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#41
I'm posting as a newbie. Before I 'got into' the N900, I knew of his site and had visited it and always had the impression that he was an industry analyst of high stature. I thought he was beyond reproach. Indeed I read and enjoyed his screenshots of the N900 and that was part of the excitement that led me to preorder one. But since then I found his Twitter, where he talks about hiding his device from Nokia, and generally has a combative tone, and my opinion has changed. But let's be honest, even strident criticism can be useful for improving a product, it just takes cool heads on the part of the recipient and the ability to look beyond poor decorum or simply language barriers.
 

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#42
Originally Posted by daperl View Post
Okay, let's ask me.

Easy to Reproduce Crashes: I can easily fix those in less than an hour.

Random Crashes: How random? How often? How catastrophic? Depending on your answers and assuming it's a software issue, the time-to-fix usually ranges from 5 1/2 hours to ∞ - 1. But this topic is too big for this discussion.

Have you ever been part of a successful software project? Good developers don't freak out like you're suggesting. In your context, absolutes like "never end well" are FUD. WEEKS is a long time, and it doesn't frighten a good development group if they're in bug-fixing mode. Sh*tty management is what usually frightens a good development group.

If it's your code, bug fixing shouldn't be difficult. Good design is where all the real work is, right? So, children, the moral of the story is: Worry less about bugs and worry more about design, then things will always (okay, mostly) end well.

Back to the topic:

Nokia needs to find out what happened, having a high profile shoot-from-the-hip blogger as an extended part of your QA department doesn't seem like a good thing. That's what we're here for. And my prototype should be arriving any day now...
I guess I have differing opinions to you about software development. I have been part of several successful projects in group of 10's which the software will sell annually 200-400M dollars to hundred of customers.

A large project which exhibits these behaviors WEEKS before release is in trouble. Even though the bug can be fixed in hours, it introduces risk, QA cycles have to be redone. You cannot be sure your changes have not affected anything else. To think otherwise is "hacker" mentality and not a "software development".

Yes, the developer never freaks out, but its a sign that its too early for release and should be set back. No matter how good QA is, QA cannot fix bad code.

Large projects with only a handful of customers and a limited set functionality may get away with it but I'm talking about O/S type code which is open for any combination of functionality and integration.

Anyway, hoping again the problems are only visible in Eldar's weird unit and not issues being "withheld" by fanboy reviewers (check out how bad reviewers of the N97 were crucified by fanboys!)
 

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#43
I'm pretty certain I won't get an N900.. and I'm not a fan of it as it exists today.. but Eldar even strikes me as an ignorant, and possibly stupid, attention whore. Mind you--I can appreciate and even sometimes like the attention whores--but not when they're ignorant or stupid.

If he's going to claim to have a critical opinion on something, he should be able to at least understand what it is he is talking about and remain open to being asked questions and, on the off-chance, proven wrong himself. Without that, he's not a critic or a reviewer at all and lowers himself well below the level of circus freak. At least the circus freak has some genuinely interesting feature you might want to see.
 

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#44
Originally Posted by bugelrex View Post
A large project which exhibits these behaviors WEEKS before release is in trouble. Even though the bug can be fixed in hours, it introduces risk, QA cycles have to be redone. You cannot be sure your changes have not affected anything else. To think otherwise is "hacker" mentality and not a "software development".
Yet, we do not know what hardware or software revision this person is running.

What we do know is that Nokia is still putting the final dots on the i (stated several times on Nokia World, in interviews on video). What we also know is that the Nokia N900 release date is changed from 1 oktober to 12 oktober. These are hectic times, with no time to waste. Competition is fierce. We know, for example, Nokia did not have time to spend a lot of dedication to portrait mode. Several times you can find reason for something not implemented is 'time constrains'. However, this community has a lot of power over the software and a SSU is delivered OTA and if I understood Ari Jaaksi's message this is pushed. It isn't uncommon for a final release to get further revisions. Its quite normal.

Regression testing isn't always appropriate, the relevance hugely differs, but thats also why some stuff is not officially supported. The real beta test is the final release, when it goes live to thousands of customers. That is why some people prefer to not buy a new product right away.
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#45
I now find myself in a software/hardware change migration management role-- and can confirm what daperl says. When you operate on the sort of clocks we do, weeks are eternities.
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#46
Originally Posted by bugelrex View Post
Anyway, hoping again the problems are only visible in Eldar's weird unit and not issues being "withheld" by fanboy reviewers (check out how bad reviewers of the N97 were crucified by fanboys!)
Have you never seen the zealots erupt when iPhone quirks were discussed?

Nokia fanboys pale in comparison.
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#47
Originally Posted by bugelrex View Post
He's basically saying that the N900 at Nokia world was a special firmware build. I "think" he's updated with a newer firmware and still seeing stability issues
On one hand it's amusing, on other hand it's not. I really hope that he didn't think that "PR release" stands for Public Relations release.

Yes, it was running the PR release. PR stands for Product Release.
 

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#48
Originally Posted by allnameswereout View Post
Maybe Nokia needs to have a look at which Russian IP addresses tried to grab, and have succesfully grabbed, firmware updates past months. With that (3G?) IP address it won't be too hard to find out the IMEI. Nor hard to track down this person, and prosecute him.
I doubt that Nokia is angry with him. He's been up to these tricks for a long time and despite that:

-The main (russian) version of his site seems to have Nokia as main sponsor (dont remeber ever visiting that site without Nokia advertisement being on top).
-Three interviews with high level Nokia people on front page (Corporate VP Vanjoki , VP of music services and Vp of services).
 
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#49
If this "eldar" is getting frequent SW updates they are almost guaranteed to be frequent interim SW builds that are designed for internal testing, not to be used for public release. Builds that are destined to be released to public will go through many QA steps before they are blessed as stable release. (If you remember from the N8x0 days you may remember that the hot new firmwares were already several weeks old...)

I'm not surprised at all if eldar has found those interim SW builds buggy. That's because lots of new code, changes or new features have been introduced on those with minimal or no QA.

I'm wondering how eldar has access (as he claims?) to those firmware images?
 

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#50
Hmm, maybe time for Lex Nokia
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