I've ceased all iLiad development

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by ali

It would have been iRex' job to please Scotty under all circumstances, because his treatment was watched by all the other geeks that may jump onto the train when it looks like fun. They should have sent scotty a bunch of Iliads, for free, no strings attached, and give him all information thats possible. They should have sent his wife flowers after scotty spent weekends in programming stuff for free that benefits iRex in the long run.

Well, I couldn't disagree more. What Scotty does with his free time is his business, but one shouldn't expect anything in return for doing what is essentially voluntary work. Supporting a community takes time and time is money and I'm not convinced that supporting an OSS community is in iRex's best business interest. Yes, that may satisfy the early adopter geeks, but that's not the market they're after.

[High 5]

Originally Posted by ali

{snip}
I always have the impression that there are two communities in this forum: One is people who just want to read books. This is the group who replies "i love the device, it does all i want" in all the iRex-bashing threads. {snip}

And there's the OS-affine geek community, who are complaining all the time in this forum. This second community is large, much larger than the first. iRex would have needed to make the Iliad the ideal toy for that group, and they failed. {and yet another snip}

If I buy a car I want it to drive me from A to B in relative comfort without depleting my countries oil reserve.
(It should also have one of those little cardboard trees hanging from the mirror with pine scent)
I couldn't care less if the engine is a high-tech piece of equipment, a little dwarf paddling his legs out or a magical ring with elvish inscription.
Yep, I am part of that first group!

I can imagine that the car manufacturer wants to sell his cars to stupid people like me.
He loves me.
Simply because there are more of me than there are of the smart type that immediately starts to fiddle with all kinds of tools to improve performance with the risk of driving very fast with one wheel coming unstuck.

The Iliad is and never was intended solely for the purpose of satisfying the tweek, fiddle and upgrade itches that the techie types constantly seem to suffer from.
It was meant for the simple dolts like me who are impressed with their own abillity to form letters into -sometimes intelligu intelligla..intelligalbl- into words.
It may be true that the geek section of this forum is much larger that the dolt section, but I very much doubt this to be true for all the buyers from Irex.

The Iliad has always been advertised as an ebook reader, not a gamesconsole, pda or coffee making machine.
Now, I have seen some of the work the geeks have done for the dolts on the Iliad.
It was mostly about as user friendly as a head-on collision with a Sherman tank for little ol'e simpletons like me.

I don't think Irex should have taken extra care to make the Iliad an ongoing project for the the geeks.
It should also not have taken four tries to get a good working Iliad to Scotty but sometimes shit just happens and especially so with new hightech stuff like this.

The procedure for returning a dud is not an easy one.
But then again I didn't find it more difficult when my Iliad started to talk back to me and finally stopped working then what I have encountered with other products .
No-one likes a DOA unit, definitely not three.
I am sure however that Irex's return policy is as good as any other.

Scotty, I am very sorry you had a bad experience with the Iliad.
And you certainly were the king of the geeks as far as I am concerned.
I guess you'll be back someday because no geek can stay away from the real challenges.

[yvanleterrible]

@Karel.

I have a question. Electronics are quite far from my fields of expertise so here it is. Why in designing the Iliad, did you have to build a completely new computing device? would it have been possible to use an existing PDA and adapt it to eink? It could have kept the price way down!

[b_k]

Originally Posted by High 5

... The Iliad is and never was intended solely for the purpose of satisfying the tweek, fiddle and upgrade itches that the techie types constantly seem to suffer from.
It was meant for the simple dolts like me who are impressed with their own abillity to form letters into -sometimes intelligu intelligla..intelligalbl- into words.
It may be true that the geek section of this forum is much larger that the dolt section, but I very much doubt this to be true for all the buyers from Irex.

The Iliad has always been advertised as an ebook reader, not a gamesconsole, pda or coffee making machine.
Now, I have seen some of the work the geeks have done for the dolts on the Iliad.
It was mostly about as user friendly as a head-on collision with a Sherman tank for little ol'e simpletons like me.

I don't think Irex should have taken extra care to make the Iliad an ongoing project for the the geeks.
It should also not have taken four tries to get a good working Iliad to Scotty but sometimes shit just happens and especially so with new hightech stuff like this. ...

Well, the license for a lot of the inner works of the iLiad is GPL and therefore they have to make it a "ongoing project for geeks" i.e. publish the sources and, depending on the point of view, also a tool to reflash. However, the second one can be argued about, as this depends on the interpretion of the GPL.
If there was a way to reflash the iLiad at home, development would probably be easier, you wouldn't have to fear bricking it and paying 75 EUR for a reflash.

