My N900 concerns
 

No this is not a 'the screen sucks' or 'it's too thick'-thread.
It's an honest post about what I feel is still troublesome and, for me, maybe one of the main reasons why I can't see myself buying an N900.
You don't have to agree at all as 'concerns' are almost per definition how you subjectively perceive something so I'm sure different people view these 'concerns' differently depending on your own paradigm.

I have an N810. I think it's a really nice piece of hardware and it is often even valuable to me (quick email checks, instant messaging, some VoiP stuff, etc) - but mostly it's a really neat toy. ( Note: For me. You may be using and viewing yours differently). Applications seem to be in a constant state of beta or stagnation as developers move on to something else (new app, new OS version, new-whatever). I know that the idea is that having the source-code made available means that someone else can/will pick it up and continue the devopment - but in most cases this doesn't happen.

I really like the concept of open-source and I think it works well in the more common distros like Ubuntu.
Maemo is very small distro in comparison, a particular OS version like Diablo, Mer and Fremantle is an even smaller subset. There are simply not enough developers that want to both support abandoned applications ontop of developing their own, new shiny stuff.

Taking into consideration that Fremantle is already a known dead-end OS version, to be replaced by Harmattan on future devices it gives me even more concerns that Fremantle, again, will be another OS with applications that gets 80% there.

If I would be willing to carry both a smartphone with 'stable'/built-out features AND an N900 I would do so simply because I think the N900 will be great fun to play with and try out new stuff in with a rather excited community. And/or if I was a college student who didn't have to have the boring stability that people in many professions require.
Sad thing is I can't see mysel carrying two phones.

Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way but in the case I am not it does make me wonder how Nokia will address such concerns in the future from professionals who wouldn't mind an open, open-sourced smart-phone as their primary phone.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Well, you question is legitimate. What i don't understand is what's keeping apps written for maemo5 from working on earlier OS versions. Are they that different? I've heard voices about harmattan being backwards-compatibile as far as hardware is concerned. If it is, this should fix the problem for a pretty long while

Re: My N900 concerns
 

In a very generic and broad overview of the situation, there were many changes to Fremantle from Diablo (the 3D UI one of them) which makes Fremantle apps not backwards compatible. However, it is to be expected that Harmattan apps will run in Fremantle, because Fremantle will support Qt, which is the standard Nokia is pushing for Harmattan and Symbian.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Well written, but I don't think your concerns are quite in the right place. The way I'm looking at the evolution of the platform, Maemo 5 (while not at the 'end of the road'), is looking increasingly polished and ready for everyday use.

The much bigger interest in the N900 vs any of the prior devices (c.f. Google trends, etc) is also a good indicator that the 'splash' this makes will be a lot bigger and longer lasting, possibly attracting some real clout to third party application development.

Of course, yes, Harmattan is still down the road, but really, this is the way technology is as we know it - new stuff obsoletes old at a rather breathtaking pace, even in more mature markets like desktop PC land. (Mostly on a hardware level now, the maturation of the software stacks there happened a few decades ago - yet people managed to use them in business situations, regardless of the (lack of) stability). [edit: and yes, the encouragement of Qt applications in Fremantle will make the transition to Harmattan a lot less painful, I think]

In what way, really, are you concerned about Maemo 5 as a development platform being an issue? That would be my real question to come out of this. If you're concerned about it as a development platform, then you might have some merit - but as an end user, I think you're likely to get quite a good experience.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Fremantle is quite a different beast from its predecessors as far as I know. Not entirely reinvented, but certainly not a walk in the park. Even just looking at things like the user interface changes (and the low level application changes required to use them) are going to be a bit fun for applications looking at supporting both.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I suspect the N900 will have a much bigger community as a device with much broader appeal. The previous tablets were nice and everything but quite niche.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

The *majority* of geek developers are really only interested in working on 'cool' stuff or learning something new. Things such as complete QA, maintaincement, documentation are secondary.

In my opinion, the only way to achieve a good variation in polished apps is with a paid app store. Otherwise, you're just going to get many developers writing the same type of app. Developer egos are generally big so of course THEIR app will be best.

Nokia needs to attract the professional developers who have 6 figure day jobs to work on paid apps in their free-time. And since the development is in C/C++ and most college grads are taught in Java these days, the good C developers are generally the ones already with several years experience.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Open-source:eek: ,Fremantle:confused: i dont have a clue so i am out of here:D

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Having done a lot of OSS development, and a lot of paid development, I'd strongly disagree with this.

