2008/9/25 Brian Butterworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> >> > >> >> > Shall I carry on? >> >> >> >> Okay, I agree that for the UI it seems Microsoft has similar features >> >> to Apple and Google. >> > >> > Ah, the Windows, Icons, Mouse and Pointer invented so very long ago by >> > Xerox >> >> Xerox didn't invent touchscreens with (pseudo) 3D accelerated >> interaction models AFAIK ;p > > Sorry, I thought we were talking about the User Interface not the input > methods...
These aren't as discrete as you suggest; ie, the M in WIMP is an input method, the WI&P are UIs. And the UIs of these phones don't seem very WIMPish to me: Touchscreens collapse the separation between the Mouse and Pointer, and the screen size of mobile computers is small which means overlapping Windowing doesn't work well. Thus the visual dominance of the icons in the iPhone OS UI, and the invisibility of the majority of the modes of interaction. > Not sure about touchscreens, Wikipedia says "Virtually all of the > significant touchscreen technology patents were filed during the 1970s and > 1980s and have expired." > And I'm sure that the gyroscopic sensors were around back when "Tomorrow's > World" was on... Sure, none of the individual parts - fast CPU, big RAM, solid state disk, 3D graphics chip, high res color display okay in sunlight, touch screen input, long battery life, wireless, GPS, gyroscope, and pocket size form factor for all - are new this decade by a long shot, and I have a sense that the fastest rate of computer hardware innovation was in the 70s. But the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and the price drop is staggering. > Perhaps this just proves Android=mashup OS? AIUI the iPhone has the mashup OS, because the only way to program it seriously is with webapps. However, Android (if it isn't fettered) and OpenMoko (which has protection against fettering via GPL) provide access to the hardware so developers can really program these devices. Over on the Free Software Business mailing list recently, Tom Lord paraphrased Eben Moglen's outline of the strategy of GPLv3: "The strategy: engage in diplomacy with [cloud computing vendors] and push as hard as you can on all forms of truly personal computing in software freedom. Rationale: In 10 years, the number of people with access to personal computing hardware is going to skyrocket relative even to today's numbers. That is where the main action [is]. In 10 years, the ad-broker model will have broken when the price-bubble on ads bursts and also when users get fed up with the privatized secret police starting to emerge out of the muck -- and given all of that available *personal* computing, the [software freedom] community will have ample room to work around those scary services." - http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?msn:12045:cllbikaneglapjlfljcf (IMO a nice thread if you have time, btw) In contrast it seems most people are planning for the core of the network to continue outpacing the periphery. I'm not sure, because it seems likely that portable computing will follow the same price-power curve that desktop computing did. Plus, I agree with Moglen/Lord that there will be several large privacy disasters - of the kind that we in the UK are most familiar with thanks to our data-greedy yet incompetent state. Together this will put people off centralised cloud computing and on to personal cloud computing. -- Regards, Dave (Personal opinion only) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
