Nathan | # 21 | 2009-10-18, 19:29 | Report

I think they have been pretty upfront about Product x being Step y in a 5 step plan. This entails change -- not everything has been major changes. Some of it has been pretty simple recompile. They have been working on getting the product to where they believe it needs to go. Think of it as Step 1 = Alpha 1, Step 2 = Beta 1, Step 3 = Beta 2, Step 4 = RC, and Step 5 = Final. ;-)

They needed to test the waters; and get community input. (Kinda like the open source model, release often...) Its a bit harder to release new hardware frequently without it costing them a huge amount of money. They have been extremely upfront what is coming for Step 5 --- I believe they have gone way above and beyond what was needed in this. They have seriously have risked taking potentially a lot of sales from the n900 by pre-announcing BEFORE the current device has shipped where they are going. This is pretty much unheard of in most companies, and considered horrible marketting. But, for us Developers this is HUGE, HUGE, HUGE! Large, kudo's for Nokia taking the time to make sure we are ALL aware of where they are going!


I don't disagree with you. I've preached this same line elsewhere. Developers are going to win this platform. But you still have to factor in Nokia and its shareholders. Most companies don't even go for "long" term wins; they go short term. Nokia has already been financing this "direction" for a long time. I believe I read that the 810 was the first device that actually made them any real money.
Part of the issue I believe is they are trying to re-build their core for the next generation -- they have strategically taken some awesome steps but everything is not in place yet. It takes time to get all the ducks in a row. So yes their will be some frustration as they make mistakes and transition. That is the whole purpose of Qt; cross-platform between Symbian and Maemo phones. This is the "missing" link between the lines of phones. Once they get it all working properly; they will be in a awesome postition. But it takes a lot of developers (that they are paying) to get all the libraries fully working to be able to see this vision come true.


Well, if you have been in this business any amount of time; you will know that the day you buy something it is outdated. ;-) Their is a good possibility it that Harmatten won't work. Also equally a good chance it will. I don't think Nokia themselves will even know if it will work until they get to the point of releasing it. They have already started an "official" (Nokia funded) Qt4.6 port for Fremantle in addition to the Qt4.5 team; so they appear to be strongly trying to make sure everything works in Fremantle.

If you want to wait; I'm in the position I have no maemo devices at all (so I develop using the scratchbox/sdk) -- I but I can see where this is going; and I think this is literally the ground floor of a product which will take Nokia a long ways into the next generation and way past Apple, Rim, and Android.


Because they are not quite at their goal for mass consumer devices (step 5) -- I would venture that once Harmatten comes out the API will be very stable (In fact you can target Qt 4.6 right now) and won't change hugely bring the stability you are seeking.


That would be me. I'm standing at 167 Karma. No discount. No device. So I will answer your question. ;-)

Getting on the ground floor of a revolutionary device. Think 8086 -> 80286 -> 80386. The development market went through a lot of upheaval between those generations of chips. 80386 brought the stability to the market.

That depends. It is the #1 presale unlocked phone on Amazon. The dev-discounts don't apply to Amazon -- so this is normal users in the USA only! The device isn't even shipping -- we haven't a clue how popular it will be. (Peter, Quim, any presale numbers available?)

I've been developing for over 20 years. Not a lot of "new" technology really excites me. The Maemo/n900 really excites me. The amount of "future" prospects it offers is unbelievable.

If I had the ability to convince the wife that I "need" a $600 phone -- I would be purchase it in a heart beat. I can only hope that by the next dev discount program that comes around that I can qualify for so that I can much convince my wife that a $300-$400 device is worth while. ;-)

Most apps have really only needed to be recompiled. Some have needed to be re-worked. But I spent a couple nights of work porting several libraries from scratch and then fixing a couple bugs and the app runs really well on my SDK/Scratchbox.

Could be if you get your satisfaction from being known and "prestigious" -- their are several developers on this forum that I am very impressed by because of all the "unpaid"work they put into it. Some have done some amazing things at no cost to the community and cost them time and money.


Their are a lot of people who are still happy their 770/800 and 810. If mine wasn't broken; I would be still happy with my n810 (and would still be lusting over a n900 tho). But you can use the SDK for free and develop pretty much anything in it if you don't want to drop any money. The community will test your app on real devices for you. = No Cost!

I understand your frustration. You feel you have been misled and you want to make sure you aren't anymore. What do you have to insure you aren't being misled this time?

Well, I think in this case Nokia has been _VERY_ upfront about where they are going and have been putting their money where their mouth is by funding not only the Maemo Qt 4.5 branch, but the Qt4.6 branch of code for the Maemo and Qt4.6 for Symbian devices. That isn't even talking about the money they are investing in Qt in general. They are attempting to synchronize their platforms and by this radical of a change they will have accidentally burnt some developers. I think they realize that Qt4 is a/the major underpinning of their next generation and they are not pulling any stops to get it out.

Nathan.

Laughing Man | # 22 | 2009-10-18, 19:44 | Report

Err..

1) How many years has Nokia been in the cell phone market compared to Apple and Google.

2) How many years have they been in the smartphone market compared to Apple and Google?

3) How fast are Apple and Google growing?

Just because Rome was on top before doesn't mean they'll be on top forever. [Though I don't see Apple being on top either, they're the type that would rather own their own market and be content with that since they can never capture the entire market with their tactics].

My concern more with compatibility breaks with the OS and device releases will be how long the n900 is supported. It would be terrible if the lifespan of the device was only one or two years. Especially if Nokia pulls stunts like "fixed in freemantle" if the fix could also be done on the previous OS. But hopefully being built on an open-source community will ensure a long life to re-coup the 600 dollar investment into the device.

UCOMM | # 23 | 2009-10-19, 04:26 | Report

based on past history it'll be supported by nokia for about a year, you know this, i know this, everyone knows this, its not some hidden fact its how they do business, look at how they support their phones for example


there is nothing wrong with this by me, as i've preordered with this knowledge in mind

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Last edited by UCOMM; 2009-10-19 at 13:05.

qgil | # 24 | 2009-10-19, 10:13 | Report

Hi, this spin-off thread belongs more to Development, if someone wants to move it.

The Qt team is working on the packages. They were busy with the Qt Developer Days. Local builds work.

The communication path is described at
http://qt.nokia.com/developer/qt-for-maemo-developers

Jaffa | # 25 | 2009-10-21, 12:42 | Report

Note that this seems to be a write-only mailing list, with perhaps only one subscriber. It has one post, by one author. Me:

http://lists.trolltech.com/pipermail...er/thread.html

DaveP1 | # 26 | 2009-10-21, 16:17 | Report

I would question that "everyone knows this" and I haven't seen any official Nokia pronouncement that Maemo 5 will only be supported for X number of years or that the N900 will not be upgradable to Maemo 6. In fact, the phrase "Maemo 6" exists on only two pages within the site www.nokia.com; both being a press release about Qt. This information may exist but it certainly isn't easily accessible to the consumer.

This isn't a problem for the cell phone market. Cell phones are purchased with the assumption that if you want a newer OS in a year you buy a newer phone. For the smartphone market, this is assumption may change depending upon how backward compatible the new set of OS upgrades are. For the portable computer market, this has never been the assumption.

Whether it will hurt Nokia at the high end remains to be seen. It certainly doesn't help.

javispedro | # 27 | 2009-10-21, 16:21 | Report

There have been a few commits to Qt Creator about that lately (I didn't know it was demoed at summit ), so I guess the feature is still under development and you may need to pull QT Creator git to use it.