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Re: IMO, MeeGo will be a tragedy on smartphone market like Maemo!

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Originally Posted by jaysire (Post 849470)

I've had my i4 for several months already and recently gave away my n900. I gotta say people seem to be looking at this all wrong:

When the N700, N800, N810 came out,they became a niche product with a hard core fanbase of dedicated enthusiasts. Many of them probably thought "this would be even more awesome with a phone attached, so I could carry just one device".

No one is saying the N700/800/810 was a "tragedy" or failure. We respect that it was intended for a smaller audience and wasn't meant to take up the fight with iPhone or any other device. Why couldn't we just accept that fact for the N900 as well? Great device, minimal support, minimal continuity, but all the keys were given to the developers from day one: "here, go forth and make great programs".

Instead, people sit around feeling entitled to great programs and great support and an awesome app store, because the competition have them.

Nokia came through and delivered the N810 in a smaller form factor with a better screen and a phone built in, so you could perhaps start carrying just one device. The rest is up to the user base, just as it was with the previous models.

Somewhere along the line, a lot of people lost track of the red line. The N900 seemed to have a chance to take up the bigger fight for world domination, because so many were excited by what they thought its potential was. The N900 tried for a while to live up to that, but after a while just said "aww, f*ck it, I'm going back to being what I always said I would and not what people want me to be". Which is where we are now and which is why I have an iPhone. I just don't have the time to get as involved with my handset as I would have to, if I still used the N900.

I think it was and still is an awesome device though. I hope you succeed with Meego and 1.3. And may your forums be free of uninformed trolls in the future ;)

I like your angle.
What I am frustrated about though was when the N97(mini) was just out and the N900 was released I had to make the decision:
Do I want something that is a smartphone (N900) or something that is a smartphone (N97)?

With this I mean that the N97 is very good at the phone part, but the smart part of being a smartphone is/was quite lacking. The thing was slow when browsing the web while listening to music and Symbian was just a drag, not really what you expect from a flagship device.
The N900 on the other hand was very good at things like multitasking, browsing the web and customizing it to bits, but then the phone-capabilities were lacking.

To me, the N900 is indeed a smartphone. People keep going on about it being a mobile computer instead of a smartphone but I'm just not buying it. It has phone functionalities and definitely a phone formfactor, which for me makes it a phone. I really doubt Nokia envisioned N900 users to carry an additional 'true phone', which means the N900 should have well functioning phone capabilities as well.
I really like my N900 and do intend to keep it for a little while, but I am frustrated Nokia didn't take the additional effort to make the N900 into a real and well-functioning computer/phone hybrid.

For Meego I really hope Nokia realizes this and gets it right. For the N9 and successive Meego devices to become a success, the whole formula has to be right. We need a good looking, competent OS and the hardware to utalize it.

Re: IMO, MeeGo will be a tragedy on smartphone market like Maemo!

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Originally Posted by mmurfin87 (Post 848749)

Nokia already has or has had its fingers in a lot of the markets that it needs to be really successful with a new OS in the modern era.

All these pies that Nokia has their fingers in are half-baked:

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[*]Music - Comes With Music / Ovi Music

Maybe. But I buy CDs and do my own encodings from those.

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[*]Gaming - NGage

What, again? They should either make a success of it or let it die gracefully - and never ever resurrect it again.

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[*]Personal Information Management - Long history of Symbian E devices

Pathetic. My 10+ year old Psion Series 5 does PIM better than any E series phone. Heck even my 15+ year old Series 3 does it better. In any case the PIM functions on an E series phone is practically the same dismal rubbish that is on the N series.

The only OVI branded thing that is worth using is Maps - but only on Symbian at the moment since the Maemo version is utter crap.

Re: IMO, MeeGo will be a tragedy on smartphone market like Maemo!

I think the phone part was an unnecessary distraction. They should have left it as a TABLET and rode ahead of the current wave of tablets. Instead... we ended up with neither a good tablet, not a good phone.

Also, I prefer TWO devices. I LIKE my phone to be a phone (with long battery life, separate from my computer/tablet/etc.). I would have preferred to see a phone act as a data tether, than this mockery of a phone that used to be a tablet effort.

Re: IMO, MeeGo will be a tragedy on smartphone market like Maemo!

