Re: Appelle la cloche – Benny’s B and B card

Thibault: “Cut!” — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:42:15 -0000

Allo? Ici la cloche (T'as raison, ça sonne bien :-)
Il aurait fallu une sonnerie qui appelle un portable directement: http://www.croydonguardian....

Re: 1987 radio ads with Stephen Fry

Thibault: “Cut!” — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 02:11:35 -0000

Thanks for stopping by. Great work on http://www.dancingbear.co.uk by the way.

Re: 1987 radio ads with Stephen Fry

Thibault: “Cut!” — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:34:37 -0000

Glad you liked them. You (Jon or Yeosh?) don’t look so old on your website http://www.pushbuttonproduc... :-) Great site, great comics.

Re: Palm did what Nokia, RIM, and Microsoft couldn’t: build a better experience than Apple

Thibault: “Cut!” — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 01:34:30 -0000

An OS powered by a dynamic language on a mobile plateform?
I might be retarted but Apple tried to sell us this one and it didn’t work.

Mobile processing power didn’t increased that much on the meantime.

I would be very surprised to read their demos with smooth transitions and animations, their apps (calendar, address book, pictures..) are actually powered by a javascript engine. It must be a plain old C++ (or similar), the only tools which deliver speed and small memory requirement.
Javascript “optimizers” are far from delivering the same efficiency that Java virtual machines do (like the one used for Android).

If the new Palm Pré apps are 1MB larger and 100% slower than their equivalent on the iPhone, it will show quickly.

Speed is important.
The only metric people feel when they actually enjoying using a device is the responsiveness of the interaction they have with it.

Which brings to us the same dilemma that Apple had: developers wants to get to the core of the device, say accessing the accelerometer, the full gestures, the keypad, etc.
So how long before we see WebOs apps and Native Pré apps?

--
Is Synergy is going to sync?
Sync is one of the most difficult task to get it right on the whole IT industry.
And as time fly, the task becomes harder and harder because of the number of providers we use to store “our digital things”.
Is the “combine everything in one” approach is really going to help or confuse people? Is merging all conversations into one a nice move?
I hope Palm did a lot of user testing before investing massively in their vision.
I hope they’re right and will be delighted if they are, but I will not buy a Pre to test it myself.

---
Kudos to Palm engineers to improve the User Interface on a mobile device.

But is nice screens and smart gestures will be enough? It remains to be seen as I never seen a proof yet.
However repainting and changing the display always been a good trick to have people coming in.

Also why have you dropped the stylus?
Why are you doing the same mistake as Apple as using 1dpi fingers on extremly high density screen.
You’ve been there before with the Palm 1 and its 160x160 pixels screen. So you know how and why precision matters.
On all your (crappy) videos we see people “missing” their target!
Let’s face it: fingers are fat and greasy.

I’m not saying they are not useful : a lot of Palm users were loosing their stylus and using their fingers instead, and were complaining the buttons were too small.
However we still don’t see somebody writing with their hands. Everybody use a pen.
Today the input resolution didn’t increased since the first Palm. The buttons are just nicer on a high definition screen.
I think there is a tradeoff between broad precision and finer control.

Palm was one of the few company able to accomodate both because of their legacy (the stylus and its gestures). For once a weakness could have been turned into an advantage.

The other company who got a chance to make something remarkable is now Microsoft with its mobile OS. They have a legacy stylus interface too.
However with the hype of the touchscreen it’s unlikely. And Microsoft never delivered an engaging interface.
Palm did. Once. A long time ago.

The three inputs fingers, keyboard and stylus are just mandatory for a modern mobile UI.
- The fingers for efficiency (always there, touch is quick),
- the keyboard because when you’re moving it’s easier (in the bus, the car, etc.) and because you have the other inputs you don’t need to have keys with several meanings.
- the stylus because it give you precision. Then you can draw, you can write, you can change the width of this excel spreadsheet, etc. You can DO more.

-----
What we’re seeing here with Palm annoucement is not even good PR.
Where are the videos with the crisp display showing fingers explaining how the device works? Like the ones we’ve seen an hour after the end of the iPhone keynote.
Before the iPhone ships people knew already how it worked because they had the opportunity to see a ton of tutorials about it.
The iPhone is not more intuitive than anything else, it’s the way the learning occurs: by friends saying “look how I’m smart, let me do a demo to you”.
The same trick has been done with the first iPod: you were able to use it on the web.
I cannot believe people coming from Apple have forgotten this.

Palm would have been bold by announcing the product and saying: “it’s so important that we will discontinue our Treo range as soon as the Pre is shipped” to show their focus.

Do we really care if your stock price was up? It’s just prove that stock prices are meaningless and do not reflect the true value of a company. Do we really need another proof to see the financial system and stock markets are broken?
Just another trick.

Please Palm executives, do us a favour, stop repeating “Palm is back”. The only things it sells is your weakness.

As a long time Palm user, I would be happy to believe once more your greatest development kit (the one starting with riddles such as “How can a gorilla learn to fly?” or “How do you fit a mountain in a teacup?”)
http://www.accessdevnet.com...

Best Regards.
Thibault

Re: On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J

Thibault: “Cut!” — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:15:36 -0000

Francisco you explain very well your vision and it’s always a delight to read your articles.
While learning (slowly) Capuccino and Objective-J, it remind me at every step the goodness of this investment. I had the same feelings while learning (slowly) NextStep and Objective-C a long time ago.

This is not about the language but about the consistency of the framework.
The whole create a beautiful unity where simplicity and elegance emerge (though it could use less words).

I can’t wait for you using SVG!

Thanks again for your work.

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Re: Appelle la cloche – Benny’s B and B card

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Re: Palm did what Nokia, RIM, and Microsoft couldn’t: build a better experience than Apple

Re: On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J