One of the cooler little gadgets I have is a Nokia N800. Unlike it’s quickly surpassed and killed off elder brother, the Nokia 770, the N800′s basic hardware platform has persisted for a while as the official platform. The successor to the N800, the N810, is cosmetically different and has a few extra things – such as a GPS, a slide-out keyboard and 2GB of fixed internal memory – but is essentially the same platform. However, given Nokia’s propensity to kill off marginally older platforms by simply not supporting them with updates, I was sure that the edition of Maemo that Nokia had released late last year would be the last major update to N800 and the N810 before a switch in hardware design to either a faster ARM chip, or as I believe strongly, an architectural change to an Intel Atom chip.
Thus, it was with some relief I found that the newest version of Maemo, version 4.1, codenamed “Diablo”, was out and running speedily on my N800. While the complete change log is extensive and provides some amount of insight into the ambition that Nokia has to make Maemo a complete Linux distribution, for the end user there are a couple of noticeable changes that matter:
- Most noticeably, the mail client – an utterly non-functional piece of crap written in-house – has been replaced by a community developed client called Modest. When I last looked at Modest, before it was adopted as thoroughly by Nokia, I found Modest anything but modest in its ambitions, but it suffered from Q&A issues. Most notably, there was a memory leak that quickly killed the limited RAM on the N800 and caused the entire OS to respond sluggishly. While I haven’t had a chance to stress-test it yet by trying to get it to download my entire Gmail inbox, it is at least able to connect flawlessly to Gmail, unlike the original Maemo email client, which would connect approximately never.
- While this did not affect this update, Nokia has now added the ability to update parts of the operating system incrementally, like a full Linux distribution. Much like Ubuntu‘s nearly daily notifications of available software updates, Maemo can now strip out and replace almost anything – including its own kernel – without needing to be connected to a computer. This is important for two reasons: (1) Maemo has finally become an OS that is capable of standing by itself, without needing to be tethered for any reason; and, (2) it means that the community can continue to support older devices if Nokia should decide to end support for it simply by specifying new system update repositories. So I look forward to not having to tether my N800 again for a long time.
- Chinese support has improved tremendously, to the point that it can be used in the browser.
- Speaking of the browser, I find that despite no change in the underlying browser engine – it’s still the same version as was used in alpha 1 release of Firefox 3 – the entire browser feels more responsive. I’m sure this is because of tweaks to the windowing architecture, not the browser code per se, but it’s still important to note that much of the sluggishness that made the browser unusable is gone.
- One small thing that seems to have gone unmentioned in the general rejoicing following the release of Diablo is vastly improved UPnP and remote storage detection. Earlier, my N800 would rarely – if ever – see and connect to the half-dozen UPnP devices on my network. Mounting a network drive was a risky proposition fraught with the danger of data loss. So it was a much welcomed pleasant surprise that upon opening the Maemo File Manager, every single device advertising itself as a UPnP server showed up perfectly, as well as every single NFS and SMB server. I don’t know who was responsible for that particular portion of the code, but who ever you are – thank you. I simply do not see the need to connect my device to anything other than power and a Bluetooth keyboard any more.
That said, Maemo still suffers from a couple of problems. A major problem is the (apparent) lack of focus. Unlike Nokia’s other major FOSS announcement of the day – the purchase and open sourcing of Symbian – Maemo seems an odd (and especially in light of the open sourcing of Symbian, redundant) fit at Nokia. GTK-based at the owner of QT, and targeting the same class of device that Ubuntu mobile and a number of other fledgling Linux distributions, it risks being left on the side, simply because no one knows what to do with it. Nokia does not need to announce upcoming devices, nor give up a competitive edge by laying out a detailed roadmap for the future of Maemo, but it would be nice to know what the entire exercise is in aid of. Is Nokia committed to Maemo sufficiently that within a decade it will replace Symbian on high-end phones with it? Or is Nokia branching back into computers with Maemo as its default operating system? Or is this a ten year experiment by Nokia into determining how to work with the FOSS community? Answers to these questions are not easy, but starting at least a dialogue with the community about what the long-term sustainability or viability of the platform is for the next decade will encourage developers to come to the platform. Moreover, it gives evangelists like myself and others the ability to say with confidence to our employers and others – look, Nokia is going to be supporting Maemo for the next decade and we should capitalize on this opportunity to take our applications to that platform. If we are witnessing the birth of yet another new platform – especially one with a long-term commitment – then surely it is time to come out and say it.
Second, Maemo’s usability leaves a lot to be desired. One of the major issues I had, when I gave someone reasonably technologically literate but unfamiliar with Maemo my N800, was they explored the Home screen and pressed the buttons, but weren’t able to figure out how to get to any of the applications. This lack of discoverability could be easily rectified – on the first boot, if no backup is restored, put some very simple animation on the applications icon. Doesn’t have to be fancy, doesn’t have to last more than a few seconds or repeat more than once; just a simple shine effect or light glow is sufficient to prompt people to say “Oooh, what does this do?” and press it. Similarly, it takes a while to discover the menus in an application, especially if you’re hurrying about looking for a save button. A simple sparkle about the down arrow will be enough to provoke exploration. In short, the entire Maemo UI team needs to read this book and give devices to those who are not just unfamiliar with Maemo, but those who are technologically illiterate. God knows, they’ve got enough in-house talent.