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Originally Posted by danramos (Post 849518)

I prefer TWO devices. I LIKE my phone to be a phone (with long battery life, separate from my computer/tablet/etc.). I would have preferred to see a phone act as a data tether, than this mockery of a phone that used to be a tablet effort.

Then the N900 is clearly not for you. As for me, I hate carrying more than one device, have no use for tethering, it works fine for me as both a phone and a tablet and I'm a happy user.

Different strokes for different folks. That's why there's so many choices on the market. But I don't get it - why complain here? I don't waste my time complaining in iPhone forums about why the iPhone sucks. I just don't buy one.

Re: IMO, MeeGo will be a tragedy on smartphone market like Maemo!

The most apparent thing in all this is that Nokia can't "do" software. It can't plan it, it can't develop it and it can't support it. Nokia is a hardware company.

There isn't any reason for Meego to be where it is right now. It should be shipping in some form, but it isn't. Nokia had access to Qt way back before it bought it. Maemo 6 should have been Qt based and the port of whatever they had done in M6 to Meego should have been child's play.

Who does Nokia think its fooling with its sliding delivery deadlines ? People aren't listening anymore.

I bought an N900 based on the promise that Meego would ship in a usable form sometime in 2010. It now appears that isn't going to happen and I'm pissed.

I don't understand what the hold up is with Meego. Nokia is a huge company. Resources should not be an issue. Meego is based on Linux and Qt, both of which are basically there to use. Its not as if they are starting anything from scratch. Intel et al are helping them. Its not as if they are working alone. They have access to all the hardware documentation. Its not like they don't have the information they need.

Why exactly isn't Meego shipping in some form, even if its only beta ?

All you have to do is watch the developer mailing list and see that the N900 target didn't get built for a month or more to know that something funny is going on.

I'd love to run that team. Nokia: PM me if you are interested.

Re: IMO, MeeGo will be a tragedy on smartphone market like Maemo!

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Originally Posted by me2000 (Post 849605)

There isn't any reason for Meego to be where it is right now. It should be shipping in some form, but it isn't.

Incredible, you can integrate two previously separate OS development teams and have a functional end-product in less than 12 months? Amazing!

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Nokia had access to Qt way back before it bought it. Maemo 6 should have been Qt based and the port of whatever they had done in M6 to Meego should have been child's play.

That's called Harmattan.

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I bought an N900 based on the promise that Meego would ship in a usable form sometime in 2010. It now appears that isn't going to happen and I'm pissed.

They NEVER promised that.

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I don't understand what the hold up is with Meego. Nokia is a huge company. Resources should not be an issue. Meego is based on Linux and Qt, both of which are basically there to use. Its not as if they are starting anything from scratch. Intel et al are helping them. Its not as if they are working alone. They have access to all the hardware documentation. Its not like they don't have the information they need.

It's not like you have a shred of insight into what Nokia and Intel are doing. They are starting from scratch. Just because the packages exist doesn't mean they'll just magically work together, and well, on the target hardware. Technically, MeeGo 1.1 is already good to go if you don't need cellular data.

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Why exactly isn't Meego shipping in some form, even if its only beta ?

Because MeeGo doesn't ship, it exists. Hardware vendors ship it. And shipping beta software is a bad idea.

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All you have to do is watch the developer mailing list and see that the N900 target didn't get built for a month or more to know that something funny is going on.

Bugs? Conflicts? They sure as hell aren't ignoring it, unless you're insulting the efforts of Stskeeps and many others for some reason.

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I'd love to run that team. Nokia: PM me if you are interested.

I'd hate it. It's obvious you have no clue what's going on.

Also, anyone who says that MeeGo is not targeted for smartphones is being willfully ignorant.

Re: IMO, MeeGo will be a tragedy on smartphone market like Maemo!

I love how the initial Meego 1.1 plans included marketing efforts (http://wiki.meego.com/Release_Engineering/Plans/1.1) and was supposed to occur on October 21st, 2010 and that has come and gone without any comment, let alone a marketing effort.

And now the release is being called a "platform". (http://forum.meego.com/showthread.php?t=1691)

Would one really need a marketing effort to release a development "platform" ?

Who does Nokia think its fooling here ?

Does anyone understand the concept of release early and often ?

