Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Well, Maemo SDK+ is actually painless to install and use: you only have to prepend all your usual build commands with "sb2". But you haven't answered any of my questions! What a pity! :D

Not sure why I should spend my life syncing with Exchange server. OpenGL may be of some use, especially on a 800x480 screen (iPhone only has 480x320) but if you have not installed an SDK, there is no point lamenting its lack or celebrating its presence. So, back to those three questions.

Hey, I can go on just for the fun of it.

Well, you pretty much answered your own question. If OMAP3 mass production has not started yet, it is not logical to expect Nokia release a product based on it. Notice that all current Nokia devices come out with OMAP2 right now. It usually takes 6-12 months to switch to a new platform, from the moment the chips go into mass production. You can use Nokia's OMAP1->OMAP2 switch as a reference.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Well if I failed to install Maemo SDK I guess it was as useful to me as Apple SDK at that time. I think this covers all three questions. :p

And I'm not sure that I want spend my entire day with internet tablet enjoying its excellent battery life. What I have read from this forum, I'm not the only one salivating over proper sync support and better graphics hardware.

But I guess I have to give Maemo SDK a second try. If I could develop software for tablet, I might justify 420 euro price tag ( that' $650 :eek:). Too bad they don't sell N800 any more in Finland.

I'm not that familiar with hardware production and their time frames so forgive my ignorance. So this means that we can't expect more powerful tablet before next Christmas (maybe spring 2009). Too bad..

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

That unbelievably cheap data plan still assumes that you bought a very expensive voice plan on top of it, right? I consider anything over $100 a year pretty expensive, since that's about what I pay for my cell phone now.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

no pay by traffic amount option built in to your original plan?

this stuff seems to come up a lot when comparing iphone and N8x0.

its making me think that the us mobile operators are working under the assumption that only corp "road warriors" use mobile data connections for anything other then downloading ringtones and phone "wallpapers", and those can be leeched on a bit more...

as in, the iphone isnt on a level playing field as it has a special plan attached to it that gives the owner more, for less. or at least so it appears.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Some developers are developing for the tablets for the freedom and open source, not for money. I don't want money for my applications. I only want people uses my apps for 0$.

What if I want develop for Iphone (if I understand it well):
Computer with MAC OS X = 1000$? I really don't know the price.
SDK = free
Distribution + hosting of apps = 99$
Iphone = 500$ + dataplan?

What if I want develop for Nokia:
Computer = many people has one
GNU/Linux = free
SDK = free
Distribution + hosting of apps = free
Nokia tablet = 100$ (yes, Nokia *pays* in some way to developers)

If I do a powerful application for free when Apple or Nokia sell a similar application for 20$. Nokia will do nothing with my application, Apple will refuse my application.
I don't see a bad deal for companies, but it's not good for individual developers, and worse for free software developers.

Never.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Not really. There is a certain important difference between "I failed" and "It is not available".

Well, I am not salivating over sync support, as I do not need it. Only have to deal with Exchange at work, so I am completely happy if it stays there.

As far as graphics goes, the OMAP2 chip inside Nokia tablets does include 3D graphics hardware, so the only problem is the drivers. I am pretty sure that sooner or later this problem will be resolved.

Just order one from the US :)

Who told you that you can't expect a more powerful tablet? I only told you that you can't expect an OMAP3-based tablet by that time. But there is still a lot of things you can do with OMAP2 architecture, not to mention the system software (like those 3D drivers).

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

In Europe many prepaid options work, as long as you either don't mind removing the simlock and voiding the warranty, or pay more for an unlocked phone with warranty.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

It's not only driver problem. See this thread: 3D acceleration for the N8x0
I quote fanous from that thread:

I wish it was that simple. If I buy from US, warranty isn't valid in Europe. (And I wouldn't have Finnish keyboard layout, although I probably could live with this)

TI only lists OMAP2430, 20 & 10 on their site and maximum frequency is said to be 450MHz. N810 is quite close to limit. Of course it's possible to add more SRAM and increate the frequency but will TI do that when the new OMAPs are just around the corner?

