I'm wondering if I should have got an iPhone Touch, upgraded to 2.0 software and have had access to all the great apps on the iTunes App Store. I'm starting to feel deserted with the lack of action in N810 app development. I'd sure like to have a Twitter client like Twitterific for the N810. Also the Adobe AIR platform would go a long way on the N810. There is Adobe ARI for Linux. How hard would it be to get it on the N810?

Having owned both here is my take.

1) The WiFi on the Touch is finicky. It will often not see closed networks for some time before it auto-attaches.

2) No mic/VoIP and I don't think that's going to change much.

3) No speaker, it's headphones or bust for 99% of stuff on the touch

4) Mobile safari is good, but it has it's fair share of bugs and was prone to crash.

5) The battery life sucked

The good points were

1) Integration with all "iLife" apps

2) Dirt simple yet reasonably powerful

This was before the 2.0 firmware, but honestly there was little to jailbreak for, I don't see the big deal in AppStore items either.

Have you looked at mTwitter, the minimalistic app for the tablets ( and desktops as well ).

There's something called Mitter that works fine.

I honestly don't know why someone would chain themselves to iTunes when that's like registering to vote in Zimbabwe -- how less free can you get?

I agree that the N810 is superior. What I'm concerned with is the future and the various cool apps that will come out.

Also mTwitter? What's that? I googled it but nothing comes up.

And Mitter. I found that but how do I install it on the N810?

And I don't like Mitter's command-line part. Who'd want to use a console when a nice GUI is available. I've been programming computers since Apple II days and never liked typing commands. I thanked God when the mouse/icon based GUI came out. In the early days of GUI, console and typing commands was still necessary and still is for really low-level tasks, but completely unnecessary and stupid for something like a twitter client.

Senior moment, I was thinking of mitter.

As for features, as I have said time and time again...

Always buy a device for the features it has *TODAY* and don't look back. When you are in the market for a new device you can take the new landscape into account.

Reallistically in the next year there will be several big changes to the handheld tablet market ( Android, new Apple hardware, and how many "netbooks" )?

This probably isn't really the best forum to ask this, but what the hell... what do you guys think is holding back mobile development in Linux?

My personal take applies to Linux GUIs in general: the lack of a solid, _simple_ base for writing GUI apps. Linux has pretty good underlying library support these days, but I think GUI development should be more analogous to that of UNIX command line: write small, simple apps that work, then combine them in to a friendly(ish? interface.

I'll probably get more in to writing GUI apps now that I have an n810, maybe it's easier than I remember. What about touch (fat finger) friendly widgets? I don't really like dealing with scroll bars on my n810... are there any projects that are aiming for sexy mobile widgets like kinetic (wrong word?) list boxes?

Is wxWidgets light enough for the n810? I think a simple mobile GUI development middle ware would go a long way in encouraging development.

I'm not really sure, I'm mostly thinking out loud with this post

Stuff that I thought would be pretty nifty:
- A sleek front end to MPD so I can have my mp3s playing without a GUI after I've made a selection (a GUI that, of course, looks a lot like Canola or Kagu or ...).
- A way to make small desktop widgets that are always on top (next/previous track. click to extend or pop up other menus, etc).
- An easier way to make it seem integrated. I'd love for maemo mapper to pretty much be my background, with the ability to have menus popup above it for managing mp3s, or checking the status of a buddy, etc.

One last question: Do you think most of the code is available in Linux, but not portable/GUI doesn't make sense for mobile, or do you think that the iPhone apps are truly innovative, not easy to copy, and open source devs are unlikely to be able to mimic them? I believe it's the lack of a foundation, but considering I've only dabbled in programming outside of web development, I accept that I could very well be wrong.

andreww,

Don't get me started... designing a good UI/UX is hard. Apple has really shown that you don't need to sacrifice functionality for ease of use. There really is no equivalent in the Linux world. Android also has a sane UI model that cleanly separates applications into pages and services that can be run independently.

- MPD is already in Maemo
- Write a home screen app

Nothing is truly innovative, most of the app store are rewrites of older games or ebooks.

I think what's been holding them back is simply the same problems that the desktop faces. Hardware support. With the desktops however, you also face Microsoft dominance which leads to problems when you need to run certain applications (good luck explaining to people how to setup Wine, VirtualBox, whatever).

With the mobiles, MS hasn't dominated this area yet (which is why they're scrambling because of the new market on sub-notebooks like the EEE PC, and mobiles). Since Windows Mobile doesn't cut it, and their desktop OS is to heavy/big. While Linux itself is scalable (which is why you can install it on pretty much anything) Which is why you see great strides for Linux in this area. Especially as more companies become open minded to Linux.

The iPhone from Apple has the same advantage Apple has with all their products. They control the hardware and software (therefore it's easier to make things work). But this is also why they want control of the application store as well (as well as profit). Some of the apps I've looked at on there, I've seen in Linux and Windows in different forms. It just hasn't gotten ported yet to a mobile device (and it doesn't have the pretty UI).

Though hopefully with all the news about Linux lately with mobiles (Nokia buying Symbian and giving it to the Symbian foundation for an open source Linux OS, Google Android, and more cell phone companies and even providers like Verizon accepting Linux) we'll hopefully see a growth in an area where Microsoft doesn't have an unfair advantage to begin with.