Re: My N900 concerns
 

Thanks, this is interesting I think.

You write that "pressure Nokia will feel to support it in a big way" and "Nokia being a heavy investor in this economy" (meaning the 'micro economy' you brought up).

What sort of pressure do you expect to be made towards Nokia - and to do what?
Could you elaborate on this micro economy and how you see Nokia being a heavy investor in it?

Thanks!

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Please see my hillbilly economic theory in post 30 :)

Re: My N900 concerns
 

You might not realise this, but much of the work on Linux is done by professional developers with >10 years experience. In my case I've been programming for 27 years and on Linux for 15 years, and I don't think I'm unusual.

Also, most app store apps don't make enough money to make much difference to those mortgages and mouths.

But maybe the fantasy of making money from an iPhone app spurs on some people anyway :-)

There have been studies which shows that paying developers sometimes reduces the quality and pace of development. It's a complex subject.

I do hope we'll have a good functioning community which includes commercially supported products, though it's not clear that copying Apple's iPhone app store is the best way to provide access to them.

In my ideal world, we'd have an app store with good ratings and reviews, open source with all aps, and great support from Nokia and/or 3rd parties for donations or choose your own price and you still get the source, like some music sites where you choose the price yourself, and (in my ideal world) people who actually do donate to products they use and enjoy.

It is beginning to happen with music sales - less DRM, more user choice, more places where you can choose when and how much to pay. So I have hope it can work eventually for software apps too; it'd be great to see Nokia leading the industry in that way.

It may take a cultural shift before there's much viable business writing open source apps for phones - but let's not kid ourselves: Most iPhone app developers don't make much, if anything, either. The big success stories are unusual.

Even for people who will only do it if they think they can make money, at the moment it's far from clear what strategy is the most profitable them, and the profitable strategies may change over time as customer behaviours and demands change.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I did and it was interesting, it didn't however address the follow-up questions I brought up to your post - about what preassure the community will apply to Nokia - how, and for what. And as you wrote, 'Nokia to support it in a big way' - support it how? Keeping it topical for the thread though.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I was talking with someone yesterday who thinks Nokia's strategy may have been to start with niche-only NITs which appeal to techies deliberately, to build experience (inside Nokia), technology, distro, an enthusiastic & supportive community, and the beginnings of apps and ideas, before they are ready to go mass market. This way, they won't suffer from the problem of releasing to mass market before it's ready with all the ingredients people expect nowadays, which would have doomed the whole project for many years due to bad reviews, people being put off, other contenders getting the mindshare etc.

So that would be (a) but not (b), because they'd have planned to be niche earlier on.

Then (c) would be not just to increase the community size, but possible because of sufficient community from the earlier NITs.

My friend had an interesting suggestion for the next device. It's really useful to be able to connect to mobile networks, and to place calls.

But do we really need a small device the size of a phone, with microphone and speakers for making calls? Another way is the NIT form factor, slightly larger pad size, thin, too big to hold next to your ear, and just accept that using Bluetooth earpiece is the way to make calls. Could that be the future of smartphones?

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Keys to sustain N900 and Maemo interest:

1. Marketing (to both consumers and devs)
2. Support the repositories and devs with all the resources needed and keep up the dev conferences on a monthly basis.
3. Work with commercial devs (all sizes) to bring apps to the N900 and the platform.
4. Create a user UI profile with a more phone centric interface. This would go a looong way to pull in smartphoners and could be turned off or on, depending on your preference.
5. Push for game dev- ports and original content.

In regards to marketing, rather than X-Files type ads, do ads that focus on the practical points of the device.

+ 32 gb space
+ Good camera
+ Great web experience / Flash
+ Great audio quality
+ Video codec support
+ Netbook-like function
+ Show a TV add with the device playing Quake 3- THAT will make a lot of people appreciate the power of the device with a practical perspective. Heck, sponsor frag fests with the N900 ;)
+ Show why Android is a weaker experience

They could save a lot of money from TV ads by going viral with the add content.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Ah that has to do with reinforcement studies in psychology. It's because if a person is doing whatever it is for an intrinsic reason (e.g. they feel good about donating, or it makes them feel good when they study and receive a good grade) adding a reinforcement (such as paying them when they get good grades) diminishes the intrinsic reason they were doing it in the first place and it starts to become an extrinsic or external (e.g. I am getting paid for this). But then the problem with paying a person to do that is you hit a cap (unless you are willing to keep paying that person more and more). While if it's still intrinsic, the more they do the better they feel.

But yeah the studies in that field are interesting.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Paying based on milestones and incentives corrects the issues.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Interesting. The inherent problem, to me, is that a tablet of usable size (5 inch minimum) you may carry 60-70% of the time with you - but you want to be able to carry your phone 100% of the time.

Anyway, a bit off-topic here maybe :)

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I am DEAD sure they will, with the next device! The N900 is still an experiement, Nokia themselves said its evolution step 4 out of 5 or something. The N900 is to attract people, but not yet the masses. People as in rather regular, conservatively profiled people, other than complete geeks and sleepless OSS devs the NITs served to attract ;)
We'll see in a years time. The next Maemo-N with the next Maemo revision ontop will solve the puzzle and everybody will see the big plan behind it all. I'm curious as hell if it Maemo really is a social act of Nokia and they have other plans for it (licensing? selling? a hobby? or just to keep Peter employed?) or if - in the end - it's still all bone die hard business and money making.