Along these lines, some amount of work needs to be done to develop (and/or update) UI guidelines. I know it sucks to write documentation rather than code, but you need the documentation to get more code. There are by my count six different ways (including third party apps) to play music on the N800 and seven widget sets supporting these six UIs. None of them, including the built in music player, look anything like the rest of the Maemo applications. For that matter, what does a Maemo application look like? Nokia needs to sit its developers down and show them what Mac OS X 10.5 and its bundled apps look like, develop a set of UI guidelines to follow, and then, most importantly, follow them. Also help the ecosystem: highlight applications that follow the UI guidelines as models to follow, and reach out to help third-party (particularly volunteer) developers bring their applications more in line with UI standards. One of the reasons I love my Ubuntu installation is because it looks so incredibly similar. Unlike almost every other Charlie Foxtrot mish-mash of applications pulled from different widget sets with different design philosophies, Ubuntu (and each of the official derivatives) all look like someone carefully picked applications that look similar and belong together. It’s not perfect, of course, and if they had a monopoly on built-in applications, like Apple does with Mac OS, it would look better. But it’s still not as bad as Microsoft’s contribution to UI standardization, nor Maemo’s explosive dissimilarity.
Finally, Nokia needs to determine what to do about installing applications, and do a better job about following the process. The second point first, illustrated: as per my usual procedure, when I updated to Diablo, I started with a clean slate and started to install applications from scratch. Despite being given notices that very clearly say “Nokia Corporation End-User Licence Agreement” and agreeing with them, installing the camera app brought up a warning that I was installing an unsupported and non-Nokia product. Ditto the FM Radio and others. I can understand that Nokia may be hesitant to claim responsibility even for its partner’s products – think mnotify (by Google), the Garnet VM (by Access) – but there is no reason that they should attempt to disclaim responsibility for their own products. Someone in the Maemo team needs to sit down with the lawyers and the suits and make a decision on this. The preferred way is the Apple way – if you put it into an “official” Nokia repository, then Nokia has checked it and certified it. Alternatively, do not offer any software at all besides what is required to run the device. A middle ground should simple be that there should be no arbitrariness about ownership and responsibility – if it has a Nokia EULA on it, Nokia should say it supports it; if it doesn’t, you’re on your own.
Speaking of repositories, this is a pet peeve of mine: I don’t go in search of repositories; I go in search of applications. Nokia needs to follow the lead of Ubuntu (and for that matter, just about every other serious Linux distribution) in putting together a central repository where users can go to. It can be as tightly integrated with Maemo as Synaptic is with Ubuntu, or as separate as Mozilla’s add-ons for Firefox or Thunderbird. But there is no reason I should have to go trawl through the bowels of InternetTabletTalk to find my statusbar clock or Abiword. By all means, leave open the option of adding repositories, but create a central source, and encourage developers to submit their applications there after some minimal quality assurance and testing. For all of Nokia’s vaunted resources, the thoroughly unofficial, unsupported and Apple-condemned jail-broken iPhone community does a better job at making applications discoverable. It should shame Nokia that it’s easier for me to find an SSH server and client on the iPhone than on the N800. And once there is a central repository, and once there are applications in there, ensure that it can be searched, no matter what the official characterization – and ensure descriptions are useful. If I need Gnumeric, I should have to look under “Office” or “Productivity” or “Utilities”: a universal search should start when I start typing “gnumeric” into a search box. If I’m looking for a calendar, “GPE packaged with MUD” is less clear than MUD.
This has turned into a much longer post than I had hoped. I had hoped mainly to highlight that Nokia had released a new edition of Maemo, something which got buried in the news about Symbian*. Instead this has turned into a bit of a rant. That was not my intention. With the release of the Diablo edition, Maemo has become the mobile OS I’ve dreamed about – one that doesn’t need to be tethered for any reason at all, including updates. Which is why the niggling problems and the lack of long-term strategy announcement bothers me so – is this just a passing fad at Nokia or can I come to rely on this as my primary OS for a mobile device? I am doubtful anyone at Nokia will read this, but if you do – you don’t have to answer my questions or even comment. Just indicate somehow that you’ve understood the gist of this article and that you will continue to make improvements to make Maemo the best mobile platform, bar none. The iPhone maybe the platform du jour, but Maemo has been out longer, matured longer and is in a position to really take Linux mainstream the way few other distributions – Ubuntu included – are ready to do and capable of doing. But it needs help doing so and Nokia as the official patron needs to step up and provide that help to make it happen.
*: Another suggestion, Maemo team – please check with your PR office that no other major FOSS-related news is due to be announced the same day as your new version’s release. It ensures maximal coverage of your contribution to FOSS.