The only difference between paid and unpaid development is that paid development (usually) has leadership which is hopefully in a fairly strong position already to be able to support developers, so, they have enough direction to be able to make things like proper QA happen.

Hobbyist developers, on the other hand, either work in groups of peer development without many formal processes, or solo - and don't have a lot of project management experience.

Both of these brushes can't be tarred across the whole spectrum, though, there are *plenty* of exceptions to every rule. It only takes high profile disasters like Windows ME - and to give a counter example, OpenSSL (and the like) to see it's possible to have it totally different from what I've outlined above.

Getting back to my point, though: what a project needs is direction. If it lacks it, all the money in the world isn't going to save it.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I must be running with the 'older' crowd, all the developers I know have bills to pay, mouths to feed. The last thing they want to do is go home and spend their free time on something that is given away for free UNLESS it enhances their professional development (learning new techniques, APIs)

Maybe its different for developers with only a few years experience or those with rich parents.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I'm 23 in April, but I've been writing code since I was around 7, most of which was "public" (even if only for my few friends at the time), so I don't really think I'd fit in with the older generation. As I've matured, so have the projects and code I've worked on.

I do agree with you that most people want to get something out of it - in a lot of the cases I know of, what that is, is usually more experience, and something else they can point at as to having contributed on, so yes, you're right.

That's not all, though, there's usually an element of fun to it too. You can't pour hours of your time into something for months, or years, with no tangible return without having an attachment to it.

We're getting a bit OT, now, though. ;)

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Good point.
Personally, my Blackberry will be sticking around in any case.

I think with the advent of Qt allowing the same program to run on Maemo 5 and 6 as well as Symbian and possibly iPhone, it may not be so bad.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

But this gets to the core of SilverMountain's concern. What's to say that in the next year or two Nokia decides to create a new and different beast for its final step? Compatibility between Maemo versions has never seemed to be a concern of Nokia.

I can understand that apps written for Fremantle may not run on Diablo. But what a commercial developer is looking for is some assurance that apps written for Fremantle will run on Harmattan. If you compare it to other OSs, this seems to be the standard. My Palm TX running PalmOS 5 could also install and run most apps for PalmOS 4 and even 3. Win7 will happily run most apps for Win5 (XP) and provides an XP compatibility mode for those apps which have a problem with Win7.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

As the population of developers increases the range of things that are "cool" to someone increase. To have a stable development community you need a critical mass of developers interested in developing a range of different applications and people with different skills to work on them.

As I said above I think the N900 will be large enough to support such a community. It's the most open platform out there and it'll likely be able to support a lot of different programming languages.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

It's already announced that Qt will be there for Harmattan and is already around for Fremantle. I can't see that changing, especially as it allows the possibility of cross-development in Linux, Symbian as well as other possibilities (eg. iPhone).

If nothing else, Qt will be useful for all of the other platforms even if it's changed for Harmattan, which I really find unlikely.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I totally agree with you. My biggest concern is that Maemo faces the same problems as Linux in general and I consider myself a hardcore Linux user (see www.osfight.de). I hope this is not going to happen, especially because Nokia backs Maemo up, at least for the core applications. When it comes to community progs, it is very likely that we are swamped with beta versions of very good programs. For that reason I already started a thread for having Android apps on Maemo, which is feasible, as Andriod is OpenSource and Canonical has already done most of the work. It would solve many problems like competing with the Iphone App store (biggest benefit), having stable versions of good programs and gives the OVI store more time to develop good OpenSource applications.

I am a student, love openness and try therefore to support Linux as much as I can now, as it is the future for all of us, believe it or not.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

But having Qt around or back/upward compatibility with Maemo 5 and 6 wont solve the problem of halfway finished apps. Theres nothing better about a pool with 10'000 apps 80% done than about a pool with 5'000 apps, 80% done...
The core problem I personally can make out in alot of open source projects or with using open source software are exactly those. Unless the size of one very specific project has so to say exceeded the critical mass, it wont ever be finished, unless driven by a "higher power". Examples of projects being of good quality having crossed the critical mass thingie: Debian, or GIMP. Being guided by a "higher power": Ubuntu, or Open Office. Many many very very VERY promising projects get abandoned halfway through, to many, unfortunately. Anyone still with me...? :rolleyes:

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I challenge you to name any software project that is 'finished'

Edit:
Just to expand on that slightly...I sort of see where you're coming from, but I think the argument you're using to support your position is flawed.

