In my humble opinion the current road is not easy: Nokia is creating a new category of products for the mainstream public and is doing it in a pioneering way, combining own development with a deep collaboration with several open source projects. Others are following now this strategy and they seem to be doing some steps pretty well. But Nokia started earlier and now has two devices, an IT OS, the maemo development platform and several applications out there, in the real world. And here we are, working hard to bring more stuff.

We try to do our best overall. We are far from perfect but we are not taking any easy road either.

I'm done.

(Note: we can't all achieve your high standards, as in your eloquent exchanges with Euchreprof).

Of course I don't blame them, that's what I said in my first post ; it's good that they participate, but they should not be the only ones.
...even for ITOS2006 bugs ? :-)
Qim, I believe that most reasonable people over here are not asking for more than that. Knowing that they are being listened to usually leads people to express themselves better than when they are just venting off. This thread has already taken a new tack after your intervention ; if you, or someone like you, were to pop in like this at regular intervals (like once a month), it would probably set a lot of things straight.
Hah, news posted almost as I was typing my own post, I hadn't seen it... Thanks for the pointer, that's very good news!
(I could care less about Skype, that's why I'd prefer a good SIP client :-)

I can understand that for the N800, with its backwards design. But *my* 770 certainly goes with me everywhere. It's been riding 40 km a day at the back of a bike since december 2005, and gone skiing, and to the beach, etc. (I'm long done with nightclubs though :-)

I do hope that with the N900 Nokia will return to a sturdy design like the 770 and its cover. Then it's not too big, not too heavy, and not fragile...

Just yesterday I picked up my 770 for the first time in about 5 months and I was struck by how slim, small and light it felt compared to my N800. I used to take my 770 with me everywhere, the case/cover afforded it excellent protection as well as providing useful offline/online functionality - still an important consideration for some of us! I now take my N800 to fewer places because it lacks the protection and it's bulkier than the 770 - the N800 is far less trouser pocket friendly.

The "N900" can learn a lot from the 770, and far less from the N800.

Proof the system works.

If you check the record, you'll see that was mostly one-sided, Karel. I quit responding to his stuff early on-- everyone ELSE volleyed with him. You guys lectured me anyway, AFTER I quit exchanging with him. Kinda silly. I'm still waiting for the realization to hit a few of you. What's the holdup?

Besides, I was kidding you two. Benny got that.

TIT, Tommorw's Internet Today! Not bad. I can't quite come up with the perfect concept, but something like

TIT: Suck on this, Internet users! Followed of course by a picture of the N800.

Qim, I don't think anyone is saying that all the systems work you have been doing on Linux, Maemo, Hildon, and user interfaces was easy. We who saw it from the start, with ITOS2005 onwards, had the ABI change in 2006, then the API incompatibilities in 2007, more or less understood the need for them, grumbled, and accepted them.

But this is just the infrastructure, the foundation. Something users take for granted, however hard it may have been to create. They also mostly take for granted that any pocketable, computer-like device will carry PIM software, and no amount of repeating the "it's not a PDA" mantra will change that.

People here have the most trouble accepting that, perhaps because they know that while you actually have been pioneering a new domain and creating new things, the part that Nokia is adamantly refusing to do is definitely NOT innovative, and is in fact so mundane that it's understandable they look at it as the "easy" part.

Ever since the 1990's, pocketable devices like the Psions and Palms and others have had PIM software.

Heck, Psion in 1997 with the Series5 was also "creating a new category of products for the mainstream public and doing it in a pioneering way". They wrote their own 32-bit OS, EPOC32 (which later became Symbian). And they did it alone. And it could edit Word docs and Excel sheets and had an agenda that could sync with Outlook. And yes, it also had a browser and email software :-)

Sharp did the same with Linux some years ago on the Zaurus line, so it's not like it's out of reach.

If Nokia wanted to, it would be in an even easier position today : Abiword and Gnumeric are known to run on the tablets, a little corporate incentive could turn them into properly Hildonized tools. Nokia is also one of the main creators and proponents of SyncML in its phones ; a calendar on the tablet with a SyncML plugin would let it synchronize with just about anything, including Outlook and Google...

Of course, it could be even simpler to just port Java :-)

Since 2005, we have seen many one-man efforts produce useful, sometimes innovative tools for maemo : maemo mapper, mplayer, abiword, gnumeric, minimo, GPE... Some projects are lively and well integrated, some obviously have resource problems and can't keep up ; some seem to lie fallow after a promising start, like Opened-hand's Dates and the elusive native SIP client...

From the outside it certainly seems like the right nudge at the right time from Nokia could have turned either of these projects from prototype hacks to usable tools for the end user - especially the stupid one who doesn't understand that he *doesn't* need PIM software :-)

One can't help feeling there are a lot of lost opportunities here, and also a contradiction with the "deep collaboration with open source projects" manifesto. Especially as it is clear that in the meantime, resources are also consumed in partnerships like Navicore, Skype et al.

Quim, thanks again for your participation. i finally found your June 1 slide show... >> http://www.slideshare.net/gofull/58688/1

Well done, It answers a lot.