phobos13013 writes "Trolltech announced this week that they will discontinue development on their Greenphone platform. The Greenphone was advertised to be the first phone with a user-modifiable environment. Trolltech CTO Benoit Schilling stated that they are not really a hardware company and so will focus their efforts on FIC's Neo 1973, now available. However, Schilling hinted at a future Wi-Fi-enabled endeavor (possibly a VOIP phone)."
It's a bummer in several ways. First, we geeks don't get hard-ons for crappy hardware (as the poster below suggests). Sleek advanced hardware, totally open for us to explore while trying to change the world, however, gets my blood going. When the hackers cracked the iPhone and put some of the best software management tools I've seen in place, without even a damned header file... that was cool.
I own an NEO1973. I'm glad to support the project, and desperately hope that it will succeed. Here's something I read today from the OpenMoko mail list: "The Neo is, was, and will be, a product for geeks and therefore never was intended to be a mass market product. Geeks do not look at fancy glamour but for useful attributes." I have no idea who this guys is talking about. I'm about the biggest geek I've ever met (yeah, I know some of you are bigger:-) but what the hell?
The NEO1973 battery is tiny, screen too small, touch capabilities poor, integration level low, plastic instead of anodized aluminum, and worst of all... there's not the same kind of inspired software leadership. The community wants to build the world's best phone, but a guy like Linus is required to lead the effort. I think the OpenMoko guys have incredible vision, but not the complete vision, and the leader needed make it succeed is currently missing. Get the right guy involved, and they could change the world... crappy hardware and all.
OpenMoko and the 1973 will fail just as the Greenphone did. There is no leadership behind the project, no vision, just a bunch of well-intentioned geeks who want to make something cool. With no cohesive plan, though, the Neo1973 will never succeed.
iPhone is still "it" for those of us who want a powerful *NIX-based cellphone -- even if we have to fight Steve Jobs tooth and nail for it.
OpenMoko and the 1973 will fail just as the Greenphone did.
The Greenphone didn't fail, because it was never meant to be anything but a development platform to fill the void while there was nothing else good out there. Now that there are other open phones, its job is done. Aside from the sensationalized headline, this really isn't news at all.
iPhone is still "it" for those of us who want a powerful *NIX-based cellphone
I think you don't need to say *NIX anymore. OS X Leopard 10.5 is certified UNIX, and as the iPhone is based on OSX, isn't the iPhone the first UNIX phone?
even if we have to fight Steve Jobs tooth and nail for it.
I thought Apple is going to open up the platform for developers.
"I thought Apple is going to open up the platform for developers."
That's one thing. And I commend Apple for opening it up for 3rd party applications.
The remaining problem (worth fighting Steve Jobs himself) is that people want to use it on networks other than AT&T. I live in Brazil and, if I were to use an iPhone, I would first have to crack it. I don't like the idea. It's a GSM phone after all - people should be able to use it with whatever SIM card they want.
OpenMoko and the 1973 will fail just as the Greenphone did. There is no leadership behind the project, no vision, just a bunch of well-intentioned geeks who want to make something cool. With no cohesive plan, though, the Neo1973 will never succeed.
If OpenMoko doesn't succeed, it will be largely because of posts like the above. Enough negative sentiment will doom any project, however cool.
OpenMoko isn't a product, it's a platform. Sure, the Neo1973 [openmoko.com] isn't the all-time ultimate mobile phone - it's a development platform. That's why in addition to the pre-built phone you get a development board you can house in your own enclosure with your own battery, screen, and other hardware bits. If you don't like Neo1973, build your own phone round the platform.
When I first started using Linux in 1993, doomsayers were saying it was obsolete [oreilly.com] and would never fly. Guess what? They were wrong.
I'm not saying OpenMoko is the world's ultimate phone project. Of course it isn't. But it's a good, big start, and it deserves support. If you don't support it, don't complain if, in ten years time, all you can get are closed, proprietary phones [apple.com]you can't even load your own software on.
