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Reggie's Avatar
Reggie is offline Reggie
2007-01-23 , 20:50
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#1
Sean Luke, a former Apple Newton developer, writes an essay about the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet Graphical User Interface (GUI) shortcomings."I like the N800. That's why I bought it. But as great as the N800 is, and as much of an advance it represents technologically over my 10-year-old MessagePad, I am surprised at how much more sophisticated the MessagePad is than the N800 in terms of user experience. The point of this essay is to discuss (later) places where Nokia could actively, and generally easily, steal from the Newton, and some GUI bugs they could fix. But it might be useful first to mention four areas where the Newton really shines compared to the N800, but which the N800 will never (and in some cases should never) adopt simply because the change in technology would require too large a tradeoff in other areas. Unfortunate but probably necessary given the N800's intended purpose."The Apple Newton is an early line of personal digital assistants developed, manufactured and marketed by Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) from 1993 to 1998. The original "MessagePad" Newtons featured handwriting recognition. The term "Newton" was Apple's name for the operating system it used, but popular usage of the word Newton has grown to include the device and its software together. The name is an allusion to Isaac Newton's apple. Read the Sean Luke's full writeup.
Read the full article.
 
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2007-01-24 , 01:09
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#2
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.
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Texrat is offline Texrat
2007-01-24 , 03:21
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#3
He brings up some very good points, and I would personally love to see an unconventional, object-oriented interface on the 770/N800.
 
michaelalanjones is offline michaelalanjones
2007-01-24 , 03:50
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#4
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.
Last edited by michaelalanjones; 2007-01-24 at 13:51.
 
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lavo is offline lavo
2007-01-24 , 04:03
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#5
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!
 
crackhead is offline crackhead
2007-01-24 , 05:36
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#6
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!
 
huari is offline huari
2007-01-24 , 07:50
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#7

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...
 
konttori is offline konttori
2007-01-24 , 08:21
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#8
Originally Posted by crackhead View Post
.... (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.) ...
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
Last edited by konttori; 2007-01-24 at 08:24.
 
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aflegg is offline aflegg
2007-01-24 , 10:15
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#9
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.

Originally Posted by michaelalanjones View Post
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.
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.

the Internet Tablet can't even import a list of contacts, calendar items or really anything, in 2007, 14 years later?
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.

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?
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.

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 (like Visual C++) or a tool for Java, to develop real apps for the Internet Tablet.
C++ should be possible with gtkmm/maemomm and possibly Laika/CDT in Eclipse. I dunno, though.

Cheers,

Andrew
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TA-t3 is offline TA-t3
2007-01-24 , 10:35
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#10
Originally Posted by crackhead View Post
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!
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 ).
Last edited by TA-t3; 2007-01-24 at 10:38.
 
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