@Enyibinakata,
My time is limited. I do not need any more any helpdesk acitivity and recommending N900 to certain friends would mean that i would spend more time helldesking with them :| Time is money as they say.

Eventually we are talking only about things. Just things. I do not have any feelings towards brands or devices or at least i try to keep it so. Actually i try to piss evenly on everyones backyard. Yes i´m rather pessimistic but sometimes something makes me happy like little neat programs and community here.

Odd, since everybody I know with a S60 (not all that many, being from the US) was able to figure it out pretty quickly once I told them that holding down the menu or home key would bring up the task switcher. They all seemed to intuit that they could close a task by using the C key (or backspace on QWERTY devices)

S60 is ugly, but it works pretty darn well and is very easy to learn, at least on non-touchscreen devices.

from a developer's standpoint, they must have put a whole lot of duck tape on that thing, or working on it for a looong time.

I once wrote a program that was made for a specific customer. One day 'the big heads' approcahed me and said "Hey, starting monday, your program needs to work for this other customer too" . right when he said that I heard the sound of a record screeching to a halt on a record player. I didn't build it for that.

I ended up having to work till the late evening that friday, and come in on saturday, and work from 6 AM to 5 or 6 PM to get it to work.

but this is even still different then that. they had to figure out how this is GOING to multi task. should the programs pause? should the programs keep going? this must have taken alot of meetings, and alot of project planning to do it right (if they did do it right).

kudos on them for actually going back and fixing something rather than just making a new device and OS.

however, there is one very important thing. the iphone OS's RAM (and other hardware for that matter) might not be so hot at handling this kind of stuff. sure in the demo they have 4 or 8 apps, but maybe these are the simpler apps that dont require much.

I myself have a feeling that although multi tasking is present, it might be more of a "barely works" feature, as opposed to other phones made to do this from the beginning.

while watching engadgets live coverage and when multitasker demo showed up the first thing came to my mind was how my previous cell, Nokia 5800 used to multitask it basicly looks like nokia's symbian task switcher and functions like android's drawer (inability to close apps)

and then good ol' steve comes up with folders, my first phone from when i was in high school had the ability to create folders - Nokia ngage QD !!

his explaination for 3rd party sucked kangaroo b***s so did his excuse for not having multitasking by his comment on "blew up"

although how much I hate the iPhone, the OS is great coz it makes everything so simple for every tom dick & harry to do so !!
due to this one reason I actually recommend my friends and family an iPhone and not the N900 cause it would be waste of my time explaining them how to set up some basic stuff and ofcourse I don't have to mention the lack of apps on N900!!

dear steve

you copied just accept it.

regards
Jackie

sent from my (mighty) N900

It makes me lol coz before iphone users said "oh we dont need multitasking" or "i never open more than 1 app at a time" but now the iphone is getting multitasking (sort of) there like "at last" and "about time" etc, im like make up your fookin minds, basicly it tells me they did want it but said they didnt on the grounds that there "innovative" device couldnt do it lol

(emphasis added)

And there lies the problem. It's a feature so well hidden that you don't discover it by an accident.

Once you know it's there, no problem.

I had an S60 device (N73 IIRC) for a month, as I was participating an user study for some company (I believe they were being subcontracted by the big N themselves). Well, I didn't know the thing can multitask. I had to actually read the manual to find that out. And normal users don't read manuals. I only did, because I started to suspect that I might be missing out something.

I'm quite curious to see how well that works for the iPeople...

The difference is that iPeople will never have to "find out". Each and every newspaper on the planet will explain in detail how Steve Jobs invented multitasking and how you get it to work once 4 is out.

That's part of the iHype that drives me so crazy: Instead of printing a user manual, they abuse the press and the media.... Like the paper I read published an article (!) about how context menus work on the iPad. Guess what? You tap and hold. Did any of us ever see a "Tap and hold to bring up a context menu on N900"-article in his local daily newspaper? Not many, I guess.

I believe that's part of the Apple system. I don't find the iPhone/pad/pod user interface "intuitive" at all. Also OSX. I just cannot find my way around on an OSX machine.
But many people know how to operate their iPhones long before they buy them... because its in the mainstream media. I never saw any phone in the main evening news. But they had a story about the iPhone and showed how to use it... before it was even available here! That's just sick.

I wonder if people would call S60 intuitive had they seen the same amount of mainstream media coverage about each and every feature on a, say, N97. My bet is: yes. S60 is absolutely simple to use. I find it even easier than Maemo 5, which has its glitches.

I just saw what the fuss is all about... And there's only one word I can utter... WOW!!! Kudos Apple!!! Always ahead of the competition... Always blowing the competition...

And now if you'll excuse I'm going to charge my old n6680, n95 and n82... I have reasons to believe that Nokia stole the idea of multitasking many many many years ago... And I want to make sure...

Iphone OS was a piece of ****... And nothing has changed... It makes one wonder what exceptional marketing and several millions of homoerectuses can do... Multitask that Apple...

I will sum it up best for everyone here:

once again Apple shows up late to the party, but (for no real reason) gets a standing ovation when he arrives.

Actually I don't think this is how it usually goes. Most of the time Apple arrives late, but also adds something new or improves what others have done before.

This time it seems that Apple copied the crappiest option on market and didn't really add anything or improve.

They still got the standing ovation though.