Notice that there’s another column I forgot: Android. They’re a variant of Linux, and running on both desktop & netbooks (sort of). Oddly enough, Android on netbooks took all the fire/criticism up front about being too limited. Apple then stepping into the void and filled it with something just. usable. enough.

The only commentary on Apple’s latest device is two-fold: (1) No multitasking? I’m a fan of what I’ve called ‘limited computing‘, but this is a tad too constricting. (2) Likewise constricting is the iPhone AppStore: only those approved by Apple will do.

For the price, I’d rather have AlwaysInnovating’s Tablet/Netbook. It’s effectively the same thing, just with the software I already use. Trouble-spot: all linux software is old-school & menu-driven. Neither linux application communities (KDE nor Gnome) seem to be concerned with this forward motion UI’s.

• Left:
  • Calendar
  • Contacts
  • Web
  • Photos
• Right:
  • Maps (associated with contacts)
  • Journal (dual-pane)
  • web also (wait, which side do I view webpages on.. both?)
• Middle:
  • Clipboard-Pocket

This is it? Doesn’t sound like much. So what do I use my laptop for these days?

• Libraries of media, for which iTunes & Amazon are trying to be the end-all. For this, I likely will run a streaming media source, or keep my library on a home server, so the laptop neWed not have a multi-terabyte drive.
• Basic file editing/viewing, for which Google Documents is trying to be the end-all. And so long as your online (or whenever local caching of GDocs hits) this might work. But Google doesn’t support various Journal formats at present.

Web viewing

There doesn’t seem to be any web-organization, just a list of tabs/Safari-like window-images. My use of the web falls into the 2 categories previously mentioned: the daily views of interest & responsibility (like reading the news & checking the bank) and researching the latest idea & interest I had, or for classes.

File-Viewing

I wanna make sure this has full office & PDF file editing & annotation, otherwise, it’s not a laptop replacement. Clearly this thing won’t be creating the office-heavy/design-heavy files.. but it should have full-view of them.

Filetypes supported are likely OneNote->PDF instead of the millions of incongruent filetypes presently on any one system. Others’ ability to edit & comment on PDFs at present is limited. This is an early-collaboration tool, not a late-collaboration, final-product kind of tool.

Pocket

There is a heavy amount of visual drag-and-dropping, specifically of web/PNG images. But I deal with excel and photoshop files too. Will previews be auto-generated for these as well? How will I know which spreadsheet is which when I place it in the pocket? Sometimes filenames *are* handy.

Minor

We didn’t see any online chat-abilities with the contacts, something my nokia N800 did well.

The 2 biggest hurdles for development:

1. Metadata heavy
2. Handwriting heavy

However, “Computer as a Desktop” or “Desktop on the Computer” is a failed ideal of the early, by-gone days of computing. Simply: everything is not and cannot be on your personal computer *screen* let alone actually on the computer.

I’m a huge computing fan, I even PDF my readings for class (thanks to an old printer/scanner my wife’s new fancy-pants mac can’t use!). I annotate the PDFs & highlight them accordingly. I’m very document heavy, being a BachArts instead of a BachScience guy.

Compared to the image above, I’ve got only 3 piles of junk on my upper right & left corners: 2 book piles on the right & 1 ‘organizer’ on the left which holds everything from my keys & cellphone to pens, coupons & my external harddrive. And sticky-notes. Stickies can be moved, computer notes cannot so easily (yet). Cell phones & keys are much more ‘real’ objects, requiring separate spatial existence — like the kleenex box nearby. No computer will replace kleenex (I hope!).

So with all this, I’m not convinced the “desktop” metaphor is worthwhile, or even warranted. Sure there’s lots of files in folders on my computer, but (a) search has replaced some of that and (b) files and folders are in cabinets, not desks..

So, iTunes and other newer applications take on the library metaphor. You search a library; it is referenced, accessed and used. But that is just for an app, not a unifying theme between apps (though a good argument could and should be made why this shouldn’t be so!). User folders on Mac & Linux are now folder-lists of Documents, Media-types (pictures, music, videos).. Various netbook UI’s have ran with this as well. But none hold together any more than the files-in-folders theme. iTunes has it’s own folder inside your music folder. I know why this is, but shouldn’t there be a platform-independent format for these datasources?

