Posted by
glen ep ropella on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/On-Apps-and-Browsers-tp6462875p6464110.html
Parks, Raymond wrote at 06/10/2011 12:01 PM:
> I think you may have missed the point of Russ' message.
[grin] Probably. I miss points all the time, especially when couched
in very terse language. In fact, if I actually _get_ a point, it's
cause for celebration.
> The whole
> "app" thing, whether web or proprietary, simply hides one layer of
> comlexity behind another complex layer. The end result is that the
> luser is completely seperated from their data yet equally confused.
I don't think so. Humans are (luckily) capable of lots of abstraction,
layers upon layers of it. That's why some of us like Jazz. ;-) Even if
your computer does some fancy things like present us with 9 alternate
apps with which to interpret a chunk of incoming data, we can
(eventually) learn to interpret and guide the process by which such
alternates are presented.
This is what we've been doing since the dawn of "the tool". Tools (e.g.
computers) don't adapt to us or make our lives any easier. We adapt to
the tools. We're better adapters than the tools will ever be
(singularity?!?). The separation doesn't matter (any more than an
iPhone user understands the device drivers they use when they make a
phone call, or a lab tech understands the physics of radioactive decay).
What matters is that the device behaves in a regular way. We expert
pattern recognizers will recognize the patterns and adapt ... even if a
generation of old farts has to die off for that to happen. ;-) "Get off
my lawn!"
> Your example of incoming data (and the proprietary nature of Apple's
> approach) makes sense. But the majority of transactions use existing
> data. Let's say the luser wants to play a song they know they own.
> Let's further postulate the actual file, whereever it resides, is not
> standard - an ogg codec file. The proprietary Apple app will only
> play songs in MP4 and only a few codecs. So the user will need to
> find the oggplayer app.
The point is that the user shouldn't do that work, the computer should.
The indexing is the important piece. If we're assuming that the data
is in "the cloud", then there's no reason the app can't also be
accessible, automatically installed from, the cloud. Perhaps it's just
a codec or perhaps it's a whole app that is either forked into versions
that run on the most popular machines or relies on a relatively common
virtual machine. Perhaps it's even a shared object that relies on a
grid infrastructure. None of that really matters as much as the
_index_, the name/address by which one refers to the data and the apps
that process the data.
The human need do nothing (except wait, depending on the bandwidth of
their connection and the compute power of their machine). It can all be
handled automatically if there is a standard ontology. The
attractiveness of approaches like Apple's are that standardization is
easier to achieve (and control, and exploit).
> Complexity is reduced but cumulatively the
> proliferation of apps will be just as confusing as the file system.
I disagree. The complexity increases with names/addresses, but not
necessarily apps. A decent example is what happens when I click on,
say, an OGG file on the web. Because of the defaults set in Firefox and
my preferences over the top of that, clicking on such a file calls up
VLC. Clicking on an M4A file, however, calls up Totem. Both begin
playing automatically, with the same standard pause, play, volume, etc.
buttons. The proliferation of apps complicates the index, but not my
interaction with the machine. All that's required is a better way to
manage/navigate the index, which is provided by the markup of an
ontology (and requires more expressibility than a 2D GUI).
--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095,
http://tempusdictum.com============================================================
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