You know, I'm getting old. I belong to a generation which, when someone gave us cool hardware, we grabbed and built cool software on top of it. Now, if it isn't all pretty and polished right out of the box, it gets condemned as rubbish. Guess what? Linus Torvalds was just a college kid when he wrote the first kernel. His professors didn't even rate him as very good. Certainly no-one thought he had leadership potential. And as for a cohesive plan, his cohesive plan was to build a scheduler which could schedule two tasks.
Stuff happens. It will surprise you. OpenMoko may, indeed, not be a great success. But if it's a bit of a success, other people will be able to come along and build on it - it isopen source [opensource.org]. In fact, that's already happening - that's what this story is about. The GreenPhone is not 'dead', it has mutated. Instead of building their own hardware platform, the Trolls [troll.no] are developing the 'green suite' on the OpenMoko platform. [zdnet.co.uk] So you can still have your greenphone - the only thing is, it will be black and silver, or white and orange [openmoko.com].
The OpenMoko software is more important than the hardware. The Neo1973 is open hardware designed to a specification, but won't ever be a successful commercial product because no phone company is going to subsidise it. There is a bullet to be bitten, that there are few smartphone platforms that are open enough to match the aspirations of OpenMoko, but I can see it being ported to other smartphone chipsets such as those used by HTC or indeed non-dedicated chipsets like the OpenSparc S1 [sunsource.net]. It wouldn't surprise m
You've made some good points... I certainly intend to support the project, and I've got the hardware and a strong desire to code for it. The NEO1973, and probably even it's successor (code named the GTA-2), probably will never sell in volume, because we geeks willing to pay more for a device that is relatively poor hardware for the money are few and far between. But, as a poster above points out, OpenMoko is the important part here, not the NEO1973. We can forget about poor hardware if the software platfor
I also have a neo1973, and am thoroughly enjoying the geek factor - just this week I got it an Apple wireless keyboard for it, set up and running, and I have to tell you all that there is nothing quite so fun as sitting somewhere, hacking code on my phone, using the phone itself. Python+neo1973+apple bt keyboard == the coolest godamn bit of hardware in the room, and I've got tons of stuff in here.. from BeBox to SGI to Access Music to.. well, lots of stuff. And yes, there is hardware in front of me that h
The NEO 1973 is a first cut. Nokia, however, seems to be reaching in the same direction. IF they have open drivers for the WiMax hardware and Sprint does the right things in securing their G4 network they're building right now, we'll have EVERYTHING you're talking to in the smartphone through the G4 capable version of the N810. As for the comment about us "not looking at fancy glamour but for useful attributes," heh I think he's missed the cluetrain there. I want BOTH, thank you very much. Nokia seems to have
Really, look at the demographics. Who buys all those pink iPods? Teen girls. The kind of people that spend all day talking and texting on their phone. Who gets a hard on over linux? Introverted geeks. The kind of people that want pizza delivery robots so they can avoid all human contact.
Only if they are samuri Pizza delivery Robots for Costa Nostra Pizza, who also bring terra bytes of code fresh from the hive mind, and... *explodes in a shower of geekstacy*
Really, look at the demographics. Who buys all those pink iPods? Teen girls. The kind of people that spend all day talking and texting on their phone. Who gets a hard on over linux? Introverted geeks. The kind of people that want pizza delivery robots so they can avoid all human contact.
Sooo, what you're saying is that by using pink delivery robots we could expand the home pizza market ?
They'll be back, I think, with something else. There's plenty of reasons for a corporate entity to want to provide customized phones to its employees, or to give them out as a promotion, or stuff like that.
Dont worry, the SOLD OUT likely means the community that bought them all up will make sure the longevity of this phone persists similar to the persistence of the Zaurus users who still have pkg sites available for both Qtopia and X environments. Though, I guess it does depend on how many phones it takes to officially sell out (200 or 20,000!)
Regardless, yea, it may not be for the masses, there IS more than a significant market for this, and yes, i think the Neo is the next step for this. It just takes at
It's sold out because it was very probably only made in a very small edition. It's intention from beginning to end was to be a development platform, not an actual product. With the Neo1973/OpenMoko, people opening up iPhones and similar stuff, Trolltech seems to regard the chain reaction they intended to start as either started or unstartable (my money's on the former). No reason to go on, let the actual hardware guys handle it.