[firekat]

I would not categorize the people that use/own the iLiad to two basic groups.

Being on the periphery of this debacle as I am not a hacker I can tell you some things that I have noted.

The way I see it there are people that are totally satisfied with the device and are the "it does what I want and it's really great". There are the hackers that have the wherewithal and ability to get it to do what they want, There are the frustrated hackers that do not receive what they construe as enough support for their pursuits. And there are those that are totally dissatisfied.

To me I think that there is a specific "blindness" in all of these. I see the totally satisfied as justifying their purchase of a device that is no way close to meeting iRex's initial design goals/schedule. The hackers that get it to function in the manner that they want live in a world of CLI and directory structure that is bewildering and puzzling to those that are not familiar with it. There is an edge of conceit above those that do not have those skills. Then there are the hackers like scotty that wanted the device to be opened to them entirely, so that they could define the device over and beyond what the initial concept that iRex had for it. I had the sense of frustration with them because they were hobbled in doing what they wanted to with the device.

My opinion being a person that is relatively technically proficient but not a developer/hacker is that in the current state the iLiad does not even come close to the competition. This is not because it does not have the potential to have advanced features, it's because it's basic underpinnings are flawed. The absurdly long boot time and questionable battery life are some of the primary problems. I find for such a short period of time and a small amount of sales an inordinate amount of reports of device failures including what appears to be a very fragile screen. I have visited the eFlybook site and have noted the same discontent that can be seen here, and that was sold as a fully functional device!

The hackers that are able to get the device to do what they want are talented, but unless they set things up so that the people that don't have their skills can use it, it make no point to the rest of us. yokos is a fundamental player in making the work that scotty did on the device available to a wider range of people. His ( I am assuming gender here) specific point to point instructions made it so that the relatively technically unsophisticated person could try the new development processes.

scotty and others worked in a world that was mostly inaccessible to the laity. I think that he pushed forward and gave insight to the iRex team in that he offered a fresh perspective. To me, iRex gives me the impression that they see the iLiad as their child and they are not very willing to let anyone tell them what they can/cannot or should do with the device. I got a sense that there are definite cultural differences in the inter dynamics between scotty and iRex. To me there seemed to be an old world/new world rift.

I try to maintain an objectivity with the device, but as time goes by I get more and more frustrated with it. I purchased it specifically as a device that would hold documents that I could access without starting up a laptop. The idea was that I could use it on my job. I knew some of the limitations of the device. I also saw that there was a SDK being made available and it was my impression that there were some people that would get the functionality of the device that iRex was not willing to do. This would be most specifically be being able to access the internet. Not having that available on a device that has wireless built into it is patently absurd and shows conceit that iRex feels that you should only connect to the iDS through their device. Overall that was not the biggest point of purchase for me and is just an example of how I feel that the device is hobbled to a certain extent.

The bigger points to me is that I currently have a device that has limited functionality. With the slow boot time, limited battery life, no bookmark support in PDF's, usage for the intended purpose for which it was purchased is cumbersome at best. Mostly it sits in my flight bag ( in a rather robust protective cover) and I dread having to pull it out and suffer through the start up and navigation times. I get concerned as when it will possibly drop dead since I see so many reports of problems on this and the iRex site. When I purchased it I knew that it was still under development, the initial release information was that it would be ready for prime time in September of 2006. We are coming up on nearly half a year after that date and we have only received incremental improvements. I will have to state that in some cases some of the improvements are impressive and are certainly welcome. The thing is that upgrades are coming at a snail's pace and unless there is a revolutionary update in the wings I fear that the device will just be passed by further developments and improvements in hardware by other companies.

The iLiad represents different things to different people. In the basic function of being a reading device for other than reference material or more specifically recreational reading I am sure it is more than adequate. For functionality over and beyond that the device is not up to speed. It was this promised advanced functionality that swayed people more to the iLiad than the Sony Reader. Right now I see only one benefit of the iLiad over the Sony; that is the bigger screen. Until the iLiad is "finished" it is clearly not a player in the ebook device world.

I would really be interested in knowing how many iLiads have been sold in the B2B environment, what they are being used as, and just how satisfied these customers are.

In conclusion I am trying to maintain an optimism about the iLiad, after all I paid a pile of money for it and I would really like to see some real return on my investment.

I am not intending this post to offend anyone, it is just my observations.

Good Luck To Us All!

[jæd]

TBH... I think everyone's probably taking this all a bit too seriously...! If it was an Irex dev I'd be concerned...

