[Phoenix]

Originally Posted by TANKERx

Inasmuch as you are talking about PocketPC-PE, I agree that you have a point...

Hey, thanks much.

Originally Posted by TANKERx

I will therefore not take personally your rather rude remarks.

Sounds like you already have since you're taking issue with something I said. But rude remarkssssss, eh??? Now c'mon, that's plural! There's nothing wrong with anything I said. However, I will concede that you must be referring to the single "underground" remark I made in my previous post. Sorry about that, mate. I suppose that wasn't the most delicate way of phrasing that question, even though I tried to temper it. My bad. ops: But I made it all bebber. :P Though it was in response to a couple of your comments which I thought were a little... well... we'll just leave that at that. :wink:

Originally Posted by TANKERx

I thought that you were talking purely about Smartphones (IE, single-handed use which normal people (ie, not geeks) use...

Yes, I understand. Well, you know what they say about assuming and all that... But not a problem. Nobody's perfect.

But do you really think geeks (or people who I think you meant to refer to as more uncommon rather than less than normal) are the only ones who use WM-PE devices? Granted, they aren't as popular as single-handed Smartphones, but I think more and more people who wouldn't ordinarily be identified as "geek" are becoming tech savvy these days, and the PE phones are growing in popularity as handhelds themselves are not uncommon and I believe peoples' interest in convergence is growing. (Could it be that these "non-geeks" become "geeks" when they begin using PE phones? Hmmmm... :lol: ).

[Phoenix]

Originally Posted by TANKERx

Inasmuch as you are talking about PocketPC-PE, I agree that you have a point...

Hey, thanks much.

Originally Posted by TANKERx

I will therefore not take personally your rather rude remarks.

Sounds like you already have since you're taking issue with something I said. But rude remarkssssss, eh??? Now c'mon, that's plural! There's nothing wrong with anything I said. However, I will concede that you must be referring to the single "underground" remark I made in my previous post. Sorry about that, mate. I suppose that wasn't the most delicate way of phrasing that question, even though I tried to temper it. My bad. ops: But I made it all bebber. :P Though it was in response to a couple of your comments which I thought were a little... well... we'll just leave that at that. :wink:

Originally Posted by TANKERx

I thought that you were talking purely about Smartphones (IE, single-handed use which normal people (ie, not geeks) use...

Yes, I understand. Well, you know what they say about assuming and all that... But not a problem. Nobody's perfect.

But do you really think geeks (or people who I think you meant to refer to as more uncommon rather than less than normal) are the only ones who use WM-PE devices? Granted, they aren't as popular as single-handed Smartphones, but I think more and more people who wouldn't ordinarily be identified as "geek" are becoming tech savvy these days, and the PE phones are growing in popularity as handhelds themselves are not uncommon and I believe peoples' interest in convergence is growing. (Could it be that these "non-geeks" become "geeks" when they begin using PE phones? Hmmmm... :lol: ).

[GoConnect]

The problem with Symbian from our point of view, as application developer, is that each brand of Symbian phone has its unique user interface. We then have to customise our development for each Symbian brand. We came across the same issue with m-Vision (www.m-vision.tv), then Direct Assist (www.directassist.com.au). It is a nightmare to allocate R&D resources across different brands and then to update the development is another drain on resources. Windows Mobile does not present this problem as the user interface is the same across all brands. Each of our development for an application will work across all WM brrands. In the long termWindows Mobile's standard front end across all brands will encourage more applications to be developed on WM devices. It is just a fact of life that R&D resources are limited and costly and we all have to learn to make the most from limited resources.
As to Sony, they stuck with Beta, not VHs, then what happened? The best may not always be the most market acceptable. The most user friendly application will always win.

[traxer]

I like my P910, mainly because of the various input methods. Sure it's a bit clumsy to use without the pen, but i guess this will change with the P990. The usability is good (the QWERTY keybord is ok, some contrabass players might have problems, though). With a little hacking linking to OpenXchange works satisfactory.

Here are some of the things I hate:
* The GUI APIs, namely UIQ, Series 60, Series 80, Series 90 and what ever may emerge from the sick mind of a misguided marketing monster. Is it really that hard to understand that you don't need to change the interface when I change the implementation. I guess not, unless you think locking in developers is just as good an idea as locking in users.
* Exception handling a.k.a. "Leaving". The difference to the standard C++ exception handling is the necessity to explicitly create a function for catching and the ignorance of that function. I'm not an expert on implementing compilers, but I don't think Symbian gained much resources by their method.
* Memory Management. I've heard roumors about beeing able to overload the 'new' operator. Are these lies? Did they get through to Symbian?
* String handles. No comment on that one, I might get a heart condition.

I guess one might rightfully accuse Symbian of reinventing the wheel, just that their wheel comes in four flavours, they are all rectangular in shape and none of them can be used outside of Symbianeese.

It certainly looks like most of the mistakes they made are copied from Microsoft, they also had horrible APIs (win32api, mfc). This has changed a bit with .NET. The point is, however: I don't know any company (except Microsoft), that can afford to do the mistakes that Microsoft does. Either Symbian will learn, or they will be out of business within 6 years.