It is a common misconception that these phones can't be economically feasible because only a small number of 'geeks' will use them. Yes, I would like a 'geek-friendly' phone, but more importantly, I want a 'developer-friendly' phone. One with a nice API to access bluetooth and wifi capabilities.
When that happens, the general non-geek population benefits due to the availability of quality software that will run on the phone.
So, step 1: make the phone easy to use
Step 2: make the phone customizable
Step 3: make the phone developer-friendly
Step 4: let me use the same API for different phones; I'm sick of recoding half of my program to make it compatible with a different phone!
Why does no one understand that the Greenphone was purely a developer platform?
It was never meant for consumers, and the fact that it works as a phone is purely secondary to its main function of providing a test bed for developing mobile phone applications for Trolltech's platform. Comparing it to consumer, mass market phones doesn't make any sense.
It was never meant for developers, either. For ${deity}'s sake, it only supported GPRS. Name one developer who's going to spend lots of his own, personal cash on a phone that maxes out at ~38kbit/sec for data. I don't care HOW customizable it is... a phone that only supports GPRS is a paperweight. Of course, they'll blame its failure on Linux, or the niche market, or its price, and totally overlook its REAL failure -- its lack of support for at least EDGE.
Name one developer who's going to spend lots of his own, personal cash on a phone that maxes out at ~38kbit/sec for data. I don't care HOW customizable it is... a phone that only supports GPRS is a paperweight
I think you still don't understand. Developer platform doesn't mean "phone marketed towards the developer/geek market" it means "device that developers use to test their software on". It's really only that, and the lack of EDGE is not really an issue (unless the network speed is crucial to your testing).
Of course, they'll blame its failure on Linux
Trolltech is hugely supportive of Linux (sponsoring developers to work on X, KDE, and freedesktop.org projects like harfbuzz), and the Greenphone wasn't a failure so finding a scapegoat isn't necessary.
Trolltech is exploitive of Linux. They're providing QT to the KDE community so as to promote the sales of their development platform. While many people don't see this as a problem, I personally do.
The "KDE Myths" page, should be more upfront and less marketing speak, the truth is that many people simply don't care about restrictions to closed software development. The original Qt licenses were absurd, today's is at least as legal as the GPL. Unlike Redhat, Sun, Netscape, or other FOSS-positive compani
it only supported GPRS. Name one developer who's going to spend lots of his own, personal cash on a phone that maxes out at ~38kbit/sec for data.
Errm, I might.
I mean, of course I want UMTS, but at the moment there are no open platforms that support it - the Neo1973 is GPRS and GSM only and I'm seriously considering getting one. To be blunt, I'm sick of crappy closed devices that aren't developer friendly (and in the case of my Symbian UIQ phone and VxWorks phone, totally unstable even when you're using the
well, if i remember correctly, they charged for the sdk. which probably killed a lot of enthusiasm from the oss crows. now, what i really hope for - that openmoko and the associated devices will be both very geek friendly and very user friendly, thus making it an ideal device to get for me and to recommend for everybody else.
Why does no one understand that the Greenphone was purely a developer platform?
I do understand that, I just don't think it really matters. If the developer version cost $700, how much was the consumer version of whatever this thing would become going to cost? Does the developer version have a whole lot more hardware that the consumer version doesn't? Or did they just price the developer version really high to try to re-coup costs? I didn't see any target prices for the consumer level version, so I'm only
Actually it does exist. However it is currently only in prototype form -- a few have been made going to key developers who are putting it through its paces to see if any final hardware bugs are found, before the production run starts. If no showstoppers are found in the current prototype run, then production should ramp up and they should be available by December. Of course that could slip again if major problems are found (which is a good thing -- I don't want broken hardware, I'd rather wait an extra mon
If by 'play with it' you mean play with the interface, then you can install OpenMoko on all sorts of phones and PDAs to try it out. Just yesterday I installed it on my Palm T|X. If you don't have a compatible touch-screen PDA, you can always virtualize it on your desktop using something like QEMU:
Is this thing available? The website says that I (the consumer) should come back in October. I guess I will check again in 5 days but it is not looking good. My contract is up soon so I might not mind trying Neo but they sure don't look ready for business.
is this thing available? The website says that I (the consumer) should come back in October. I guess I will check again in 5 days but it is not looking good. My contract is up soon so I might not mind trying Neo but they sure don't look ready for business.
