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2010-07-03
, 20:35
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Posts: 179 |
Thanked: 115 times |
Joined on Apr 2010
@ Victoria BC Canada
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#82
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I think this is a pretty useful thread.
I'm beginning see more clearly why a lot of disappointed n900 users post on these forums.
As mentioned, a great many are carrying with them the experiences of past cell/smart phone usage. Of course, the best of these devices are very complete and polished for the majority of end-users. These devices are, in some cases, easier to design, while being harder for the user to screw-up.
I think this has been the status quo from the beginnings of cellular technology. Sure there have been enterprising hackers and tweakers who have worked around the fail-safe's and enjoyed a more flexible product, but these folks are not the majority.
Speaking for myself, a person who makes a living from tools and technology, I shunned all the "swiss army phones" just as I've shunned do-it-all tools. (OK I have a leatherman!
) When I felt the need to have a cell-phone, that was all I wanted......a cell phone! I didn't want a bunch of inferior peripheral crap of dubious value. It only needed clear communication, good battery life and a fairly big contacts list. This I found, more or less, altough I can still find fault in just about anything.... when I want to!
The thing that irritates and bothers me more than ANYTHING is the device/vehicle/tool etc that is sealed from any corrective, customizing or repair approach that may be required or desired. (I can change a battery!!!) This really irks me!
Now when I saw the first pocket pc-phone I've ever bought.....the n900, I saw a powerful flexible device with a host of features to allow as unfettered communication as any device I've seen before! Like others have already compared it to, I saw a fresh, tiny PC with superb communication abilities thrown in!
Polish!!!
Man I planned to configure this little Hot-Rod Exactly the way I wanted! On my terms....
Do I like things with polish??? Of Course!
Will the n900 ever be polished??? Phhhhhtt NO!
Do I care???? With a community like this and a flexible, tweakable device like the n900? ....Naw!
I like the n900 better and better every time I polish it.
I'm beginning see more clearly why a lot of disappointed n900 users post on these forums.
As mentioned, a great many are carrying with them the experiences of past cell/smart phone usage. Of course, the best of these devices are very complete and polished for the majority of end-users. These devices are, in some cases, easier to design, while being harder for the user to screw-up.
I think this has been the status quo from the beginnings of cellular technology. Sure there have been enterprising hackers and tweakers who have worked around the fail-safe's and enjoyed a more flexible product, but these folks are not the majority.
Speaking for myself, a person who makes a living from tools and technology, I shunned all the "swiss army phones" just as I've shunned do-it-all tools. (OK I have a leatherman!
) When I felt the need to have a cell-phone, that was all I wanted......a cell phone! I didn't want a bunch of inferior peripheral crap of dubious value. It only needed clear communication, good battery life and a fairly big contacts list. This I found, more or less, altough I can still find fault in just about anything.... when I want to!The thing that irritates and bothers me more than ANYTHING is the device/vehicle/tool etc that is sealed from any corrective, customizing or repair approach that may be required or desired. (I can change a battery!!!) This really irks me!
Now when I saw the first pocket pc-phone I've ever bought.....the n900, I saw a powerful flexible device with a host of features to allow as unfettered communication as any device I've seen before! Like others have already compared it to, I saw a fresh, tiny PC with superb communication abilities thrown in!
Polish!!!
Man I planned to configure this little Hot-Rod Exactly the way I wanted! On my terms....
Do I like things with polish??? Of Course!
Will the n900 ever be polished??? Phhhhhtt NO!
Do I care???? With a community like this and a flexible, tweakable device like the n900? ....Naw!
I like the n900 better and better every time I polish it.
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2010-07-03
, 21:39
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Posts: 3,159 |
Thanked: 2,023 times |
Joined on Feb 2008
@ Finland
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#83
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Originally Posted by chatbox
then you must have heard from 5 steps?
haha...I've been hearing that from the N800 days...the next one will be polished...then the next one... Every single one has been a, IMO, subpar, non competitive product...and with their users saying something like "This is a very unique product, if it doesn't suit you, then go away". Since when do we demand human beings to be suitable for a product? There are some exceptional cases...true. But a mobile computing platform and hardware that Nokia is pretty much saying...take it or leave it, it is what it is....just doesn't seem right. But somewhere along the way, the users, the community have come to accept this, IMO, a weird "fact" that you can't demand more from Nokia.
M5 is huge leap from OS2008, you should know it too if you own both N800 & N900....
..and because of whole UI remake there probably wasn't enough resources for email, [insert any other unpolished item here], ...
e: simple illustration:
OS2008
M5
ee: and btw I am waiting the device that made n800 look like sub-par....
