Metro • Hacker News Board

Re: Metro

#161

Post by shinratdr » Fri, Sep 16, 2011, 7:18 AM UTC

cooldeal wrote: post #82

statictype wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was the portability and size and ease of access to apps (the ecosystem around the device) that makes the iPad successful. All of these things are possible because of the restrictions in iOS. For example, the lack of a filesystem forces apps to have a more simplified data access mechanism[1]. The good battery life and response time comes from the fact that the OS puts severe limits on what each app can do…

> the lack of a filesystem What?! How are files stored on iOS if there's no filesystem? Maybe you mean no user visible filesystem?

What!? I thought you had an actual concern! Maybe you're just being needlessly pedantic?

Re: Metro

#162

Post by redthrowaway » Fri, Sep 16, 2011, 7:25 AM UTC

pyre wrote: post #99

redthrowaway wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Office itself may eventually be divided along those lines, with a lightweight, tablet-friendly spinoff It'd be interesting to see how such a thing would differ from Google Docs, and if it would justify the kind of prices MS likes to charge for Office. An Office app for lightly-spec'd computers makes sense, but you'd have to charge app prices for it and I don't see MS sacrificing their second biggest cash cow any tim…

How about an offline version? That's something that Google doesn't really offer.

More and more these days I find a computer without Internet to be increasingly useless. Google Docs' value proposition is irrevocably tied to its online status. It offers features that a strictly offline office suite does not. For Microsoft to be able to sell an offline Office, on a mobile, 3g-integrated computer, for Office prices, would require some functionality that they haven't come close to implementing. You would have to make some argument as to why your offline Office Light (lite for you colonials who insist upon spelling that corresponds to pronunciation) is better than the free, connected office suite Google offers.

At the moment, Google Docs is Office Light. It offers a limited subset of Office's features, and doesn't do it particularly well. What it does do, extremely well, is make it easy to get the documents you create to your friends and co-workers. I can't see a limited-functionality, offline version of Office competing with that.

Re: Metro

#163

Post by Tloewald » Sun, Sep 18, 2011, 5:14 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #127

Tloewald wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of nutty to equate technological simplification and totalitarianism. Some people don't want to solder their own computers together or inspect their own meat. We need, occasionally, to draw a line of abstraction over complicated stuff so we can build upwards. This is why we code in high level languages rather than toggling switches on front panels, even though it meant surrendering some "freedom".

Yes, layers of abstraction can be useful. I don't see how the iOS restrictions are a layer of abstraction, though. And selling pre-built computers doesn't mean you have to glue the box shut. You just have to make sure people don't have to mess or even think about the internals unless they really want to.

Some iOS restrictions are obviously simply business driven, but fewer than you might think.

E.g. The "give us 30% and don't undercut" rule means that the user can buy from the app store without needing to price compare. The "no execution of outside code" rule means no platform subversion with the endless security issues this would bring.

If you stop thinking in terms of technical capabilities and start thinking in terms of the user's cognitive load, iOS is a huge step forward in terms of abstraction.