Thread: Things i really don't like ...
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ragnar is offline ragnar
2009-06-10 , 16:00
Posts: 631 | Thanked: 1,123 times | Joined on Sep 2005 @ Helsinki
#63
Originally Posted by fms View Post
That is obviously a misconception. It is almost like you want your users to eat food but do not want them to prepare it. This may work for iPhone, with its iTunes store and an audience of users willing to put up with whatever Apple inflicts on them. This is not going to work for Maemo, starting with the fact that Nokia does not provide anything comparable to iTunes in functionality and ending with the Maemo user base not willing to put up with the lack of control of their data. This means that users will manage their own media files and you have to address this activity properly.
Well, I think it is somewhat derogatory to talk about Apple audiences and "Maemo user bases" like that. Obviously we want to expand any current user bases to a great extent, therefore I wouldn't make generalized statements like that: the intended user base is not dramatically different from any other user base.

And I therefore wouldn't agree with your statement. People want to have a good experience with consuming and interacting with their data. I don't think most Apple users miss terribly "lack of control" with their data. As long as the overall experience has no gaps, I would claim most people prefer the simpler approach. Then again, I'm not saying that we would going the Apple route.

Originally Posted by fms View Post
Ok, not talking about specialized gaming devices here. But let us take pretty modest games available on Nokia devices via NGage. A lot of them (if not most) require directional controls and OpenGL ES APIs to be usable. I hope we both agree that having at least this kind of games play is well within the intended use for Maemo?
I'm not that familiar with the NGage offering, it's a whole different unit. I am under the impression that games are Symbian or Maemo specific, so I wouldn't be talking about cross-platform support. (But I could be off on this subject.)

I.e. I don't know of a wide pool of games that we could be automatically supporting but we would be not even though we wouldn't have those two features. (That is not to say if they are there or not.)

I know that the iPhone has turned out to be a very successful gaming platform, despite not being particularly targeted towards gaming. They have sufficient enablers in the HW and SW side for games development, plus most importantly now a sufficiently large user base for commercial development. But it's just an example to say that there are other ways to do good gaming devices than just sticking directional controls and support to any certain technology.