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> From: inaudible@simplesuperlativ.es<br>> not abandon it as a short-lived experiment, <br><br>I thought that even Nokia recognised that Maemo was a stepping stone rather than <br>a final goal, a means of demonstrating feasibility of Linux as a mobile platform whilst<br>not actually being a corporate direction - I still see it as a sandbox for them rather <br>than a product.<br><br>> anyones guess with google breathing down their necks and apple setting the benchmark.<br><br>So this is personal opinion rather than anything heard off the net: I have iPhone, Androids<br>and the N900 here and what is too evident is that Maemo is lightyears away from these<br>two competitors. The unit is great as a geek computer but the interface is slow and kludgy<br>compared to the slick Android and 'iOS' interfaces, partly due to the resistive screen but in<br>part due to the disparate focus of Nokia on Symbian, Maemo, Meego and others - there has<br>just not been enough attention to the usability or presentation of this interface. On top of that <br>when I got the iPhone (for the wife, but I 'play' with it every now and then) the store had <br>280K apps, then Google is up towards what, 100K+. The N900 has somewhere short of 3K <br>apps available and almost zero growth. <br><br>- They have lost it. <br><br>The issue is not the _number_ of apps, the issue is that developers are simply ignoring the <br>platform, all of the Nokia platforms at the moment, including Symbian. People are looking<br>at smartphones for apps. Nokia has none. That does not draw in customers and without the<br>customers then the developers are not going to get onboard - with previous phones (I have<br>been a staunch user of Nokia phones for years) their own technology defined the popularity<br>of the product, Nokia were in control. They are no longer directly responsible for the <br>success of their products, the apps companies are, and Nokia seem to have a problem <br>getting their head around this.<br><br>It is going to be a seriously slow crawl out of a damn big hole they have dug for themselves, <br>will just have to see if it is 6' deep leaving them as an 'also ran', or that they back off and<br>release an Android phone/tablet thereby giving up on the mobile OS race.<br><br>Regards, nick.<br> </body>
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