Current estimates [openmoko.org] suggests the Neo1973 GTA02v4 (the production version) will be shipping at the end of December. But I think all bets are off as to whether the software will be of "production quality" by then (whatever "production quality" means these days
Assuming we all had Neos with mobile broadband access and TrixBoxes(Asterisk) running at home what would the future look like? Open Source VOIP? Would we have something like email addresses instead of phone numbers?
FYI, my biggest IT coup was installing asterisk at work and having it email everybody voice messages as email attachments. Best bang for your buck if you're about to ask for a raise.
What would the future look like. I mean come on, can't you guess ? #asterix. luser001: it's not working can someone fix it ? #asterix. luser002: it's not working can someone fix it ? #asterix. luser003: it's not working can someone fix it ? #asterix. luser004: it's not working can someone fix it ? #asterix. luser005: it's not working can someone fix it ? #asterix. luser006: it's not working can someone fix it ? #asterix. luser007: it's not working can someone fix it ? #asterix. luser008: it's not working can someon
The Neo runs X11 on a 640x480 screen and allows multiple toolkits to run on the same screen. If TrollTech wants to run in that environment, that's good.
On the other hand, if they are going to port Qt/Embedded and try to take over the phone, like they have done on other phones, they should forget it; those attempts at monopolizing the platform are unwelcome.
Overall, I'm kind of doubtful that TrollTech has much to contribute anyway. Devices based on Qt/Embedded have had lackluster commercial success, and the platform has serious usability problems in my opinion. Maybe the company should stick to writing toolkits and leave the end user experience to people who have more experience with that.
Why don't you do just that with an iPhone, Neo1973/OpenMoko or any Symbian-based phone (that's just about each and every Nokia out there and lots more)?
No, it's not only you. Unfortunately, there's plenty of controlling jackholes that don't trust their wives. Please do your wife/children a favor and tell them that you're a dirtbag that doesn't deserve her and she should leave.
Ugh, thinking of spying on the one person in the world that you're supposed to trust more than anybody else. How the hell do you sleep at night? Oh, that's right, you probably don't. You're probably rummaging through your wife's stuff looking for.. something.
This article is not a Troll (Score:3)
Re:This article is not a Troll (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(toolkit) [wikipedia.org]
Which is what KDE uses.
Parent
Bummer (Score:2)
Maybe OpenMoko can fill the void left behind...
Re:Bummer (Score:5, Interesting)
I own an NEO1973. I'm glad to support the project, and desperately hope that it will succeed. Here's something I read today from the OpenMoko mail list: "The Neo is, was, and will be, a product for geeks and therefore never was intended to be a mass market product. Geeks do not look at fancy glamour but for useful attributes." I have no idea who this guys is talking about. I'm about the biggest geek I've ever met (yeah, I know some of you are bigger
The NEO1973 battery is tiny, screen too small, touch capabilities poor, integration level low, plastic instead of anodized aluminum, and worst of all... there's not the same kind of inspired software leadership. The community wants to build the world's best phone, but a guy like Linus is required to lead the effort. I think the OpenMoko guys have incredible vision, but not the complete vision, and the leader needed make it succeed is currently missing. Get the right guy involved, and they could change the world... crappy hardware and all.
Parent
Unfortunately, you're right (Score:2)
iPhone is still "it" for those of us who want a powerful *NIX-based cellphone -- even if we have to fight Steve Jobs tooth and nail for it.
