Houston, we have a take-off!

We gave a few hundred Nokia N900s out to the Maemo Summit participants. That happened about a month ago. You have now been using the devices and provided us with feedback. Thank you so much! That has been very helpful. You've helped us to focus our effort and work on the remaining issues. That's why I want YOU to be the first to know.

We have also been testing the software extensivly in our own labs. We will continue working on the software and will provide important software upgrades as we go forward. But we also wanted to have very good software release to start with.

Based on our testing and your feedback we decided to postpone the delivery start. We had oroiginally said October, but now we said November. Now I'm happy to tell that we ment only days, not weeks or months.

The shipments of the Nokia N900 have now started. The factories are now working full speed and the devices are on their way to distribution.

Houston, we have a take-off!

My vision of Maemo ... at least a part of it

We say that the Nokia N900 running Maemo 5 is a computer. It is a computer in your pocket. What an earth do we mean? Let me try to explain what I think. This is my interpretation.

A computer of 2009 -- not 1999
When I talk about a computer, I talk about a computer people use today, especially young people. Think about the internet, messaging, sharing, openness, and think about browsers and players. Don't think about spreadsheets, word processors, file managers, or closed systems. That should put you in the right ballpark to start with.

Open and expandable
I want Maemo software to be expandable without limits. I want to encourage people to write apps that install themselves into the application grids and sit on top of the Maemo OS. But I also want to invite people to build services and apps that integrate within the Maemo software --- as an integral part of the end user experience. Not only apps but Maemo OS expansions. Maemo devices are open and true Linux computers so the sky is the limit.

Let me try to explain. An application that goes "on top of Maemo" is like the Nako game from Jakub. It sits on top of Maemo. The N900 will have many of these!

Figure: The Nako game -- an application

A MSN messaging I'm using is implemented with a piece of software called Butterfly developed as connection manager to the Telepathy communication framework. It is developed by the community (hackers, developers, 3rd party companies, ....) but it is tightly integrated into Maemo. Maemo allows such integration. For the end user MSN messaging becomes an integral part of Maemo as if it was originally developed by Nokia.

Figure: My accounts -- including MSN -- integrated within Maemo 5

Figure: Butterfly MSN discussion with my daughter

Figure: Similar discussion over SMS -- both look exactly the same. SMS is developed and integrated by Nokia and MSN/Butterfly by others

So Maemo is an open platform for all kinds of integration possibilities.

Addictive, active, and connected
My vision is to make Maemo really addictive. I want users to be constantly checking it out -- what's happening, who's online, who said what etc. Instead of a boring static menu grid, I want Maemo to open directly to the world around us. Maemo is active -- not passive. I want plug-ins, message bars, picture galleries, and status indicators constantly changing on the home screen. I want to see the latest from the world around me. I want to be connected all the time with a glance at the screen!

Figure: What's up RIGHT NOW?

Figure: What's up RIGHT NOW?

Doing many things at the same time
We all multitask. I want Maemo to make multitasking simple and understandable. I want to be able to shift from one activity to another with one touch of a finger. I do not want to limit people to only one job at a time.

Figure: A whole lotta things goin' on ...

Cult
Maemo is rough on the edges. It is a bit dangerous. It is open to experiments. It is about community involvement. I want these to stay. I do not like boring cars, either.

Figure: Torrents ... like in any computer

Summary
These were some of my thoughts when I'm thinking about Maemo 5, pushing Maemo forward, and making computers. We are not making a new iPhone or Symbian here. They both exist already and are pretty good. So no need to replicate them.

With Maemo, I see computers that are always connected, fit into your pocket, are open, and addictive.

About boring cars

Getting close now!!

It was cool to see the Maemo Summit participants playing with N900s. For those of you who still need to wait for a while (yes, my fault ...) check out the new videos from our UI team.


We are working like maniacs to get the N900 finalized. I'm so proud of the Nokia teams in India, US, and Finland working hard on Maemo 5 .... and already equally hard on Maemo 6. And I'm also very happy to see the Maemo community efforts getting cool stuff on and inside the Maemo platform.

People speculate now if N900 is a smartphone, or a computer, or a some kind of a killer of another phone --- you know. I understand that people want to compare N900 to other devices, but it's like comparing apples and oranges. Literally. N900 does many things better than any other device I know, some features could be improved, and some tricks it cannot do at all. So you better check it out and form your own opinion.

