Community Matters

Look at that – there’s a new project out there, doing client Linux for devices, mobile and otherwise. With a focus on phones and netbooks and cool things like connected TVs and in vehicle infotainment (i.e., nav systems that can also play DVDs and surf the web – preferably not by the driver, while driving… but I digress).

So MeeGo has just been launched, the website is still under development and has quite a few spots that are waiting for content, but what is clear is where the project comes from and where it is going.

maemo and Moblin have been around for a while. They are both shipping on products; maemo on phones like the Nokia N900, Moblin on a bunch of Netbooks from Dell, Samsung, MSI and others – delivered through OSVs like Novell or Canonical. They both have track record as solid and competent and innovative. And they are actually quite similar in many of the underlying ideas. Which is a good sign, if you think about it.

But why merge them? Aren’t major mergers always a bad thing (cue the music from the Daimler / Chrysler horror movie). Well it’s not the corporations that are merging. It’s the open source projects that are combining forces. And that’s a good thing. There are too many projects doing the same thing over and over again. Having two of them that are well aligned get together and take the best from both sides to create something that’s even better is promising.

What will this mean in detail? Well, there’s a lot more that will have to be published by the Moblin and maemo leadership teams, but it seems that we will see a base OS that is largely built around the Moblin infrastructure, including fast and flicker free boot, non-root X, connman, etc. And the Qt-based application development environment that maemo has been migrating to. Add to that the experience in building operating systems for phones and netbooks and many other new devices and you have an interesting mix.

The first actual release won’t happen until the second quarter, it seems. But I guess we need to give the teams some time to actually get the details figured out. I’m excited.

My usual disclosure: I work for Intel, so some might conclude that I’m biased. But this is my blog, not an Intel blog. So what you read here are my thoughts, not those of my employer.

I know that most people will shake their heads and call me crazy. I mean, seriously – even the Nexus One (which has one of the bigger screens among phones) has only a 3.7″ display. Tiny.

But stay with me for a moment. The reason I never bought an ebook reader is that I don’t want to carry yet another device with me. I have way too many already. So I instead carried paperbacks. Silly, I know. A kindle would have been smaller. But another several hundred dollars? Plus content from only one monopolist (and we know what that does to prices).

A few weeks ago I tried reading a book on my Nexus One and was positively surprised. The AMOLED screen is great for reading – no backlight! And the best thing about reading books on your phone? If you are anything like me, your phone is always with you. So you can read your book wherever you are, wherever a sudden break comes up.

Yes, the screen is tiny and you flip pages a lot. But it’s not as painful as it sounds – give it a try. I’ve now completed three books on my phone and I think I’m hooked – which makes me feel very sorry for our neighborhood bookstore…

The thing that finally won me over is that there’s a surprising amount of choice when it comes to reading books on an Android phone. You can read Mobipocket books (via FBreader – and Calibre if they are DRM infected). You can read books from Diesel ebooks, ereader.com and of course Barnes and Nobles. The latter is somewhat surprising at first since they explicitly don’t support Android – but it turns out that the free ereader Android app reads Barnes and Nobles ebooks as well. The download from your library somehow fails with the Android browser (still need to figure out why). But download to your computer and manually transfer to the eReader directory on your sdcard and the eReader app will find them and display them just fine. Turns out eReader is a subsidiary of Barnes and Noble and they use the same DRM technology and keys.

With all these choices, most books are available. And you often find wildly differing prices. The book I’m currently reading (Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly) I found in every single one of the stores mentioned with prices from USD 9.99 (Barnes and Nobles) to USD 27.99 (Barnes and Nobles subsidiary eReader.com). Go figure.

As I pointed out before, Nikon is a bit lacking in large aperture prime lenses. So I’m very excited that Nikon added an AF-S 24mm f/1.4 ED lens. I wish I could say “I preordered mine” – but at an expected street price of $2200 (around $500 more than the comparable Canon lens) I don’t think this is within reach any time soon.

Still, it is a step in the right direction and hopefully more lenses in this range will follow. A Nikkor AF-S 28mm f/1.4 ED or AF-S 30mm f/1.4 ED lens would be extremely welcome by the market, I think.

Also announced was an AF-S 16-35mm f/4 ED VR lens. I’m a bit more ambivalent about this lens. VR doesn’t seem to be as important on a wide angle lens – yet f/4 versus f/2.8 to me is a pretty significant step back. Of course the AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8D IF-ED with a street price of about $1600 is even more expensive than the new 16-35mm f/4 (which is expected to start selling at $1260).

I have the old Nikkor AF 20-35mm f/2.8D lens which sadly has been out of production for almost a decade, but still is easily found at less than half the price of this new lens. I love that lens and use it quite frequently – it does of course lack a bit of range on the wide angle side and the VR – but it gives you f/2.8 for a lot less money.