Thread: Is the N900 yet another user acceptance test device?
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Flandry is offline Flandry
2009-10-07 , 21:04
Posts: 1,559 | Thanked: 1,786 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ Boston
#47
Originally Posted by RevdKathy View Post
Except as far as I can gather most of those apps for download won't run on the n900. They're apps for the n800, and need adapting to maemo 5.

Case in point is that I really want to run a Bible programme that will be accesible offline. (I live in Cornwall, where signal isn't guaranteed and work in a hospital which is a no-gprs area). Rapier is apparently a tad challenging to get working but does the job... on the n800. The developer isn't planning to adapt it to the n900 - yes, I already asked him and he most politely replied.

If all those apps in the 'downloads' area would run freely on an n900 I'd order tonight.
Sorry if that was misleading. I was using the current downloads as an example of how much will probably be available for N900.

Not having a bible program is actually a problem for me, too. As things are now i'll still probably get the N900 regardless, and use the ebook reader that will come out (sufficiently large user base that someone will make it happen) or the PDF reader that i believe is included on the stock model until then. That would be the first app i'd work on if it doesn't show up, too. I use Opie Reader on a Zaurus now for on-the-go scripture reference. Nevertheless, if having a dedicated bible reader program is essential for you, you should probably wait.

@DaveP1: You might as well ask why you can't download and run those apps on a linux desktop. It's an issue of OS compatibility, not capability. There are two things standing in the way of doing that. The first is that the processor in the N900 is ARM-based, which is different than Intel's x86 architecture. The second is that those programs, even if they were compiled to run on ARM-based desktops (of which there are none afaik, it's a hypothetical situation :P), would also have to be compiled to use the libraries that Maemo uses, which are slightly different.

Think about program incompatibility between Windows 95 and Windows Vista, or Mac OSX and Windows. All of those are "real computer OSes", yet you can't just go download one copy of Flash from Adobe and run it on any of them.