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Posts: 76 | Thanked: 27 times | Joined on Aug 2008
#36
Originally Posted by Alex Atkin UK View Post
I just wanted to say that from the direction it seems Meego is going it looks like that WILL be polished and I am quite worried about that. As said previously, the more polished a device is the less configurable it tends to be and from what I have seen of the Handset UI I don't like the look of it.

One example of why flexibility requires compromise resulting in a "less polished" feel:

So why is the N900 app manager slow?
Because its entirely Linux based and Linux package management is designed to be plug and play, allowing you to add whatever software sources you want.

In order to do that it has to refresh those sources every time you open the app manager because there is no way it can know what has changed.

It has to update each one separately and then collate the results of all the sources together so you can search them or view a list. Naturally, this takes a long time and uses a lot of disk IO and CPU power, not helped by the fact that the N900 doesn't exactly have the fastest eMMC in the world (seeing as a good SSD alone would cost half the price of the N900, not something Nokia could fix unless you wanted a $1000 device). Just try booting your desktop PC from a USB stick or SD card and see how slow it gets (that is installing your OS on there not a Live CD/USB as those cheat by putting everything in RAM).

Why is the App Store so polished?
Apple only have a single software repository, so they don't even need to bother pushing that list to your device - you can just browse it on the web which I believe is all the App Store does. Then when you request a file, it just pushes you that file nicely wrapped in DRM.

In fact, its pretty much how Ovi Store works too (minus the DRM of course) so if you removed the ability to install community software the N900 would be faster too.

This is just one example of how the flexibility of the OS causes it to feel less polished.

I understand the technical aspects of it. But where the problem really is, I think, is that Nokia didn't "bother enough" to "come up" with an "elegant" "mobile solution" for application management. Taking DEB solution path is just the easy way out as Maemo is Linux based (as you've stated), and Nokia has ignored the mobile aspects when they put together a product and its solutions.

Nokia is certainly behind in the innovation sense lately.

Last edited by chatbox; 2010-07-03 at 12:58.