[RWood]

I have been involved in product development on and off for a number of years and I am always amazed by the users that come back and know more about how a certain part of it works then the people that put it together do. This is not a bad thing. We look at it from our angle and they see it in another light. We have learned a great deal from them from new features we didn't know we had laid the groundwork for to new uses that we had never dreamed about before.

Sure Scott is not their main market for the future, just one of the best examples of the current market of early adopters and gurus. Sure there are flaws (not to say "bugs") in the code and a lot of things can (and will) be made better as time goes on. What Scott did was to push the envelope perhaps in ways the iRex team never saw or was constrained by budget, time, and management to avoid.

Any tech product on the market without a vibrant user community is doomed to die. There are too many choices and too many others out there that can (and will) meet the demands of your target market and will listen to the "geeks" and their "rantings."

I picked the Sony Reader over the iRex. I am glad Scott is going to develop stuff for the Sony. It may never meet my needs or do things that I want the Sony to do. This is not the point. The point is that he is pushing at the envelope of features and functions and something good always comes out of it. If not today, then tomorrow or the next day.

[jæd]

Originally Posted by RWood

What Scott did was to push the envelope perhaps in ways the iRex team never saw or was constrained by budget, time, and management to avoid.

Did he...? Al I saw where some tweaks to the PDF reader, and ports of calculators. Not exacty ground-breaking stuff... The rest (the bluetooth projec, a port of an email client, and rtf support) all seem vaporware...

I'll be interested in what he produces for the Sony, but I wouldn't be calling him a guru... Just another hacker with some interesting ideas.

[ali]

Originally Posted by jæd

Did he...? Al I saw where some tweaks to the PDF reader, and ports of calculators. Not exacty ground-breaking stuff... The rest (the bluetooth projec, a port of an email client, and rtf support) all seem vaporware...

He did. While I agree that he's a little bit strong on the talking side, he actually produced a lot. Setting up and explaining a build environment, digging into the undocumented sources, and uncovering the Iliad's software details is a lot of work and the foundation for any porting/programming project. It produces nothing that's visible to the user, but is a substantial chunk of the work that's required to get new software for the Iliad.

Reg. the car metaphor: The people who want everything open do that because it was announced so, though implicitly. If you buy a desktop computer from, say, Dell, with Windows on it, you can expect to get original, licensed, legal software. That is, you can expect that Dell paid their dues to Microsoft to be in the legal position to install Windows on the PC you buy there. And I expected to get a legal operating system plus SDK, and I didn't. The Iliad software can only be distributed legally if you publish your sources.

Reg. "understanding" not showing your sources: If the business model begins with "we steal some software" - then I don't care about the rest. No understanding, no sympathy. If you want to sell a closed system, you are free to do so - just buy software that allows it.

Reg. "basing the Iliad on some PDA": They did. Hardware design is close to Zaurus/Ipaq/.... The software and operating system is essentially OpenEmbedded/OpenZaurus stuff. (You didn't think iRex made their software themselves, did you?)

On the other hand, I heard (actually in the beginning of december) that the FSF Europe made some moves towards iRex, and that there will be some GPL/MPL-compliant release in February. Perhaps things get better then, though it means that iRex first scares away the developers, then releases sources afterwards. Sounds like perfect iRex logic. And I'm sure they will promote that release as a big, friendly, oh-we-are-so-nice-let's-group-hug step just out of pure kindness.

[Matthijs]

I'd like to stress (again) that it is not a matter of "not wanting" or "deliberately not releasing".

Also: there is no obligation under the GPL to release a SDK. Even so, we have already released the complete SDK/toolchain. I would have thought opening up the PDF viewer and the SDK would have sparked a lot more constructive development. Its sad to see that especially those shouting loudest for the sources, have not shown any interest in actually using those available.

You didn't think iRex made their software themselves, did you?)

For the core OS, we use standard available building-blocks, which we mostly haven't modified at all (apart from applying publicly available patches). On top of that a lot of custom applications -- written from scratch -- are running. We're talking >100k lines of C code (without headers).

You can expect the sources for the kernel and the sources of modified GPL/LGPL software packages by the end of February (as also advertised on our developers website).

[markiehill]

matthijs,

if you had a public to do list we would see the things that are not going to be done and perhaps look at addressing some of these. I would like an RTF viewer for instance, but i would not consider porting one until i was sure there wouldnt be one in the next firmware. Does that make sense ?

[ali]

Hey, Matthijs, dude, no need to defend here.

