'Re: [Moblin Dev] User experience strategy'

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List:       moblin-dev
Subject:    Re: [Moblin Dev] User experience strategy
From:       David Woolbright <davidwoolbright () mac ! com>
Date:       2009-11-24 23:00:51
Message-ID: 79B3D0E2-C87E-4C81-A0F6-AD8F643EEE66 () mac ! com
[Download RAW message or body]

The mono project is conceptually interesting but has at least one  
significant flaw. I've dabbled with monodevelop on mac and while it's  
kind of cool to be able to write c# on a mac, all of the ui elements  
still look like windows. It doesn't adopt the native os chrome so it  
doesn't feel like a native app.

<ramble>

Here are some rough thoughts along the line I was thinking.

What positive lessons can we learn from:

1) Apple
     - Give away the development tools. If you want to develop an app  
for the mac or the iPhone, you can just download Xcode and start  
going. They don't charge people insane amounts of money for the  
privalege of writing apps that add value to their products (yes, I'm  
talking about you Microsoft). Apple wants developers to support their  
products so they give away to tools to encourage that. It's all about  
developer mindshare.
     - Seperation of Concerns. While I'm not the biggest fan of Xcode  
as an IDE, it does one thing really well - it forces everyone to write  
apps the same way. Every single mac app uses the model view controller  
pattern and there's no way around it. Forcing all apps into the same  
presentation pattern allows for a very clean seperation of concerns.

2) Adobe and Microsoft
    - Seperation of responsibilities. Once you've seperated the view  
from the code, you can let designers design the view and the  
developers write the code. Adobe's Flash Catalyst and Ms's Expression  
Blend allow those creative right brained people to do what they do  
best while flash/flex and visual studio allow those left brained  
developers to make stuff happen.

3) Google
    - Push the envelope. Their chrome os is a very intriguing project  
but I really admire their commitment to html5. Even though most of the  
browsers support some level of html5 -safari, chrome, firefox and  
opera - Microsoft still has significant marketshare with ie6/7/8 -  
none of which supports the new spec. But google doesn't care because  
html5 is the future whether ms gets on board with it or not.

</ramble>

So I guess where I'm heading is this

moblin team, you all have one of the most elegant and coolest products  
I've seen in a long time. I hope and pray that it succeeds. But my  
concerns are this

- even though you've created another cool Linux distro, what will  
seperate it from becoming just another distro in an increasingly  
fragmented Linux environment?

- how do you intend to position this product against ubuntu remix and  
other Linux netbook projects?

- what compelling reason is there for me to develop apps for this os?  
I read today that game makers have begun abandoning android and moving  
to the iPhone, because that's where all the people are.




On Nov 23, 2009, at 12:00 PM, james_p_freyensee@linux.intel.com wrote:

> Mono/C# is available in Moblin.  Maybe that could be an alternative to
> writing in C and making things a bit easier to develop an app in  
> Moblin?
>
> I dabbled with writing C# a couple of apps in Windows and seeing how  
> they
> would work in Linux, so there is an opportunity to use a higher-level
> language like C# for Moblin apps, especially since the Mono packages  
> are
> there in Moblin 2.1.
>
>> Interested at your ideas about enabling engineers to create apps on  
>> Moblin
>> platform.
>>
>> Is that something like java environment?
>>
>>
>> William
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: dev-bounces@moblin.org [mailto:dev-bounces@moblin.org] On  
>> Behalf Of
>> David Woolbright
>> Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2009 2:42 AM
>> To: Moblin
>> Subject: [Moblin Dev] User experience strategy
>>
>> Moblin dev team,
>>
>> I love your os. From a visual design point of view it puts jolicloud
>> and chromeos to shame.
>>
>> I'm new to the project so if I get my facts wrong please forgive me.
>> The one weakness I see with the project is level of difficulty in
>> developing new applications.
>>
>> Chrome os is used to access new and existing web applications. They
>> demoed running the web versions of ms office and running gmail and
>> google apps. Anything that'll run on the web will run on chrome os.
>>
>> Jolicloud takes a slightly different approach. You can add web
>> applications to the desktop from their app library. This uses Mozilla
>> prisim to wrap the site so it behaves like an app. They also support
>> the adobe air runtime so you can run any air app.
>>
>> The problem I see with moblin is that if a developer wants to write  
>> an
>> app for the os, it has to be written in c.
>>
>> Unfortunately, technical merits don't always win with capturing
>> mindshare with the market - look at os/2 and windows 3.1. What counts
>> is the number of apps available for the platform. It wasn't until
>> Microsoft lowered the barrier of entry to developing Windows apps  
>> from
>> c to visual basic that Windows took off.
>>
>> You've got a great product and a great looking product. I'd love to
>> see it become widely successful. What I think would help that would  
>> be
>> a user experience strategy that supports the ease of designing and
>> developing new applications.
>>
>> I've been a developer for about 15 years, have been working as a user
>> experience designer for the last 5 and have a foot in both worlds.
>> I've got some ideas for how to do this if anyone's interested.
>>
>> If I've misunderstood the situation, I apologize. Like I said  
>> earlier,
>> I'm new to the project so if my analysis is wrong, please ignore  
>> this.
>>
>> This is one of the most elegant operating systems I've seen and would
>> love to help out if possible.
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> David
>> _______________________________________________
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>> _______________________________________________
>> Moblin dev Mailing List
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>>
>> To manage or unsubscribe from this mailing list visit:
>> http://lists.moblin.org/listinfo/dev or your user account on
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>>
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>>
>
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