lavo | # 31 | 2007-10-29, 01:56 | Report

@johnkzin

Fair point, but to be honest the main developers for the iPhone are going to be the ones that already develop for the Mac. There has never been much cross over from Linux/Unix when all the tools were available for the desktop machines. I can't imagine many will make a switch just because of the iPhone.

BTW, if Nokia were serious about the ITT, it would be nice if they didn't rip off other parts of the world. The N800 is still listed at $549AUS, which is $505US. Disgraceful considering the n800 is half that price elsewhere

Texrat | # 32 | 2007-10-29, 04:16 | Report

Wow, thanks for the heads up, Mark! I'll be selling all my NOK stock ASAP, and looking for another job. Maybe I should leave the country, too. If the iPhone can destroy a company with 39% global phone market share, who knows what ELSE it's capable of doing!

sachin007 | # 33 | 2007-10-29, 05:14 | Report

The itouch still cant do half of what the n770 does ...... And its been 2 years since the 770 was launched. At this rate.... i really am scared for nokia!!!

benny1967 | # 34 | 2007-10-29, 08:59 | Report

This is a very interesting one - it reminds me of something a Nokia representative (probably Ari Jaaksi, but I could be wrong) said when they launched the 770: that the very reason for this product line is to create a new kind of device, a whole new market. Something thats not a media player, not a PDA, not a phone, simply not something we already know but the first of its kind.

Thinking of it, it makes sense that Nokia tries so hard to avoid anything that could possibly put the tablets in one of the existing categories in public perception:

• They dont want it to be a PDA, so they dont offer even basic PIM-functionality (even though Nokia has this kind of software)
• They dont want it to be a media player, so they dont offer high capacity storage (even though it would be possible with only minor changes to the design)
• They dont want it to be a phone, so no SIM-card.

I never thought of it this way before... So they're doing something very, very risky with the tablets. You're right: people tend to buy devices for well known concepts. Media player is a well known concept. Internet tablet isnt. So what Nokia needs to do is slowly make the concept known and create the market with as little risk as possible - because it could fail miserably.

I feel they've been successful so far. They wouldnt have introduced a third tablet if the 770 and N800 wouldnt have met their expectations sales-wise. And, even more important, other manufacturers join the party now. (Think of Intel.) Still, the game is not over; we'll yet have to see if the market actually exists in 2-3 years.

One more reason to keep it simple and not waste precious space.

Yep, seen the previews. Guess I'm simply not the Apple kind of guy. I remember when first working with OSX the dock made me scream and shout because I didnt find anything there. And Apple-guys say its the best since they invented chocolate. Will probably be the same for this concept...

rs-px | # 35 | 2007-10-29, 09:23 | Report

I think Steve Jobs has realised he's made a mistake, hence the release of the SDK next year. That's another thing Apple does well -- it very quickly realises its mistake and fixes it. Other companies just plod on with their original design goal, no matter what users say.

Well, that's my point If Apple should decide to release their own Internet tablet (horrible phrase -- I prefer 'personal digital companion') then Nokia will be left on the sidelines, with its army of geek users (many of whom frequent this forum). Bear in mind Apple have not only the know-how in UI design, but they also have the marketing capability. Plus, if people already own an iPod, then they will consider an Apple tablet. And LOTS of people own iPods.

If you're reading and posting on this forum then you're a geek

Be careful of falling into the 'reviewers fallacy'. I used to work as a computer journalist. I've edited magazines and written books. One thing that newbie journalists do all the time is review a product based on what they want out of it. Well, that's not how you do it. You look at what it sets out to do and you look at how successful it is in doing that.

With the Nokia tablets, nobody is quite sure what it sets out to do. On the one hand it's a mobile internet device, on the other it's a full Linux computer. Nokia market it at the Internet aware kids on the one hand, and create garage.maemo.org on the other. I'm not saying these two camps are incompatible, but a singleness of vision is how Apple tend to succeed -- here's our product. If you don't like it then you can f*** off.

Oh, they'll be huge. I wish we could arrange to re-read this discussion in 10 years time but, by then, we'll be older and wiser, and this will be a forgotten part of the Internet archive.

They'll be successful because they make the Internet usable on the move. Simple as that. How can they not succeed? BUT... for them to be successful, we need ubiquitous internet access. And we don't have that right now. My definition of ubiquitous also includes 'free of charge', and that's the biggest stumbling block. Greedy telco companies want to make money out of wifi and it's annoying and repressive browsing the web when you know a clock is ticking and ramping up the cost the longer you spent reading the sports results. It removes the casual aspect of Internet access, and that's a major factor (well, for me, at least).

So we need free and ubiquitous Internet access. I go somewhere, my Nokia tablet goes online instantly, and I work or have fun. This can be via Wimax or wifi or any technology. I don't really care.

That's like saying, "I find my car a disappointment because it doesn't have a primary function beyond getting me from A to B". Seriously, I don't understand your point. It's a mobile internet device, just like the ipod is a mobile music player.

Very strongly disagree here The form factor is perfect and the screen size works very well with it. When using my 770, I feel the designers were very clever to combine these two factors, and I find browsing the web very easy. The only way it could be improved is if the screen was flush against the top of the unit, like the touch or iPhone. But I'll bet Apple have a patent on that.

The thing that's keeping this market repressed is that nobody understands how useful internet tablets are until they've tried them. They seem like a geek toy until you've got one in your hands, after which they'll never let them go. Maybe by building in a media player to the iPod touch, Apple has neatly side-stepped this issue. I dunno. But the original home computers had the same problem and they succeeded once word of mouth spread.

