NMC Interviews Minimo Founders

Gentu writes "NewMobileComputing (NMC) features an interview with Doug Turner and Chris Hoffman, the leaders of the Minimo project. Minimo is a Gecko-based browser built for PDAs and other mobile devices and shows already a lot of promise."

Hmm. Not even a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. Not even a GNAA troll. Looks like there is minimo interest in this news item, boys!

Hmmmmm...

[ManxStef]

Don't get me wrong, I'd *love* to see an implementation of the Gecko engine on a PocketPC, but this thing's going nowhere far. Why?

Cause it's ONLY FOR LINUX. Yes, I know there are various flavours for PocketPCs, but how many people (outside of the geek domain) do you know that change the OS on their PDA? NONE, that's how many (percentage-wise overall I'd reckon under 0.001% of the market). A PDA is a fully functional device as it is; you might install a few other apps on you PPC or Palm, but average Joe is NOT going to spend a day f*cking round getting Opie/Familiar working (risking turning it into a paperweight) and then spend a week learning all the new applications just to get a better browser than PocketIE (which *does* suck ass, but not enough to change the entire OS).

If, on the other hand, they could write it to support WinCE/PocketPC 2000/2002/2003 then I'd image a lot of people would be very interested...

Re:Hmmmmm...

[jilles]

Eh did you even read the article? This thing is not targeted at end users but at pda/smartphone manufacturers. A lot of high end smartphones don't run windows and never will. These phones need browsers too and minimo seems like a really valid option in a field where currently opera (and not IE) is the browser of choice. If this thing takes off, there will be several millions of minimo users in a couple of years. That's a huge market. If by that time you are still stuck with your ubercool ms pocket pc, a nice, unintended side effect will be that you can still install oss software updates on your otherwise obsolete and unsupported device. But that is strictly for geeks, as you argued quite convincingly.

BTW. the thing is crossplatform. It would surprise me if it wouldn't be ported to pocketpc (it probably was months ago). It's just very unlikely that a smartphone/pda manufacturer is going to bundle a non MS browser with it so you'll have to forgive the minimo developers for having more important things to do.