__________________
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K.I.S.S. approach:
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K.I.S.S. approach:
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If the link doesn't help, just use
Google Custom Search
Last edited by ossipena; 2010-07-03 at 21:49.
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2010-07-03
, 22:29
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Posts: 5 |
Thanked: 3 times |
Joined on Jul 2010
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#84
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You know, one thing that I think is really keeping people from developing for the N900 more is the horrible state of the documentation. It seems to be all over the place and near unintelligible. It took me hours to find a working example of adding my own category to the contacts list. It was even a colossal pain to install the SDK itself.
Then there is the reliance on Eclipse (Which is really just a piece of trash.), the fact that the environment variables inside the scratchbox are not automatically set up to actually find libraries on their own does not help either. When you try to compile on the command-line inside the scratchbox you end up getting linker related errors and have to play around with various flags to get your code to compile. This also makes it even harder to use some other tool to write the code (I'm an Emacs guy myself.)
In short it is such an annoyance that it makes me want to avoid spending time actually writing anything for the N900 because it feels like I have to pull teeth to find what I want from the documentation and pull even more teeth to get code that is otherwise correct to actually build. I have enough problems getting stuff to work at my job, I really don't want to be bothered with platform related issues when coding in my free time. I would much rather be dealing issues related to the actual program I am writing, rather than the tools and or manuals getting in my way.
It is really a shame that the current Maemo documentation is in the state that it is in because Nokia does have people on their staff that know how to organize documentation. Even without really knowing C or C++ I can easily navigate the Qt docs and find what I am looking for in most cases. I really can't wait for the port over to Qt to be finished since that will most likely address the problem of poorly organized documentation.
Then there is the reliance on Eclipse (Which is really just a piece of trash.), the fact that the environment variables inside the scratchbox are not automatically set up to actually find libraries on their own does not help either. When you try to compile on the command-line inside the scratchbox you end up getting linker related errors and have to play around with various flags to get your code to compile. This also makes it even harder to use some other tool to write the code (I'm an Emacs guy myself.)
In short it is such an annoyance that it makes me want to avoid spending time actually writing anything for the N900 because it feels like I have to pull teeth to find what I want from the documentation and pull even more teeth to get code that is otherwise correct to actually build. I have enough problems getting stuff to work at my job, I really don't want to be bothered with platform related issues when coding in my free time. I would much rather be dealing issues related to the actual program I am writing, rather than the tools and or manuals getting in my way.
It is really a shame that the current Maemo documentation is in the state that it is in because Nokia does have people on their staff that know how to organize documentation. Even without really knowing C or C++ I can easily navigate the Qt docs and find what I am looking for in most cases. I really can't wait for the port over to Qt to be finished since that will most likely address the problem of poorly organized documentation.
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2010-07-03
, 23:54
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Posts: 1,427 |
Thanked: 2,077 times |
Joined on Aug 2009
@ Sydney
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#85
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N900 is excellent in many ways but it could have been much better with a bit more love from Nokia. But since its future path was cut pretty much at the beginning of its release by Nokia themselves, most commercial developers stayed away from it even before trying. Nokia knew that would happen but didn't care as no official MeeGo upgrade means N900 wasn't meant to live past 2010. Simple as that.
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2010-07-04
, 00:05
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Posts: 857 |
Thanked: 362 times |
Joined on Feb 2009
@ London
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#86
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Even an inferior product like the iphone in terms of its hardware specs at each generation can be made to be amazing with a little love from the vendor.
But without that vision and focus to carry it through, having lots of separate projects is not going to create that finesse. Its more of a patch up job.
But without that vision and focus to carry it through, having lots of separate projects is not going to create that finesse. Its more of a patch up job.
__________________
Game Gripper now available for n900 emulators and games
Game Gripper now available for n900 emulators and games
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2010-07-04
, 01:35
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Posts: 267 |
Thanked: 408 times |
Joined on May 2010
@ Austria
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#87
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Originally Posted by gerbick
Automatically comes with working for customers who constantly try to belittle your efforts in order to beat down the price.
Harsh. Love your way or dealing with it though, you seem unfazed.
Apache alone destroys that. But the problem with "free software" is when it goes up against corporate software that's been established for a long time and falls a bit flat in some areas... for me, that would be Photoshop versus the GIMP's and the rest. Sure, they're usable, but not it's not the same. But... it's not supposed to be. In some areas, GIMP is better, in some others, it's not. But I wouldn't say "worthless".
If the lack of developers is the problem then... then the community won't polish Maemo 5. It needs to be said now. I can deal with reality better than fantasy.
But I wouldn't give up all hope yet, as there's an even higher probability at certain developers growing bored of writing simple applications and looking for new challenges. Challenges that providing good alternatives for the closed source parts might provide.