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Last edited by rs-px; 2007-10-29 at 09:28.

Texrat | # 36 | 2007-10-29, 12:26 | Report

Bingo.

And as I've said before, I see the internet tablets as a very close analog to the original PCs.

The mainstream didn't know what to with those, either-- even as people such as myself were exploring the new frontier and discovering all sorts of potential. I remember PCs being mocked by business writers because they were advertised as recipe file managers and checkbook balancing tools... yeah, I'll pay $3000 for that!

Anyway, rs-px nails it on the head. The use will define (or redefine) the internet tablets. Certain Nokia employees adamantly disagree with me on that-- but it's real. It's here.

Zoso | # 37 | 2007-10-29, 12:45 | Report

The headphones that came with every portable tape/CD/MP3 player I've bought over the last 20 years "leak horribly" if cranked up to a sufficiently offensive volume by some scrote on a bus.

Apart from the iPod Touch, iPods have tactile play/pause, next and previous buttons, same as just about everything else. If you want the next track, push the button. If you suddenly go "hey, I fancy listening to this specific song/album", can you find that on your Lyra without pulling it out of your pocket?

If you're talking about the iPod Touch, sure, it's a poor design for an audio player, but then so is a maximum of 16Gb storage on something that size. But then that's assuming the iPod Touch is an audio player...

Oh, yeah, very "objective". Is that the sum total of "huge design flaws" you can come up with?

You read the original Slashdot story about the iPod? Though particularly funny with hindsight, it maybe wasn't quite so far off the mark based on the first generation unit. And the iPhone, and thus iPod Touch, are the first generation of Apple touchscreen/tablet/PDA-type things (though success won't inevitably follow, see also "Newton").

One issue, as touched on by many threads around here, is that nobody is quite sure what a "touchscreen/tablet/PDA-type thing" (PLinTH?) should actually do. "Play music" was a nice, simple target for the iPod (even if it got fripperies like photos, videos and what-not after a while). "Browse the web" is a given for an Internet Tablet, but you've got phones that browse the web, portable games consoles that browse the web, media players that browse the web, even GPS units that browse the web.

Obviously convergence has been a major theme of portable devices, leading to PDAs all but dying out in favour of "smartphones", so I guess I (and most other people here) are in a minority in really not wanting that. I want a small phone I can easily shove in a trouser pocket, but for PDA-type tasks I want a good sized screen and decent method of text input (and in an ideal world, they'd interface seamlessly). Perhaps hopelessly simplistically, I reckon the easiest way to cater for that is to offer a smartphone, just without the phone. The market seems to think otherwise, though, as there are hardly any new non-phone PalmOS, Windows Mobile or Symbian devices (are there?) I thought Apple had a golden opportunity with the iPod Touch to basically do the iPhone without the phone, but the initial message seems to be "no, it's an iPod and the WiFi's mainly for buying more stuff from iTunes in Starbucks" (what with no bluetooth, removing apps like mail and maps, disabling calendar editing etc.). Question is, will it continue in that vein, or is it a bit of a test-bed for a more useful non-phone tablet, especially with an SDK coming? Along the same lines, to me it would make sense to have the option of a phone in the N800 range to open up a wider potential market, but then perhaps non-phone versions would go the same way as PalmOS and Windows Mobile...

The biggest potential danger I can see for the N800 series is the Pareto principle. If the N810, and steps 4 and 5 along the road to the mainstream, take off, and out of the amazing range of things you can do with them, 80% of people only use 20% of the features, it's a market ripe for a company like Apple to jump into and produce a shiny, polished iPod Touch/Newton II/whatever that does those 20% of things really well, out of the box, with a simple interface anyone can get to grips with. However! That only applies if those 80% of people use the same 20% of features as each other. If every user needs a different 20%, it's a whole different kettle of fish, and the openness of the N800 series then comes into its own. So we're back to that question of "what do people want?", and I'm not sure that'll be answered until someone (Apple? Nokia? A newcomer to the field?) releases it and the world goes "it's that!" In the meantime, I think I'll pick up an N810 as the best thing out there, for me, at the moment.

Texrat | # 38 | 2007-10-29, 13:57 | Report

Zoso, stick around. Eventually you'll start to understand when Hedgie is being serious vs having fun.

Oh, and I see the Internet Tablets observing a Long Tail trend. Most long-term success stories do.

EDIT: lol... somehow I overlooked your nod to 'plinth'. I'm thinking maybe the whole thing is Portable Linux Internet Tablet/Hildonized.

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Last edited by Texrat; 2007-10-29 at 19:07.

geneven | # 39 | 2007-10-29, 14:19 | Report

"Be careful of falling into the 'reviewers fallacy'. I used to work as a computer journalist. I've edited magazines and written books. One thing that newbie journalists do all the time is review a product based on what they want out of it. Well, that's not how you do it. You look at what it sets out to do and you look at how successful it is in doing that."

That's saying that reviws should be 'developer-centric'. This kind of debate goes on in literary criicism all the time. In fact, reviews can properly be written from different points of view. Most readers are interested in reviews that mirror their points of view.

Newbie reviewers go wrong because they are not sufficiently aware of the way their readers see things, not because they don't think like developers.

Texrat | # 40 | 2007-10-29, 14:23 | Report

Oddly, geneven, my interpretation of that quote is just the opposite. Looks to me like he's leaving developers out of the picture and focusing on users, to wit:

That's a pure functionality check. So how is it developer-centric?