Originally Posted by Matthijs

Its sad to see that especially those shouting loudest for the sources, have not shown any interest in actually using those available.

Huh. I hope you don't mean me here. After the burning-my-fingers episode where I bricked my device, I shut up, due to a sudden decrease in interest in the Iliad.

Originally Posted by Matthijs

For the core OS, we use standard available building-blocks, which we mostly haven't modified at all (apart from applying publicly available patches). On top of that a lot of custom applications -- written from scratch -- are running. We're talking >100k lines of C code (without headers).

Well I don't think 100klines is so much. Lines-of-code is actually a very bad measure for development effort. But, to be fair, let me add a few numbers to yours, because there's many non-programmers here. The software implementation for my masters thesis (where the implementation was not the main part), was over 50 klines, in C++, including headers. That means one developer, working part-time in parallel to his studies. According to some random site i just googled, the linux kernel (version 2.6.17), is over 4 million lines, and firefox is over 2 million. Note iRex uses an older kernel (2.4.something) and minimo instead of firefox.

I think Matthijs' point is "hey, we did a lot of software development". And my point is "hey, but that's still just a tiny piece of the Iliad's software". I think both are right

Originally Posted by Matthijs

You can expect the sources for the kernel and the sources of modified GPL/LGPL software packages by the end of February (as also advertised on our developers website).

Well I think that's half a year too late. Add a safe development environment and user-friendly software installer for the Iliad, and you may attract new developers. Which would be the best that could happen to you and the Iliad's users, so I wish you the best luck for it.

(But don't expect to convince me. From what I've seen so far, I don't trust you guys at all. Let me see some proofs instead of announcements.)

[CommanderROR]

@Matthijs

I really liked you guys at iRex, I got on very well with Karel and Angel and the little contact I had with you was also rather pleasant.

However, I have to agree with ali...

I'm not a programmer myself, but I have been following the whole SDK/Sources thing from the beginning...and the release dates were postponed again and again. Might be that you will actually make it this time, but it won't repair the damage that is already done.

As for developers jumping ont he released sources...well...they did in a way, but since it does not really make a lot of sense to develop a PDF viewer that is going to be useless once the next Frimware release is out, I can understand why there was not really that much interest.
What developers need (as far as I can tell, not being one) is the complete system, a way to test apps and a way to safely restore the system if something goes wrong.
Developing a PDF viewer is your job, developing additional software could be the community job, but working blind and using security holes and grudgingly granted "hack access" is not everybody's glass of beer.

There is no reason why you shoul offer a SDK, nobody can force you, but if you want the device to be open (as advertised) and want people to develop for it (as advertised) you'll have to put the cards on the table. If you had done it right from the start, maybe that would have sped development of the Iliad along, if you do it now, perhaps it'll still work, but much trust has been lost and many users and developers have been dissappointed, so i'm not sure how it will work out now.

[Matthijs]

@markiehill:
That does make sense. I cannot go into details of what is going to be in next versions, but what I can do is share some information on projects that we consider interesting for 3rd party developers.

Nice examples of things we will not likely develop soon ourselves are: full web-browser, games, email application, calendar functionality, calculator, etc.

As for document viewers: you're welcome to start developing an additional format (like RTF), but to facilitate viewer development we're currently working on a viewer framework. This would abstract creating a document viewer somewhat and make all viewers behave in a similar way. Each document format would have a plugin to the framework and the effort for enabling a document format would be reduced to porting an existing library and writing glue to hook it into the viewer framework API.

Given this, I'd say that porting an existing document viewer (like f.i. FBreader) would be a lot more useful than trying to write an RTF viewer from scratch (or starting from iPDF).

[design256]

Originally Posted by Matthijs

Its sad to see that especially those shouting loudest for the sources, have not shown any interest in actually using those available.

Two points in answer to this:


1. The existing docs/sdk are fine if you want to do trivial stuff like porting simple X Window apps (which I did). If you want to make the Iliad do anything useful (like last-page-autoload), or interesting (like suspend/resume), there is very little to help you.


2. I bricked my Iliad. Well - it died with a whimper after the upgrade to 2.8, and I couldn't prove it one way or the other. Fortunately IRex gave me the benefit of the doubt (thanks guys!) and didn't charge me to fix it - but I have sadly decided that this just isn't a developer-friendly machine and left it for other more hardy souls to work with. Maybe if they provide a robust unbricking solution I'll be interested enough to give it another go - but I'm beginning to doubt it.


I wish them all the best with their B2B ventures, and hope they sell lots of machines.