This is Linux after all, and Linux developers are quite different from other app developers. They are bound to hack the core system after a while.
I blame Nokia's push to the "it's the newest, most open, blah blah for developers" push that they got going on now that makes competent developers abandon prior iterations of their "open software" the truly depends on the closed bits way too ****ing much.
Especially not with Qt being the future of MeeGo, which actually means we'll get lots and lots of applications that can be used with Maemo, too.
Fix that and people will fix the stuff Nokia can't be arsed to fix and then take that expertise to the next OS at their own leisure as opposed to always chasing the Nokia carrot and never fulfilling the full potential of any OS - past or present.
That's my take. You... keep developing. You're an asset and lifeline to this OS, community and agenda.
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2010-07-04
, 02:03
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Posts: 4,556 |
Thanked: 1,624 times |
Joined on Dec 2007
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#88
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Originally Posted by ossipena
I've said it before. I personally don't think the N900 should even be considered Step 4 to Step 5 to a user device for the consumers. More like Step 3 to me.
then you must have heard from 5 steps?
M5 is huge leap from OS2008, you should know it too if you own both N800 & N900....
..and because of whole UI remake there probably wasn't enough resources for email, [insert any other unpolished item here], ...
e: simple illustration:
OS2008
M5
ee: and btw I am waiting the device that made n800 look like sub-par....
__________________
Originally Posted by ysss
They're maemo and MeeGo...
"Meamo!" sounds like what Zorro would say to catherine zeta jones... after she slaps him for looking at her dirtily...
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2010-07-04
, 02:16
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Posts: 16 |
Thanked: 11 times |
Joined on Jul 2010
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#89
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Just going to issue a challenge out here...
What other "phone" out there can do everything the n900 can? (i say "phone" as the n900 is primarily a computer, with a phone secondary)
Hell, i can even remotely control my home computer (VNC) from my mobile phone.
With the amount of capabilities it has, if you wanted a "polished" product it would cost twice as much as it does now, and you'd be locked into the programs they provided (like the iphone). If you say "well, the community can replace anything they want with whatever they want" then you cut away some programming and reduce the end price, then the user "polishes" the phone themself, individually, according to their requirements. You can't polish a phone to suit everyone's needs, because i can guarantee something will piss someone off every time.
As i said earlier, if you want something changed - program it yourself (BECAUSE THE N900 ALLOWS YOU TO DO THAT)
What other "phone" out there can do everything the n900 can? (i say "phone" as the n900 is primarily a computer, with a phone secondary)
Hell, i can even remotely control my home computer (VNC) from my mobile phone.
With the amount of capabilities it has, if you wanted a "polished" product it would cost twice as much as it does now, and you'd be locked into the programs they provided (like the iphone). If you say "well, the community can replace anything they want with whatever they want" then you cut away some programming and reduce the end price, then the user "polishes" the phone themself, individually, according to their requirements. You can't polish a phone to suit everyone's needs, because i can guarantee something will piss someone off every time.
As i said earlier, if you want something changed - program it yourself (BECAUSE THE N900 ALLOWS YOU TO DO THAT)
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2010-07-04
, 02:47
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Posts: 857 |
Thanked: 362 times |
Joined on Feb 2009
@ London
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#90
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Originally Posted by lordfury007
Other smartphone devices can run ubuntu etc although they are not built around it
Just going to issue a challenge out here...
What other "phone" out there can do everything the n900 can? (i say "phone" as the n900 is primarily a computer, with a phone secondary)
Hell, i can even remotely control my home computer (VNC) from my mobile phone.
With the amount of capabilities it has, if you wanted a "polished" product it would cost twice as much as it does now, and you'd be locked into the programs they provided (like the iphone). If you say "well, the community can replace anything they want with whatever they want" then you cut away some programming and reduce the end price, then the user "polishes" the phone themself, individually, according to their requirements. You can't polish a phone to suit everyone's needs, because i can guarantee something will piss someone off every time.
As i said earlier, if you want something changed - program it yourself (BECAUSE THE N900 ALLOWS YOU TO DO THAT)
Have you seen this for instance:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=53436
HD2 has Ubuntu and USB out although GSM voice is still being ported.
__________________
Game Gripper now available for n900 emulators and games
Game Gripper now available for n900 emulators and games
Last edited by imperiallight; 2010-07-04 at 02:56.
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If the lack of developers is the problem then... then the community won't polish Maemo 5. It needs to be said now. I can deal with reality better than fantasy.
Fix that and people will fix the stuff Nokia can't be arsed to fix and then take that expertise to the next OS at their own leisure as opposed to always chasing the Nokia carrot and never fulfilling the full potential of any OS - past or present.
That's my take. You... keep developing. You're an asset and lifeline to this OS, community and agenda.