Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

No, it just means you should stop using Macs :)

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

Hmmm... iPhone OS 3 runs on 1st gen iPhones. Hmm...

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

Nah, the real reason for Maemo6 to be brought out in some form on the N900 is to ease the transition from Gtk to Qt and to demonstrate Nokia's "commitment to openness".

Just think... it has taken many years of hard work (and 4 devices) to get Fremantle "nearly ready".

The next step is from comparitive niche to mass market; "bridging the gap" and all that jazz.

So, picture the conversation:

"I know. Just before we launch the mass market version lets completely replace the entire UI and gui SDK, all the apps, the security model, the desktop and even the main programming language. What could possibly go wrong?"

<long and incredulous pause>

"Err"

"Hmm, do you think we should test it on the N900 first?"

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

Uuuhm... did you see the most recent commercial for the N900? If Nokia internally works like that, geeeez, the answer to that last question will be "No!"...

Ok, seriously, no they won't of course change as drastically as they did from OS2008 to Maemo 5. *BUT* I do think the N900 will be abandoned upon the presentation of the next gen Nxxx. Transition from the niche and experimental test bed onto consumer land most likely also means a change in marketing technique, eg. marketing behaviour which has to be considered normal in mass markets. Abandoning previous device generations *is* perfectly normal in electronical gadget mass markets. And it's not like they didn't try before with the 770 and the N800.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

Absolutely! They can't afford to leave the N900 behind at least with the high interst/customer base that it seems to be gaining even before its release.

These "new" maemo customers will NOT come back to maemo if they get ignored by Nokia. This could be a very painful mistake for the future of maemo devices.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

That could be, but at the very least they should not Abandon the device and the OS like they did with the previous tablets.
Diablo still has plenty of bugs that are very annoying that could have been fixed through updates and improved the user experience, but they just left it.

Even if Maemo 6 won't be portable to the N900, they should still make sure they keep maintaining Maemo 5 once the New OS is out.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

That's what they did for the N810. We can't upgrade to Maemo 5. The N800 could upgrade to the N810's Diablo but the N770 couldn't officially (but there is a hack for that).

Nokia has never been overly concerned with yesterday's customer. If you buy the N900, expect to upgrade to a new phone if you want a new OS.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

Well the previous tables can't upgrade to Fremantle because of hardware issues. Think of the UI, it's fully hardware accelerated. Hardware the N8xx's don't feature. But the N900's successors are most likely quite similar, hardware wise. Still I think the N900 will be maintained for a couple months into the new devices lifetime and then abandoned. We'll see, we'll see...

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

If it's a computer that fits in my pocket, makes calls like a phone, costs like a phone, has the radio of a phone... it's a smartphone. You're only half-right.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

That's a big part of the problem, I think. I keep feeling like Nokia is concerned with selling you the new thing and not really interested in keeping you as a customer and supplying you with accessories to beef up your initial investment with more stuff you can buy along the way. Gaww--I feel like I should be thankful I can buy a replacement BATTERY for my N800. I almost regret convincing so many people to buy N800's except that the device itself is rather fantastic. :P It's everything OUTSIDE of the tangible device that that's killing me aside from the increasingly open nature of the OS. (Thankful for at least that, I suppose... never truly felt fully open, to me...and that's a real problem now that it's being tossed aside for the new product to support.)

This is true.. but I can't help feeling that there's no really good reason to outright drop all support on devices that were released so recently. I'm hoping a lot of this gloom will evaporate from me once Mer comes out with a 1.0 and fully supports all the N8x0 hardware... someday. Of course, by then I've probably moved on and avoided Nokia's tablet devices because of all this. **grumble**

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

HTC and their lackluster business politics regarding the hardware accelerated graphics chips slumbering inside the whole lineup of last generation devices drove me away from their name quite quickly. I do own a HTC again, but it's Android powered and there was no real competition to chose from when I bought it. But as I let HTC go I can and most likely will if forced to (sounds soooo endlessly stupid) leave any other brand, Nokia included. In fact I never ever touched a Nokia again after the desaster they pulled off with the Nokia 6000. And it's only for the N900 I'll have a look at them again, now come on guys, don't screw this up again ;)

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

So... Qt 4.6 is now in Maemo 5 extras-devel. It's alpha-ish but already pretty decent according to the first developers trying it out.

The Harmattan application framework is based in Qt 4.6. Plain Qt applications running in this Maemo 5 Qt 4.6 port should also run on Maemo 6 (perhaps with recompile, perhaps with little polishing tweaks... who knows at this point).

This also defines the minimum expectation: plain Qt apps for Maemo 6 can run on Maemo 5 with little or no tweaking.

Now think of the Web Runtime apps that will be running on top of Webkit on top of Qt 4.6.

