Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Awesome essay. I highly recommend UI developers of Maemo read this immediately (as well as other application developers that could use a bit of a UI overhaul). As an upcoming developer, I know I gathered some good ideas from it.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

He brings up some very good points, and I would personally love to see an unconventional, object-oriented interface on the 770/N800.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

I said something like this last week, Sean, here:http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...t=3988&page=4; although I wasn't as polite. I was brutal. I basically said that the Newton OMP in my drawer, which still works great, is infinitely better as a PDA than my 770.

I know, I know, Nokia says: "But it's not a PDA, it's an Internet Tablet!" Whatever.

I have to add to your list: Newton Connection Utilities. They sync'ed my Newtons, which included the OMP, 110, 130 and an eMate 300. Sure, you can copy files via the USB cable, but what files, from where and to where? Who knows? The Linux fanboys? Joe User doesn't.

The Newton was able to easily copy the most relevant data from the PC or Mac since its inception (uh, was it in 1993?), and the Internet Tablet can't even import a list of contacts, calendar items or really anything, in 2007, 14 years later? The 'import' feature is cr@p, and it is inconsistent. Give me a break. I am not going to re-enter all my contacts by hand - that's ridiculous.

I did a project for my Operating Systems class in college, on the Newton OS, and I did a lot of research about the ARM processor and how it can idle down, sleep soundly, then wake up, and switch on immediately, when it needs to alert the user of a timed event. The Internet Tablet, which also runs the ARM processor, is crippled, so that it will not do one simple thing, which is: wake the heck up, to tell Michael that he is missing a staff meeting. I need that.

Can somebody make a decision to switch this feature back on? Can we even get a simple cron for this? Today?

Finally, you did mention the toolkit, and here is the thing - I know C++, VB and Java - that is what I use at work. I do not have hours and hours of free time to learn a new language like Python or Scheme. I would actually pay for a robust C++ tool (something like Visual C++) or a tool for Java, to develop real apps for the Internet Tablet.

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

I wish Apple had sold off the Newton IP rather than burying it. Such a lovely device to use, and the OS was terrific. Every PDA manufacturer could learn a thing or two from the Newt. With some work, it could have been a better OS to put on the iPhone than OS X. Steve's gone for style over function :-(

Great article!

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

What a phenomenal article! I don't need the N800 to accomplish the same tasks as a Newton, but his points on some of the mind boggling asinine UI decisions in the device are right on...particularly regarding the iconography and ridiculous waste of space throughout. (The taskbar at the top takes up FAR too much screen real estate with it's ugly border, as does the application icon section to the left.) It's a complaint that bubbles up to nearly all *nix distributions...that the UI is designed for geeks by geeks, and almost as an afterthought. This isn't as big of a deal on a workstation-class machine, but it is a serious impediment on a portable device.

One thing I've noticed in the PDF viewer is that there is no way to use the hardware buttons to move to the next page in a document. You can scroll around the page while zoomed in, but as far as I can tell there is simply no way to navigate page by page. Between that and the fact that you can't rotate the document on this gorgeous screen...I am just floored!

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

:eek:
this had me LOL:
"The scroll triangles adjust the menu -- I wish I were kidding you -- by the pixel. Not the item. The pixel. It's really fun pressing and holding for things to slowly go by."
Makes me feel sad all the Newton IP doesn't have a platform. hope someone at Nokia or Apple is listening...

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

Fortunately at least the top bar is themeable in the way that it can be made a bit less space waster. Also the left and right application borders can be stripped off. I agree that they should take less space by default, but I'm just saying that using community themes, you can get a bit more space for apps in 770 and N800. e.g. nuvotheme uses 45 pixels in the top bar for apps while all default themes use 60 pixels.

https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa.../NuvoTheme.deb

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

OK, I'm going to dismiss a lot of your points - although that doesn't mean I don't agree with the spirit, just to clarify the detail so it doesn't come across as FUD.

You see the external media: there's nothing on here, so there's nothing to get confused by. If you use the File Manager and copy stuff to the clearly labelled MMC card, it'll then show up when plugged in to a PC.

I think here you're making the mistake of assuming that because you've poked around with Xterm (or followed instructions to do something "out of the ordinary"), you assume others will too.

What would a Nokia-provided sync actually import calendar items *to*? They don't provide a PIM. GPE Calendar does provide an import (and synchronisation) which works well for me with ScheduleWorld and Google Calendar.

It's done (late, admittedly): OS 2007 includes an alarm framework:

http://maemo.org/platform/docs/howto...face_bora.html

Hopefully GPE will be updated to use it shortly.

C++ should be possible with gtkmm/maemomm and possibly Laika/CDT in Eclipse. I dunno, though.

Cheers,

Andrew

Re: Apple Newton Developer Talks About the Maemo GUI
 

This is the one thing about the UI that actually bothers me daily, the rest I'm pretty flexible with. I've seen so many UIs, I can adjust.

But the missing page scroll button hampers my daily use. In the pdf reader I have to go out of full-screen and use the stylus on the arrow at the bottom, and in the browser I likewise have to use the scrollbar (seriously, who actually uses the scrollbar for page forwarding even on a desktop? After you figured out a better way (keys, wheel mouse, whatever). It's tiring.

I expected the five-way button to let me scroll page-by-page up and down, as the five-way button on my T3 will. Instead it just moves line-by-line up and down in some menu to the left or some such other useless thing. The button on my T3 works intelligently enough to "know" when i want to scroll. This should definitely be possible to fix in the N800 UI, we're not talking paradigm shift here (unlike the database vs. file system discussion).

The five-way key should let you scroll page-by-page up and down, and scroll left/right when there is a horizontal scrollbar in the application.

(Actually there's one more thing I would like: Rotate browser window to portrait mode, for use when reading Slashdot. Slashdot keeps all the text in a narrow center column, very bad for the N800 landscape screen. Ah, I see you mentioned rotation too, in the quote above:) ).