By the way.

The picture here is of Russia's ex-President V. Putin (now prime-minister) while tagging tranquilized wild tiger with GLONASS (Russian GPS system) marker.

Disclaimer: I live in Russia, so I actually have a clue.

1) Apple brought only iPhone 3G to Russia, like a year late, at that time gray exports of iPhone 1st generation were like 500K. So everyone who really wanted them - got them via gray market.
2) 3G is almost non-existant in Russia, because frequencies are used by military agencies. We have more WiMax than 3G now. Advertising of new fancy 3G capabilities of iPhone looks like a bad joke to average user.
3) All phones here are sold unlocked, Russians are not used to operator-locked phones.
4) We have huge amount of WinMO / Symbian phones on market, same price or even cheaper than iPhone. Here iPhone looks like a shiny overpriced toy, not a real smartphone.
5) iPhone 3G is sold at around 20-21K roubles now - that's about 700 USD. More than average monthly salary.
6) There were very little advertising as compared to USA.

While riding every day in Moscow subway I can see lots and lots of kids with iphones 1st generation (imported via gray market), very little "official" iPhones 3G.

> "much-hyped-by-Nokia maemo Linux" - much hyped? You gotta be kidding me. Nokia hasn't done a single tiny bit of advertising for any Maemo device, so how exactly did they hype it? Please elaborate...

I've seen lots of hype around N8x0 and new and New and Exciting concept of Internet Tablets with New and Exciting Maemo OS. Remember, USA is not the only country in the world, m'kay? :)

> "Maemo is a OS wich is not developed properly" - what is that supposed to mean?

Decent PIM? Established roadmap with new features? Less bugs?

To me it looks like Nokia tried to develop Maemo as consumer OS, failed and just let it hang there.

> "has no support" - um, Nokia constantly releases new versions, and small updates for it. Given how much of a niche product the internet tablets were up to now, what exactly do you expect? They are and have been experimental devices up to now, so...

If they are "experimental devices", I find it quite funny that Nokia charged me 500 bucks for one, and marketed it as an "ultimate Internet Tablet yada-yada". I bought it to use as a PDA (PIM, some documents), hoping that they will go PDA way - no luck. Had to give to me wife for eBook reading.

> "and almost no applications." - I disagree. Given how small the community is compared to other platforms, there are a lot of very nice applications like Canola, Maemo Mapper or liqbase already available for it, and if they use Maemo on more mass-market devices like phones, this is going to become even better, fast. So what exactly are you complaining about there?

I'm not talking about community apps, I'm talking about built-in. I use Nokia E90 Communicator as phone and find that they've done a really good job in developing standard apps in Symbian (like PIM suite, email clients, etc.). Nothing like that in maemo. And community PIM apps suck.

Problem with Maemo apps is that they are always in beta, UI is not well designed and they have too many options to set instead of just working.

> "N800/N810 are just geek toys, not proper consumer devices." - and Nokia's marketing (or the lack of it, actually) reflects that. And this is about to change. So what are you complaining about?

Don't think that it will change, really. Nokia suck at software development. They make nice hardware though.

> "No PC Suite-like app." - and why would that be needed, again?

Desktop sync and management. As it is in, for example, Symbian.

> "Yet Nokia tries to spread Maemo BS around. Maemo is fucked up, get over it for Pete's sake!" - I think you really need to go outside once in a while and catch a breath of fresh air...might help with all that unnecessary bitching and whining...

I might've overreacted here, that's true. Just got wound up by markedroid bullshit.

I upgrade my N800 when updates come out (and they even do OTA update now), but it does not look like they're really trying to improve things, just fix some bug here and there. Feature-wise it's still like two years ago, when I bought it.

Symbian works and it is quite stable, which is kinda important for a phone.

They will just buy it, try to integrate it and fuck it up.

They fucked up maemo already, they have a gazillion of incompatible always-in-beta apps and technologies, so I don't see a reason they would do good this time.