Qt 4.6 is being designed with the focus on compatibility across Maemo, Symbian, Windows Mobile and other platforms shipping it (Moblin? Ubuntu? etc). Now compare that to the jump from Maemo 5 to Maemo 6. It's still the same platform.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

Qt compatibility is nice, but I don't think the basic concern here is lack of backporting. I could just as well tweak Qt 4.6 to run on Diablo, but that will not fix metalayer-crawler or some other system level component's problems. The question is if with Harmattan we'll see the fixed-in-fremantle-which-you-cannot-upgrade-to story again and how Mer (and it's readiness for the general public) fits the picture when Harmattan device(s) hit the streets.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

Just a comment about running a plain Qt app on Maemo 6. Maemo 6 is fully QGraphicsView based application framework, so plain Qt apps based on QWidget will not (probably) look nice. Though they can be compiled and run on Maemo 6.

I hope they will provide like "MaemoStyle" for plain Qt apps and Hildon like port where e.g. all the Qt menus (file, edit, etc..) are handled by the application framework as the Qt 4.6 for Maemo 5 does.

So basically if you want to look at to the future, implement your application based on QGraphicsView and then it should run on Maemo 5 and Maemo 6 platforms with less effort needed later. On the otherhand, the Maemo 6 UI framework will provide bunch of QGraphicsWidget based widgets so it might be quite difficult to find a silver bullet that makes your application fit perfectly on Maemo 5 & 6. You can alway take a look at the Maemo 6 UI framework source code from gitourious and see how things work or will work unless they decide to change some essential parts.

Another thing that came to my mind is that, depending on which Qt 4.6 version is ported to Maemo there might be some differences. For example how well Qt's gesture API will be supported in official Maemo 5 version? I tested to build a Qt application that was based on "too new" Qt 4.6 version and when I compiled the app to Maemo 5 I noticed that QGesture and QTouchEvent were not included that version. Of course the version can always be updated later.

I might be wrong here also so please correct me if I have understood somethig wrong.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

We make the earliest releases of Qt 4.6 for Maemo 5, the Maemo 6 UI Framework and Maemo 6 Qt (to come with a first Harmattan pre-release, just like we had Fremantle pre-releases) precisely to have time for everybody to test, give feedback, fine tune & so on.

When is maemo6 going to be released? will it support N900?
 

Title says it all:

I'd like to know if there are any estimates for the release date of Maemo6, and if it will run on the N900. And if so would it maybe b pushed as an update ?

I'm thinking in terms of the long run, if it's worth it to buy the N900..

thank you

Re: When is maemo6 going to be released? will it support N900?
 

Ad 1st no release date (mmh the maemo5 device is just shipping and you ask for the next gen?!)
Ad 2nd not so far (but keep asking maybe it becomes yes)
Ad 3rd yes (keep in mind that Qt programs most likely will run on all three symbian maemo5 and maemo6)

Re: When is maemo6 going to be released? will it support N900?
 

Hah, N900 isn't even released, so, who can say. Hopefully Nokia will announce a realistic delivery date for Maemo6, but that's years in the future. 2016:D:D:D

Re: When is maemo6 going to be released? will it support N900?
 

Will n900 run Maemo 6? My understanding is that no, there will be serious hardware changes so it won't.

As for when it will be released: best estimates say 12-18 months after maemo 5. Then add a month or two for delays in delivery and shipping... Somewhere around spring/summer 2011?

Personally, I'm reckoning that the n900 will be good for two or three years (about the life of a phone). If maemo 6 is coming on a device that's physically very different (or a range of devices) it may or may not be what I want. ;)

Re: When is maemo6 going to be released? will it support N900?
 

there are already several threads on that topic (search is your friend):
here's one
here's another

all the answers are there :)
to sum it up in one sentence: it's not officially decided yet, but it's unlikely to happen.

Re: When is maemo6 going to be released? will it support N900?
 

I keep thinking Nokia is moving too slow. A potential release of Maemo6 on spring 2011 is way too late! Considering the improvement we´ve seen from Androd 1.x to Android 2.0, and that Google is rumoured to be shooting for a late next year Android 3.0 release, I keep thinking Nokia may fall off the wagon if they don´t expedite dramatically their development.

Re: When is maemo6 going to be released? will it support N900?
 

Please see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=31346

Re: When is maemo6 going to be released? will it support N900?
 

The changes Maemo6 brings are the biggest changes in Maemo EVER. If they can pull that off in under a year AND make that a mass-market product on the first try, hats off.

Re: When is maemo6 going to be released? will it support N900?
 

That's the problem. Massive changes between versions rarely work out. Think of something like Windows XP to Vista and you get an idea of the pitfalls.

Instead Nokia should be looking at the Android model. Sure Android has its problems but there's no shame in copying what works. Make small incremental releases which work on the previous device. Make a Maemo release every three months with 25% of what you want instead of one release in a year with 100% of what you want. With the latter approach I guarantee the following:

-It won't be 100%, it'll be 80%. Scaled back to meet deadlines.

