Comments on: Away from iphone and towards a better platform analogy http://www.fredtrotter.com/2009/09/28/away-from-iphone-and-towards-a-better-platform-analogy/ Hacktivist, coding for social change Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:14:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 By: Martin http://www.fredtrotter.com/2009/09/28/away-from-iphone-and-towards-a-better-platform-analogy/comment-page-1/#comment-5509 Martin Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:08:43 +0000 http://www.fredtrotter.com/?p=358#comment-5509 Fred.. If you're trying Ubuntu I sugegst you try 8.04 rather than the more recent. 8.10 and 9.04 broke a lot of things for me. I do think you give Apple more credit than is due. To take the things you reckon Apple did 'right': 1. Actually I think the 'simplicity' was just cocked-up requirements definition. As an example, until the recent 3.x iPhone, it wasn't possible to send SMS to multiple recipients, or to forward a received SMS. One thing Apple missed in the 'simplicity' was proper UI guidelines. Even in the official Apple Apps, given a list of 'items' - emails, texts, notes, or whatever, there was at least 3 mechanisms for deleting an item. There are (still) two places where PIN entry is required - one requires 'OK' and one doesn't. Small things maybe, but hardly a model development platform. That level of simplicity is also inappropriate for many environments (especially HIT). One would be better looking towards platforms link GNOME or KDE for a model inspiration (or not). 2. Granted, but as you point out, it's hardly innovative. BTW as I'm sure you're discovering, Ubuntu has that also ( http://popcon.ubuntu.com/ ). Yum doesn't? :-) 3. Point taken. Although I'm not sure I want rock star developers! I guess they <a href='http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/06/26/farts-v-explosions-which-iphone-app-was-rejected-from-the-app-store-youd-be-surprised/' rel="nofollow">fart</a> <a href='http://digital.venturebeat.com/2008/12/23/iphone-fart-app-pulls-in-nearly-10000-a-day/' rel="nofollow">too</a>. Fred.. If you’re trying Ubuntu I sugegst you try 8.04 rather than the more recent. 8.10 and 9.04 broke a lot of things for me. I do think you give Apple more credit than is due. To take the things you reckon Apple did ‘right’:

1. Actually I think the ‘simplicity’ was just cocked-up requirements definition. As an example, until the recent 3.x iPhone, it wasn’t possible to send SMS to multiple recipients, or to forward a received SMS. One thing Apple missed in the ‘simplicity’ was proper UI guidelines. Even in the official Apple Apps, given a list of ‘items’ – emails, texts, notes, or whatever, there was at least 3 mechanisms for deleting an item. There are (still) two places where PIN entry is required – one requires ‘OK’ and one doesn’t. Small things maybe, but hardly a model development platform.

That level of simplicity is also inappropriate for many environments (especially HIT). One would be better looking towards platforms link GNOME or KDE for a model inspiration (or not).

2. Granted, but as you point out, it’s hardly innovative. BTW as I’m sure you’re discovering, Ubuntu has that also ( http://popcon.ubuntu.com/ ). Yum doesn’t? :-)

3. Point taken. Although I’m not sure I want rock star developers! I guess they fart too.

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