Good post TA. WE seem to have a chicken-and-egg scenario here with the tablets... and Nokia laid the egg.

Bad APIs, outdated/incompatible libraries, lack of communication as far as upcoming features. Limited/zero documentation of core features. Limited/zero API access to core features. Closed-source core functionality set (browser, drivers.) No browser plugin SDK. Dated browser. Dated flash. No support for the APIs/software of any other mobile platform (QT/Embedded, J2ME, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm). Compatibility was broken with the N770 for poor reasons.

The ITOS tablets are closed-standard closed-source projects very similar to your average cellphone. That's fine, assuming the feature set that gets shipped is rock-solid. It's not.

ITOS users have little clout to demand compatibility --- very few people treat it as a serious target. ITOS developers have little power to provide compatibility --- much of the OS and feature set is proprietary.

I'm not expecting anything earthshaking until Ubuntu Mobile (or some other major distribution) supports the N800. Nokia did a fine job with the hardware and some points, but is doing a terrible job with managing the platform.

EDIT: One more thing. Developers are motivated and demotivated by a certain set of criteria. Owning the device (and the discount!) makes me inclined to do a certain level of work to adapt it to me. There's a limit to the amount of uncompensated work I'll do to improve a device when substitute devices already provide the feature set. The developer community is simply not responsible for fixing core issues.

It's too tempting to port things. After all, even creating a simple program that is truly functional and doesn't seem half-finished is a lot of work. But the result of porting can be apps that don't fit on screen properly, or assume you can type without losing a third of the screen, or have tiny toolbars that really need tooltips to be useable.

Sometimes I'd rather have the ported programs than nothing at all (or some barely-functional fresh program, or the built-in email program). But some ports I just find too frustrating to use.

Things like MaemoMapper or Canola show what can be done.

Beyond Contacts on my Palm certainly has spoiled me. Were DataViz to offer something similar for the N800, I'd buy it in an instant. I emailed them to tell them as much, though I don't expect anything to come of it.

QuickTime's fairly open, and folks have written at least subsets of it for Linux in the past, so it's at least theoretically possible. It used to be the codecs (primarily SV3 and Qdesign Music 2) that were the problem, but these days, most of the proprietary codecs have either fallen out of common use or are not really appropriate to the N800 in any case.

That said, Apple itself seems to view QuickTime as tool for content creation only these days. MPEG-4 (particularly Part 10) would appear to be their chosen delivery format. (Bring this issue up with a QTVR aficionado if ever you're feeling spiteful.)

My greatest wish for the N800 is a good port of Emu48. Sure, real PIM software, an improved web browser, better Flash support, and the like would all be nice, but a computing device that doesn't give me ready access to the functionality of an HP48GX just leaves me feeling...naked.

With a stable abiword, including doc and odt i/o filters, pdf output and with a port of pdftk, I would be able to leave my notebook in a drawer for 99% of my daily activities.

Stable Abiword would be 33% there for me. I really need a good push email client.

Citrix, citrix, citrix!!!! Nokia pay Citrix money to make a client for the N800!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I want just little tools, where I can prepare stuff offline and have it upload it when a wifi signal becomes available:

* A flickr uploader
* A tool for checking my gmail (POP is insufficient, I want it pre-sorted like I get when I'm online with Gmail)
* A tool for writing blog posts that works with blogger

and, since this is a wishlist, an offline RSS reader that works with/like the google rss reader. Google ownes me right now, alas.

I'm looking into writing these with Mono, but the learning curve for n800 development is steep as heck and poorly documented for Mac users. I think I can do it with a few layers of emulation.

I have one very small (I think) request. Maybe it already exists, but I couldn't find it. I hate how the built-in browser background changes to white every time I change/load pages/sites. No only does a white background drain power faster, but it's very annoying when surfing the web at night in low light situations (ie bed).

Thanks
SL

Please port Bloglines 770!!

good stuff. good stuff. It was nice to see the Nokia vs Developers point of views....

IMO Nokia is going to have to step up if they want to see this platform more forward. Like Palm did with its developers. There is a reason there are a billion and one palm apps out there.

I love the idea of running linux in my hand but.... there are cheaper devices that do a lot of thing better than the N800. I'm going to hold onto mine until we see this rumored July "update." If the update bring half of what I hope for, I will be thrilled.

Besides, what other device (besides the iPhone) has such great touch screen potential.... It's soooo close.
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