There is the complexity required to make something functional. This is about 20% of the complexity. Then the further complexity required to make something usable. This is about 80% of the complexity.

Often people get these figures the wrong way around, put 80% of the effort into functionality, and 20% into usability. This results in something perceived as complex, but actually less complex than it needed to be.

The car has an advantage in that there's been much more work done on the user interface. Back when cars began, they required a lot more knowledge of their working, and only an engineer (or someone who could afford one) would have one. Most people couldn't understand why someone wanted to travel so fast.

It's the same with the Nokia tablet. It's a technology which will change the world, but this isn't even as accessible as Henry F's little black number.

It'll be ages before linux reaches the complexity, and therefore imagined simplicity of the humble motor car. This is because it's designed by engineers who think the UI is 20% of the work required.

Apple's iPhone is approaching the car problem from the other direction: It has a wonderful UI which really makes it easy to use, but at the moment there's nothing to use. But they've done the tough 80% of the work and features can come thick and fast now.

I wonder who will reach the sweet spot first?

I'm betting Apple have an internet tablet announced in under 2 weeks time.


Faye

I'll take that bet.

At that point I just had to grin with all of the "hacks" I used to keep my poor old 80's beater running a couple years ago. Like changing alternators in the middle of the night in the pouring rain. Or bypassing damaged wiring and having it short out later causing my car to lose all electrical power on a dark twisty road. Or how the internal wiring in it was shot so to use the automatic windows I had to pull off the interior door panels and run a 12v source to the right pins. Or driving it back from the original owner with a piece of lexan in place of a windshield. (lexan is *awesome* stuff, BTW)

When I think about it like that a little software recompiling every now and then seems just about infinitely preferable (though doesn't make as good a story...).

WOW--been along time since I've seen anyone mention an Intel 4004. Good stuff. You are correct, a modern automobile is far more complex than an Internet Tablet. My Cadillac's camshaft sensor is failing and the car's diagnostic console reported this last week (directly on the dashboard command console). It is a Hall Effect sensor located in the distributor. To replace it is not going to be fun or inexpensive.

I know a great amount about my car, and it definitely is way more complex than my N800.

Anyone want a Intel 1702 UV-EPROM? or a 8748 microcontroller from 1977? I got 'em....hundreds of 'em.

An OMAP processor wouldn't survive long in space. The only one I know used in Europe missions that are radiation-proof are ERC32.
The OS running on the n800 is much much more complicated than the OS running on a space mission processor.
As it's little OS and relatively small application running on top of it, 33Mhz is usually sufficient for good performance on top of a Real Time OS.

If you compare an old (80s) car to an n800, I would say that the n800 is more complicated, much more parameters.

Well don't forget that how long the processor survices depends heavily on the shielding, for example on the ISS the astronauts use standard IBM Thinkpads with Windows (I heard they had a macro virus on them at one point).
On the other side of the spectrum the mars rovers are running VxWorks on a MIPS compatible processor (33 Mhz) but still thanks to a few gigs of flash Linux would probably able to run on them. And things like this processor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750
would also run a standard realtime Linux without problems. Of course you wouldn't want to use a GUI on them, but I guess a combination of 2.4 Linux Kernel + busybox or GNU coreutils wouldn't be much less secure than the VxWorks used on the mars rovers and many more space based systems.
Don't forget unlike Windows there are already hundreds of mission critical systems running on Linux where an hour of downtime would possibly cost billions of dollars (the New York stock exchange servers are just a small example)
However I guess because of some idiot there are also Windows computers controlling mission critical stuff. (The worst thing i have seen so far were controlling computers at Houston (you can see them on the big monitors on Nasa TV though there is also a system running Red Hat), a windows 95 system controlling an artificial heart for a cell culture and coast guard safety systems)

N800 vs car: the car is more complex as it has more hardware to deal with. OTOH, some cars use Windows CE (BMW iDrive system), so some cars' software is vasty inferior.

Oh, so reed stylii and clay tablets you had, did you? Very well for you Mr. Fancy-Schmancy scribe, given that we had to make do with drawing shapes in the sand with our fingers. Oh, and that wind! Let me tell you. Reed stylii and clay tablets would have been a welcome luxury.

A car today was not a car in the past. Having seen old cars, cars like a 92 and 94 camry (mine being a 94 camry) and now 2003+ Camrys. Just opening the hood can tell you how complex and advanced cars are today.

Operation wise, not much has changed. A gas pedal is still a gas pedal, brake still brake. But hey hold it down and you get antilock brakes! But actual design wise..haha huge change. As my dad says, it's impossible to do any self-work on a Camry nowadays, compared to the older ones. It's just easier to take it to the dealership. And now they're coming with even more electronics built in.

I think the tablet is the same way, out of the box. Operational wise it works just fine like a car. Browse the internet, use skype, yup all fine. Start tinkering and your going reach complexity real quick

But as to which, I say a car. It's rapidly reaching a combination of car mechanics and electronics as we know them today.

The second generation iDrive is VXWorks - Windows CE kept doing the inevitable...

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Ah'd says a N810 be more difficult. Ah keeps pouring gas in it and it ain't not going.

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