Re: N810 RIP

Ryan Abel wrote:

> On Jan 29, 2009, at 9:30 PM, Jeffrey Barish wrote:
>
>> Judging from the clearance pricing of the N810 at buy.com ($219.99), I
>> surmise that Nokia has now discontinued it as well as the N800 and
>> the N810
>> Wimax Edition. So, let's see. That leaves... nothing. Nothing but
>> fond
>> memories of 2 years spent developing for a platform that no longer
>> exists.
>
> Well, I suppose ignorance can be forgiven since an announcement hasn't
> actually been made yet, but I'd recommend reading up a bit before you
> jump to the melodrama.[1][2][3][4]

The rumors are fascinating. In the meantime, I am nearly ready to start
shipping my software but my potential customers have nothing on which to
run it, unless they happen to own an N8x0 already. Nokia opened their
platform to encourage developers to contribute their expertise, but their
capriciousness and opacity about their hardware roadmap are tolerable only
to hobbyists or companies porting software from another platform as a
sideline. If I postpone delivery until after the rumored next-generation
platform appears, what assurance do I have that Nokia will not balk again?
What assurance do I have that Nokia will not price me out of the market
with an upgrade burdened with features I don't need? If you see only
melodrama in these concerns, then perhaps you have never tried to run a
business in the face of such uncertainty.
--
Jeffrey Barish

Jeffrey Barish wrote:
> Ryan Abel wrote:
>
>> On Jan 29, 2009, at 9:30 PM, Jeffrey Barish wrote:
>>
>>> Judging from the clearance pricing of the N810 at buy.com ($219.99), I
>>> surmise that Nokia has now discontinued it as well as the N800 and
>>> the N810
>>> Wimax Edition. So, let's see. That leaves... nothing. Nothing but
>>> fond
>>> memories of 2 years spent developing for a platform that no longer
>>> exists.
>> Well, I suppose ignorance can be forgiven since an announcement hasn't
>> actually been made yet, but I'd recommend reading up a bit before you
>> jump to the melodrama.[1][2][3][4]
>
> The rumors are fascinating. In the meantime, I am nearly ready to start
> shipping my software but my potential customers have nothing on which to
> run it, unless they happen to own an N8x0 already. Nokia opened their
> platform to encourage developers to contribute their expertise, but their
> capriciousness and opacity about their hardware roadmap are tolerable only
> to hobbyists or companies porting software from another platform as a
> sideline. If I postpone delivery until after the rumored next-generation
> platform appears,

It's not _just_ a rumor. There is something else coming up: Fremantle. There is something else even
more exciting after that.

> what assurance do I have that Nokia will not balk again?

Balk at what?

> What assurance do I have that Nokia will not price me out of the market
> with an upgrade burdened with features I don't need?

I am confused here, how would Nokia price you out of the market? As far as I know Nokia isn't
charging for SDK and application development.

Maybe there are features in Fremantle that many more would like, giving you more opportunities and a
larger market than the current device can offer?


> If you see only
> melodrama in these concerns, then perhaps you have never tried to run a
> business in the face of such uncertainty.

I think the economy would be a bigger uncertainty in any business right now.
Besides, the n810 is still available. http://www.nseries.com/index.html#l=products,n810




--
Lorn 'ljp' Potter
Software Engineer, Qt Software R&D, Nokia Pty Ltd

Jeffrey Barish wrote:
> The rumors are fascinating. In the meantime, I am nearly ready to start
> shipping my software but my potential customers have nothing on which to
> run it, unless they happen to own an N8x0 already. Nokia opened their
> platform to encourage developers to contribute their expertise, but their
> capriciousness and opacity about their hardware roadmap are tolerable only
> to hobbyists or companies porting software from another platform as a
> sideline. If I postpone delivery until after the rumored next-generation
> platform appears, what assurance do I have that Nokia will not balk again?

I get digests from the alsa-devel mailing list and there has been at
least one patch from nokia for the omap3. If it was just a rumor I
don't think they would bother. Perhaps nokia could itself kept a
convenient record of their patches to upstream projects, assuming they
don't already.

http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2009-January/014311.html

Regards, Sarah

Hi,

I understand all you want to know what device(s) come after the N810 and
when. The only details we can share now is that more products will come
for sure.

ext Jeffrey Barish wrote:
> The rumors are fascinating.

