Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

To go back to the topic of this thread (assuming anyone's eyeballs still work after those fingernails) that is the problem. "You can build", not "Nokia will build." Just as the community came up with hacked editions of later Maemo versions to install on the N770, I have no doubt that eventually some Maemo 6 version will be available for the N900 (and, hopefully, some sort of Maemo 5 will be available for my N810).

My point was that a a phone manufacturer, Nokia has not historically been concerned with making their latest OS compatible with existing hardware. If you are buying the N900, you should buy it based on the current capabilities of Maemo 5, not on the potential benefits of Maemo 6.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

Why does the dang iPhone and its hardware get injected into a conversation about the N900 and its software. :confused:

EDIT: A rhetorical question^. No need to respond projecting the use of 2 or 3 year old technology on all future devices. It won't much matter then imho. :)

***

Thanks for your input regarding announcement timing and practical use qgil.

My next desktop monitor will more than likely be a touch screen... After using Maemo for awhile I sometimes catch my self trying to manipulate objects with my fingers on my current plain ol' 24" wide screen monitor when I do sit down at the desktop computer.

I'm thinkin' QT and developing GUI's like Maemo6 may have more influence on how we interact with all our computing devices in the future.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

Wood? You can't kill the trees man!

To be truly eco-friendly, everything must be fashioned from poo

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

But that last sentence is exactly what I mean: "You can build", not "Nokia will build". Why are you waiting for Nokia to build it? Compaq (for example) won't provide you with updated versions of Ubuntu working with your 386 PC. As I said, you can install whatever OS you want on your N900.

Of course, I agree with the last part. Better not to expect Maemo6 to run on N900, as much as I don't expect Fremantle to run in N810. Not because it's not possible, but because nobody might want to do it.
In one year your shiny N900 is like what today the N810 is for the general population: nothing. Even though the hardware differences will be, like, 2%. It happens :( We are starting to see it already...

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

Why not 3.1.2? The question is which models can run the 4.0 in future... Do they disable 3gs's properties and drag 1g along further. 2 years is good support time imo.

I'd like to have maemo6 in my n900 but probably i'm gonna buy the next tablet next year if there are no major dealbreakers for me. And maemo is still doing big steps, i bet that when step 5 is ready, a lot has been standardized and there will be no more n810 style shortcomings.

And somebody speculated about hybrid touchscreen (capacitive and resistive at the same tine). That would be perfect for me!

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

I for one will miss the stylus if it goes away. I enjoy apps that allow doodling to accompany notes, and the precision it allows. It's a more elegant input tool for a more civilized PDA... ;)

Finger painting is fine now and then, but sometimes it just doesn't cut it.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

2nd that notion. These days state-of-the-art hardware is state-of-the-art for about 15 minutes. Trying to always have the latest and greatest thing is pointless tail-chasing. There's always something better just around the corner. I'm not getting a N900 to have the latest hardware, I'm getting it to have good hardware running the most open, capable, i.e. the best, mobile OS.

Worrying now about if Maemo 6 will run on the N900 seems to me like worrying now if Windows 8 or RedHat 7 will run on your present PC. (From a regular user point of view, I understand it's can be a different thing for developers). Sometimes, ya just gotta enjoy using what you have and not be concerned about what might be in 1-2 years. I intend to get at least a couple of years use from a N900. If that's with Maemo 5, fine. If I can upgrade to Maemo 6, even better, and I hope I can. But if not I'll still be happy with it as is.

Keep in mind this is from a old-school guy that installs a new distro every few years, not months...but point is I'm not gonna worry about Maemo 6 or Snapdragon CPUs. I'm gonna buy and enjoy using a N900 and Maemo now.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

We knew long ago Nokia N900 (or: the succesor of N8x0 series) would be based on OMAP3. We knew it'd have OpenGL. We knew there wouldn't be an official port for N8x0. We also knew many of the software would be open source and backports would be possible.

We know next Maemo 6 device is going to be based on Qt instead of GTK, but that does not break backwards compatibility, because current supports both. We know it may be based on OMAP3 or OMAP4. The former doesn't imply breaking backwards compatibility. We know it supports OpenGL ES (said so in slides).

But say a new device uses LTE, and all the cool stuff requires LTE speed. Does that break backwards compatibility? Officially, no. Yet, practically, yes. Say augmented reality becomes deeply integrated in our mobile computing. Devices without digital compass are then far less useful. Again, practically, requires you to either hack device or require new one.

One can argue: "yeah, iPhone OS 3 runs on my iPod touch or iPhone" but if you can't get a friggin' GPS working on it while neat applications and faster workflows use it (or actually, you simply cannot install software depending on GPS on the hardware) well then you're fried. And in this case, it is intentional crippling by Apple.

What you may reasonably expect by law is device works as advertised with its official, default features, as well as reliability and security upgrades, for a specific time (IMO about 2 years). Anything else is extra, free candy; gifts. So don't expect extras, don't look gifted horse in mouth. Don't demand. Be grateful instead.

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

Damn right! There's a few other minor quirks with the N82 that could easily be fixed with a firmware update. No reason why that can't be done.

And they shouldn't. They have nothing to do with Ubuntu. Nokia produces the software, so they should be updating it. The fact that they also make the hardware is irrelevant (for this example).

Re: Maemo 6 on N900
 

Thanks for this info! So basically OMAP3, OpenGL ES (2.0) and WVGA will be the same. This is good news for developers. And on the same post, multitouch as an extra input method on capacitive displays; it does not say that capacitive displays are a must...? Hopefully there will be many different kind of devices so that we can choose whether to buy a capacitive or resistive (similarly to laptops having a transflective or transmissive LCD). And perhaps the N900 will sell massively so that the upgrade path to Maemo 6 will be taken for granted -- the next year will be about intense and excited software development in any case, continuing from the present. It is funny what kind of speculation this arouses -- judging on the info on that link, I would take a positive stance.