Re: Is Freemantle dead before it's out of the gates?
 

I provided about 18 tablets to friends, colleagues and family.

I am the only one of that group to visit ITT.

Re: Is Freemantle dead before it's out of the gates?
 

Well then... I stand corrected...

Nokia has provided plenty of support for the tablets and has not relied on this community to answer questions like "where is the swap key?" after releasing an update days before a company wide, two week holiday...

My bad... I must not have drank the same kool-aid as some. :p


EDIT: Added...

Where? A Google search of maemo.nokia.com comes back to here. If you are talking about the future then when?


Talk about developers vs. users seems to suck the enthusiasm out this for me at least.

What's so hard about saying we are all users of the device and we don't separate this community into factions?

Is it safer for some to feel they belong to some elite sub-group or suttin'?

My comment about heads in the sand referred to a belief that a new user of a Maemo device wouldn't come here... They will. Just as they have after each time buy.com or whoever lowers their price. When a new device hits the market they will come here again... unless maemo.nokia.com does something magical to Google page rank. :eek:

Be prepared to answer this threads question as well as many other questions, over and over, all over again. :)

Re: Is Freemantle dead before it's out of the gates?
 

I'd expect Nokia to keep tabs on how many individual tablets have been updated to new (incl. which) versions of firmware.

I personally found ITT even before I began hunting for my tablet (I reckoned it being open source any software updates would be more-or-less future-proof so the half-bakedness didn't bother me all that much...), so I haven't kept an eye on the upgrade and community information Nokia dispenses via their official channels.

What kind of information does a new and relatively inexperienced user get from Nokia without googling the right keywords and getting lucky?

Most improvements to Chinook/Diablo user experience require at least some elbow grease and the user experience of the plain standard install is also decaying due to cruft and with web standards and app compatibilities moving forward.

So, how does this relate to Fremantle's potential "stillborn" status and the community?

I wonder what percentage of Nokia tablet owners are genuinely happy with the level of support (incl. software updates - also by major partners- and present/future platform support). Bonus points for breaking up that stat between 1) those who've never updated anything, 2) those who simply flashed an upgrade, 3) those who've been to ITT but didn't stick around, and 4) us die-hard users and developers.

One of the keys to a healthy community is keeping the potential members involved or interested (and also not fragmented). I don't think I've ever received any communication from Nokia about anything related to the tablets.

Re: Is Freemantle dead before it's out of the gates?
 

They can't ,really. You may have to enter the WLAN MAC address to access the firmware downloads, but once you download an image you can flash any number of devices with it.
SSU updates make it even harder, as the downloads are "anonymous" (and does Akamai even provide http access logs?)

Re: Is Freemantle dead before it's out of the gates?
 

That's not a valid comparison IMHO. Historically Qtopia on Openmoko drew directly on the framebuffer, while the Neo X server had very poor performance. On Maemo both GTK+ and Qt run on top of X11, and the devices have decent display hardware (2D at least) acceleration.

Re: Is Freemantle dead before it's out of the gates?
 

Which developers? Whilst Diablo's been out we've had Tear, FlipClock, and many others. But you're right; Diablo's been a maintenance release so the flurry of stuff for Chinook's carried through to Diablo.

As for Fremantle, external developers are already doing cool things and are excited about the increased CPU power, 3D acceleration, accelerometers and more compelling UI.

If you're talking about Nokia developers, I don't see your point.

People are discussing it. But because some are disagreeing with you there's a sub-conscious conspiracy of fanboys to silence any dissent from the company line? Pfft.

As for the Gtk+ -> Qt transition, it's not unexpected; we'll probably lose some developers and gain some new ones. Development will become easier and more consistent (certainly easier to avoid Scratchbox with things like PyQt).

The increased disk space rumoured to be coming in the next generation of devices means that a package pulling in Gtk from Extras will be no harder, or troublesome, than pulling in Python now.

Re: Is Freemantle dead before it's out of the gates?
 

iirc, fremantle will be the first maemo release to use a full X11, diable and earlier use a more limited version on top of framebuffer...

Re: Is Freemantle dead before it's out of the gates?
 

What "flurry" of apps? I've listed out what has not been updated since Chinook or early 2008 mostly in another thread: Skype, Gizmo, Evince, Xournal, MPlayer, RTComm, MicroB, Flash Player, Media Player, Maps. And I've stated what has been updated: Tear, DialCentral, Mauku, the Home Apps (HomeIP, et al)...

There was no flurry of apps. A few applets here and there, or the apps that came from Fiferboy - Personal Launcher, Yellow Notes 0.2, etc. - were... for the most part all that I installed and wanted. The rest weren't anywhere near ready for primetime.

And yet the accelerometer apps for the iPhone here are dismissed as gimmick. Same thing to be honest.

Where are the apps that people actually want/use that are commercial? Adobe FP10 - we have to wait for the Open Screen initiative because... well, it could have been updated but hasn't been - blame Adobe or Nokia. Where's the updated browser and not the dead end fork that we still use today? Where's the RTComm that uses the included camera and Skype that's been updated since December 2007?

I don't want another flip clock. I have a watch, I have a cellphone, I have a clock widget on the NIT already. That's like having 8 different ways to edit a text file. Do I need 8 different ways to edit a *.txt file? No. Waste of space.

See above. Browser, Maps, RTComm, et al. None of it, updated yet supplied by Nokia. Which part of it has not been updated by Nokia since less than a year after the N810 release are you willing to deny?

You people are just being unrealistic. Sure, Fremantle is being discussed. Diablo was born dead. Chinook is dead. Bora, extremely dead. I get it. But Fremantle... soon to die too. Harmattan is where people are already looking.

And I have no reason to join the next iteration because of how I saw it go from the 770 to N800/N810 to this upcoming model in about 3 years and support lasting only one year on a non-phone but pocket computer (basically)... sorry, but my gadgets aren't that disposable.

So I'll be waiting on Qt, Harmattan and watching the N900 basically become obselete by next Winter (2010)... about a year after its release.

With the talks going on, even a cursory glance supports what I just said. The N900 will not be anything but replaced soon thereafter, Harmattan is where Nokia might actually stop killing parts of this Maemo platform and deprecating main UI bits and settle in on an upgrade path that makes sense.

Right now, all I see is Mobile Windows 2003/2003 Second Edition all over again. Only with root access and more fanaticism.

Re: Is Freemantle dead before it's out of the gates?
 

Gerbick's impressions point to what I am thinking.

I believe Nokia has used the tablets N770 - N810 as stepping stones towards a future of Linux pocketables.
Someone from Nokia spoke of steps 1 to 5, N810 beeing nr. 3.

My guess is that Nokia has focused their software development on the future pocket Linux OS,
and used the tablets to communicate with the Linux community.
Of course the tablets had to be useful for consumers, but I guess that Nokia will target more professional use
first with "step 5 (4?)". Nr. 5 = Harmattan ? Or Harmattan+ ?

E.g.:
Surfing on complex websites with many photos is a bit slow, many pro's would want more power before they consider leaving their laptop at home.
In Sweden shops have never had these tablets in stock, although we are rather gadget minded.
You could buy them from web stores, or order them at your dealer, but then he'd expect you to buy.

Consider Nokias strategy of (heavily) bying into supporting development, and at the same time preparing a continuation of Symbian more independant of Nokia.

Re: Is Freemantle dead before it's out of the gates?
 

Would you have a link to where Nokia talked about '1-5'?