How do you organize your 10,000 apps and find the one you want at any particular time?
*-- Russ Abbott* *_____________________________________________* *** Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* * Google voice: 747-*999-5105 * blog: *http://russabbott.blogspot.com/ vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ *_____________________________________________* On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 9:09 AM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]> wrote: > Pardon me if this is to weird for words, but our other conversation > brought out the phenomenon of Apps. Attached below this is the > original fragment. > > Basically I was surprised by the growth of "Apps", especially with the > apparent convergence of everything in the browser (Web Apps). > > It has now been explained to me by several of my friends in accademia. > Their students have, for me, an odd relationship to computers. Few > can program and generally find the idea foreign. For a while I > thought this an aberration but more evidence piled up. So why is > this? Twitter? Facebook? Lazy dumb-ass kids? > > No. > > Jobs explained it all in the WWDC keynote. He described the concept > of a file hierarchy as being a pain for most folks who simply want an > App to manage their files and to hell with the file, its name and > extension, and where it is in the file hierarchy and syncing the damn > files from/to all my devices. And setting up sync to iPad to allow > more music files (larger disk) than my iPhone (smaller disk). Files > and their management are a bitch. > > Jobs sez that all data should have a simple App managing the data, and > actually, the data should not even be on individual devices .. instead > they should be in the cloud and managed by the OS/App pair. Better > yet, the Time Machine notion is generalized so that all backups, over > time, are also available to you. Oh, and if 10,000 people have the > same music, there is one, count it one, copy of the file in the sky > and we all share it! > > Well now, there's an idea! And I bet it works. And I bet it makes > Google run like the devil to catch up because they're still stuck in > yesterday's Web App approach. > > Well, I don't mind Web Apps and I love the convergence due to the > simplification: one solution across all browsers and OSs and > platforms. But Jobs has this right due to the explosion of devices: > phones, tvs, tablets, netbooks, desktops, laptops, servers etc. Its > just too hard to have a single web interface across them all. > > So the race is on: Will Web Apps win, or will Apps win. I'm betting > on the latter, and on iCloud to do the best job of implementing them. > > Final point: this is definitely going to up the ante to get security > right. And I'm betting Apple is hot on that, probably some sort of > key-pair approach that is made easier by King Jobs and his court. > > Let the fun begin. I'm glad I now at least have a map! > > -- Owen > > Philosophical note: The WWDC Apple keynote by Jobs made a good point. > The trend away from browser interfaces to Apps. This is not a biggie > for us, but Google's in a tight corner now. Most vanilla computer > users will want an App for every Google service. > > Jobs' comment that raw data in file hierarchies is too weird for the > general user. I thought that odd until I spoke with a few educators > who say their students despise looking around for where their files > are and launching the right app for them. Hard to believe. > > But Google really is in a tough place with the new iCloud. I was at a > talk with all of Apple engineering in the early '80s where Negroponte, > discussing Mac color displays will have to be twice as good as PCs due > to being late to the party. Well, Jobs listened and spent LOTS of > engineering time on getting color right across computers and printers. > He's going to do it right this time with iCloud. Us old farts will > hang on to our splintered unorganized world till the End Of Time. The > rest of the world is passing us by. > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