Why don't they pare down the system to the bare essentials (basic calls, phone charging, etc.) and SHIP so that people can at least start using it to get the bugs out ? Right now everything is being developed simultaneously and nothing works. They are trying to do Big Bang development and that NEVER works.

It took a long time for USB devices to automount in Fedora. It shipped without that functionality and people accepted that. At least there was a Fedora. Right now there is no Meego.

So here is my advice to the Meego team. Take whatever you have that works and ship it as TESTING. Strip out everything that doesn't work. After 2 months of user use and bug fix releases, call that subset of functionality STABLE. Then you will have a code base to start building from.

This business of shipping without calls working and without battery charging working is BS. That is the base functionality of what the phone has to do. Without that, it isn't a phone !

Forget SMS. Forget apps. Forget everything except the very smallest set of phone functionality. Get that stable, put it in testing and SHIP it and provide some support resources so that people start using it and it gets tested in end user hands.

Right now you have a mess. You have tons of code being worked on. Nothing works. Nothing is stable enough for any of the end users to test. You are missing shipping deadlines. You are pushing deadlines back. And the market is running away from you.

Re: IMO, MeeGo will be a tragedy on smartphone market like Maemo!

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Originally Posted by me2000 (Post 849636)

Plans change? You could, you know, go and ASK someone who is directly involved in the project what's going on, but it seems you're content to sit here and throw stones. Try #meego and #meego-arm for starters.

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And now the release is being called a "platform". (http://forum.meego.com/showthread.php?t=1691)

Would one really need a marketing effort to release a development "platform" ?

It's always been a platform. And a marketing effort for a platform would be directed at hardware OEMs.

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Does anyone understand the concept of release early and often ?

MeeGo is going to be on a 6 month cycle. But it's always open, so the release is constant (unlike say, Android, which is released when Google feels like it.)

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Why don't they pare down the system to the bare essentials (basic calls, phone charging, etc.) and SHIP so that people can at least start using it to get the bugs out ?

MeeGo 1.1 can can do that -now-, last I checked.

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Right now everything is being developed simultaneously and nothing works. They are trying to do Big Bang development and that NEVER works.

And your proof if this is where, exactly?

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So here is my advice to the Meego team. Take whatever you have that works and ship it as TESTING. Strip out everything that doesn't work. After 2 months of user use and bug fix releases, call that subset of functionality STABLE. Then you will have a code base to start building from.

You seem content to command and control people from outside. I wonder how far you'd get if you actually started participating in the project.

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This business of shipping without calls working and without battery charging working is BS. That is the base functionality of what the phone has to do. Without that, it isn't a phone !

Apparently you are wholly blind to MeeGo's progress.

Re: IMO, MeeGo will be a tragedy on smartphone market like Maemo!

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Technically, MeeGo 1.1 is already good to go if you don't need cellular data.

a) Then ship it ! Ship early, ship often !

b) It is not "good to go". The testers running Meego 1.1 are plagued with issues. That is why there is no release.

It is very apparent you don't understand anything about software development. Being done so it runs on a developer's phone is very different from being able to run on an end user's phone.

The development team, including management, is lying to itself. It doesn't even realize it, but it is.

Re: IMO, MeeGo will be a tragedy on smartphone market like Maemo!

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Originally Posted by me2000 (Post 849605)

All you have to do is watch the developer mailing list and see that the N900 target didn't get built for a month or more to know that something funny is going on.

I'd love to run that team. Nokia: PM me if you are interested.

Sorry, that's my job :)

I don't exactly recall what you mean by 'not built for a month' - we had some down time with the ARMv7 build but all the due while we were doing ARMv5 images. We uncovered a GCC bug that broke even the simplest of things, including DBus and it took some time to locate and fix.

If you're speaking of the problem that we had two weekly releases not getting built properly, well, that was due to a release procedure not getting communicated properly when our release guy was on vacation. We're now part of the meego.com release machinery, we weren't before and that solves that problem once and for all.

I vote that you go and look at developer mailing list, meego-releases, the handset reports, bugs.meego.com, metrics and our IRC channel logs for #meego-arm to see there's real work going into it.

Even if MeeGo 1.1 isn't the swan I hoped myself it would be, I'm bloody proud of the work and effort we've (as in the team and the people contributing to the port) put into the N900 side of things.

And it'll only get better.

We're making sure we can keep the N900 port alive for a -long- time.