PzIfVzIIJuwHYXXmGWF, 2012-04-22 06:57:25

Operating systems, lsleciapey mobile ones, and the Frameworks built on top of it should be about elegance. And yet I don't see this anywhere in this article.Let me explain what I mean, and please excuse me for using Apple as an example here since I think there is currently no one doing it better, which is a very sad thing. In OSX, iPhone or Desktop, the layering of all the different subsystems is very elegantly done. This enables them to be so platform-agnostic in the first time, and made the intel-switch or all the mobile endeavors possible. It also enables them to get the really old NextStep-Frameworks to still be regarded as the most advanced way to do UIs - even though they are probably the oldest Framework still being around. Hardware Acceleration of the compositing of the View Hierarchy on the graphics card, with the help of Quartz Extreme and Core Animation is the stuff that Nokia - years after the first iPhones debut - still dreams about.We will see the graphics chips play a even bigger role in mobile UIs as they do now, as they can offer a lot of performance while using relatively low power. What will happen when the mobile Chips don't just support OpenGL ES, but the real thing, with the full shader languages, etc? Then there will be CoreImage on mobile devices. Quartz2D Extreme. OpenCL. And all this parallelization stuff like GrandCentral/Blocks? Made for mobile devices obvoiusly, since not many people need this power on the desktop, but on mobile it is the only way to increase computing power without a significant burst in energy use. Does Nokia have - or even think of - similar technologies? I highly doubt it.A philosophy to build the OS on flexibility, expandability and elegance might not be the most sexy thing - NeXT struggled a lot since nobody needed this approach in the 80s and 90s - but it will eventually form a stable base to built all those dream devices. The philosophy here is not "yeah, it works" or "yeah it works great", but "we release it when we can't think of a way how to do it better". That is the hardest possible goal, and a LOT of times it's also missed in OSX, but sometimes it works.And then, after the device in your pocket became a computer, with a flexible and elegant architecture, developers can start to make it into this universal dream machine that keeps whatever information you might seek just a few fingertips away. It's not about the device being a fully capable computer with linux and a terminal, and it's also not about leaving away files, folders and the like - this is very, very commonplace and will not set Nokia apart in the future.The bad thing is, that making something like this takes a lot of focus and effort. And that this has already happened with NextStep/OSX. There is a huge opportunity for a second chance with the advent of multitouch and mobile multiprocessing - but again it seems that Apple is the only company realizing this.Until Nokia and the Maemo team thinks about this stuff, and will not get distracted by strategy changes, they will be overrun by a train they didn't see coming. Again.

Reklama