Killer Application

[Terrence Barr - Evangelist, Java Mobile & Embedded Community]

Gabriel,

Sorry, but I can't leave this undisputed. I agree there is definitely
a line at which a UI is so dumbed-down that it is inflexible and doesn't
accommodate anything but the most basic operations. That is the case
for many "consumer" applications (including some of the Apple i* apps).
The audience for those applications is very specific and if one needs
more feature-richs apps you can simply install something better.

However, the case of "stubborn, lowest common denominator" can certainly
*not* be made for OS X. Have you actually ever used OS X? I am a computer
engineer and I do *everything* on my Mac, including hard-core engineering
work. Over the last 15 years I've used most versions Windows, various
flavors of UNIX, and various embedded OSes. I find that OS X gives me
by far the greatest productivity of all systems pretty much regardless
of the task. And at the end of the day that is what counts for me, not
the degree to which I can *fiddle* with a system.

Just wanted to set that straight (and get that flame-war started ;-)

-- Terrence

Gabriel Ambuehl wrote:
> On Friday 15 December 2006 19:53, Richard Franks wrote:
>> Apple doesn't have 'killer applications' as such, but each application
>> which comes close draws upon a consistent coherent interface - the
>> 'just works' philosophy. I'd say this is even more crucial for a
>> mobile phone as you have less opportunity to 'fix' things without
>> ready access to a keyboard.
> 
> Not meaning to start a flamewar, but if your idea of just works is the same as 
> the one on OSX, i.e only the lowest common denominator features with a GUI 
> that allows one way to do it and one only (i.e. very stubborn) then I'll 
> gladly pass on OpenMoko. The one reason I'm not using OSX is exactly the fact 
> that it wont allow me to chose how I want to work...
> 
> We have enough dumb phones (even most so called smart phones), why not make a 
> smart one for a change...
> 
> 
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