I haven't totally given up on NIT. I sure hope Nokia will surprise me with WiMax tablet. :)

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Funny how you quoted the thread but missed the point: the internal OMAP2 SRAM is still available for video, even although it does not cover the whole screen. MPlayer makes use of it, if I understand things correctly. In other words, given the drivers, you should be perfectly capable of doing 3D in a 640x480 window and place other stuff (like stats or controls) at the sides. And no, you do not need 60fps for 3D: it will never render at this framerate anyway.

AFAIK, Nokia offers world-wide warranty on its devices. So, it should still be valid.

Won't be a problem with N800 you expressed a wish to buy. No keyboard -> no layout.

Why do you need to increase CPU frequency in the first place? 400MHz is sufficient for purposes N8x0 are designed for. Hell, you can even do 3D gaming at this speed, given the drivers. Increasing CPU clock will drain the battery faster and, with SDRAM access being the main bottleneck in this kind of devices, you may not feel any significant performance increase.

Believe me, with these devices things are not as simple as just increasing the clock rates.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

I just want to run Monkey Ball on my tablet.
I don't want it to run at 800x640x16, it's enough at 640x480x16.
3D games don't need to be ran at full resolution.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

ah yes, 3D. it actually surprised me that i didnt know the iphone packed a 3D chip under the hood. explains the snappy interface people have been raving on about...

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

No, I didn't miss the point. I don't consider this to be a good solution. I don't think MID will have this kind of restrictions.
I'm not saying that current NIT hardware is bad. Competition is just getting stronger and I think that devices that offer best user experience out of the box will be the winners. Apple is very good at that and their SDK seems to be on the same track.


I have asked this from Nokia Care and response was they they don't offer world-wide warranty.

I didn't say it's that easy and that's why I asked about OMAP3. You said that current design could be stretched further.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Oh, they will, they definitely will. The only problem is, they won't last through a day with that Silverthorne chip in its current gluttonous state. Also, most MIDs I have seen photos of are larger than N8x0 tablets. So, you will either have to wait for them to get smaller or wear cargo pants with spare batteries in the second pocket. :)

Too bad :(

And I've said so because the current design can be stretched further. Put more SDRAM and rootfs flash in. Make SDRAM bus faster. Add PowerVR, Jazelle, and A2DP support to the firmware. Fix GPS acquisition times. make better use of OMAP2 video buffer. All of these do not require OMAP3.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Well the points (in slighty random order) were

- with 'real' framebuffer in main RAM (SDRAM) whole system is slowed down by constant LCD display refresh that fights with any other access to RAM. When they designed 770 someone decided this is too much to bear and they used external LCD controller with its own memory. Same solution is used on PCs, integrated videocards steal RAM cycles from main RAM too, dedicated video cards are preferred for better performance. This solution however makes display updates more complicated as, unlike with PCs, external video RAM is not directly mapped to CPU and cannot be written to easily (and directly). It must be send 'by hand' (you can send specific rectangle of display area).

- OMAP 2 in N8x0 has SRAM good enough for 640x480 which is sadly less than 800x480 our tablets need, so problem is not solved and there is still external chip with its own 800x480 framebuffer. internal 640x480 SRAM is used for additional video plane (why not when we have it) but this does not bring big benefits now as it also needs to be transferred to external chip (together with rest of normal 800x480 framebuffer in SDRAM). I believe there is slight benefit of having this SRAM used now for video and some video scaling or other transformation is done by OMAP display controller but nothing substantial.

- as for 3D - maybe the video plane in SRAM would be a benefit but maybe not, I don't know if the (currently unused) 3D chip can draw to it or must draw to SDRAM and what is performance of both solutions (if both are possible). Maybe it doesn't matter much and this is not the main problem, see below

- you can draw as fast as you can (in 2d or maybe in 3d in future) to internal 'video' RAM (both SRAM and SDRAM) but you won't see it on display until transferred to external chip. This causes problem for fullscreen 800x480 display updates at good FPS rate but is supposedly good enough for 640x480 at ~25 fps so it is not show stopper but ..

