QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)

[Lally Singh]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 9:04 AM, Ken Young <rtm at cfa.harvard.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 07:57:13AM +0800, Carsten Haitzler wrote:
>> the day the design mockups for the ui i see stop having alpha
>> transparency is the day i make this unimportant. until that day,
>> your "i don't care about this" is the kind of opinion that i also am
>> not interested in, because i am being shown ui designs hat REQUIRE
>> it in the long run between windows, and in the short term is being
>> faked with software within windows. i am just trying to make
>> something possible that is being requested, and has been for a long
>> time.  not just say "i don't care".
>
> The problem isn't that transparency effects, and other CPU/GPU intensitve
> UI enhancements, are unimportant.   On a handheld device they *are*
> important.    They make the device worse.    It is important to resist
> the push to add eye-candy to a handheld device, because every CPU/GPU
> cycle spent animating an icon, or making a window translucent, eats
> some of the energy stored in your battery, and reduces the amount of
> useful work which can be done between recharges.

I disagree with such categorical statements.  There is a trade-off
between usability and performance (e.g. user performance and device
performance).  The optimal value is in between, dependent on both user
and system capabilities.  The iPhone is success *because* of its heavy
bias for user performance over system performance.  The hardware isn't
novel, but the UI is, and it makes all the difference.

Example: Shadows on windows on Mac OS X --- the shadows indicate,
better than any titlebar hilight ever will, what window has focus.
Using the brain's innate understanding of depth provides user-side
hardware acceleration for this activity.

Example: Desktop switcher animation --- when switching virtual
desktops, having the windows slide off to the appropriate side is
critical for building a spatial model in the user's mind.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/finder.ars/2

Geeks will probably want a different set of trade-offs between
usability & performance, but those are best done as customizations on
an expert platform.  One that we hope that OM will become.

-- 
H. Lally Singh
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science
Virginia Tech