All this and you did not even vote http://talk.maemo.org/poll.php?do=sh...lts&pollid=597

Contrary to your beliefs i do indeed try to get things moving .

I'm working for a multi thousand dollar budget smartphone game for iphone and maemo5/meego..am I now allowed to provoke anybody?

abill mate, if me clicking on your "release the code" thread will make you happy i'll gladly do it, but I know a lost cause when I see one.
nokia conributes to open source where they see a benefit, methinks there's no benefit for them in opening the code.
someone on your thread said it better. nokia are in the business of selling new handsets.......

and i was serious. the ui on meego handset is a reference ui. it is merely a test case and vendors/adoptors are expected to develop their own. the devs are not interested in bells and whistles, the want rock solid basic functionality first.
trust me, if i can retheme and tweak it (i'm really not that bright) anyone can.
@turbowei:
i wouldn't call theming and configuration changing "coding" in the real sense of the word, but if it makes you feel superior to think so, by all means, go ahead.
my point is, actually getting stuck in and contributing, either by offering artwork, testing and bug reporting, or writing code, is a far better way to make things better than being a "critic" on a forum.
you don't need tp be a programmer to test daily builds and report back on them....

edit: i voted too mate

Comments are really missing the point...

Anyway, this is something I was just thinking about. As backwards as it may seem, I am starting to wonder if the WP7 decision can actually be good for MeeGo. As Jo said, MeeGo is not mature enough for the wide portfolio Nokia wants to offer.

On the other hand, it is certainly mature enough to deliver a single device that will raise some eyebrows. Ecosystem or not, the device alone should satisfy a lot of consumers (especially those like me, who mainly just use a few standard features of their phone anyway).

WP7 looks like a huge step up from Symbian on smartphones, and is certainly (going to be) mature enough to power a wide range of phones. This can give MeeGo the time and space it needs to ripe into a true contender, or at least allow it to serve a role on a few high-end devices.

Of course all of this won't matter if Nokia retracts completely from MeeGo after this device, but looking at the current state of it, I would be rather surprised if that happened. You will see what I mean in not so long from now!

@kanishou
Comments aren't entirely off topic.....
Abill's reference to the UI development is pretty accurate. It is pretty meager. The fact that it isn't the primary focus of the dev team, won't help meego from the perspective that you don't need a phd in astrophysics to download an image just to "see what it's like" and those "users" who aren't interested enough to read about it's use case will do just that.
they'll download it, try it, see that it sucks (from a consumer perspective) and then badmouth it to everyone they know.
you only need to see the threads here and on the Meego forum, started by disappointed "users" who have installed the handset image on their N900 only to find it doesn't have their favourite fart app let alone a fully functioning, media player, mms app... the list goes on.

If the platform that's in the public eye isn't mature (and it isn't) then consumers are going to settle for whatever is next, and I'm sure that despite our die hard cries here at TMO of "WP7 NEVERRR!!!!", there are a lot of people who will just transition across to WP7 because it's a Nokia.

given that, maybe you're right. Maybe the MS deal is the best thing to happen to Nokia.
then again, the massive cutbacks to R&D has to have a negative impact. Some here have argued that a part of the slow development was due to lack of R&D funds allocation to the Meego Project and if that's true, it's going to be even less now.

the big joke in the article is the reference to meego not being mature enough to build a whole portfolio around. Well neither is WP7, so in effect Nokia has swapped one immature OS for another.
Meego was NEVER going to be an OS for Nokia's whole portfolio and that's what makes me believe Jo is merely trying to smear a thin veil of justification over the decision to drop Meego from it's planned high end smartphone line up (read: media spin).

There certainly is no lack of funding.

What has harmed Maemo the most is the constant rewriting and changing of focus. When I was working on Fremantle, the idea to rewrite almost everything for the switch to Qt seemed insane, and it was clear that it wouldn't work out in the targeted timeframe.

It is only now, after all this time, that I am starting to think that maybe it was worth it. The result is pretty darn impressive, but the issue remains that it is too late at this point in time. The ecosystem won't develop over night, and starting essentially from scratch against two established and a bunch of semi-established competitors does not bode well.

WP7 is a promising and surprisingly interesting (for Microsoft standards) platform, that will give Nokia some breathing room.

Meanwhile, I am convinced that Maemo/MeeGo is going to prove that it is still relevant. But you don't have to take my word for it, just have a little bit more patience.

Obviously any R&D cuts will have an effect, but you also have to consider that getting from zero to competitive is a much larger effort than continuous improvements matching the speed of the competition. So it does not mean that Maemo/MeeGo would immediately fall behind.

Valid points!
I for one still hope that Maemo in it's Harmattan form will not be the end of the line
It is an evolution of the existing OS we have in fremantle and as such should give us more of a good thing.

It's OK for the headshed to waffle on about ecosystems and "Disruptive technologies" but you don't need to change OS to have a paradigm shift in the user experience.
Incremental changes, that offer well thought out progression of existing ideas and innovation in integrating functionality into the functions that interact with the objects we wish to manipulate (social media entries, media files, contacts, docs etc) can all create a new "environment" for people to work in.
HWKB or not, 4 inch screen or not, 1080 video via hdmi or not, I still look forward to what Harmattan has to offer and that was always planned to show up befor the final move to Meego.
Perhaps the success of a Harmattan device will encourage Nokia to push on to develop a "real" Meego handset.
Certainly Meego offers more potential for Nokia to Differentiate itself in the market than WP7 does, no matter how they skin it?

Looks like I will soon get rid of my N900 for something better, thank god for that!!!
"You're going to see the first MeeGo device soon," Nokia's executive vice president of smart devices, Jo Harlow said in an interview on Wednesday."


That bit also made me very happy:
"I'm not going to comment on what's been floating around the Internet," Harlow said. "It'll be more of a high-end device that certainly will attract the early-adopter geek. I think there's some innovation there that we believe captures the imagination."