And the desktop folder itself? Is there ever any real purpose to it? Most mobile platforms don’t have one and most linux geeks don’t place their files on the ‘desktop’. Microsoft Courier lacks a desktop as well, instead merging the desktop and the clipboard into one middle-bar for all things temporary (which most ppl use their desktop for).

Really looking at a normal, original desktop, it’s more a matter of objects which are acted upon with tools. Applications are the tool-set these days, but they fail to interact and avail themselves *on the desktop*. Desktops are loaded up with file *icons* not the file itself. Mac tries to maintain this file-window independence, but it’s just a jumble of windows overtop background pictures and icons. I cannot go from an open spreadsheet window and start making it pretty with a document design editor. These apps are mutually exclusive, and ruining any desktop metaphor.

All this critique is pointing towards a unified file format which all applications agree upon, and all have access to modify at anytime.

Clearly this is an idealism which won’t occur without limits placed. And such limits break the very nature of ‘general computing’ over which the Mac/Windows debate rages.

I’m a huge fan of limited and thereby differentiated computing: the workstation should not be running the same UI as a eJournal (Courier!). And neither of them are sufficient for the task of media center.

We once had a division of these 3 tiers with servers, desktops & mobile devices. Then WindowsNT was thrown on servers & XP(and NT variant!) was thrown on faux-tablets UMPC’s. This UI/codebase permeation is inverse of the ideal, where the low-level is the universal, and the high-level is specialized to the task.

Moblin 2.0 has a chance with this for at least one front.

My latest spin *was* playing with screen-maximizing UI’s: task-bar-less environments, panel-over-top window-titlebars, then I turned wanna-be tablet with the iPen.

But I’ll not deny, the best ‘inspiration’ has been the non-existent-yet(?) Microsoft Courier. Here’s a list of the bits, related & not, which I’ve come up with:

Dual-pane

My 13″ macbook is nearly-exactly 2×9″ screens. Yes, this is very Courier-esque. Especially if I use Linux’ dragbox in between panes! But the benefit here is window management. In Xwindows-land, there’s lots of these things called ‘window managers’. They’re supposed to, y’know.. manage windows. What do they ACTUALLY do? Place windows in wierd locations & sizes which require you to use a taskbar, alt-tab or expose’ your day away. I’m not down with that. Time for a ’tiling” window manager. Yet I’m just looking for 2 panels, and on a 13″ screen, that’s plenty. If I config my window-placer-thing to throw some of my apps on the left, I (craziest idea ever) can expect them to be there. I know where they are! Which leads me to my next point..

Priority

Since I’m not fussin’ with my 9 windows that are open, wondering where to look for ‘em (something a taskbar is supposed to do, but doesn’t supply the requisite window-parallel usage scenario).. anyways, since I’m not wasting time placing windows, I can focus on what I’m supposed to be doing: being a human with responsibilities over resources and being creative and learning. Those are the categories my applications have taken: email, calendar & files on the left, OpenOffice, Journal & Web on the right.

Lists, lists, lists!

Perhaps this is more iphone-y than anything, but there’s some goodness to be had with the removal of clutter (and there’s plenty on the web!) Yet, I use google calendar & email all day long. I don’t need another cal or mail app, I just need a browser open with these bits in it. But even these apps aren’t clean. Facebook, Yahoo Mail, Google Mail, Google Reader AND Google Calendar ALL have sidebars. Why, oh why do we need sidebars? They take up sooo much screen real-estate, especially after you scroll.

Bad:

What you get when viewing web-apps half-screen'd or in portrait

Good:

Ahh, mobile: a clutter-free web-experience!

You just have to load the mobile versions of the webapps you use. To find them, I viewed them on my phone & checked the url. I’ve also found the ‘print’ versions of yahoo news to be similarly readable.

