Thanks Paul, I think you hit it right on the mark.
The startup community there has been building up steam the past couple of years — and it has become more and more organized. I'll definitely miss hanging out with all the talented people back there.
Worth another visit imho. ;)
- Dirk (one of the Sofa founders who's now moving to Palo Alto)
You had me at "I don't think Nokia's leadership thinks".
They must have known this device was in the pipeline when they made the WP7 announcement. It really doesn't seem like they gave much thought to how that would impact this (otherwise easy to get excited about) product's launch…
Having people report to one person usually empowers them more than having them report to a committee. It also ensures 'vision control' in a much better way. So yes, and no, they're not at all different or incompatible.
Further specifying "good": you really need a lawyer who's seriously experienced in these kinds of matters, not just any lawyer. It makes all the difference.
Also remember that there's a lot a lawyer can do for you in a situation like this, way before a lawsuit is even on the horizon.
I worry more about shaking-to-undo on my iPad and faux leather buttons in my Calendar app than about other companies figuring out there is more than plastic to build with.
For concrete problem solving, sure. Esp. If the problems are small or common enough. But there's more that you get out of working closely together with someone who can teach you something.
This isn't good news at all. Nothing about it implies that when large incumbents imitate (or simply notice) something invented at a startup they won't patent it.
This is a disadvantage for startups, because big companies will play this game. And it's a game backed by IP law so you can decide not to file, but you can't opt out.
I started typing a really long reply yesterday, but you're right, there's not a lot we can share in public about our plans right now.
One thing I do want to share is that SVN merging and text merging are completely different problems. Both would be great features for either app, but there's not a lot they could share implementation-wise.
SVN merging means dealing with the pre-defined features and limitations of SVN (both a pro – it already works – and a con – it is really hard to make something within the contraints of SVN that's not too error-prone and easy enough to use).
For text merging, we'd get to work on a completely 'new' problem, the only systems we have to code against are the file system and the cocoa text system.. More work maybe, but 'easier' to create something excellent.
I vividly remember the Scherzo theme; who could erase that memory? ;)
We emailed Greg and Arlo (authors of the classic Kaleidoscope) to see if they were cool with us repurposing the name and they were, you'll find their names in our app's About window.
There's absolutely no reason for it to turn out smaller. The meat of the app is in the media.
I make cocoa apps, and I'm pretty sure that the 'native' part of the app — the part of it that could be ditched by linking to WebKit instead – weighs in way under 10 megs
None of the big players will want tech that doesn't give them enough control over minimum bandwidth/streaming performance.
For small players, putting some h264/ogg files up on Amazon cloudfront may cost some money, but it's extremely easy to set up right and offers extremely good and consistent performance for the money. P2P doesn't add much for distributors that don't get massive amounts of viewers.
Not saying it can't be a game changer somehow; a similar P2P strategy worked out pretty well for Skype. But given that it's all talk right now, I don't think it'll do much to slow down HTML5 adoption for a while.
I'm sorry but the basic premise of GUIs being limited and CLIs not is just completely wrong.