Theodore Tso wrote: > I'm not speaking for Nokia, but I've talked to a number of folks from > Nokia, and the problem is that their suppliers are not willing to > release specifications under any kinda of NDA that would allow them, > or someone else, to release open source device drivers. If they did > this, they would either be late to market by 6-12 months, which is an > eternity, or they would not be able to use the latest hardware which > has a combination of the latest functionality (i.e., 3G support, GPS, > WIFI, etc. all on one chipset) that competitors such as Apple and > iPhone might use. Fine by me. I don't want bleeding-edge hardware. I'm happy to have what was state of the art last year, with open specifications and software. > I very much doubt that Android or other Linux mobile solutions will be > much different. Android in particular tries to make it such that > application vendors don't even know that they are running on a Linux > OS; what they see is a restricted Java environment. Sounds good to me. Solves issues with security and stability, and lets me develop in a modern programming language I already know rather than a crufty old one I'd rather never see again. Gives me access to state of the art development environments. Plus, I don't have to care about setting up cross-compiling for a different CPU architecture. > Compared to what you can get, even ignoring the carrier subsidies, > that's a pretty anemic feature set. The iPhone has a pretty anemic feature set too, so it's not going to be a success, right? > It's just like in the airline business, where people will kvetch about > comfort, and lack of hot food in economy class, but where time and > time again, it has been proven that when it comes down to deciding > whether to fly with airline X or airline Y, the vast majority of > customers overwhelmingly go with whatever is cheapest. > Have you looked at how well the US airline industry is doing? Price wars only worked up to a certain point. Once the experience got bad enough, people stopped flying no matter how cheap it was. Personally, I paid extra to fly with a European airline last time I had to travel internationally, just so I could get decent service. I don't see the European airlines going out of business, so there must be a viable market. Ditto the iPhone. Clearly people will buy a phone with an anemic feature set and year-old technology if it offers a compelling user experience and applications they actually want. It's the applications that really let the N8x0 down, in my view, not the lack of bleeding-edge proprietary hardware. mathew _______________________________________________ maemo-users mailing list maemo-users@xxxxxxxxx https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users