Re:Unfortunately, you're right (Score:5, Insightful)
The Greenphone didn't fail, because it was never meant to be anything but a development platform to fill the void while there was nothing else good out there. Now that there are other open phones, its job is done. Aside from the sensationalized headline, this really isn't news at all.
Parent
iPhone the first UNIX phone? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you don't need to say *NIX anymore. OS X Leopard 10.5 is certified UNIX, and as the iPhone is based on OSX, isn't the iPhone the first UNIX phone?
I thought Apple is going to open up the platform for developers.
Parent
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That's one thing. And I commend Apple for opening it up for 3rd party applications.
The remaining problem (worth fighting Steve Jobs himself) is that people want to use it on networks other than AT&T. I live in Brazil and, if I were to use an iPhone, I would first have to crack it. I don't like the idea. It's a GSM phone after all - people should be able to use it with whatever SIM card they want.
Re:Unfortunately, you're right (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying OpenMoko is the world's ultimate phone project. Of course it isn't. But it's a good, big start, and it deserves support. If you don't support it, don't complain if, in ten years time, all you can get are closed, proprietary phones [apple.com]you can't even load your own software on.
You know, I'm getting old. I belong to a generation which, when someone gave us cool hardware, we grabbed and built cool software on top of it. Now, if it isn't all pretty and polished right out of the box, it gets condemned as rubbish. Guess what? Linus Torvalds was just a college kid when he wrote the first kernel. His professors didn't even rate him as very good. Certainly no-one thought he had leadership potential. And as for a cohesive plan, his cohesive plan was to build a scheduler which could schedule two tasks.
Stuff happens. It will surprise you. OpenMoko may, indeed, not be a great success. But if it's a bit of a success, other people will be able to come along and build on it - it is open source [opensource.org]. In fact, that's already happening - that's what this story is about. The GreenPhone is not 'dead', it has mutated. Instead of building their own hardware platform, the Trolls [troll.no] are developing the 'green suite' on the OpenMoko platform. [zdnet.co.uk] So you can still have your greenphone - the only thing is, it will be black and silver, or white and orange [openmoko.com].
Parent
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But, as a poster above points out, OpenMoko is the important part here, not the NEO1973. We can forget about poor hardware if the software platfor
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And yes, there is hardware in front of me that h
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they have open drivers for the WiMax hardware and Sprint does the right things in securing
their G4 network they're building right now, we'll have EVERYTHING you're talking to in the
smartphone through the G4 capable version of the N810.
As for the comment about us "not looking at fancy glamour but for useful attributes," heh
I think he's missed the cluetrain there. I want BOTH, thank you very much. Nokia seems
to have
Shouldn't be a surprise (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Shouldn't be a surprise (Score:5, Funny)
idk my bff jill?
Parent
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wtf omg me 2!!!!
Re:Shouldn't be a surprise (Score:4, Funny)
Peace out.
Ooh, I didnt like that popping sound. r u ok?
Parent
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Odd (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet they're quitting development?
DOES NOT COMPUTE!
They'll be back, I think, with something else. There's plenty of reasons for a corporate entity to want to provide customized phones to its employees, or to give them out as a promotion, or stuff like that.
It's too cool a gadget idea to throw away.
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Regardless, yea, it may not be for the masses, there IS more than a significant market for this, and yes, i think the Neo is the next step for this. It just takes at
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Geek-friendly (Score:4, Insightful)
When that happens, the general non-geek population benefits due to the availability of quality software that will run on the phone.
So, step 1: make the phone easy to use
Step 2: make the phone customizable
Step 3: make the phone developer-friendly
Step 4: let me use the same API for different phones; I'm sick of recoding half of my program to make it compatible with a different phone!
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Step 5: Profit!
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$700 for a phone? Screw that. (Score:2, Insightful)
The $300 neo 1973 replacement is still a bit steep for me, but at least it's in the ballpark.
Re:$700 for a phone? Screw that. (Score:5, Interesting)
It was never meant for consumers, and the fact that it works as a phone is purely secondary to its main function of providing a test bed for developing mobile phone applications for Trolltech's platform. Comparing it to consumer, mass market phones doesn't make any sense.