So, he's from marketing. "I don't see anything in Android which would make it better than Linux maemo."

As a proud owner of N800 tablet with much-hyped-by-Nokia maemo Linux, I can say, that this is totally wrong.

Maemo is a OS wich is not developed properly, has no support, and almost no applications. Software catalogue contains fugly ports of Linux apps, with no optimization for small screen / pen input. N800/N810 are just geek toys, not proper consumer devices. No PIM. No PC Suite-like app. And they are painfully slow (still usable although).

Yet Nokia tries to spread Maemo BS around. Maemo is fucked up, get over it for Pete's sake! Either develop Symbian or shift to Android. Or invest at least several millions in getting Maemo done.

"Why would anyone invest into proprietary hard- and software that is controlled by one company?"

Because there are people who want to work on a laptop which is built well, has premium components and designed nice?

I don't give a damn if it is proprietary if it works as advertise. Boohoo, vendor lock-in.
There are no comparable laptop producers on the market, in terms of build quality and stability. IBM ThinkPads turned into Lenovo StinkPads. IBM sold laptop business to chinese and they turned it into a fucking mess.

I'm telecom systems integration guy, big boxen and stuff. You would be amazed how big telcos are "stupid" enough to invest into that scary proprietary boxes from Sun and Cisco. And you know what? Them boxes work.

Also I use MacBook Pro. Love it.

You use Dell, right?

Ahem.

That was a comment of a person who do not seem to ever have seen Mac OS X.

There is a terminal, much better than in Windows - Bash shell, all Unix tools, not that piece of shit cmd.exe.
There is a system/process monitor - called Activity Monitor, much better that Task Manager in Windows.

Do you work on System 9 maybe?

As about OS X being "for starters" - yes, it is. And it is for advanced users at the same time. Because it does not bug you. It is designed for people to work, no to answer to gazillion of modal popup windows.

My favorite thing when comparing OS X and Windows usability is what happens when you plug in USB mouse.

Windows (tooltips from system tray):
- Found new hardware.
- Found new USB HID device. (mouse starts working)
- Found new hardware Logitech Revolution mouse.
- You hardware is installed and ready to use.

Each tooltip displayed like each second - 4-5 seconds of distraction and useless information.

OS X:
- Mouse starts working. If (and only IF) there are problems, user will be notified.


If you forget to plug in USB mouse when booting:

Windows:
- No mouse. Oh, well. Fuck you, use TAB and cursor keys.

OS X:
- Tries to find Bluetooth mouse.

I've been using Windows since version 3.1, Linux since Redhat 5 (or something like that), Mac OS X for last 6 months. Now I use only Mac for everything (ocasionally Windows in VMWare to do specific development stuff or dual-boot it to play games).

For 6 (SIX!) months I've seen gray screen of death on my MacBook Pro only one (ONE!) time - when installed buggy Logitech drivers which caused kernel panic when you unplug USB mouse. Also, as it is laptop it gets rebooted like once in a month, sleeping during the night. OS X boots for me in seconds, faster than any Windows (except maybe 3.1).

I have a Intel Mac Mini acting as a HTPC attached to LCD TV. It is rebooted like once in 3-4 month, runs Bittorrent all the time - never ever see it crashed.

My point is that you either unlucky to have faulty hardware on Mac or you do something really wrong.

I've tried Vista - it was XP with new UI. Also it crashed and lagged constantly (ah, the hanging Explorer bug!). Also it's UI seemed to me really bad. But that my personal opinion.

Every SIM card has a unique number called IMSI. What is interesting about this number - every operator has his own range of this numbers, which are supported in the network.

Various operator's systems (network inventory, billing system / prepaid platform) have these numbers' ranges defined. And they never add ranges of IMSIs from other operators.

You do not "add that other SIM to your contract" (whatever this means). It's too much headache for operator to support.

This article sounds like bullshit to me.