-It'll still be late anyway.

-That 80% won't be what people want so you end with with maybe 50% of stuff people want in addition to missing the things people do want.

It'll also keep N900 sales strong since customers will be confident that the device is beign supported and it's getting new features all the time.

Will Nokia do this? Probably not, it's too alien to their thought processes.

Re: Harmattan on N900?
 

Btw, some folks on other fora have jumped to saying "since Maemo6 will support multitouch, it cannot be ported to N900". Sounds like a load of rubbish to me - I would imagine it would not be that difficult to have any multitouch thingies turned off and be controlled with the good old mono-finger methods. :)

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

Threads merged, title adjusted slightly to (hopefully) increase visibility in search, and tags added to (again, hopefully) assist with search.

Re: When is maemo6 going to be released? will it support N900?
 

From the start of Maemo, Nokia apparently intended annual major-version upgrades to the OS. I find that to be a reasonably rapid OS release schedule. Heck, I still see Windows users bashing Apple for churning out Mac OS X releases that frequently.

The path is a bit rocky at the moment, with Elephanta skipped and Fremantle pushed forward, but there's no sign that Nokia intends to dally about in getting Harmattan ready. Meanwhile, the time and energy Nokia invested in getting SSUs working indicates to me that they have no intention of relying solely upon annual releases to get new code on devices.

As much as I'm looking forward to more minor-version updates to Maemo, I don't see the transition from Fremantle to Harmattan as the time or place for attempting the incremental change approach you propose. Swapping out GTK for Qt on a device while bringing a massively redesigned UI to the system and all apps may not be as hard to accomplish smoothly as the old libc5 to glibc change, if you remember that, but I'd guess that were it attempted, Nokia would wind up expending multiple times more effort on managing the transition than they did on actual design and code.

Re: Maemo 6 / Harmattan on N900?
 

It's an age long engineering dilemma, finding the right balance between the evolutionary and the revolutionary parts of development, and there are no guaranteed recipes - every project needs to make it's own calls.

Re: When is maemo6 going to be released? will it support N900?
 

Well firstly you're comparing desktop operating systems with consumer device operating systems. Certainly there's some converging going on but they're different things for different purposes.

Secondly the criticism of Apple is that they make you pay for each update not that they update too quickly.

The enormous scope of these changes is exactly why the odds of them trying to do it all in block in a year is likely to fail.

Each of those tasks (swap out GTK for Qt, redesign UI) needs to be broken down and managed. If they assign "Stable release milestones" on 3-4 month intervals and release that they'll be a lot better off even it's just the hardcore geeks taking those updates. They'll get a bunch of feedback on how things are going (particularly with regard to the UI) as well as a lot of real world testing so by the time the year is up the odds of them having something usable will be a lot higher.

Maemo6 as update for N900?
 

Hi there,

will Maemo6 become available as an update for the N900? As far as I know the N900 is Maemo5 based? BTW, what kernel version use Maemo 5 and 6? Kernel 2.6.x?

Regards
Malte

Re: Maemo6 as update for N900?
 

yes it will be in 2010. Not at the moment, I think will be atleast Q3 2010 or something when the N920 is announced then Maemo 6 will be also. Damn multitouch N920

Re: Maemo6 as update for N900?
 

Ok. Just one stupid question, what is "multitouch"? What is the difference to a standard touch screen?

Re: Maemo6 as update for N900?
 

you know how some girls slap you when you touch them once?

The N900 doesn't.

Re: Maemo6 as update for N900?
 

"multitouch" refers to the ability of a touchscreen to track more than one finger at a time. Basically this lets you do things like two, three or four fingered gestures. "lbt" is a term that refers to someone who is being a dork. :)

-John

Re: Maemo6 as update for N900?
 

Im sure some jealous Apple developers will surely thud at this fourm :D

Re: Maemo6 as update for N900?
 

Just to avoid misunderstandings and spreading false rumours. No-one has ever promised N900 would get an official update to Maemo 6. Also no-one has ever said the next Maemo device would have multitouch. These may happen or may not happen but stating rumours as facts is not the way to go.

Re: Maemo6 as update for N900?
 

I believe multi-touch is not confirmed in the next Maemo device. But having a capacitative screen is.

Re: Maemo6 as update for N900?
 

Don't all capacitive screens feature multitouch?

Re: Maemo6 as update for N900?
 

wasn't it another way round?

capacitive hasn't been mentioned but multitouch has been...

Re: Maemo6 as update for N900?
 

The hardware probably does. But even then also the drivers have to support it. And even if both the hardware and the drivers support multitouch, the software has to support it too.

You can try running for example WinXP on a capacitive screen and you'll notice that no matter how hard you pinch or pan or rotate nothing happens.

It will be implemented in Maemo 6, but not necessarily before.