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#161
Originally Posted by daperl View Post
You might find this strange, but some us are using our tablets as desktop computers. Not because we can, but because the devices can.
A netbook doesn't suite my needs because I can't take it out of the house (I very rarely have much more on me than a cellphone, tablet, watch, wallet, keys and a Leatherman—assuming I'm not on campus), and you make the tablets much smaller and they basically become hyped-up smartphones. It's the formfactor that makes them great, change it too much and you've got a commodity item that doesn't fill my needs.

Originally Posted by daperl View Post
But we're not looking for netbooks; we're looking for pocketbooks.
How telling.
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#162
Originally Posted by GeraldKo View Post
Krisse, how about those of us who don't want a cellphone but want a pocketable device with 800x480 resolution? You throwin' us to the wolves?
Sorry, I should be a bit clearer. I don't want to stop people having pocket computers. I used to own a Psion 3 when they first came out, it was a very handy gadget. If I had control over the gadget market I'd be letting everyone have whatever kind of device suits their needs.

As I'm not in control of anything though, I'm trying to guess what is likely to happen in the real world.

At the moment, the vast vast majority of the pocket computer market is made up of phones and smartphones, and the rest is media players, games consoles, navigators, PDAs and ebook readers. If you make a pocket computer that isn't any of these things, it will almost certainly fail commercially.

By avoiding being in a phone/media player/console/pda/reader/navigator, maemo is being like a very expensive TV series that is only watched by a hardcore of fans, with no one else tuning in. I've been a fan of many series like that , and they never last long. I wish they did but they don't.


Also, don't you think Nokia wants to compete with the iPod touch?
If the new maemo devices are marketed as media players, and have a media-centric interface to match the marketing, then maybe they will compete with the iPod Touch.

I'd love to see that happen, I was calling for Canola to be made the main tablet interface for ages (and got lots of hate mail as a result).

But the tablets so far haven't done anything like this, they've just stuck to the "general pocket computer" line.

Last edited by krisse; 2009-04-26 at 21:28.
 
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#163
Originally Posted by krisse View Post

At the moment, the vast vast majority of the pocket computer market is made up of phones and smartphones, and the rest is media players, games consoles, navigators, PDAs and ebook readers. If you make a pocket computer that isn't any of these things, it will almost certainly fail commercially.
My N800 isn't a cellphone, but it already takes the place, wonderfully, of "media players, games consoles, navigators, PDAs and ebook readers." OK, not a PDA, but that has always seemed to me like a huge lacuna in Nokia's NIT offering and one they really ought to take seriously and include.

If Nokia offered the Tablet with Personal Menu, containing a good subset of what I currently have there, it would obviously and successfully fill all those categories. Who then would want to carry all those different devices individually? It already is my ebook reader, game console, navigator, and (except when I want something tiny) media player.

Nokia just needs to set it up that way at the factory and present it to the consumer as such at the time they open the box. Some of the apps could take a little polishing (PDA's could take a lot more than that), but they're pretty much there already. And you can add sketchpad (if they'll let us keep the stylus in the unit), pdf viewer, movie viewer, etc. Who then would want to lug around a Garmin, a Kindle, and an Archos. It's just a matter of "packaging," in the widest sense.

(I don't know that most people regard the iPod Touch as primarily a media player. It's great at it, but the touch-owners I know regard it foremost as a web browser and ebook reader. But, like the Tablet could do, it has -- apart from GPS -- your whole list covered. And the iPhone is all of them.)

I agree that for out-of-the-box, Canola should be featured. I don't much like it compared to alternatives, but it's perfect for the average user, and the rest of us can modify our apps. It just wouldn't be that hard for Nokia to offer your whole list at the level of Canola's elegance and superficial ease. Hopefully, for the next iteration they will.
 

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#164
Originally Posted by GeraldKo View Post
I agree that for out-of-the-box, Canola should be featured.
The problem with bundling things for out-of-the-box is that it dramatically changes the requirements for the software (mostly for the worse).