The open and therefore slightly anarchic nature of FOSS development mirrors the open and slightly anarchic nature of organic evolution - the series of mutations and evolutionary developments that led from the first mammals to us humans is still ongoing and will be so until the planet finally becomes incapable of supporting life as we know it. By no stretch of the imagination could organic evolution be described as 'finished'. It never will be. Computer software is just the same - there will always be something different just around the corner. If enough people find the 'something different' useful, they will keep using it, thus encouraging the author(s) to try to improve it further. If it turns out to be an evolutionary dead end, it will become extinct and another 'something different' will appear in its place. It's simply the nature of the process.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

What always strikes me about this argument, superficially attractive though it is, is the simple fact that I'm posting this from a complete operating system, including the boring bits, that's all given away for free.

You might not understand why free development works, but the fact remains - it does.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I challenge anyone to find more than 1% of the software on the "App Store" either useful or feature complete. Fact is, the iPhone is considered a huge success but it has a huge collection of crapware and a piss poor interface to browse that software. Its great if you know exactly what you are looking for, otherwise its a royal PITA.

I love my iPod, but its sad that unless you know what you are looking for (app name) or something good is in the top 10 of that category the day you look, you wont find what you want. Why Apple think not being able to sort the list by rating, or having more categories (eg game genres), is perfectly acceptable I do not know.

So far quite a few apps I found via piracy then bought them. If I had not jailbroken my iPod I would never have found them and certainly not bought them, as I refuse to buy a game that might be crapware because few have proper trial versions to test.

As others have said, I would rather have a few hundred useful applications than thousands of useless ones. But that does still beg the question, will the N900 have the software you want?

One the biggest problems I find on open source is there software is there, but I never knew it was. Its greatest weakness is advertising. Only recently I realised how many games there really is for Linux these days, although granted a lot are limited due to long slow development.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

To put this in context, the word "they' refers to experienced developers with over decade of professional experience (i.e. they have a family, rent, mortgage, expenses and mouths to feed).

I don't see the same problem with developers who are just starting out, eager to gain experience..

Re: My N900 concerns
 

First of all thanks for the great contributions to the thread.
It was somewhat of a 'relief' to realize that I was at least not entirely alone in having concerns of the nature I expressed in the opening thread.

One of the more interesting paradoxes that I see is that even though open-sourcing offers a lot to the areas of continuity and support of applications with the source code readily available - it seems as if it is one of the areas that fails most often on the maemo platform.
As I've stated in the opening post I really do like the concept of open sourcing but the way it is executed on a commercial device like the NITs (I think it's too early to speak much about Fremantle) does not portray the platform as a viable option for many professional users that are not developers themselves.

Commercial applications also have a fundamental 'clash' with the philosophy of open sourcing (how do you give out the source code for an application that you also charge for, open source code means the potential of a variety of 'versions' of the app and that may go against the consistency that paying customers are expecting from it, 'free' versions appearing, etc, etc). In addition to that, open source is very much about community building and support - not about commercializing products and lock away the code out of sight.

It does however bring back the question to - how can this be managed in an open source environment that is small and where the interest is in much focused on individual development and not continuity/support of abandoned projects.

Is there a role for Nokia to step into here?
If an application has reached a certain degree of 'populaity' (sorry, bad choice in words) the application gets tagged for 'official support' and development resources from Nokia would get involved. I don't know. It's a tricky situation but, if un-addressed I also feel that the Nxxx's will never be viewed as realistic options for many professionals.
As I've said before, your opinions and experiences are most certainly different but this still remains a big concern of mine.

Phil, I of course understand what you imply about any software will continue to evolve and change. But I think that for the purpose of this discussion 'finished' includes areas like a level of support for bugs/documenations/help, a polished UI, finishing up feature implementations that have been discussed/announced, a level of continuity, etc.

Examples of that, for me, would be applications like the MS Office suite, Firefox, etc.
None of them are perfect but they would meet the, granted few and hastily put together, 'requirements' for 'finished'.