Conditions: sure forcing all my windows into 2 locations (left/right) & 2 states (half-screen or maximized) is ‘limiting’, but I’m a limited human! I need some parallels here to stay sane. I can’t be moving & resizing windows all day long.

Perhaps I’m just getting old, and will eventually regress into the old lady who only has one window open (maximized) at a time. Until then, this is a good compromise.

But there’s 2 things I’m here to mention: my dream & the obvious rising behind Courier.

Why Courier is Obvious:

First off, how many people do you see carrying around a notebook/folio of some variety? Everyone. The business guys do it for their contacts, dates & files. College kids do it for their class notes. Artsy-kids do it for their scribble-pics. Christians have a habit of doing it for their Bible study/sermon notes. Everyone.

Second: netbook+eReader. Limited computing strikes again, and awaiting for a convergence.

Third: Intel’s atom platform (and I would argue ARM even more!) is ready for this kind of thin-and-goodness. Especially with ssd’s (heck, I’d be happy with an SDHC!)

My Little Dream:

I’m a fan of the UI-customizability of Linux. Always have been: it’s what keeps me away from MacOS. Right now, I’ve got a toolbar that has everything I need in it: time, calendar-on-click, applets & a task-switcher. All this overlays the wasted-space of window-titlebar. Most of the time I maximize my apps, so I can focus. But there are somethings that should be a sidebar: notably a tabbed filemanager (since I already have a tabbed term thanks to tilda).

And there’s no reason why a quick photo-viewer, calculator, contacts & datebook cannot also be in this sidebar (especially if cache’d & synced from Google!) All this sidebar stuff is too perfect. Why not make a Window Manager that runs specific apps in specific ‘frames’ (yes, like HTML old-skool style). The frames are resizable & collapsable. Ths is so (similar but) much more useful than a tiling WM.

Next up, I’ve never, ever understood file dialog boxes. I do however understand Delicious’ tagging. It auto-generates recommendations, and why not do this for files?  Linux is built for this: symlinks.

And while we’re at it, why not kill off scrollbars & make everything grab-and-draggable. Just use a modifier key (or both-click). Then we can have the app be like a magnifying glass, with the edges smushed to show you how much more you have down there (in preview-style).

As for all this journally stuff, Xournal is the single-best program I have ever, ever, ever encountered. Multiple-layers? yup. Print to PDF? Yup. Wanna add a new page? Click the ‘next page’ button. It could remove all it’s menus if it just had a ‘preferences’ dialog box. It is the model for any journaling program.

Lastly, mouse-gestures are very hot lately. I don’t use them because I’d like ‘em to be like Courier: context-specific AND list suggested actions, instead of always acting on its own.

Dreams, dreams, dreams.

All I’m sayin’ is if ASUS puts out an Intel Atom dual-screen netbook/eReader next year, or even this year, I’m putting my dreams to work. Just need to solve 2 problems:  the sidebar thinger (update: “devilspie” might be halfway there for me) & handwriting recognition (and I’ve got a prototype system coming this december when classes are out!).

Simply put: Maybe computers aren’t supposed to do everything, but be task-specific appliances. (And based on the interest in desktop-theories, they do a poor job of such task-focusing!)

I max-out the hardware on my mac daily. My job requires it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of having a job where I’m limited by my computing resources. But more intensely, I’m sick of having a computer appear like it can handle all I throw at it.

User-interface suggestions:

• Have the task-manager (Taskbar, Dock) show which apps are being hogs through simple color-recognition/visual intensity (bold, blackened out, etc)
• When I switch applications (alt-tab) show ratings of how bad an idea such a context-switch is! Or at least show how long it will take for the switch to become active!
• When I open a new application, show the likelihood of it running smoothly, or recommended apps to kill upon running this new application.

Fact is, my old Nokia N800 did this. I think my ARM-based WinMo 2003 device did this before as well. And I’m certain my new cellphone lets me run only 3 Java applications… and I’m OK with this! If I’m trying to do more than the device can handle, then it’s time to upgrade the device, or downgrade my expectations/idealism. Either way, both are better than me getting mad at a limited device that doesn’t realize it’s finitude.