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I'm not so sure abstracting away document open is a good idea in the long run. You lose the ability to separate your valuable data from the application, and it
by zhyder 16y ago
I'm not so sure abstracting away document open is a good idea in the long run. You lose the ability to separate your valuable data from the application, and it encourages lock-in within each app.
Abstracting away document save is also probably not a good idea unless there's automatic versioning (at least up to a few versions) built in.
Also 1-dimensional lists (like the coverflow of docs in iPad's iWork) don't scale well. These problems are dealt with more effectively by hierarchical folder systems of today's desktop OSes than by the iPhone OS. They're not as foolproof, but there's real benefit in exchange for the complexity.
I agree with you about application start/stop though. Also, IMO infinitely adjustable/overlappable windows in desktop OSes don't add much value either. A simpler windowing model (maybe a little like webOS's cards; the iPad's is too extreme) would probably be better.
- sunchild 16y ago"You lose the ability to separate your valuable data from the application, and it encourages lock-in within each app." Most users of MS Word will be familiar with this.
- iron_ball 16y agoOnly because RTF is not well-known among nontechnical users.
- ElAura 16y agoAnd because most moderately complex Word documents will not transfer 100% when you save them as RTF. Or said differently, RTF documents won't display the same in different applications if they contain enough complexity.
- roc 16y agoDocument Open certainly didn't prevent proprietary document nightmares. Lock-in is only an issue inasmuch as users don't demand a sane export. Pages documents could be a proprietary, patent-protected nightmare internally and it wouldn't matter to me: when I want the document out, I export it back to myself in a standard format. (Sure, it'd be nice to have a mass-export, but these things will come with time.) Automatic versioning is also just "one of those things that software should do". Ideally with some logarithmically scaled set of versions when space becomes an issue. Folders don't scale either. People quickly wind up just using search. Search works pretty darn well everywhere beyond the trivial case. Of course, for search to work really well, what the iPhone OS needs is an interface to let device-wide search tap into third party data stores. Also, I think "piles" a la albums in the photo app is going to become a more generalized solution to the 'folder' issue. It will fill the middle-ground where linear lists break down and tagging/foldering makes sense, but before tagging/foldering gets so complex that you just search anyway.