Thread: Symbiam S60??
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BrentDC's Avatar
Posts: 903 | Thanked: 632 times | Joined on Apr 2008
#13
Originally Posted by ukjeeper View Post
Not sure if you're being sarcastic, sooo...

I've cruised my N810 app manager listings, Maemo.org's app listings, and OS2008's app listings and unless there's other (not known to me) sites listing HUNDREDS of Maemo apps, i'm going to have to say that Symbian has more than just a slight edge:

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/software/all/

739 pages of apps (on just ONE site), many of which are the kinds of which i have yet to see for Maemo. And none of them involve any tweaking, editing, X Term'ing, or recompiling in order to work. My E90 has more apps successfully installed and working than my N810. Not because i can't figure how to make Maemo homebrews work, but because there are more S60 options available.

Don't get me wrong, i don't mind rolling my sleeves up and lifting the hood. But then i'm in the 4% of people who are 'into' that kind of thing, and i'm still in the 98% of that group who don't want it to spend a lifetime getting my gadget to work.

IMO, and i could be way off base here, tablets running Maemo are an 'enthusiasts' gadget rather than a mainstream gadget. IE: not many people are going to pass it across a cash register if they know whats involved to make it do what other options can. Iphones/ITouches (spit) sell 1 billionty:1 over Tablets because users want something that just 'works', straight out of the box. They don't want to know HOW it works (they wouldn't understand anyway), they just want to press a button and something to happen.

Tablets are not PnP. S60, on the other hand, is. At least in relative terms. 98% of the S60 apps will just install and go. Click 'install', done. Users like this.

Personally i'd like to see S60 and its inherant ease of use on a tablet. Even on my E90 some apps could do with more screen space. For instance, I use an app called Viewranger on my E90. Look at the app, the screenshots. Imagine that on a tablet screen. Nice.

Officesuite would be even nicer on a tablet screen than on my E90 screen. Again, more acreage. OK, i know you can run OpenOffice on a tablet. But how many 'Main Street' users would want to go through the trouble of installing an OS emulater onto their existing OS just to open Doc's? Abiword? Yes, ok IF you can get it working (and there seem to be plenty of posts from users on here can't get it to work), and you're happy to ONLY be able to open .Docs. Docx, xls(x), ppt's are all resolved in S60. Again, would you rather view and edit a complex .xls on an N95 screen, or a tablet?

It would be nice to think that someone, somewhere at an RnD in Finland is porting S60 to tablets, but i don't think it'll happen. With devices like the N97 coming up, the economics of producing a new tablet probably aren't viable. The N97 is the natural convergance of Tablets and Commies (with a mainstream OS thrown in!)
I have a few points of contentions with your post. First, I believe you missed the mark concerning app availability; sure there are more applications available for Symbian than Maemo (well, I didn't click the link, but I believe you), but that is only because of 1 reason. No, not because getting applications on a tablet is inherently difficult, or developers find it too hard to make applications in the first place, or anything else. It is because Symbian has reached more people and thus more developers.

Don't bring the mountain to the man (Symbian to the tablets), bring the man to the mountain (tablets to the world).

Second contention: Installing apps on Maemo is difficult; click on an application in the Application Manager and click Install.

Just because Maemo allows you to hack your system doesn't mean you have to.