4 ms·

Roughly speaking, current OSs "stop" at tools for interacting with data, and the hardware behind it. In this world where we expect internet access, I'm beginni

Roughly speaking, current OSs "stop" at tools for interacting with data, and the hardware behind it. In this world where we expect internet access, I'm beginning to think OSs need to manage certain types of data more proactively. I'm trying to wrap a general point around your concerns about contacts. Contacts seem one of the data types that need something approaching OS level tooling. For me, another is "tags". I want to use the same set of tags I apply to "files" to apply to "contacts" too. I keep hoping someone will make a rival OS that tackles this head-on. Start at Haiku, sprinkle some of Apple's "the UI isn't a virtualised office any more" UI paradigm, model a small handful of human-centric data types (like places, people, maybe individual health, too) and the access and interaction rules that support them safely and really run with it.

xerox13ster 6y ago
That rival was Windows Phone 7.5 through 8.5 They had a People hub that collated all your contacts and had reasonable sharing mechanisms for the data. HERE was essentially that places concept. I'm sure if Windows Phone had kept traction, it would be integrating your smart device health data into live tiles and a hub interface for all the metrics.
- rescbr 6y ago
  Windows Phone’s hub concept was marvelous. As a user I don’t care if I’m messaging you though MSN Messenger* , Skype or XMPP; I just want to IM. Gaming hub integrating with Xbox Live was a nice touch, it felt like MS finally got the concept of an ecosystem. * let’s keep it time accurate :)
  - asveikau 6y ago
    Except when you realize all of those implementations needed to be coded by Microsoft. There was no way for a third party to plug in. I heard some things from MS people that the clients for IM services were driven server side which would have made it hard and inelegant to add additional protocols. Nokia's maemo had this done with better execution. The SMS app had a plug-in for xmpp and I used it for Google talk. I think I used a third party one for Google voice. There was a Skype one that supported calling through the normal phone app but it didn't work very well. The clients were run on the phone and not in the cloud.
    - rescbr 6y ago
      IIRC you had to do server side push as Windows Phone 7 didn't support local notifications and always-on Internet connection. Some IM clients used some tricks to run in background, such as masquerading as a streaming audio player (that had always-on capabilities enabled) but you lost the music player capabilities of your smartphone when running those apps. WP8 relaxed some of those restrictions but it wasn't enough to truly develop a IM client. It's true that only Microsoft could create such integrations, but it was a business decision. On Windows Phone 7 era, regular developers couldn't deploy native code and you couldn't call native APIs directly from the managed .NET/Silverlight runtime. Native SDK wasn't available at all, but it was a regular Windows CE at its core. Maemo's was way superior to Windows Phone. It's a shame that Microsoft trojan-horsed Nokia.
- greyhair 6y ago
  My son and I were both long time Windows Phone users. It never gained the public acceptance required to survive, but I don't know anyone that used it for any length of time, that does not miss it. The UI was very intuitive and it just worked for me. My brother is still running it on his Nokia phone, that seems to be lasting forever. I am not sure which model it is, but the camera on it is fabulous. I wish I had picked one of those up.

xerox13ster 6y ago

That rival was Windows Phone 7.5 through 8.5 They had a People hub that collated all your contacts and had reasonable sharing mechanisms for the data. HERE was essentially that places concept. I'm sure if Windows Phone had kept traction, it would be integrating your smart device health data into live tiles and a hub interface for all the metrics.

rescbr 6y ago
Windows Phone’s hub concept was marvelous. As a user I don’t care if I’m messaging you though MSN Messenger* , Skype or XMPP; I just want to IM. Gaming hub integrating with Xbox Live was a nice touch, it felt like MS finally got the concept of an ecosystem. * let’s keep it time accurate :)
- asveikau 6y ago
  Except when you realize all of those implementations needed to be coded by Microsoft. There was no way for a third party to plug in. I heard some things from MS people that the clients for IM services were driven server side which would have made it hard and inelegant to add additional protocols. Nokia's maemo had this done with better execution. The SMS app had a plug-in for xmpp and I used it for Google talk. I think I used a third party one for Google voice. There was a Skype one that supported calling through the normal phone app but it didn't work very well. The clients were run on the phone and not in the cloud.
  - rescbr 6y ago
    IIRC you had to do server side push as Windows Phone 7 didn't support local notifications and always-on Internet connection. Some IM clients used some tricks to run in background, such as masquerading as a streaming audio player (that had always-on capabilities enabled) but you lost the music player capabilities of your smartphone when running those apps. WP8 relaxed some of those restrictions but it wasn't enough to truly develop a IM client. It's true that only Microsoft could create such integrations, but it was a business decision. On Windows Phone 7 era, regular developers couldn't deploy native code and you couldn't call native APIs directly from the managed .NET/Silverlight runtime. Native SDK wasn't available at all, but it was a regular Windows CE at its core. Maemo's was way superior to Windows Phone. It's a shame that Microsoft trojan-horsed Nokia.
greyhair 6y ago
My son and I were both long time Windows Phone users. It never gained the public acceptance required to survive, but I don't know anyone that used it for any length of time, that does not miss it. The UI was very intuitive and it just worked for me. My brother is still running it on his Nokia phone, that seems to be lasting forever. I am not sure which model it is, but the camera on it is fabulous. I wish I had picked one of those up.