3rd Anniversary Inside Nokia: An interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi

This post is part of a series celebrating the third anniversary of the Nokia 770 launch:

1. Introduction and more
   
2. Inside Nokia: An interview with Dr. Ari Jaaksi (You are here.)
3. Community Spotlight: An interview with Reggie Suplido of InternetTabletTalk
4. An insider's outside perspective: An interview with Veronica Belmont of Tekzilla
5. A timeline of Internet Tablet developments from 2005 to 2008

When I first met Dr. Ari Jaaksi (left) in the photo above. we were talking about the day-0ld Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. He is the Director of Open Source Operations at Nokia and a champion of Linux devices within Nokia. For this Third Anniversary special, he lends us a bit of his time for a nice light-hearted interview.

Starting with the past:

TF: Happy birthday! The tablets are three years old and in their third generation (or 3.5, with the release of the WiMAX tablet.) When the 770 came out, it was described as a very experimental, very early design. How well do you feel the product has matured?

AJ: Like a good wine. Like wine, these things get better every day. When we started with 770 everybody asked what? Then, 12 months later you started to see ultra mobile PCs and others. But, nobody else has WEB 2.0 browser, maps & gps, open Linux platform, developer ecosystem, --and a lot of cool apps!

TF: What are the greatest landmark events in the growth of the tablets? (This could be product development, partnerships, staff acquisitions, or even changes to the Internet that helped the tablet along.)

AJ: Just before the announcement of the 770, I thought we cannot get the performance right. A few months if not just weeks before the launch we managed to improve the performance to a level that we felt good about. Prior to that I was not sure if we would even announce the product! That maturation period was clearly a landmark.

Then, the actual announcement in May 2005.

Another one is clearly the introduction of VoIP, Google talk.

Fourth, Mozilla browser.

Hiring Quim ;-)

And many more ....

TF: As part of the Internet Tablet family, what inspired you personally to become part of this team and what are your personal goals with this product?

AJ: To make a difference.

Present:

TF: When the Nokia 770 was released, it was truly one-of-a-kind. 2008 seems to bring in a boat load of competitors. While there is some pride you should take in being the first, what are you doing to distinguish Nokia's product from other MIDs or portable internet devices?

AJ: We've already done a lot. As I mentioned above. Others do not even come close ;-)

TF: We've seen a lot of marketing material and convention displays by now. What is your favorite demonstration of the Internet Tablet's ability?

AJ: I like the campaign where we promoted 3rd party apps. A good demonstration case is of course YouTube and a Skype call, too.

Future:

TF: The community seems to agree that the tablet user interface needs to change in order to appeal to more consumers. What is Nokia doing to counter this criticism?

AJ: This is a good question we need to address, I agree. And my answer is, we need to make it better!

TF: The Trolltech merger and Ubuntu ARM ports are hot and mysterious topics within the community. We're all waiting to see what happens with these. You know my own speculations on this, but what can you say from Nokia?

AJ: We will support Qt sooner or later. That is the plan. Details to be ironed out. With Ubuntu as well as with Debian, GNOME, KDE, you name it. We are constantly in talks and aligning our plans. No need to invent the wheel several times. I feel there is a real value for us to maintain the maemo stack together with the community as a dedicated collection of components and architectures suitable for our current and future projects. Therefore, we need maemo in the future too --- even more than today.

TF: Can we get any more comments or details on that?

AJ: We know the N810 was planned before the N800 even hit the shelves. We know the N810 WiMAX Edition has been in the works since the middle of last year.

TF: Other than CPU power upgrades and perhaps a 3D graphics chip, what could possibly be added to the tablets on the hardware level? I am asking this honestly - I just don't know what else it could use!

AJ: I'm thinking of a hidden knife.

TF: On a final note: How do you personally feel about the third anniversary of the Internet Tablet's launch?

AJ: Wow. I'm old!

Thanks and congratulations on three years of tablets!