Thread: Cleaning N900 FUD
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twaelti is offline twaelti
2010-03-01 , 19:50
Posts: 883 | Thanked: 980 times | Joined on Jul 2007 @ Bern, Switzerland
#55
Originally Posted by konttori View Post
We haven't been very forthcoming about the content being created for the next releases of maemo 5. I can assure you, there is a lot of great content being developed, and you should be able to get your hands on it soonish.

Roadmap page is a great idea in my opinion, the only issue being in it the dates, which we don't want to commit to. But I'm sure a roadmap can be built without such. I'll take the action of following that up.
Thank you for your post. Most of us really believe strongly in Maemo, trust you guys at the keyboards and appreciate very much what you did in the last year for the N900. It's just that Nokia's (visible) output dried up considerably over the last months since the release of the N900 (guess everybody had to catch up on holidays finally :-), with PR1.1 being just a "cosmetic" release for many (even if the devs here appreciate the finetuning of the framework etc.)

Nobody reasonable expects any date commitment, but why can't Nokia announce a feature roadmap like other software houses do? Quarterly estimates would more than suffice. And explain why some perhaps expected things won't show up (technical, economical, marketing reasons).

A purely hypothetical (but IMHO not entirely unreasonable) roadmap might just look like:
  • Q4'09/Q1'10 (Winter): PR 1.1 Stability, critical fixes
  • Q1/Q2 '10 (Spring): PR 1.2 Ovi Maps 2.0 (offline search, map loader compatible), QT 4.6, Ovi Store open for commercial apps. Google Sync compatibility. Flash 10.1 hardware-accelerated. Front-facing cam enabled for all possible protocols . Camera app with HDR mode. Assign custom ringtones to contacts. MediaPlayer with Equalizer and vastly improved playlist editor.
  • Q2/Q3 '10 (Summer): PR 1.3 Ovi Maps 4.0 (voice navigation, based on QT 4.6, feature equivalent to Symbian). Full portrait mode for major Nokia Apps. MMS. Open sourcing of selected Nokia Apps under a slightly restricting licence to protect IP.
  • Q3/Q4 '10 (Autumn) : PR 2.0 MeeGo for N900 (Paid upgrade @ 10 EUR)
  • Q4'10/Q1'11 (Winter): PR 2.1 Stability, critical fixes.
  • ...
(Again: just an example)

Such a roadmap would be a great marketing help against FUD, as it would show the extent of Nokia's commitment and assure potential buyers of the "long-term" potential of the platform. You want people to keep buying N900 until the next device comes, or not? So the buzz must be kept alive, and this can only be done by releasing head-turning updates, therefore each release MUST feature at least 1-2 "supersexy" features (the bold items on my hypothetical roadmap are such examples)

Last but not least, the roadmap might also be useful when closing bugs in the maemo bugzilla, as we might more clearly see an indication when to expect a fix released.

(BTW: I will PM you on how to coordinate my Wiicontrol fixes :-)
__________________
-Tom (N900, N810, N800)

"the idea of truly having a computer in your pocket just moved a big step closer."
Last edited by twaelti; 2010-03-01 at 19:53.
 

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