Dear Nokia,

You've probably seen a lot of people upset about you moving to a new OS -- one that won't work on the 770.

Why is that? Technology progresses, outdated things become obsolete. Common knowledge, right? So what's the big deal?

I think it's because the 770 never really seemed like a finished product, but everyone saw its potential, and because of that and the grassroots-style community you've built up around it, we've put up with it, confident and excited about the day that it's perfect.

Why have so many of us for so long put up with the little dialog window to add application repositories that is barely wide enough to display the URL for your own repository, when there is no reason this couldn't be a resizable window?

Or that in the the Task Manager settings, why have we accepted the fact that the drop-down menu for selecting what should be first in the task navigator contains one option: Web? A drop-down with one single option?

Why is there no way that I know of to remove the Contacts/IM options from my task manager? I don't use them. I can't configure what's on the main menu of my 770?

Why, when I save podcasts to "Audio Clips/Podcasts" on my memory card does it always create a new folder called "Audio%20Clips/Podcasts"?

Why, when I'm downloading one file, and start to download another, can I for some reason no longer navigate to a different location to which I want to save, and instead see a "Searching" dialog which never ends?

Why does the text editor not have the option to actually save things as plain text?

...and so on...

Why have we put up with so many things we normally wouldn't put up with? It's 'cause we love ya, Nokia, and we're all part of a club here, right? The 770 users? There's forums where developers mingle with users! Your product manager blogs! Yeah! Imagine how great the 770 will be when all those little frustrating kinks are worked out! GO NOKIA 770! IT'S GOING TO RULE SO HARD WHEN IT'S FINISHED.

And then you come out with a new device. It's got a new OS. One that won't work with the 770. And you're luring the prominent developers from the scene to the new platform with huge discounts. And when Ari Jaaksi's own blog says of the 770: "we expect people to create more apps on it", it doesn't look like you yourselves plan to take it much further. And who are the developers you expect to create more apps on it, anyway? Obviously not the ones you're bribing to the new platform with three hundred dollar discounts on N800's.

We stuck by you, Nokia. We put up with a lot of things that we otherwise wouldn't have, all because you did such a good job bringing enthusiasts together and we thought it was going to turn out to be something great in the end.

And thence comes the feeling of betrayal. You can have your grassroots community where we're all one big happy family, or you can have this cold corporate practice of "well, we've finished the first one, now here's the next one!" But you can't have both. Nobody can blame you for choosing the latter. We just thought it was really cool when it was the former.

Addendum:

PS, Nokia -

I don't care about the video camera. I don't care about stereo speakers. I can live without being able to watch YouTube.

I accept the limitations of the 770, and know it will never be able to do all that the N800 can.

Just please tell us you're going to finish it.

Just please tell us there will be a way to add new search engines to the Search applet.

Just tell us it'll stop creating a new "Audio%20Clips" folder every time I try and save something to "Audio Clips".

And that I'll be able to add and remove things from the Task Navigator.

That I'll be able to un-install the applications that come with it -- like that game with the marbles.

Tell me I'll be able to do all this without installing Xterm and dropping to a command prompt and editing some text file (with vi, because your text editor only saves in HTML).

Please tell me you'll budget for a User Interface expert to go over the whole 2006 OS.

Tell me your "continued support" for it doesn't mean just fixing some bug where it was crashing when the user did this and that.

No kidding! My 770 is going to be nothing more than just an expensive paperweight. Wait - I still use Gizmo, but other than that I never ended up depending on it for anything. It's not worth it to upgrade to the N800, or the N9xx for that matter. I'm glad I kept my Psion 5MX as a PDA.

I hope it isn't true that Nokia will not be releasing a OS '07 for 770 users. I thought I had read elsewhere a couple of weeks ago that it would be available on both N800 and N770.

Nokia will not be releasing OS 2007 for the 770. I direct you to the latest entry on the blog of Ari Jaaksi, product manager for Nokia's internet tablets:

http://jaaksi.blogspot.com/2007/01/more-from-vegas.html