Trust me, you don't want Nokia's grubby fingers all over the community cookie jar.
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#165
Originally Posted by GeraldKo View Post
If Nokia offered the Tablet with Personal Menu, containing a good subset of what I currently have there, it would obviously and successfully fill all those categories. Who then would want to carry all those different devices individually? It already is my ebook reader, game console, navigator, and (except when I want something tiny) media player.
...but it isn't your phone, and that's the problem.

If you want it to be an all-in-one gadget, it has to include telephony.

Trying to be an all-in-one gadget without including telephony is not going to work, because that's the most-used function of pocket gadgets.

There are villages full of people earning a dollar a day, who don't even have regular electricity or television sets, yet even they stump together the cash to buy mobile phones because they find it so useful.

Last edited by krisse; 2009-04-26 at 22:17.
 
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#166
Originally Posted by krisse View Post
...but it isn't your phone, and that's the problem.

If you want it to be an all-in-one gadget, it has to include telephony.

Trying to be an all-in-one gadget without including telephony is not going to work, because that's the most-used function of pocket gadgets.
First off, the iPod touch doesn't seem to be having much trouble making sales. And it isn't a telephone.

Besides that, I don't think many people want a telephone as large as the Tablets. So there's an inherent trade-off between screen size and cellphone expectation. Apple went with a reduced screen size and did what you're saying with the iPhone. Personally, I prefer the two-gizmo solution, which allows for the larger screen size.

You seem to think that no matter how it were configured, the NIT form factor is bound to fail.

One solution is to have the NIT form factor, with the cellphone capability, but not make people use it. Maybe with bluetooth headsets, there's a larger segment willing to have a NIT-sized telephone.

GA, is the RX-51's built-in cell-data capability the same hardware-wise as a cellphone requires?

Last edited by GeraldKo; 2009-04-26 at 22:34.
 

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#167
Just my $.02 on telephony...

My N800 has lasted through a couple of different cell phones with differing connectivity and speeds ( darn cell providers )

I would rather keep the connectivity separate & therefore upgradable, than replace an all-in-one style device when 3G goes to xG...
 

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#168
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles View Post
The problem with bundling things for out-of-the-box is that it dramatically changes the requirements for the software (mostly for the worse).

Trust me, you don't want Nokia's grubby fingers all over the community cookie jar.
I don't get it. Why can't Nokia include the software the way it wants, just like there are different distributions of Linux? The community can still do what it wants with the open source apps. And some of them -- Canola specifically -- were developed by Nokia, or an affiliate thereof.

It makes much more sense to me for Nokia to bundle those things and make it a great right-out-of-the-box experience for the non-tinkerer, if it ever wants the Tablets to succeed in the mass market. That approach doesn't stop those who want to tinker from tinkering. Everybody wins.
 

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#169
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles View Post
OK, I see all the Thanks! at the bottom of your post, but I don't "get" it.

You sort of throw these two points out there, then ramble a bit about manufacturing and losing your job (which is interesting to read, but doesn't really give me any clue to what's prompted you to write the quoted text).

So, do you mind elaborating a bit on exactly what it is that you see them losing?
I was generalizing, sure, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily pointless. The clues you seek are all over this forum.

I think the points have been covered well enough; I was just encapsulating at a high level. But suffice to say failing to provide continuity in the product line was, IMO, a losing move. Again, I point to the lack of an N800 refresh. That's just one example under my generally rambling umbrella.

Allowing gaps in product releases and coverage means opportunities for competitors. That didn't have to happen.

I'd ramble some more but I'm a bit tired. Went on a job search burst this weekend and it's taken its toll. I'm up to 130+ applications and managing them is a nightmare...
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#170
Originally Posted by qole View Post
My (admittedly limited) knowledge of what Maemo SW is trying to do with Maemo 5 suggests that Maemo continues to push closer to an OS on which this kind of application can be developed easily and without hacking, rather than farther away...
I meant hardware. Sorry for not making that clear.
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