Thread: Dr. Ari Jaaksi on Maemo 5
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nilchak is offline nilchak
2008-09-24 , 20:16
Posts: 1,097 | Thanked: 650 times | Joined on Nov 2007
#469
Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
The one and probably only thing that makes the tablets different from most competing and semi-similar platforms is the fact that they are, in fact, small desktop PCs and you can port desktop applications with little, sometimes no effort.

This is the only reason why I bought the thing in the first place. I didn't want a "mobile device" that's crippled because some design guru said mobile interfaces have to be restricted. I wanted everything I have on my desktop, only smaller. That's what I've got.
I see this vision failing majorly (don't get me wrong, I understand what you want personally). But if the aim of the tablets is to carry over all (or most) desktop apps to a portable device and only that (so that we have a LOT of apps), then it is doomed. There has been many such devices (Zaurus to start with with Debian ported over, many Windows based MID's) where desktop apps have been ported (or the whole OS in fact). But porting an app is only half the job. The actual part is making it usable, and that is where this paradigm fails miserably.

Why, oh why would a general user want the full featured desktop app on his little 4" screened device ? I mean would I want the tablet apps to be ported over to my little 2" phone next, just so I can have access to most popular apps on every device ? That IS NOT the point of mobile devices.

IPhone interface (and I am not praising iPhone here, so lets not go there) is an example of mobile devices having its own unique UI and UX which should be distinct from its desktop application.

Mobile apps can compliment the desktop apps in function and extend it that way, but just porting a desktop app to a mobile platform, UI and all, does not a mobile application make.
 

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