I wouldn't call rumors to

- Public presentations done by Nokia representatives, from engineers to
a vice-president.
- 2 unstable releases (the second yesterday) telling already a lot about
supported hardware and features.
- Significant contributions done already upstream, starting from the
omap list in the Linux kernel project.
- Dozens of bugs resolved as FIXED targeting the Fremantle release plus
an additional bunch of bugs commented as reproducible in Fremantle.
- An announced selection of community projects that will get early
access to new hardware.

All the content visible and linked at
http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Maemo_roadmap/Fremantle comes from official
sources.

> In the meantime, I am nearly ready to start
> shipping my software but my potential customers have nothing on which to
> run it, unless they happen to own an N8x0 already.

The N810 sales are continuing. The progressive price reduction is
business as usual in this industry.


> Nokia opened their
> platform to encourage developers to contribute their expertise, but their
> capriciousness and opacity about their hardware roadmap are tolerable only
> to hobbyists or companies porting software from another platform as a
> sideline.

As much as I love free software and open roadmaps, I must reckon that in
the current times transparent hardware roadmaps are not helping
companies to sell devices sooner, cheaper or better.

For companies like Nokia, the ultimate reason behind hardware roadmap
opacity is to sell more and better, which is equivalent to increase more
your potential user base. Get more (and happier) users by bringing
better products than the competition and get more (and happier) users by
managing consumer expectations and media hype.


> If you see only
> melodrama in these concerns, then perhaps you have never tried to run a
> business in the face of such uncertainty.

For what is worth Forum Nokia is being quite frank presenting Maemo
today more as a platform for fast prototyping and Linux innovation than
a profitable business for application developers.

My advice to commercial developers is to make a step in the Maemo
platform, learn and have fun with it. This way you will be ready to go
when the right time for commercial software comes. Getting yourselves
introduced to Forum Nokia might help you having some business even before.

--
Quim Gil
open source advocate
Maemo Software @ Nokia

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 7:06 AM, Quim Gil <quim.gil@nokia.com> wrote:
> Hi,

Hi Quim,

Thanks for taking the time to answer what nearly was flamebait.

>> Nokia opened their
>> platform to encourage developers to contribute their expertise, but their
>> capriciousness and opacity about their hardware roadmap are tolerable only
>> to hobbyists or companies porting software from another platform as a
>> sideline.
>
> As much as I love free software and open roadmaps, I must reckon that in
> the current times transparent hardware roadmaps are not helping
> companies to sell devices sooner, cheaper or better.
>
> For companies like Nokia, the ultimate reason behind hardware roadmap
> opacity is to sell more and better, which is equivalent to increase more
> your potential user base. Get more (and happier) users by bringing
> better products than the competition and get more (and happier) users by
> managing consumer expectations and media hype.

There is another point I would like to stress here. Ever since I have
been involved, every so often, I see a rant and it just baffles me.
These rants can be about an array of different subjects, but every
time, it boils down to the same thing: Some people believe Nokia owes
them something. I'm not saying Nokia need not work to keep their
customers happy, far from it -- they wouldn't still be in business had
they not, but I don't understand how people can even think that Nokia
should bow before their every whim and wish.

In this particular case, the troll believes that Nokia owes him the
assurance that he and his company will be able to develop and sell
applications. I'm sorry, but where do your business ideas come from?
Yes, you are a Nokia customer, and as such, you have the right to
technical support, or software updates, but you are *not* entitled to
some unheard of commercial agreement. The NIT is a platform, open as
it can be, but that doesn't necessarily mean that your agreement with
Nokia is that you will develop software, make profit from it, and
Nokia will support you.

Let me stress this a bit more. If you were a software developer, and
you bought the hardware device from Nokia, put your software on it,
and then sold the device, yes, you would have a contract that entitled
you to get heads up to the EOL of a product. You would most probably
also have access to product lifecycles and product updates, so that
your company could brace for the next version. But this is not what
happens. You buy the product as an end-user. You may not use it as
such, as you are a developer, but regardless of that, you still are
just that. An end-user.

Apple would not justify itself if it discontinued the Mac Mini.
Verisign did not send apologies when they stopped issuing md5-based
certificates. Miltek did not flame at VW when they discontinued the
Golf 3 in favour of the Golf 4. So why would anyone have the right to
attack Nokia when they are sticking to their internal product
lifecycle?

>> If you see only
>> melodrama in these concerns, then perhaps you have never tried to run a
>> business in the face of such uncertainty.

