joepagiii | # 71 | 2008-06-10, 18:44 | Report

ok...now my kids are crying...why...cause im crankin that song....thanks..i love it...

andrewfblack | # 72 | 2008-06-10, 19:21 | Report

I hot Icelanddreams copy and pasted that. Because I know the song but not that good. It was an oldie when I was born.

joepagiii | # 73 | 2008-06-10, 19:30 | Report

welll i remember hearing it as a kid...in the 70s....i like oldies

ddalex | # 74 | 2008-06-10, 19:31 | Report

Good points.... I have to stress out that I'm describing my _subjective_ experience. I'm not saying that others don't find these devices useful beside being lovely (and yes, I'm very proud of my toys ). But my point is that we should focus on how to improve the experience of using this device, and pass to Nokia these desires. This sounds a lot like market-droid-speak, but it isn't.

So allow me to quote you in trying to make a constructive approach here (even if it may sound like bashing, and blame-throwing, it isn't; all of you guys, think of this as a post-mortem on the current status of NITs, and a discussion on where we want to take them).

Good point. But NIT's are not the ground-breaking devices they want to be, user experince-wise. We've had time to form an idea about what a PDA does, what a PMP does, what do you expect from a low-end and from a high-end laptop since years ago. In this case, it's not about reinventing the wheel from scratch, it's about taking all the wheel designs made so far and figure out how to make a new better wheel. I'd expect incremental inovation from a known base, not starting from 0 like Newton and Palm did. But it seems that the tablets do not capitalize on that knowledge.

So you say that two years and three iterations is too short to make a new device for a new market out of thin air. I say it's about enough, and the next iteration should be consumer-level. iPods went from nothing to millions sold in less than 2 years.

I'm not complaining that the tablets are not at consumer-level so far; but I hope that the next iteration will be at true consumer level; I invested too much passion, energy and interest in these specific devices to watch light-heartadly how it is gonna be surpased and killed by iThings that will lock devs (and myself) out of it. So what I'm trying to do is make Nokia listen to my and my fellow NIT users requests for improvement, and take action on them, so in the next iteration we will get a consumer-level tablet that is still very friendly to developers and OSS crowd.

I'm well aware of those pesky lawyers and their legal implications. My point is that the worst position to be in is half-closed and half-OSS. You'll annoy everybody and you'll be in no side. In my country we call this "haveing your *** in two boats will only get you drawned".

Two years, three iterations later, I think that this product line should take momentum. If not now, then when ?. NITs already competitors that are on more-or-less equal terms now, and which hadn't the two year advantage. I strongly suspect that if this line doesn't take off now, it will never get the chance again, even if this happens for simple economic reasons.

[/QUOTE]
The guys and girls who built that did it good starting from nothing. It took them 5 years, yes. But we (read IT community and designers) already have good ideas on how to proceed - why throw away and re-learning everything from scratch how to make mobile computing ? And spending another 5 years on that ? Maemo as platform is already 3 years old, and it's getting dated by the minute now. The moment Android comes alive on a HTC device, doing everything NIT does, but with better capabilites, NITs and Nokia will be in big trouble. I'll repet myself, I belive that this is the latest critical point to change the mission of NIT and make it into a mainstream platform. So think about what should be next in NIT line and voice your thoughts.

Damn, running into limitations. Will follow up on next post.

IcelandDreams | # 75 | 2008-06-10, 19:43 | Report

oh the wonders of technology.... I don't know it *that* well either.
But when it was popular I wasn't too young to understand it. Compare then with now (that war in Iraq) and I am thoroughly confused by what is happening regarding war. That change in thinking seems to bleed over to the insanity that is the iThread.

Please don't. Or as they say in Georgia "let's not and say we did"

joepagiii | # 76 | 2008-06-10, 19:45 | Report

georgia...fun place to pass thru...hitchiked from new york to florida stoped there a few times...fun place...

ddalex | # 77 | 2008-06-10, 19:54 | Report

Me goes again... Is there, anywhere, a prize for the thread with the longest series of lenghtly posts ?

