Monthly Archives: July 2009

I had a quick play with WriteRoom for Mac OS X last week and was stunned at how much a simple change of interface could improve the speed at which I write and also my ability to overview in my mind an entire article. It is a text editor which includes an interface which is as minimalistic as the word processors found on the very early computers and this may seem like a backward step. The irony is that it is far from a backward step because it really does let the important parts shine through- the words.

In reality you can simulate this affect in most word processors, but that’s not the point. The point is that taking the menus and options away makes all of the difference in the world to me and it suddenly dawned on me that the cluttered interfaces we use on desktops and some smartphones do little more than get in the way of what needs to be done. In the early days of computing people could not do much at all with them in comparison to today, but there was merit in the way they worked. Word processing is easy to take back in time and simplify because for writers it is just words on a screen- it is about creativity and expressing yourself and to do that you don’t want to be clicking menus and looking at faceless icons and menu titles. Microsoft is a specialist at making applications which look exceptionally busy and this has been translated to the core Windows Mobile OS. Mac OS and Linux are fairly clean and the iPhone is probably the cleanest looking of all the major mobile operating systems on the market.

I am not suggesting that we can go back to the days of two colour interfaces because so many applications cannot work properly that way, but I do think that the approach of hiding the inner workings of software is what works and this is something that Apple have always lived by. As computers and smartphones progress they obviously become more complex, but we have reached the evolutionary stage where the hardware and software can start to become tools which fit the human being rather than the other way around.

A television is a computer, a washing machine is a computer, a home telephone is a computer, but no one ever stops to consider that. We just use these items to get a particular task done. We should be able to do the same with a computer and not have to adjust every little aspect of the software and hardware to get to the point that we can start to use them. The future of computing is in making people forget that they are using a computer, and to do that we may have to look back a few years before we can move forward.

It is very difficult to keep a perspective on the mobile industry when you only use one device. Over the past few years I have tended to move from platform to platform and it is human nature that I will look at news more closely for the platform that I own. If I remember correctly my PDA and smartphone path has been like this- Psion -> Palm -> Windows Mobile -> Palm -> Symbian -> Palm -> Windows Mobile -> iPhone -> BlackBerry -> iPhone. This offers me a wide perspective on how each platform has developed over time and also leads me to consider what has gone right and what has gone so wrong for certain platforms.

We all know the story of Palm OS and what went wrong there; a lack of software development and some crippling restrictions which means that it could not keep up with the connected age. We also know the story of Psion; a lack of marketing initiative in the US when the US dominated all things mobile. The others survive and their stories continue, but I have great concerns for one of them, and maybe two. BlackBerry and iPhone are sitting pretty at the moment and so is Android. None of them have reached their true potential even though they are selling in the millions, and I suspect that these three will be carrying the smartphone baton for the next couple of years at least. When you have the backing of three companies who are positively dripping in dollars it is hard to go wrong. Apple, RIM and Google are forward thinking and tend to move at exactly the right time to keep up with the changing demands of mobile users. RIM does need to make a wholesale change soon though because it won’t survive forever with an OS which works primarily for organisation and communication, no matter how good it is.

The future of Windows Mobile seems more uncertain than the others and the longer it lingers on one manufacturer, HTC, the more uncertain its future will become. HTC has got the Hero now and this could trigger a rush to Android. If sales are high and the development costs are lower (which is the case) then any company would re-think its strategy in the light of sales figures which may well show that Windows Mobile cannot compete with Android at the moment. I am not suggesting that Android is better than Windows Mobile, but I am suggesting that it is showing its age, and that it is not built to cope with the human interface style people expect in 2009. Android most definitely is and this is its killer advantage over Windows Mobile and Symbian.

Talking of Symbian, what on earth is going on there? All of the talk of Ovi, S60 5th edition and many other so-called revolutionary steps from Symbian do not disguise the fact that the OS is ill suited to touch screens. The N97 is an example, but one that is sadly let down in too many other ways for the touch screen annoyances to even enter the top 10 disappointments of this phone. Symbian needs some serious work and to be fair to Nokia it is trying- it has the money, the users and the support to succeed, but needs to stop following the likes of Apple and do something seriously original and inventive.

I am fairly clear in my mind where the industry is going and I think we are entering another period of variations on the same old themes. Apple is unlikely to release anything new until this time next year because it is highly US centric and will not want to annoy those subscribers who took out 24 month contracts on the iPhone 3G. Microsoft doesn’t seem to know where to go next and still appears to have a belief that tweaking Windows Mobile will be enough to succeed- so wrong. RIM will make big changes and these could work very well if the background philosophy of the BlackBerry OS is held in place. Palm has the Pre to sit on and time will tell as to how well that will do. I think it will keep Palm afloat for a period of time, but I am far from convinced it will do the job for them long term. Finally, Nokia has the hardware and the clout to make the software great- time to get clouting then.