Again, if you don't see how little sense you are making -- from a
business standpoint, I do understand your fears as Joe Blogs -- I
doubt you should be trying to run a business. You are not a Nokia
partner, they are not your hardware providers. You are using their
platform to your own interest. Why would Nokia care?

Praise the day people realise we are talking to a big product company.
Not a hardware manufacturer, not a big brother whose job is to get
your business -- or life for that matter -- going. They will do what
is profitable for them, and if they're not, they're idiots --
business-wise.

Yes I know, I'm a troll as well. Sorry.

--
question = ( to ) ? be : ! be;
-- Wm. Shakespeare

Hi,

as far as we no, Freemantle won't run on N810/N800 because of the new
UI. The interesting question for 3rd-party developers could be: Does
applications written for Diablo run in Freemantle? Which dependencies
are deprecated and which new they had to comply.

Maybe they could be some not so important for the marketing, but
interesting for the developers details about the hardware reported (like
HD-camera). For e.g. does it have a hardware keyboard or the default
screen orientation..


Regards,

Keywan

--
Keywan Najafi Tonekaboni
http://www.prometoys.net

people@world:/# apt-get --purge remove capitalism
After unpacking world will be freed.
You are about to do something potentially beneficial
To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as We say!'

Hallo,

I think you are quite hard to Jeffrey. I am not running a business with
NIT, but I have an open source project running. And I love my project,
and I like to have a lot of people using it. I think this was the idea
of Nokia to open the platform. They want us developers. The realy did a
lot of work to support us. And if Jeffrey tells them, all this work is
of no use to him, if he has the uncertencies (and to a lower extend this
is true for me to, as I am thinking of programming open source games and
try to decide for what platform, and I am not feeling this platform is
very alive at the moment) Nokia should be happy about this information
(and I think they are).

I think you got my point ...

Detlef

Am Freitag, den 30.01.2009, 08:46 +0000 schrieb Sebastian 'CrashandDie'
Lauwers:
> On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 7:06 AM, Quim Gil <quim.gil@nokia.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
>
> Hi Quim,
>
> Thanks for taking the time to answer what nearly was flamebait.
>
> >> Nokia opened their
> >> platform to encourage developers to contribute their expertise, but their
> >> capriciousness and opacity about their hardware roadmap are tolerable only
> >> to hobbyists or companies porting software from another platform as a
> >> sideline.
> >
> > As much as I love free software and open roadmaps, I must reckon that in
> > the current times transparent hardware roadmaps are not helping
> > companies to sell devices sooner, cheaper or better.
> >
> > For companies like Nokia, the ultimate reason behind hardware roadmap
> > opacity is to sell more and better, which is equivalent to increase more
> > your potential user base. Get more (and happier) users by bringing
> > better products than the competition and get more (and happier) users by
> > managing consumer expectations and media hype.
>
> There is another point I would like to stress here. Ever since I have
> been involved, every so often, I see a rant and it just baffles me.
> These rants can be about an array of different subjects, but every
> time, it boils down to the same thing: Some people believe Nokia owes
> them something. I'm not saying Nokia need not work to keep their
> customers happy, far from it -- they wouldn't still be in business had
> they not, but I don't understand how people can even think that Nokia
> should bow before their every whim and wish.
>
> In this particular case, the troll believes that Nokia owes him the
> assurance that he and his company will be able to develop and sell
> applications. I'm sorry, but where do your business ideas come from?
> Yes, you are a Nokia customer, and as such, you have the right to
> technical support, or software updates, but you are *not* entitled to
> some unheard of commercial agreement. The NIT is a platform, open as
> it can be, but that doesn't necessarily mean that your agreement with
> Nokia is that you will develop software, make profit from it, and
> Nokia will support you.
>
> Let me stress this a bit more. If you were a software developer, and
> you bought the hardware device from Nokia, put your software on it,
> and then sold the device, yes, you would have a contract that entitled
> you to get heads up to the EOL of a product. You would most probably
> also have access to product lifecycles and product updates, so that
> your company could brace for the next version. But this is not what
> happens. You buy the product as an end-user. You may not use it as
> such, as you are a developer, but regardless of that, you still are
> just that. An end-user.
>
> Apple would not justify itself if it discontinued the Mac Mini.
> Verisign did not send apologies when they stopped issuing md5-based
> certificates. Miltek did not flame at VW when they discontinued the
> Golf 3 in favour of the Golf 4. So why would anyone have the right to
> attack Nokia when they are sticking to their internal product
> lifecycle?
>
> >> If you see only
> >> melodrama in these concerns, then perhaps you have never tried to run a
> >> business in the face of such uncertainty.
>
> Again, if you don't see how little sense you are making -- from a
> business standpoint, I do understand your fears as Joe Blogs -- I
> doubt you should be trying to run a business. You are not a Nokia
> partner, they are not your hardware providers. You are using their
> platform to your own interest. Why would Nokia care?
>
> Praise the day people realise we are talking to a big product company.
> Not a hardware manufacturer, not a big brother whose job is to get
> your business -- or life for that matter -- going. They will do what
> is profitable for them, and if they're not, they're idiots --
> business-wise.
>
> Yes I know, I'm a troll as well. Sorry.
>