P.S: I was sort of hoping that we could stay away from posts about how the Apple appstore have thousands of 'crap-applications, etc - my intent was not so much to compare maemo with other OS solutions but rather to look at where we are, are there grounds for real concerns (and if you feel that there is not then that is of course a perfectly acceptable answer/contribution) and if so, what can be done to address them.

Edit: Unfortunately, in the end, I feel that this thread will disappear and nothing will really have been achieved from even starting it. I'm not assuming that one small posts will, or even should, alter such significant areas as discussed here but in the same way I also feel that the 'value' in raising theses concerns will mostly amount to me practicing my poor typing skills :)

Is there an official comment about any of this from Nokia somewhere?
I tried searching but couldn't find anything that was really applicable.
Is this something that the Maemo 'council' could/should works on (I plead both council-ignorance and also guilty to not read up on what they do).

Thanks for an interesting discussion.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Even those developers can potentially code for free. It just depends on the developer, for example how altruistic they may be might influence their likelihood to code for free (when they have free time). Or they might be working for a company but want to create something of their own where the program itself is free but services are at a cost.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

I imagine, as has been pointed out all ready, that the user base and developer base for the N900 will be so much larger than for the previous tablets, that there will be more apps, more polish and more everything.

Maybe there'll even be commercial proprietary offerings, but I personally wouldn't care about that, since I'm only in it for the Freedom.

Obviously we won't know for sure for a while, though.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

You're right in that we won't know for sure for quite some time.

Come to think about it, maybe this is part of a rather clever strategy from Nokia:

a) Concept-proof of NIT hardware (up to N810)
b) a realization that the NITs were too niched to attract the mass needed in maemo for community application support/continuity
c) development of a smartphone running maemo - increasing the community size to the point that it now is big enough to not have 'just' people developing but also maintain/continue application projects
d) back to develop a new NIT - now supported by a grown maemo community

Personally, I love to see an 'N820', running maemo6 coming out of all of this - so, 'Go point d!!' :)

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Well... commercial software can be distributed as binaries only right ?
If really necessary, commercial developers can use serials and so on.
Of course I'd personally prefer free software, and won't be surprised if a commercial application comes to the N900 and there are developers who try to make a free version as well.

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Maemo 5 and the N900 will rock, mainly due to consumer demand and the pressure Nokia will feel to support it in a big way. This device has broad interest from Linux techs to general smartphoners.

Maemo 5 will experience its own micro economy, with Nokia being the heavy investor in this economy. This in turn will create even more interest in Maemo and the N900 as well as devices for next year.

That is my take anyway. :)

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Apologies for that one, my wording was unreasonably inprecise. Might be also due to the fact that English isn't my mother tongue. I would like to participate none the less though.

Thanks to silvermountain at this point for putting in more precise words what I tried to express. Of course I didn't mean finished as in perfected, feature complete as in nothing more exists which could possibly be added but I rather thought of a software having reached a certain level of maturity, quality, polishedness and shinyness UI wise, having the most severe bugs eliminated. So to say finished as for the state or stage it is in. I hope you get the idea.

Comparing software to human or in a wider sense natural evolution is a bit far fetched though. While evolution per se can't or at least shouldn't be influenced, the evolution or progression of a software can. Or as it seems to me, and this is what I argue about, even should be influenced, directed, planned, thought ahead of. Speaking of thinking ahead: pick up the idea of stages or states in the paragraph above. I'm not that up to date on the developement of any of the big projects, but I do know that every major project formulates milestones or goals and a certain set of features or a grade of completeness which has to be met to reach the next version, to advance to the next stage so to say. So it is being thought ahead, planned and then executed. A lot of those little project's are missing out on that. Version numbers increment retrospectively, with the developer feeling that enough functions have been added since the last incrementation. The developement of Debian, Firefox or even Maemo itself at Nokia works more the way I described it, I think. Of course I stand corrected if wrong. So, to summarize what I tried to describe, it seems to me there has to be that critical mass I have been talking about or the commercial drive to keep projects evolving in a way finally useful to the end user, being again very imprecise and not very careful with my wording :p

