Yes, I agree with the points, end while we were "keeping" canola working with diablo as we could, I think the point here is the new " way " of working, that there was maybe another way to do (like make it closed beta, then open a little bit and so on) so this would be " smooth " for the "end-user" profile.
What I have seen is that : if you have a release, people WILL install it. and as much as we need this update as developers and hardcore users, the majority of users will not " acceppt " the problem. So :
a. this is needed. unfortunately there will be this space between the transition
b. I believe it could have been done quietly (not only with US and other "big" devs , but with all interested developers out there...) and then after the basics were done then opened to the public.
BUT talk when we are outside is always easier ... so I will not take for granted that it could have been done differently.
Anyway I came home pissed and pissed off last night. I had a very bad day yesterday and just felt like letting off steam...
I went into Akihabara (geek heaven in Tokyo) to buy USB cables and adapters so that I can hook my MP3 recorder to the N810 in order to xfer recordings to the N10 for upload to my website. I also especially wanted to visit a Tully's coffee shop that has the NTT "Flets Spot" wireless service to setup my N810 on it (I'm already setup for FON and Wireless Gate). I couldn't get logged on. So I tried to call NTT support center only to find that my Softbank cell phone didn't work.
I had just picked it up yesterday morning after it had been sent for repairs. The Softbank shop where I picked it up opened 15 minutes late and my phone was returned to me by a young air-headed girl with long bejeweled fingernails which gave her great trouble when taking out the battery in order to insert the SIMM card. While she was doing this she got a phone call from her boss during which she apologized for oversleeping. Well she returned the phone without testing it and I was stupid enough to trust her.
Anyway the Softbank shop where I picked up my phone is near my home and Akihabara where I was when I discovered that my phone didn't work is an hour train ride into Tokyo. So needless to say I was unsuccessful in getting my N810 setup to use NTT'S Flets Spot. So my trip to Akihabara and the 10 to 15 dollars that it costs went half down the drain (I did get the adapter I wanted though).
Don't worry though, I still love my N810. I just like things to work.
But before I go, here's anther rant...in Akihabara, the biggest electronics center in the world, there isn't one USB cable with a micro USB plug - the type used by the N810. Why did Nokia have to go with such a stupid unstandardized and rare USB jack? There's enough room on the N810 for a mini USB jack.
The ipod touch is a solid multimedia dude. There's actually a couple of things we (from Canola team) would like to be able to have, but at the same time those are the biggest drawbacks from the iDevices : liberty to place your media.
Photos always go trhough a "transconding" : this is great because it makes sure the UI will be always " snappy " but you have a dithered (low quality) photo no matter how good is your camera.
Videos always go through filtering : only the specific h264 formats will go into and this is quite boring as you will have to convert almost any internet video nowdays : /
And the same for music and so on.
in the end this comes to a point I'm writing a small article about :
" Balancing freedom and User experience" : how to deal in the opensource based device world with the needs of highly experienced users x the need of having a responsive UI and a concise user experience across multiple platforms in not so powered devices.
But I need to agree with you in some points: Maemo could be way better by now. It's something not easy to understand why it is still so " not-ready " for prime time : /
well... obviously! The tablets have no need to be "jailbroken" :P
And there's a lot of great quality software out there that can be installed on jailbroken iPhones, but there's also a lot of great quality software that can be installed on our NITs :P
@TokyoDan: I use a micro usb to mini usb adapter that Motorola makes for their Razr phone, it was pretty easy to find on Amazon and cheap too (to the tune of 27 cents or so) But I agree, micro instead of mini is not really a space saver in the least :/
The reason I went overboard last night, besides my bad day, was hearing how some N810 users are jumping through hoops to get things working with Diablo. That's what set me off. But I7ve been having great success with Diablo and Canola works fine so far - no problems, although I don't know about the lower volume on Diablo as I didn't have much time to use Canola on Chinook. So I can't make a comparison. I wonder why so many people are having problems with Canola on Diablo. Could it be conflicts with other installed 3rd party software?
When I was in systems integration, many times I was called out after 5PM on a Friday night because our "sneaker net" swapable hard drives stopped working on our customers' Macintoshes. After troubleshooting for hours I found (most of the time) that the drives weren't being recognized because of some dam unneccessary extension that the customer installed/enabled on his Mac. I know that "The customer is always right" but I wanted to kill the sucker for screwing up my Friday night. In those days I prayed for closed systems that the customer couldn't f*** up.
The ipod touch is a solid multimedia dude. There's actually a couple of things we (from Canola team) would like to be able to have, but at the same time those are the biggest drawbacks from the iDevices : liberty to place your media.
Photos always go trhough a "transconding" : this is great because it makes sure the UI will be always " snappy " but you have a dithered (low quality) photo no matter how good is your camera.
Videos always go through filtering : only the specific h264 formats will go into and this is quite boring as you will have to convert almost any internet video nowdays : /
And the same for music and so on.
in the end this comes to a point I'm writing a small article about :
" Balancing freedom and User experience" : how to deal in the opensource based device world with the needs of highly experienced users x the need of having a responsive UI and a concise user experience across multiple platforms in not so powered devices.
But I need to agree with you in some points: Maemo could be way better by now. It's something not easy to understand why it is still so " not-ready " for prime time : /
well... obviously! The tablets have no need to be "jailbroken" :P
And there's a lot of great quality software out there that can be installed on jailbroken iPhones, but there's also a lot of great quality software that can be installed on our NITs :P
@TokyoDan: I use a micro usb to mini usb adapter that Motorola makes for their Razr phone, it was pretty easy to find on Amazon and cheap too (to the tune of 27 cents or so) But I agree, micro instead of mini is not really a space saver in the least :/
If you jailbreak the iPhone you don't need any contract and it's the only two clicks hack you'll ever need to make it work.
Can we say the same thing with ours tablet? I don't think so...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the new 3G iPhone not been jailbroken yet? And how are you going to buy one without a contract? Who's going to sell it to you?
Update on the volume issue: I added the following lines to mplayer.conf based on another thread:
softvol = yes
softvol-max = 500
That seems to help most of the playback volume, but not all. For example my BBC News podcast on which I am completely addicted to (you gotta love Max Pierson) is still playing quite. Something tells me that this particular feed is not going through mplayer and is therefore not affected by the volume uncapping. Any other BBC listeners noticing this? If so, is there a fix?
Ah!... Like an Italian sports car Canola sure looks pretty, goes like hell, and when you really need it... it's in the shop.
With the 4th of July coming and our American tendency to celebrate our independence by drinking large amounts of beer, roasting and eating beast, and comparing lawns with our neighbors I was hoping to show off my N800 and its 6 GB music library using Canola.
I guess I'll fire up the metalayer-crawler again and use the built in Media Player. I've tried all the techniques outlined in this thread with no luck... I'll wait for the Diablo build of Canola.
