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Posts: 1,255 | Thanked: 393 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ US
#281
Originally Posted by cb474 View Post
I agree that Symbian is dead (or Nokia will kill itself in the smartphone market if they remain dedicated to it). And I can totally see the argument about how Dalvik could help Maemo. But I think it could also be a real losing argument for Nokia to say, hey look we run Android apps too! For a lot of users they may well just say, then why shouldn't I just get an Android device? After all, it's a sign of Apple's relative weakness and marginality in the desktop market that they have to provide Boot Camp and Microsoft does nothing of the kind in return.

So I'm not saying Meamo wouldn't technically speaking be more awesome if it ran Dalvik. I'm just not convinced it would be a winning strategy for Nokia in the smartphone market. For a sophisticated user they will see how much more powerful Maemo is, if it can run Dalvik. But for the kind of mass market consumer that made the iPhone a runaway success and who will now also flock to Android devices, I think they're looking for a few applications and services, executed in a slick and well integrated fashion. The device that does that the best will appeal to the most people. I can't remember if I said it in this thread or elsewhere, but I think one of the fundamental appeals of the iPhone is that it limits choices. Most people don't want too many choices. They just want the appearance that they're getting the best of the few things they need (whether it's really the best or not).

So it may just be confusing in the end if Maemo devices can run a lot of different virtual platforms like Dalvik. The average end user may just think, why does it have to do all these different things? Why don't they just make it simple and well integrated like the iPhone/Android?

And even for those who stick with Meamo, if those Dalvik based apps dovetail nicely with Google Voice, Google Maps, Gmail, and other services Google provides (by which I mean if in the background they help Google grow its massive cross-referenced data base of user behavior and concomitantly advertise to Meamo users), then Google will end up potentially getting more revenue out of Meamo devices than Nokia does.

You could be right, but for me in the big picture Dalvik on a Maemo device is one more avenue for Google to get its tentacles into even a competitors device. I don't think that's a strategy for going up against Google. It's what Google wants.
I can see it as a an option but not as main app distribution.

Why take a perfectly good N900 and efficient OS and add a byte code layer to it? By doing so, we have just defeated the purpose and efficiency of the OS.

Just look at all the same building block-type apps that Android has. With the exception of the game emulators (which use C to some extent), they are all like Lego apps. This is due to the lack of resource access to the hardware. Unless the resource is directly part of the framework- you can not use it unless you want to beat the chipset to death and suck the battery down.

Try and create something as "simple" as an audio EQ or video codec that does not bog down. Can not do it- effiiciently.
 

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