Which I feel is just not true. Well yes, true, there is always and always will be something different around the corner. But it's not so much the case with finding that something useful and it being improved. It is in fact the key to it all, I feel. Imagine that this certain something coming around the corner is very appealing to a developer; he will most likely drop his current unfinished/unpolished/unperfected project, no matter how appealing, useful or why not even necessary it may be to a certain circle of people. An example will follow later. So the developer moving on will result in a once promising project being being left behind. A piece of immature software in a maybe more or less usuable state, but ageing quite quickly without further developement or care and thus being rendered obsolete very quickly. An imagined scenario could be vpnc which would be rendered useless in an instant if not looked after upon Cisco deciding to introduce alterations in its VPN servers altering the connection method. However, if vpnc would be a commercial product, it would be altered along with the alterations taking place in the servers. Of course this would also happen if the project would have gained so much attention that it wouldn't be abandoned. Bad example, I know, as vpnc is enough important to several developers themselves so it will most likely be maintained and end users can benefit from that. But if a developer only works for the users and not or not anymore for himself as well, the project will most likely be abandoned at some point.

Granted. But this doesn't pose a problem since most users will most likely or hopefully leave a sinking boat. But what about all those useful tools and/or utilities, far from being mature enough to be left alone? What if the perception of the developer and users differs in exactly the point what a dead end is and what not? I don't know. I seriously don't know. I just know that there is an awful projects on sourceforge which could be very very cool but are dead. Without any word from the autor in most cases.

Hmm... now having proof read my whole text, the idea of that critical mass seems to become strikingly clear. Of course once a critical mass has been met, enough developers which care about the project are following the project as well, as a part of this mass. I suppose it's them picking up the development once the original maintainers leave for something else. Now small projects, even if very very very useful, cannot profit of this fact. Which is, where mannakiosk comes into play:

While this is true as well, the userbase and thus the potential circle of engaged developers will be wider upon the release of the N900, this most likely won't change the way those small projects are handled though. I personally fear more developers will result in more single projects being abandoned after some time. Like the number of dead projects is somewhat proportional to the number of developers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The Ubuntu professional products. SuSE. Mandriva. In fact any commercial distribution, no?
But speaking of commercial software, theres the DocToGo suite which will cost money. AFAIK the viewer is only functional for 30 days as well, right?

What a post. I need to go to bed, it's 4:30am and I have to get up at 5:15am. See my problem? I'm too dedicated, now if I only were a developer :D Thanks for the civilized discussion though!

One last thing:
Uuuhm... yes and no? Yes it will create more interest in Maemo, the N900 and the following devices. But no it won't put any pressure on Nokia. Remember: Nokia has laid out a business plan, all steps are carefully planned, budgeted and marketed. The N900 is just one small piece in a big puzzle and we the consumers are important in the sense of take out those bills, go to the next shop and buy a device with the Nokia logo on it. All this is not about Nokia being friendly to anyone, this all is business after all...

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Like so many areas, much of the "free" development stems from someone simply wanting to build the better mousetrap for themselves and, once it is done, they share it. Certainly there are those who feel they can earn money on personal development, and they try (some are more successful than others)... but like all tinkerers, there are those who enjoy making, cobbling together or designing something which would be custom only for themselves. However; with today's method of aggregation those packages which are wanted/embraced by other users can easily be distributed at virtually no cost. More and more, this same idea is found in hardware -- just take a look at "Instructables" or Make magazine... resourceful folks giving us everything we need to make a project work... short of making it themselves. In so many ways, it is the same idea. We are entering very exciting times.... and with hardware like the N900 (and the others before it) people are being made enablers for one another.

I think with communities like maemo, certain packages will float to the top, for whatever reason (good "marketing", hype, etc) and some potential winners will wither and die... but so it is in nature too... this process of software acceptance is really a little Darwinist, but that spawns excitement. This is just the beginning, and from all the new folks joining these forums, some superstars will appear, and the entire community will benefit.

Thor

Re: My N900 concerns
 

Nokia needs to maximize returns at some point. Their business model is beginning to show signs of erosion due to the same tactics and strategy for each device.

The N900 is their chance to maximize returns through the nice economic point of economies of scale. The more devices they make of the same device, the more money they will make to stop erosion (of course, they must be careful of diminished returns here too).

Their macro perspective of their business has truly reached the point of diminished returns, so they can fix this at a micro level by selling as many of each device as possible. This is facilitated through strong commercial and community support to sustain interest- beginning with the N900.

Again, just my take and my odd fixation with economics :)

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.