- current video system is pretty complex even now so it is not surprise that nobody at Nokia pushed hard for making 3D acceleration working. Even if hardware specs could do it, it is not easy to make it running with current architecture so (IMO) they better spend developer resources elsewhere. Also maybe the licensed 3d solution Nokia could buy would not fit this architecture and customizations would be costly or even impossible. Maybe all this can change if Nokia managers dazzled by iPhone decide to change some priorities but I'm not holding my breath for it :-)

- hopefully with next generation we may fit whole 800x480 (or more) to directly mapped video ram and ditch external chip making the architecture easier to support features like 3D, video out, etc

Not sure if all this gives you some arguments in your iphone vs Maemo SDK discussion though :-)

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Lol this thread is pretty derailed.

Everything is so messy on the N800/N810. Weak video support, terrible LCD controller, no PowerVR drivers, bad GPS lock on times, a browser that loses finger/stylus control on sites with javascript. Its just an unfinished and unpolished product even after 3 years of development.

Its very unfortunate, as the idea behind the IT is awesome and something with arguably lesser hardware (iTouch) comes in and makes it look really bad.

Apple took the time to build a proper platform with no video tearing, 3d drivers, awesome scaling webkit engine, PIM syncing, email that works and now an incredible sdk with big name developers. And this is all in ONE year, not three.

I hope Nokia sticks with it. They have the right idea with the easy tethering, big high res screen and open source software... but they are at least another year or two out from really creating an "everyday" product. I'll continue to follow the product line, as it got me interested in the idea of a pocket browser.

For some it sucks that the iPhone SDK is Mac OS X only, but its one of the best I've seen for a mobile platform. I am patiently waiting for an iMac update and I'll definitely be messing around then :)

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

No, the monthly cost is 60/month and you get 450 minutes with unlimited data and web.

With verizon, it's 40 for voice plan, 60 on top if you want unlimited data.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

That probably is true. All of at&t's competitors are trying to come up with comparable plans but it's difficult for them to do so. As it is now, the iphone has the best data plan right now. You are limited to using it on the iphone as of now but if that's all you need, why pay an extra premium to have tethering capabilities when you don't use it.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Also, the higher cost is because I have wanted to be able to have internet on my tablet at all times (or most of the time like the iphone is capable of depending on your location).

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

and thats the part i find so amusing in its difference.

here (norway) tethering do not come at a premium, its just another generator of data traffic thats payed by the megabyte (or you can get a unlimited flat rate option with the ones that have actual networks).

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

That's not true.
Everything they have on the iPhone comes from Mac OS X.
They simply just had to fix some issues related to the "embedded" word (better power manager, touch input and so on).
But everything else comes from Mac OS X.
And they are working on Mac OS X more than Nokia on Linux+GTK.
Moreover, they are for sure working, internally, on the iPhone a lot more earlier than one year.
Like they did for Mac OS X on Intel. They said, later, that they were working on it since 2000.
Last, Cocoa stems from Carbon. Carbon comes from NeXT (still Steve, but running a darker company).

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

I got it to install under debian recently without a hitch.

The old SDK would run on top of Xen, believe it or not, but the recent one doesn't.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Nokia likely worked on the 770 for a year or 2 before it was released as well, in addition to taking everything from linux and GTK. So we're 3 to 5 years into Tablet OS development too. Its still a mess!

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

This does not sound like much of a problem, more like an optimization. You can only transfer parts of the screen that you change and thus save memory bandwidth.

Taking into account that both PowerVR and the framebuffer are integrated into the same OMAP2 chip, the PowerVR should be usable to render directly into that framebuffer. You can then tell the hardware to transfer that framebuffer to the display.

