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Having spent a few hours playing with the device, I'm still not
convinced why anybody might want a tablet - my Google Nexus S phone is
a bit smaller, much lighter and far more portable; my Acer AOA150
netbook is a similar size (but only 1024x600 resolution), has a usable
keyboard (okay, not everybody wants a keyboard, but I do), and I don't
really see what I'm supposed to do with a keyboardless screen other
than simply consume content. I did get the impression that that is what
Intel want devs to do for them - create content for non-technical users
- but for me, I'm not sure what to do with it.<br>
<br>
The App Store (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.appup.com">www.appup.com</a>) seems to be broken at the moment (404
error!) but when I was looking earlier, it only had Windows apps - no
Meego apps at all. The figures they gave were 1.1m users, 58k
developers, 4k apps. As far as I can see, there are no apps for Meego.
Search for "meego" and you get TweeMe, Facebook and UniversalSync. All
three say that they only support Windows.<br>
<br>
>From tonight's talk, that seems to be the background of this appup
store - Windows, x86, and niche devices. To me, that's not an
interesting platform. Linux on mobile devices is a fascinating thing
for me - I wanted to buy a Nokia N900 but my in-store salesperson told
me that the software was "crap", so they didn't sell it any more.<br>
<br>
It seems that natively this device can only process Ogg video; I used
ffmpeg to convert "Pirates of Silicon Valley" to ogg and it played back
fine. Maybe that's another part of the strategy - get WinAmp, etc, to
write apps for the "missing bits"? Or maybe it's just that it's still
work in progress. It plays MP3 and M4A.<br>
<br>
Oh, and it overheats when recharging, but part of the docs do say that
temperature testing is not valid for this device. As far as I can tell,
(and I am using my landlady's figure-8 power lead to drive it, since it
came with a US power cable), it can't recharge to full battery life
without the charger becoming dangerously hot.<br>
<br>
So - it's cool to have a device which some people would pay hundreds of
pounds for. Still, I fail to see what the market is. It's a massive
thing to carry around, needs extra protective devices to stop it from
being damaged, and because it's so expensive, you are inclined to
protect it. But (and this is a big thing) it is "proper" Linux, unlike
my Android phone. It's a (potentially) massive consumer device running
"proper" Linux, glibc, GNU, etc. If that takes off, we've got a serious
FLOSS platform in the mass market. Development for Android (say) is
pretty easy; if the Meego platform (or at least apps for it) can be
"proper" Free Software (as per the FSF definition) then there is hope
for the future of humanity<br>
<br>
Steve<br>
<br>
On 05/07/11 22:40, Steve Parker wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4E1384D8.9050508@steve-parker.org" type="cite">
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Many thanks for the info, it was an interesting evening and at the end
they were handing out (well, loaning for 3 years...) tablets. The spec
is apparently: Atom N450 1.66GHz, 512Kb L2, single core, 2Gb DDR2
667MHz RAM, 11.6" LED-backlit capacitive touch screen at 1366x768
(that's as good as my 17" laptop!), Intel Graphics Media Accelerator
3150, 64Gb SATA SDD, Atheros Wifi. The docs suggest there's a
microphone and webcam too, but the battery life was about 5 minutes and
it comes with a US power adapter, which I don't have in my rented flat,
so more than that I cannot say.<br>
<br>
Having written one small Android app, I'm not terribly qualified to
talk about the SDK etc, but the whole setup does seem a lot less
polished than the Android stuff that Google have done. But I've only
got my experience with Android and tonight's talk to base that on, so
that opinion bears little weight.<br>
<br>
The market for these devices is obviously getting a lot of attention at
the moment, and for a hardware vendor like Intel it's important to
build up a good software infrastructure around it to sell lots of Atom
chips. They won't care who makes the machines, or who writes the
software, so long as they've got Atom CPUs, so it seems to put them in
a bit of a strange place; they've go t little/no control over Meego,
QT, etc, and are unlikely to get into building tablets (I guess), but
they do have a vested interest in the overall platform being a success.<br>
<br>
We live in Interesting Times...<br>
<br>
Steve<br>
<br>
On 24/06/11 13:22, Thibaut Rouffineau wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4E04818E.5090601@wipconnector.com" type="cite"> Hi
<br>
<br>
More of a social note, we are putting together a Meego meetup on the
5th of July at Skills Matter offices in Clerkenwell in the evening. <br>
<br>
A few presentations from Intel who are generously sponsoring the event
but mainly a big community gathering with a lot of Meego hardware. <br>
<br>
Registration is here: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://ce1.com/intel/2011/londonappuplab/">http://ce1.com/intel/2011/londonappuplab/</a>
<br>
<br>
Hope this is useful! <br>
<br>
T <br>
-- <br>
Gllug mailing list - <a moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Gllug@gllug.org.uk">Gllug@gllug.org.uk</a>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug">http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug</a>
<br>
</blockquote>
-<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Steve Parker<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:steve@steve-parker.org">steve@steve-parker.org</a><br>
Author of the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://steve-parker.org/book/">Shell Scripting
Recipes</a> book, due out August 2011<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://steve-parker.org/">http://steve-parker.org/</a>
/
+44(0) 789 777 2100 / <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:steve@steve-parker.org">steve@steve-parker.org</a><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://steve-parker.org/book/">http://steve-parker.org/book/</a>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Steve Parker<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:steve@steve-parker.org">steve@steve-parker.org</a><br>
Author of the <a href="http://steve-parker.org/book/">Shell Scripting
Recipes</a> book, due out August 2011<br>
<a href="http://steve-parker.org/">http://steve-parker.org/</a> /
+44(0) 789 777 2100 / <a href="mailto:steve@steve-parker.org">steve@steve-parker.org</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://steve-parker.org/book/">http://steve-parker.org/book/</a>
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