[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] OS2006 roadmap

[From: Martin Grimme]

Klaasjan Brand schrieb:
> That's what I thought when I heard about the N800. There's nothing 
> stopping you from using the 770 as shipped, but since the 
> community-contributed software is one of the key selling points I'd be 
> very disappointed if software support for the 770 begins to decrease for 
> a device which was - until last week - sold as the "future of mobile 
> internet". One way of preventing that would be to make it easy for 
> developers to target both environments. Also, there are some bugs left 
> in the 770 OS which only Nokia can fix (like rebooting every 5 minutes 
> when using WPA for wireless). I hope Nokia will make an effort to clean 
> up the worst 770 problems before committing exclusively to n800 
> development.


Well, I think it's too early to rant about Nokia's step.
First everybody complained about RAM and CPU on the 770. Now that the
N800 is available, people complain about compatibility with the 770.

I'm pretty sure that there are good reason for the compatibility
problems, such as more recent libraries on ITOS 2007. If ITOS 2007 uses
a Cairo-enabled GTK version (and I guess it does), then there's no point
in running ITOS 2007 on the 770. It would be too slow.

The fact that many programs for ITOS 2006 can be run on ITOS 2007 shows
that there is a certain degree of compatibility. So if a developer wants 
to target both platforms, it can be done by developing for the 770.
As an additional bonus, the applications will be highly optimized and
thus run even better on the new platform.
My current project, the Obscura Photo Manager, targets both platforms
while being optimized to live with the limited resources of the 770.
I just don't have a N800 to test it yet (*winks to Nokia* ;) )

Actually, I think scirocco (ITOS 2006.39) was intended to narrow the
gap between ITOS 2006 and ITOS 2007 and to fix some bugs on the 770.
Have you tried enabling swap on the 770? It makes a huge difference!
Out-of-the-blue-crashes vanished completely. I can even run Navicore and
Canola side by side with swap space.
I'm using WPA with my 770 a lot and it never crashed. So I assume the
problem there is not in software.

Let's hope that the 770 will still see some more bugfix updates for
ITOS 2006. scirocco was a step in the right direction.

My guess is that Nokia will continue selling the 770 as a low-budget
internet tablet for a reduced price, and as part of bundles such as
the Navigation Kit + 770. And I'm pretty sure that nothing beats the
770 as an eBook reader, not even the N800! :D

Anyway, this is a developer's mailing list. Why complain about the 770's
future when the future is in our hands? ;)


Regards,
Martin