I know many of us could be considered freaks but this sounds a bit too much like room 101.

Can`t you choose a different number, before we all start blaming Nokia for our madness?

On a poll of multitasking I had to vote that I use quite a few windows. But there wasn't a choice that said I had to because of appalling design in the OS. Maemo makes you open a page for every web page, it opens up a page for each conversation so I have 5 open using 2 apps.

Neither a valid use of multitasking because there is no juice left for me to run other apps, for example if I put music on as well the music skips because it can't hack web browsing, flash and music at the same time. Nor is it a measure of happiness in the N900 or the N900's ability to multitask. I could do more and with better results on my tytn2 under winmo 6.0.

The more accurate questions would be something along the lines of do you want tab browsing, do you want an inbox instead of conversations, or do you think 600 is seriously underpowered when 30% on average is chewed up indexing by the media player?

And a few forums threads are reporting that it can't hack too much music on the SD card. Perhaps that should be addressed?

You really think that? Or is it a case of everyone that is left likes it because lots have jumped ship and moved on. Way too many threads of people leaving in favour of other phones.

I don't but thanks anyway.

Here is a diagram you could use for the ones you already have...

I'll say this: I love my N900, wouldn't trade it, but I am not even considering buying a Nokia MeeGo device.

The N900 is very much a dual personality phone. It does some things exceedingly well (or at least far better than other competitors) and other things far worse than competitors. I take that back, it's not a phone . It really comes off as half done, with so much potential that was wasted. I couldn't recommend anyone else I know buy one. To me it feels as if it were rushed out, just to get something out, so the community didn't vanish while Nokia changed focus to MeeGo.

The main reason I bought it, was that I was sure it would be the last device with a resistive screen and keyboard. Factor in other things that I *expected* would work well, I thought that it was a deal. Now, after 9 months, I'm still happy to have it, but it is not the deal I thought.

I believe that if Nokia had listened more to the "community of geeks" it had at its' disposal, rather than the "standard" marketing channels and focus groups, the N900 could have been a much better product, that would have appealed to the masses as well as the power user / developer crowd. The "community of geeks" could have provided much valuable information/suggestions both pre and post launch.

The fact that Peter is here polling for data is a good start. It remains to be seen how that data is used. Will it be used as an indication of "real world use cases" (albeit more power user than normal user), or will it merely be footnotes to support results from focus groups.

But, as the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, I await with baited breath the announcement of a MeeGo phone from a vendor other than Nokia. I keep reading "if you don't like Nokia, get a MeeGo phone from another vendor", but I haven't seen any announcements from other vendors (if I missed any, I appreciate if they were pointed out).

Symbian actually multitasks better than Maemo. It may not look as stylish while doing it as Maemo but it is a powerful OS. The new E5 just multitasked 74 apps

Practically all my computing devices have been multitasking - Amiga, Psion Series 3x, Series 5x, Zaurus C3100, various Symbian phones etc. I would expect multitasking to "just work". The Psion devices were the only devices which simply worked, mainly because they had sufficient RAM to run the applications expected of them and because the OS is extremely resilient (virtually crashproof). The Zaurus had enough RAM if you wanted to limit yourself to the default factory OS/applications. But when you start to run things like Pocket Workstation (ie chroot Debian) or alternative distros then RAM is certainly a limiting factor. Symbian devices are plagued by the lack of RAM crippling their multitasking potential, eg the E70 you mostly can't run more than 1 major app at a time.

Think of it like Windows is overrated and yet can't be ignored

That one I can get-- I just can't see the concept of community as overrated.

well,even my nokia e90 communicator can easily multitask 35 apps (incl of games like quale and apshalt) while on the n900 i can barely cross 30 mark but still there is something about n900 thet it became my primary phone.I believe n900 is easily capable of running 100+ apps with so many times the ram + proce oced to say 1.15 ghz ! I think nokia engrs needed to really work at it,to make sure everything is stiched to perfection

For a symbian 3rd edition device E90 has lots of RAM, and the browser makes it painful to have more than one page open at a time, so you generally don't...

I agree with you, but on the other hand I also believe that to make geeks happy you have to make the mass market happy. We're not entirely different, we're a superset. The most frequent complaints on this very site are about stuff that s40 does better. And you could've found out about that exactly by listening to the mass market.

So even if I'm restating what you're saying, I think we need to be more precise and say that a winning product satisfies *all* the needs of the geeks, not just the *geeky* needs of the geeks. When I read about focusing on geeks, I think about things like the terminal application, but that's only half of the picture.


Speaking of marketing, geeks don't live in isolation even if they're 100% happy with the product. I believe there has been a transition to a very strange state of affairs in the current market.

10+ years ago, if you had nerdy electronics, you were ahead of the curve. People may not have understood your devices, and they may have dismissed you as a nerd, but deep down they recognized that your operating system was more advanced. And that gave many people the emotional kick they needed. (Yes, geeks have emotional needs too )

Today, if you choose the geeky alternative, you're using a "worse" product. The question isn't "Why are you bothering with Linux when everyone is standardized on Windows", but rather "Why are you bothering with Maemo when the iPhone is better". That's disheartening. See this thread.

The interaction between the geek market and the mass market goes both ways, not just one. Even geeks need a socially acceptable choice of product, eventually, or they're going to find something else.


The battery reliability issue is huge. My N900 is amazing 99% of the time, but when I'm abroad I'm so scared of that one percent chance something random will drain my battery that I switch to my Symbian phone. I don't agree that the solution is to cripple multitasking, though. There should be an alarm if the CPU is too active for more than 5 minutes with the screen off, imho.

Most applications already "pause" when they're not being used. They just sit there doing nothing while waiting for user input. If they're swapped out of RAM, going back is slower, but the same applies to opening forcefully suspended apps.

Surely this is a problem with Bounce itself? Even if the scheduler were to allocate zero cycles to it while you talk, the clock would still keep moving and the game would get confused when you return.



Your problem is probably due to audio itself not being properly hardware accelerated. Pulseaudio is currently taking 20-30% CPU time on my N900. With that kind of usage, it's going to be very sensitive to *anything* else happening.

One app opening multiple windows will not significantly increase RAM usage. By implementing tabs within the apps, you're increasing the complexity of the apps themselves (Both from a UI and resource perspective).

Web browsing and messaging are such a fundamental part of the experience that I enjoy having the separate views directly accessible from the task switcher. If every app did the same, the task switcher would obviously get too cluttered.