Nokia
 

I second that! As someone who is involved in creating technology products and has been for many years, I learned a long time ago that your best customer's are the one who jumped on board early and if you alienate them you pretty much will self destruct future growth of a product. At the very least Nokia has to support the 770 with updates for the next 12 months so that it's core base can feel comfortable moving to the next generation products.

I just wonder if the Product Manager from Nokia will ever read this...

Re: Ask Nokia
 

Reggie:

At the risk of beating a dead horse, two issues are important to me:

1. Backward OS compatibility to the 770;
2. Compatibility of 3rd party developed software with the new OS, so they don't all have to be re-developed and/or repackaged (again!).

Thanks, for listening! K.

Re: Ask Nokia
 

For Maemo 1.1 there was a Knoppix live cd of the development environment but AFAIK nobody has continued this effort. The install instructions/process for setting up Maemo 3.0 have been streamlined and aren't bad at all. From what I can see a lot of the "3.0" changes have been to the devel environment as much as the device image itself. That's one of the reasons I'm annoyed that they're not supporting the 770 since it could benefit from the improvements (for development) too.

Setting up the device to multi-boot is a simple 10-minute process (not counting file copy time) and I use it to try out various images like Sardine. It's actually part of the Sardine setup process: http://maemo.org/maemowiki/HowTo_GetStartedWithSardine Without it you have no way to recover from a configuration change or upgrade, so yes, it's critical to have. I used it to try out the developer's edition image of OS2007 --on my 770. It does work although it's a bit slow and various things like wireless (!) are non-functional. No Opera or much else, but it's handy if you're looking for a clean image without a lot of extras.

Larry