Parent
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Re:$700 for a phone? Screw that. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you still don't understand. Developer platform doesn't mean "phone marketed towards the developer/geek market" it means "device that developers use to test their software on". It's really only that, and the lack of EDGE is not really an issue (unless the network speed is crucial to your testing).
Of course, they'll blame its failure on Linux
Trolltech is hugely supportive of Linux (sponsoring developers to work on X, KDE, and freedesktop.org projects like harfbuzz), and the Greenphone wasn't a failure so finding a scapegoat isn't necessary.
Parent
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Trolltech is exploitive of Linux. They're providing QT to the KDE community so as to promote the sales of their development platform. While many people don't see this as a problem, I personally do.
The "KDE Myths" page, should be more upfront and less marketing speak, the truth is that many people simply don't care about restrictions to closed software development. The original Qt licenses were absurd, today's is at least as legal as the GPL. Unlike Redhat, Sun, Netscape, or other FOSS-positive compani
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Errm, I might.
I mean, of course I want UMTS, but at the moment there are no open platforms that support it - the Neo1973 is GPRS and GSM only and I'm seriously considering getting one. To be blunt, I'm sick of crappy closed devices that aren't developer friendly (and in the case of my Symbian UIQ phone and VxWorks phone, totally unstable even when you're using the
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Why does no one understand that the Greenphone was purely a developer platform?
I do understand that, I just don't think it really matters. If the developer version cost $700, how much was the consumer version of whatever this thing would become going to cost? Does the developer version have a whole lot more hardware that the consumer version doesn't? Or did they just price the developer version really high to try to re-coup costs? I didn't see any target prices for the consumer level version, so I'm only
Neo 1973 (Score:2)
I like the idea, but I need to play with a phone before I buy it.
I wonder how hard it would be to adapt a NEO 1973 to VOIP. It's got USB, but I don't think it could handle a USB NIC.
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More info:
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973 [openmoko.org]
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If no showstoppers are found in the current prototype run, then production should ramp up and they should be available by December. Of course that could slip again if major problems are found (which is a good thing -- I don't want broken hardware, I'd rather wait an extra mon
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http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/OpenMoko_under_QEMU [openmoko.org]
Neo1973 (Score:2)
but it is not looking good. My contract is up soon so I might not mind trying Neo but they sure don't look ready for business.
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but it is not looking good. My contract is up soon so I might not mind trying Neo but they sure don't look ready for business.
Current estimates [openmoko.org] suggests the Neo1973 GTA02v4 (the production version) will be shipping at the end of December. But I think all bets are off as to whether the software will be of "production quality" by then (whatever "production quality" means these days
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http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Talk:Neo1973 [openmoko.org]
In the Year 2000 (Score:3, Insightful)
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#asterix. luser001: it's not working can someone fix it ?
#asterix. luser002: it's not working can someone fix it ?
#asterix. luser003: it's not working can someone fix it ?
#asterix. luser004: it's not working can someone fix it ?
#asterix. luser005: it's not working can someone fix it ?
#asterix. luser006: it's not working can someone fix it ?
#asterix. luser007: it's not working can someone fix it ?
#asterix. luser008: it's not working can someon
do it right or don't do it at all (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, if they are going to port Qt/Embedded and try to take over the phone, like they have done on other phones, they should forget it; those attempts at monopolizing the platform are unwelcome.
Overall, I'm kind of doubtful that TrollTech has much to contribute anyway. Devices based on Qt/Embedded have had lackluster commercial success, and the platform has serious usability problems in my opinion. Maybe the company should stick to writing toolkits and leave the end user experience to people who have more experience with that.
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http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20050524172943589 [groklaw.net]
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No, it's not only you. Unfortunately, there's plenty of controlling jackholes that don't trust their wives. Please do your wife/children a favor and tell them that you're a dirtbag that doesn't deserve her and she should leave.
Ugh, thinking of spying on the one person in the world that you're supposed to trust more than anybody else. How the hell do you sleep at night? Oh, that's right, you probably don't. You're probably rummaging through your wife's stuff looking for.. something.