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The segment was a casualty of the fact that very different elements of design were forced to co-exist in a space where nothing worked in a reasonable, enjoyable
by AmVess 14y ago
The segment was a casualty of the fact that very different elements of design were forced to co-exist in a space where nothing worked in a reasonable, enjoyable or productive manner.
Desktop UI on a tiny device? They were always impossible to use and had vastly more tradeoffs than bonuses in actual use.
A functional web browser was the last item on a very long list of shortcomings these devices had.
- cma 14y agoThat makes it sound worse than it was: it wasn't a desktop is with e.g. floating windows. It did have trappings of windows 95 that didn't belong: start menu, task bar, systray But, apps were full screen. The biggest impediment was internet explorer couldn't render standard webpages that the desktop version could. That and resistive touch sucked.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoI had one. It was a fun toy. Did about as much as a Palm Pilot. And that's probably why it failed.
- quanticle 14y agoDesktop UI on a tiny device? They were always impossible to use and had vastly more tradeoffs than bonuses in actual use. And Microsoft is making exactly the same mistake again with Metro on Windows 8. Only this time, instead of bringing the desktop UI to mobile, they're bringing the mobile UI to the desktop. How many failures is it going to take before Microsoft realizes that different form factors require different UIs?