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Because it runs.

yes, maemo needs more apps. and no, maemo isn't yet at the state it could really compete with competitors or even symbian. and yes, it was officially announced before launch.

do your homework and come back after that.

Many of the defenders here talk about

1. Large pool of Debian apps
2. Quality > Quantity

Matter of fact, anyone looking for a smartphone today will be asking these questions.

1. Why aren't we seeing them in Maemo repositories then? Will they get nice GUIs?
2. AppStore games alone exceed Maemo's in BOTH quantity AND quality, so what do you say now?

Sadly you're both wrong. In a few short months

Apple (100,000) vs Nokia (0) [Meego of course]

iPhone current release compatible all the way back to 2007
Nokia will have QT but all previous instances of Maemo (5/4/2) + old Symbian^* = irrelevant

I'm sure there must be a handful of QT apps floating around already but at this point its just noise given that everyone else is developing apps, maturing their platform and Nokia is running around in circles waiting for this or that to be ready so they can start preparing for the next thing.

I don't know if its the Linux mentality or what but you know what... it's not going to be perfect, deal with it. Pick something, put a stake in the ground and start building an ecosystem.

We can all turn our noses at Apple because they don't have this or that, but when they go to the bank and cash millions (billions?) in profits. Who's laughing then?

When I had a G1 (where there are thousands of apps in the Android market) I never had so many apps installed as I have on my N900 now. It's the quality and usefulness that matters, not the quantity.

I'd hate to pull out the old iFart argument, but the fact is that the vast majority of those 100,000+ apps are:
1) Really pointless crap that either nobody uses, or use them once in their lifetime - to see what the hell is it all about
2) Interfaces to websites that MicroB handles without a hassle while Mobile Safari cannot even load some basic sites properly
3) Small games that are usually a direct port from Flash-based games which N900 handles by itself - just because those are not in App Manager that doesn't mean they are not available for the N900
4) Lots and lots of same apps with different flavors (e.g. Lotto numbers for each city, sport stats for each city...) - it's like building the OMWeather package for each city separately, and then instead of one OMWeather you'd get hundreds of OMWeathers' for each state/city/country/whatever. Here is a nice example of that: http://www.theappsmachine.com/iphone...the-app-store/ . And speaking of OMWeather, there are about 10 different iconsets in the repositories, do you think that anyone counts them as apps?
5) Lots and lots of different apps with same functionality (think of all those tweeter/fb/myspace/whatever interfacing apps)

Of all those 100,000+ apps, I'd bet that no more than 5000 hold any real value (apart from marketing stunt of mentioning those 100,000+ apps, but that's a value for Apple, not for its customers). And if it would have a proper browser and Flash support that number would probably go down to around 1000. Now, 1000 useful apps is not a small thing by any means, but if you take that it took 3 years to get to that on one of the most widely marketed mobile device in history that doesn't really impress me. N900 has been around for less than 4 months and you have around 50 applications that hold some real value in the repositories, which IMO is not bad at all, especially given the fact that it comes preloaded with a complete VoIP and IM solution, a heavy-duty browser and Flash support. Out of the box N900 can do most of the things that iPhone cannot even with additional apps.

Yes, N900 (and Maemo/MeeGo platform) needs a lot more work on it, but that doesn't mean that you can compare those two just by the sheer number of apps available - N900 in most cases don't need any app to do what you want. I have currently 44 apps installed on my N900 (and I'm not counting basics like the rootsh, fonts, iconsets and such), how many do I use - about 15, and most of them are either status widgets/applets (load applet, simple brightness applet, 2G/3G mode selection applet, cell modem control buttons) or desktop widgets (personal dataplan monitor, personal ip address, OMWeather) or background services (SSH client/server, x11vnc). The only five `real` (as in user interaction) apps I actually use daily are: vim, htop, Petrovich, PyGTKEditor and VNC Viewer. And frankly, I can't think of anything I'd add more to it - I actually don't miss a thing on the N900.

Sure, some really usable, adapted for N900 UIX, office suite would be nice (not for me, but en general), a couple of good games couldn't hurt, even some better email/calendar manager could highly add to the value of N900, but frankly, even with what it already has I can't think of an area where it seriously lacks. What would 100,000+ iPhone-like apps add to the value of N900?

And here is an afterthought: how many apps do you actually use, both on your phone and on your computer?

t.m.o. seriously lacks a :facepalm: emoticon
It's NOT supposed to be a fun phone - Phone app is actually the only one that seriously lacks functionality and Nokia never claimed that the prime focus of N900 is the phone aspect. And they never claimed that its a gaming console either. They advertised it quite correctly as a mobile computer, and probably the first time they were right when setting such a label on their device (they advertised N95 with `what computers have become` but compared to N900, N95 is just a toy when it comes to computing aspect). If you wanted a fun phone, the iPhone is unbeatable in that area.

And just because you don't need something that doesn't mean that it has no use - I could say the same about the Bounce Evolution and those FB-like applets, but I know there are people using those and would consider them the best things on N900.


While you, sir, are a stinking troll, I'll indulge you with an answer - if you care to check how things are from a FOSS developer's perspective and how there is quite sweet cash to be made in the free area, especially in the underdeveloped world - click HERE. I'm making quite a decent living out of it.


Probably Nokia then, as they make more money on their mobile phones (including the money coming from the `poor African farmer` that many people laugh at) than Apple makes with all their products. And all that while Nokia funds R&D team that counts more employees than the whole Apple corp. which spends majority of its money on marketing. No, I'm not a fanboi of both of those (loving a company is a lot like loving cyanide just because it has that sweet almond smell), but if I have to compare...

Look we can pull out the extremes. Have you heard of the $1000 iPhone app by BarMax. Yes they have a small audience, but the point is they changed the game for how their industry sells product and they benefit. between iFart and BarMax are there tons of opportunity in between? Absolutey. People are being creative with a platform that has a lot of visibility. That's a good thing right? Choice and opportunity benefit customers, no?

BTW, you picked an arbitrary number that you're not impressed by, wonderful. You're assumption is that only 1% of iPhone apps are useful but somehow around 30% of N900 apps are useful. Nice fair analysis.

And post N900 the counter gets reset and Harmattan / Meego start from 0 with all QT apps. What good are those 50 then?


We're talking the smartphone market right? Yes I know that Nokia sells its share of smartphones (few to the poor African farmer but I could be wrong). The problem with all of that R&D is that they can't make up their mind. Maemo, Meego, Mer? I'm glad they have time for science experiments but as a consumer I'd prefer they pick a platform stick to it and iterate it over time. Yeah, everyone loves to work on the new next best thing since sliced bread that will blow away all others before but you now what. It's getting old, don't you think?

Just to finish this thread off (it's a bit old).

I sold my Nokia N900. The price was shity, but apparently that crappy device doesn't "hold" it's price for no more than a month or two, and then it drops.

I've changed it to an Android-phone. HTC Legend. The phone is better, more smooth, A LOT SMALLER and ultimately a better phone.

Nokia really ****ed this up as they needed more marketshare. Nerds, stop whining about how good this phone is for programming. Go boy a pc and programme on that one.

No, Nokia had the chance to go and make a phone that could easily be as good as an iPhone. Instead they made a giant brick which barely suits in my pocket... :-(

Hell even Microsoft can make a phone (look at the new Windows 7 Phone-series).

Nokia you need to do a remake.

- Over and out.

Go away, please.

You are hurting my feelings