ext Keywan Najafi Tonekaboni wrote:
> Hi,
>
> as far as we no, Freemantle won't run on N810/N800 because of the new
> UI. The interesting question for 3rd-party developers could be: Does
> applications written for Diablo run in Freemantle? Which dependencies
> are deprecated and which new they had to comply.
>
>
The existing applications will run in Fremantle, there is
already SDK pre-alpha release that you can use to see many things
from Fremantle. The changes are not so big and there will
be full Fremantle SDK lot before actual product is in
shops. You have time to adapt applications to some changes.

Even the UI looks new, application API's have not changed so much at all.
As example, really big majority of Qt applications will run unmodified
at all.
With GTK applications, my experiences are very similar.

There will be new API's like Clutter and OpenGL-ES2.0 but it is
not mandatory to use them if you don't need them.

With Qt, you can use Graphisview without OpenGL acceleration
and it will just run faster in Fremantle with OpenGL-ES render.

> Maybe they could be some not so important for the marketing, but
> interesting for the developers details about the hardware reported (like
> HD-camera). For e.g. does it have a hardware keyboard or the default
> screen orientation..
>
Next thing would be alpha version of SDK that has most
of new API's atc. With the SDK you can develop
and test applications. After product release,
Forum Nokia will have prototypes available in proto loan service
to selected developers. That means that developers will have lot of time
to write and test application with SDK and possibility to test
it with prototypes before device is in shops.

Camera is just typical example that is impossible to test without
real device and just for this purpose we have the proto loan service.



Kate Alhola
Maemo Chief Engineer
Technical services and consultancy
Forum Nokia
>
> Regards,
>
> Keywan
>
> --
> Keywan Najafi Tonekaboni
> http://www.prometoys.net
>
> people@world:/# apt-get --purge remove capitalism
> After unpacking world will be freed.
> You are about to do something potentially beneficial
> To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as We say!'
>
>

Keywan Najafi Tonekaboni wrote:
> Hi,
>
> as far as we no, Freemantle won't run on N810/N800 because of the new
> UI. The interesting question for 3rd-party developers could be: Does
> applications written for Diablo run in Freemantle? Which dependencies
> are deprecated and which new they had to comply.
>
> Maybe they could be some not so important for the marketing, but
> interesting for the developers details about the hardware reported (like
> HD-camera). For e.g. does it have a hardware keyboard or the default
> screen orientation..
>
Whoa! backup.

Would someone else please confirm that freemantle will NOT run on the
N800 or N810? This is the first that I have noticed this.

Thanks,
Jason

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 3:50 PM, Jason Edgecombe
<jason@rampaginggeek.com> wrote:

> Whoa! backup.
>
> Would someone else please confirm that freemantle will NOT run on the
> N800 or N810? This is the first that I have noticed this.

It is implied that official support won't be there, but it could be
made to work:

http://maemo.org/news/announcements/first_maemo_5_sdk_release_targeting_platform_developers/

QQQ

Maemo 5 comes today as an SDK only since it targets the OMAP3
architecture and no OMAP2 compatibility will be officially provided.
The revamped UI relying on graphics acceleration and the new
functionality built around the new supported hardware made it too
complex to keep the compatibility between both architectures.

This early release comes with an invitation to build variants based on
Maemo 5 compatible with existing hardware like the N800 and N810.
Maemo SW can't promise commercial quality for such configurations but
through maemo.org we are able to collaborate at a community level with
technical support, license changes and code.

QQQ

--
Ville M. Vainio
http://tinyurl.com/vainio