Those of you who know me know that I'm a bit of a petrol head. So for me my N900 is a bit like my Alfa Romeo. It can be almost anything -- but boring it ain't!



...and, life is simply too short to drive boring cars. But that's another story .....

Sttgrt

We had a good few days @ Nokia world in Stuttgart. Nokians, journalist, analysts, partners, operators, Maemo.org dudes, etc. I received overwhelmingly positive feedback from people once they saw a N900 in action. But then again, I do not know what they talked behind my back.

Or actually I do. Very positive comments also in various blogs and articles. People understand what we are doing and they like the product.

It is all about
1) Internet (browsing, chatting, sharing, talking ....) first
2) Open source & collaborative development for consumers
3) True computer experience in a small package

Alan has a nice story @ maemo.org.

How do we build Maemo devices?

Nice buzz ;-)

We have a tough last mile to finalize the N900 for the sales start. The Maemo team is working very hard and I'm so proud of it! Thus, I want to say a few words about how we build the Maemo devices. We do it as a part of the community in upstream projects, maemo.org projects, and internal hardware and software development, finalizing, and releasing.



Upstream projects
The most significant part of this joint development happens in upstream communities, such as kernel.org, Mozilla, and Gnome. Hundreds of individuals are participating the development and this is what creates the foundation of the Maemo platform.

Maemo is based on the world's most significant open source components. It is build with the community. I've said some time ago that our vision is to bring open source to consumers. That is what is happening right now.

Maemo.org
While working within these upstream projects, we have maemo.org as the Maemo community. It provides a means for developers to discuss, contribute, follow up, praise&complain, and be part of the Maemo evolution. The Maemo community has over 16.000 registered members that contribute to more than 700 development projects. Is it the largest community of mobile open source developers? We as Nokia sponsor it but it is governed by the community council.

Nokia Maemo team
The Nokia team runs device development programs, such as the N900 program, and software programs, such as the Fremantle software program as a part of the Maemo Devices. Software programs and the roadmap are communicated and discussed openly within the maemo.org. Device programs are Nokia secrets before days like this Thursday.

The Nokia programs utilize the work from upstream projects, maemo.org work and Nokia internal R&D. They finalize the software and hardware, and create an open source based user experience that -- I hope -- people will love the way I do.

Don't think that this is a simple engine to run! In addition of getting the most significant parts of the code from community projects, the Nokia Maemo team has a huge job to develop, finalize, optimize, fine tune, test, and integrae the devices into ready packages. The work varies from bootloaders to UI widgets, from power management to graphical elements.

In addition to the open source projects, the Maemo team works intimately with external companies providing components and technology to Maemo devices. Texas Instruments, Adobe, Ebay/Skype to name a few.

Summary

Great user experience through open source. Excitement in the air. The community development in the core.

This really made my day: A reason to get up in the morning by Philip.

N900 announced

Ifeel good. It is now publicly announced. See www.maemo.nokia.com.
More to follow.

See you at Nokia World, Maemo Summit and OSIM.

Collaboration, upstream, Intel, and others

We are living interesting times. The current economical situation has made things change faster. The whole mobile world is changing. New players are entering and old players are changing or disappearing.

There is now less time and energy for games, politics and religion in the tech world. For all of us who are in this for the long run -- we all need to get products and services out to consumers ASAP. For us, the key is collaboration.

As a part of our strategy in Maemo, we collaborate with many partners. We work closely with the Mozilla foundation and the Linux foundation. We work in several open source projects such as Gnome, Qt, X and so forth. In addition we work with several industry partners, such as Texas Instruments, who provide us with the underlying technology for the existing Maemo products.

And today we announced that we collaborate with Intel inside several new and established open source projects. This is the kind of upstream collaboration we've been talking about. We say: "Intel and Nokia are coordinating their Open Source technology selection and development investments for Maemo and Moblin. This means alignment behind a range of key Open Source technologies for Mobile Computing such as: oFono, ConnMan, Mozilla, X.Org, BlueZ, D-BUS, Tracker, GStreamer, PulseAudio. "

We both feel that it makes a lot of sense to collaborate and direct key investments to the same direction. It allows us both to contribute mature technology to same open source projects – and not fragment the industry.

All this is needed to create new interesting products and services.