As far as I could tell from your information, it just adds an extra step before things show up at the display. Funnily, at least some (if not all) iPods use the same mechanism. It is not very complex, just a bit cumbersome.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

I really don't know if I want to return my N800 and get a ipod touch or keep it. Im really leaning toward keeping it because I bought it to act as a small cheap laptop replacement for me and so far has been working great. I really Like how it has expandable memory and bluetooth for a keyboard, and the resolutions awesome. But then you have Apple offering 100,000,000 to any developer that has a great idea, plus a great distribution system. Even though the Maemo community is big, because of apple's fan base I would think that they would get much more developers flocking to there console. Plus, its hard to resist Steve Job's silver tongue, and even if he promises big things for the iPod touch, the finished SDK could suck.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

the touch do not have bluetooth...

hell, i dont even think it can do usb host, and the apps cant touch the dock connector in any way...

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Apple puts on all kinds of restrictions on apps (Users can only run one application at a time, and if they leave an application it quits ). Not that it will stop the jailbreakers and free spirited.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

huh, my non-smart phone can multitask java apps and some internal functions (browser not being one of them, go fig).

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Oops sorry, I meant the N800 has bluetooth!

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

That really kills the whole iPhone SDK... I frequently run multiple apps at the same time. (Like use internet streaming radio, Skype, etc. in the background and browser on the foreground...) If the iPhone can not do that, I'm finding it hard to see any value for the whole iPhone SDK? :confused:

I knew it all sounded too good to be true... :rolleyes:

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

i know, i was just pointing out that you cant use a bluetooth keyboard with a touch. or any other bluetooth device for that matter.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Well sometimes it is quite hard to decide which parts of screen changed. When you give direct access (i.e. memory pointers) to framebuffer to programs you don't know what the program did so you can't optimize much. Also it causes problems with tearing. How would you move three rectangles to the chip in one frame without tearing? You can't. So for such playback you must sent only one rectangle = whole video frame (and then you are limited by bandwidth). Also the overhead of starting and stopping the transfer may be bigger than sending one bigger rectangle. So yes it is optimization but (IMO) it has more drawbacks than advantages and mostly just complicates everything.

I simply said I don't know what are the rules but anyway, yes there is no problem with that. And BTW, OMAP is system on chip, it is not clear every part (DSP, MPU, IVA, 3d accelerator - each being separate CPU with own caches, private SRAM, even private MMU units ...) can directly access any other part. Some parts may have easier access to main SDRAM than SRAM of other part. There are no public docs for OMAP2 so we can only guess. Still no matter how exactly it works it is not the main problem (as already said twice).
Yes and such step causes delay and you must stop drawing until frame is transferred. So even if you can send 25 fps at 640x480 you have very little time to actually draw something there without tearing.

Anyway, as for complexity, feel free to study omapfb, rfbi, dispc and blizzard drivers (and lcd_mipid.c but that one does not add any complexity) in linux sources (in drivers/video/omap/), each handling different part of hardware puzzle. While it certainly is not deep magic, it is not easy either. Not 100% sure now but I think that for displaying full screen resolution, video is first slightly scaled down by dispc (omap display controller) and then scaled back up by blizzard (the epson chip) to overcome slow rfbi (remote frame buffer interface) transfer.

I don't understand it completely but seeing code of those drivers in kernel is good (or bad) enough for me to feel pity for anyone who must touch that code and may be tasked to throw 3d acceleration to the mix :-) But yes, I agree that given enough motivation it is doable :-) Well, unless of course they licence 3d acceleration driver as a binary blob with no right to customize it for this scenario (just like they couldn't directly customize Opera engine so they were happy to replace it with slower and more bloated firefox engine once it was usable enough, or like they can't customize Skype now and add video calls).

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Just a clarification. Cocoa stems from NextStep/OpenStep, which comes from next. Carbon comes from the old Macintosh toolkit.
There is almost no relationship between cocoa and carbon, in fact it is actually hard to bridge between them - they are two completely disimilar frameworks, programmed with different languages purely there to maintain compatibility with older software.
The iPod cannot use carbon, it only has cocoa.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

The 770 and the N800 up to OS2007 used Opera as internet browser, which is the opposite of open source, and aside from the WLAN driver memory leak bug, actually was one of the reasons why the internet browsing experience was so bad on the 770.

