True, but it's also more of an issue of design of programs. Though in the end it's up to the developer for his/her preference of interface and usability design.

In all fairness, it was a brilliant idea let down by the touchscreen hardware not being up to it (unreliable detection of stylus vs finger events, getting worse with age).

Being able to use device with just fingers is great, especially through actual physical keys that give tactile feedback so that you can acccurately operate even small keys, this enables a device to provide instant access to many different functions at once. Plus, with input and output somewhat separated, the precious output space can be dedicated to displaying more information.

What worries me about finger friendly touchscreen is that the screen is roughly 5 by 3 thumbs big, which puts a limit to the amount of inputs instantly available, and it has to be combined somehow with displaying the actual content/information...

On a more practical note, the touchscreen of my N800 and N810 is too insensitive to consistently register fingerpresses without exerting disturbing amount of force. Something sharp works better, except for pressing 'o' on the osk of my N810 and enter in N800, there I need to press with stylus until the colors go funny on the LCD. I dare not even try make it recognize finger in those areas. As I still like to use the device one handed, while holding it, I've become accustomed to using my thumbnail as stylus. It's not entirely free of frustration, because you have to keep nails long enough to register when jabbing the touchscreen, but short enough to not get in the way when typing on the hw keyboard. Still, I manage to both hit links and keys on osk (when nail length is optimal).

If the device had a dpad or joystick on the left, centred vertically, and you could rotate the device to portrait, and there was a browser with virtual pointer like opera mini, or microb jump-to-link that wasn't so random and perhaps with added pointer clue so you knew where you were, I'd probably use the device like that a majority of the time.. Kinda like a traditional phone but with bigger screen... I still browse the web on my phone instead of tablet and normal computer sometimes, because it's more comfortable physically to handle.

I use the tablet the most at home, and probably spend more time browsing web on it than on my computer... It's a compromise in comfort and information-at-once.

I've never had any problems.

I'd have let this endlessly argued point go, but not after an absolute remark like that.

Tell me just how it sucks for mobile usage? Yeah, it would suck if you're driving a car, but you can't, or shouldn't, do much in that situation anyway. Or I can see how maybe it's universally inconvenient to bother with the stylus for very brief uses, like tapping in a phone number or pausing a music player.

But, for example, I walked around Cairo last month using Maemo Mapper (thank you, gnuite!) and the stylus was not an issue at all. OTOH, I don't think I could have accurately managed the tap-and-holds on the Points-of-Interest icons without a whole lot of zooming in and then back out if I had been restricted to using my fingers.

If Nokia took away the convenience of the stylus holder, then dealing with the stylus would suck for mobile usage.

Dear Nokia:

I heard the most preposterous rumor and I was hoping you could clear things up for me. Is it true that none of your future hand-held linux devices will have a stylus and a stylus holder? Thanks in advance.

Yours truly forever and ever,

daperl

So, moving right along.

It would seem that the speculation of a Nokia App Store (based upon standardised QT toolkit for S60 and Maemo) was right on the money (forgive me if this isn't new info). It's called the OVI Store and is currently accepting publisher registration.

Considering that Maemo seems to constitute a large part of Nokia's future strategy, and news of the cross platform QT (and Java and flash), it wouldn't be out of place to see these apps find their way into Maemo. It is rumored that Nokia is considering Linux (read: Maemo) for future high-end phones.

Here's the question though: would you mind having closed apps on your open system?

I think it would be a FANTASTIC idea, that would open the tablet to a much broader market, and provide real incentives for developers.


YARR!
}:^)~

Capt'ns Log.....

right... for mobile use, one-handed finger usage is essential, and a small set of hardware keys (d-pad) is the best interface for this as you don't even have to look at the device when operating it.

a touchscreen based interface cannot provide this, finger-friendly or not, as it lacks the tactile feedback. you cannot feel the "OK" button when you slide over it.
more important though, all tablets so far were much too big and heavy for me to consider them for any mobile use case. they're too big for my trousers, too heavy for my shirt.

that's why i think maemo UI work should focus more on the couch and restaurant use cases than on the "walk in the park"-ones. the couch use case is when you take the device not only to skip a track, but to do something with it for 20min or more. surfing, chatting, working through your mail,... these are the strengths of the tablets, and it's a lot easier to perform such tasks over a longer period of time with an efficient, high-precision input device.

(of course, maybe the next device will be as small as my phone.... i could see me taking it to the park, then. i still wouldn't use a touchscreen, though, only hardware keys.)

We already do, including Nokia and third-party (maps, flash, skype & gizmo installers) packages in the stock firmware and packages available elsewhere (garnet, boingo, hava player, rhapsody etc).

From a purely practical point of view, yes I mind (particularly the first category, no one is forced to use the rest or keep them installed to avoid breaking updates) because invariably they get far fewer fixes than the open ones.

However, openness and price are orthogonal, and such an app store doesn't necessarily imply closed-source (leaving aside the GPL implications of certain fruity store & SDK terms). I suspect a lot of current maemo users, myself included, wouldn't mind paying for F/OS packages (and other things being equal would even prefer them to closed alternatives) and the larger "consumer" audience wouldn't know the difference.

we always had closed/proprietary applications on the tablets. as long as i can decide to install/uninstall them, i see no problem. i do use proprietary apps on my desktop, too. it's a decision you have to make for each single application.

proprietary components in the core system are a different issue, but i guess most of us learned to accept those as a part of the maemo reality we can cope with.

and as for an app store: maybe i'd pay. i do pay for software, i am that kind of person.
the question is: if there's a commercial app in the store that i want to have, how likely will it be that i find a free (beer and speech) one with the same functionality somewhere else that runs on the device? probably very likely. it will be interesting to see what kind of applications people will pay for. games? apps that come with data (like navigation apps come with maps)?