No, actually I wasn't aware that Ubuntu mobile uses Hildon for its UI. That it supports it, like in a lib, yeah, but having it be THE UI, no, I didn't know. I admit, I never did look in depth at Ubuntu mobile distribution, and I don't even know if it can be downloaded and tested from somewhere, but I was using that more like a generic example, and I think that my point, that it is a bad idea having Hildon break perfectly good GTK applications, was well understood .

I've seen that. A video, and nothing in the wild. I got better hopes on this:USB video. But I wouldn't call a mini-B female with autosensing for which you can't get cables "proper USB host port". Your point of OOo is quite valid . But I belive that you got my point: that we should take active steps in driving what's becoming of N900, and how one expects to interact with it, instead of passively wait for another "developer" device that Nokia will throw at us. ITT crowd is the driving force of the NIT extra-value, which is considerable, and I think Nokia will actually listen to our requests of having on the 4th iteration a finished and polished device that wouldn't stand in shame next to 2nd generation iPhone when trying to open a page to let me see what movies are on tonite.

I'm not writing it off. Like I said, I invested too much in it (even if my work is not visible in the community, I know, I know). What I want is to MAKE SURE that what comes is the best of all possible outcomes, and from my point of view, it doesn't seem that NIT/Maemo Next Generation is ready to become that... it can be so much more !

sjgadsby | # 78 | 2008-06-10, 20:07 | Report

It's déjà vu all over again, but here goes:

Had Nokia locked and limited the range of functionality the Internet Tablets offer as much as Apple did with the iPods, particularly those early models, I expect we'd have seen much more refinement of, and polish on, the product. However, the devices would have attracted much less attention, as their potential would have been greatly diminished.

Instead, Nokia invested their development time in going broad, rather than deep, and offered a flexible, open platform. As Nokia and maemo add a bit more depth with each release of the hardware and software, the openness encourages others to step in and contribute to the platform. Additionally, maemo is able build upon, and share back with, other open source projects, which strengthens all involved. Obviously, the process of improvement isn't as rapid as many would like, but its momentum is growing.

ddalex | # 79 | 2008-06-10, 20:19 | Report

I'd rather lazy on a Barcelona beach,
With Margueritas in hand,
But life being what it is - a *****,
I'll never make it to wonderland.

This is what I want too. Even if I actually prefer real paper for the books . I'll give it another try.

It's quite surprising how inflexible big companies are, even if they are declared enemies of M$. So Exchange support is a must have to make it in the corporate world. iPhone 2.0 does it, no ?

Never tried modesto, looks like I missed something.

Well, I'm asking for a consumer-level device.... Make the ports yourself and share, that's a great philosophy for OSS-tinkerers, but since most addins are anyhow platform-agnostic, why should I have to tweak them instead of having the mozilla-based browser accept them as they are, .xpi packets ? This is what I understand by consumer-level device .


Cutting edge ? Maybe 2 years ago. It's not anymore cutting edge. iPhone has better hardware, with really working software. It's time to open the eyes, and see that while we love our tablets, in short term, if the platform will not evolve into something usable, and economically succesfull, it will be probably killed off by Nokia, or kept as an interesting side experiment.

While I can do, and actually do the tinkering, not everyone is ready to make this invesment in learning the inner workings. I have Linux with Evolution on desktop precisely because this is what works for me. Better yet, I can drop a 8.04 Ubuntu on any computer and have any neofite browse the web and edit documents in no time (it's that polished, yes).

But I can't drop a tablet in the same way on someone and ask them to see what's on tonite on the tele, because in 5 minutes they will scream in frustration. Still, I have yet to see someone unhappy with the way their iPhone works. eeePc is a NIT-like story, nobody that isn't a geek is using it.

Why do they have to be separate ? I want both the polish and the openness.

And what do you prefer ? Somebody telling you that your baby is desfigured by a disease, hurt your feelings, but actually having time and work on a solution before it's too late, or you'd rather be told by everybody how nice and beautiful your baby is, feel all nice, cozy and warm inside, and end up with a prematurely dead baby? Maybe a harsh comparation, but I think we're moving to a turning point here, and NITs must not miss the consumer boat.

GeneralAntilles | # 80 | 2008-06-10, 20:24 | Report

I try, oh how I try, but there's always some that seep through the cracks.