And even the OS itself is not completely open source.


Nokia took some good steps in the past, in creating the 770 and N810 at all, and setting up a community/development portal (maemo).


But it seems they wanted to outsource the application development completely, and that's where they shot themselves in the foot.

There are very few native applications, one of the best being Maemo Mapper.

Most apps are software ported from other platforms, which isn't bad in itself.

The problem is that many of these apps never leave beta stage, because the authors will loose interest eventually.

Why should they loose interest? Because they don't get paid...

Prominent example: Minimo

It seems Apple tries to avoid these flaws,
by providing new functionality for the iPhone/iTouch from 'in-house' .

I don't know if the developers of the iPhone UI and apps earned much money,
but I'm sure they were at least paid for their work,
which surely was a motivation to make it right and finish their work,
and everyone can see that they did a great job,
and that's one of the reasons why the iPhone is so popular.

Other reasons include the lack of marketing from the Nokia side.
They don't invest much more than the hardware basis, and the fees for running the maemo site.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

it is interesting in this thread to read all the technical stuff.... but as an advanced newbie i am more interested in bottom line stuff.. that said
i can do more stuff with the n810 than with my wife's itouch
but what she can do is more "elegant" ....
i had a client in my office yesterday he was transferring from dallas to chicago we were making small talk and he whipped out his iphone scrolled his finger across the screen and voila had temperatures in chicago and dallas in about 15 seconds... all the time i was thinking yeah i can do that with my n810 - but it looked so cool on his iphone... that finger swipe is way cool and makes me think my brand new n810 is about 10 years old ---

that is the advantage of the iphone/touch the coolness of how an app works (eye candy to some)

the advantage of the n810 (which after an apt-get upgrade-my gps is flawless and fixes on satellites as quickly as my garmin etrex legendc does) is the coolness of all the apps and stuff that work on it
just my thoughts

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

You could do that with om weather. Infact just add a new city and it updates on your desktop. Yeah eye candy is nice .....but ultimately functionality is what matters. Look at the razr; when it came out it was great looking and every second phone was a razr. But now motorola is almost gone. SO it is not all about eyecandy

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

There's that, but they weren't paid in the first place, and they were somehow interested. Often, they want the app ported so that they can use them. Once it hits honest-to-goodness beta quality, it's pretty usable, so they've alleviated the source of motivation that they did have.

The result is that their motivation, being more tied to early results, does a lot better than pay to get a bunch of apps kinda-sorta running, but paid developers are more motivated for finishing touches.

It suggests a route Nokia could (and to some extent does) take: Let the community be largely responsible for starting projects, but then pay developers to finish promising projects as they become functional enough to stagnate.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

the problem i have found with omweather is that it blows my battery life away (plus it obliterates the picture i have of my wife as my background image :) ) otherwise i agree the n810 has a greater functionality. . . but i do enjoy that eye candy of the itouch/phone

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Well yes, the technical stuff is boring, just wanted to explain that high resolution display (800x480, 2.5 times more pixels than iPhone) which is major selling point for tablets and was IMO excellent choice for serious web browsing is unfortunately too much to handle even for current hardware (not talking about 770 more than 2 years ago) so there are some sacrifices made. Also Nokia tablets are meant as experiment for creating relatively open platform so it is not surprising it still feels a bit unpolished and 100% closed features like 3d acceleration are not in. We already have too many closed parts in our tablets that were unavoidable. One should perhaps compare iphone with symbian based Nokia smarthphones which is equally closed and polished platform.

Re: iPhone and iPod Touch SDK is amazing... Wow.
 

Personally I think it's a combination of too early and too cheap.

- Too early, because the latest incarnation(s) of the OMAP (3430 and 35X0) will easily address the video issue (see the Pandora specs) and

- too cheap, because even the more primitive OMAP the Itablets use, has very powerful video capabilities -- provided the client pays for them...