Microsoft has for years tried to get into mobile devices. Here you see Bill Gates really uncomfortable with the notion that Apple has succeeded more than Microsoft in this space. He is not wrong, since for a time Windows phones and tablets were the only ones out there, while Apple’s Newton was forgotten memory. Those devices either used a slightly modified Windows OS or one that copied all of its metaphors. The latest Windows phones are an exception, but with Windows 8, it will no longer be. It cannot be disputed that there are important applications that do not exist on mobile devices (currently), and therefore mobile devices are not complete (currently). So people argue that mobile devices will be full-fledged computers or desktops will not die. The idea of a dual interface seems to be aimed in this direction. However, a third possibility exists. Applications, after all, merely solve real life problems. They are not themselves holy. If there were a different way of accomplishing the same things, the applications could be replaced. One could argue that data is the rather more holy object. Back to this later.

While devices are converging, it becomes a question of what the hardware distribution of the future will look like, and how functions will be partitioned among them. In this video, Steve Jobs posits a rather linear, functional view of computing history, where things moved from desktops to more mobile devices as usage functions evolved from scientific and office work to entertainment and socializing. Bill Gates posits a more encompassing and parasitic view, seeing computing power spreading to colonize all niches, a niche for each device, none really going away. To him, the kind of space or niche makes a difference, like whether a device fits in a pocket or not.

What they are both getting at is that there are constraints — some hardware, some social convention — that limit what functions can be used where. Because if it were at all possible, why wouldn’t one want all functions on all devices? But there are power, weight, screen-size, and input device constraints that are fundamental. Given that, you can’t possibly have all applications run in all devices.

To address this, one way is to have all devices become one device — a hardware solution along with its companion software like Windows 8. This “classic” solution has existed quite a while now, e.g. convertible laptops, some better than others. The problem is in both hardware and software. The equivalent tethered power and heavy-case computing power cannot be had with mobility at any given time, even though mobile devices are more powerful than computers of even a few years ago. And the software interface is also different — requiring a stylus for mouse-like precision (although I like the stylus, it’s one more thing to hold). With Windows 8, the interface problem maybe is solved, but the hardware problem remains. There is talk of some dual-part computer where you can remove a light (both weight and CPU power) piece of it. The non-mobile base of such a computer would have additional processing capabilities as well as keyboard and mouse like a standard docking station. The hardware design for this though, would be enormously complicated if it were to be efficient. For example, two processors separated a great physical distance, does not make for good communication speed. Either that, or when the light piece is docked, its own capabilities are totally disabled for its trivial contribution to total computing power. This would be a waste of hardware and the cost would be even greater than a tablet and a separate non-mobile computer combined.

So what about another way. Forget combining all devices into one device — in hardware. Why not have all these devices, and even let them run all their vastly different applications and interfaces at vastly different processing capabilities, but combine them at the level of data? Given the constraints of the devices, people will write any and all applications that support functions natural to them — we need not worry about that. We only care that these applications can access a common set of data and have seamless sync’ing between them. This also has a buzzword already, it’s called cloud computing. Yet I don’t think it’s about migrating applications to the cloud — not so, although some of that will take place, for “light” applications (light on bandwidth and computation). The full power of each device though, is going to harnessed, I am sure of that. So the best gains from the cloud is data sync’ing. This is a problem not merely of sync’ing, but of a method to record data in a way that is universally available regardless of software or hardware platform. It’s not just document data, but things like preferences, and program states. And I’m not talking about applications that are simple and entertainment-like or applications already on the web for which devices are only terminals. Furthermore, this “cloud” doesn’t even need to be an internet company, it can be managed among the devices themselves or by any mostly-on device that is at a common locus of interaction, like a “cloud server” or some such in the home. I think this is the more likely future, because it makes more sense.

Beginning a few years back, when graphics cards in computers not used for games became powerful enough to do something interesting, out came features that tried to take advantage of this power. I’m talking about things like circular windows, transparency, video wallpapers, flipping window previews, 3d desktops, like a cube or whatever…

Now trust me. Since I don’t play games, I’ve thought about using the idle GPU for other purposes, too. So I tried the above features. And they all suck. Greatly. (I also tried GPGPU but that’s a rant for another day.)

Along the way, I’ve become convinced that trying too hard to “use” GPU power is the wrong way to go. Alas, it’s probably better to stick to the basics and think of things that are actually useful. But first, why are the aforementioned graphics features so repugnant that users (at least I) turn them off after a few tries? Because they are unnatural, that’s why!

For example, the shape of windows. Look, rectangles are nice, for a good reason. They tesselate well. Hexagons may even work. Circles do not work. Odd shaped windows are the bane of my existence. How about the use of transparency? It never works! You don’t actually want to see what’s underneath, because if you do, it’s distracting. So transparency blurs what’s behind to the degree that you can’t tell what’s behind. This is paradoxical and completely useless. Video wallpapers. Bad idea. The desktop should not be distracting with movements. The eye is extremely capable of detecting scene change, especially change due to movement. You do not want the background to move at all! Flipping windows as in Vista… no. It’s harder to see what’s in the window due to the 3d angle and harder to see which one is at the forefront because of a stack of very different looking windows all competing for attention. Cube or spherical surfaces for desktops a la Compiz: fail. Nothing on our current desktop naturally wraps around a cube or sphere. You’re introducing extra distortion to generate the unnecessary projection to 2D. This is stupid.

However, I can think of two useful graphics features that are modifications of the failures described here:

1. Getting things out of your way
Do you see all these people with multiple monitors? Why? Because people want space. They want multiple windows showing at the same time. They want a big desktop. Now desktop resolutions even on a single monitor these days are by no means small. I argue that it is the extremely inefficient use of a single monitor that drives people to multiple monitors. This is quite ridiculous, actually. Why do I say this? Because I’ve seen a good MDI (multiple document interface) in, say, source code editors and development environments that can easily put all the documents you want (usually just two) on screen at the same time. So there is no reason to give up on the same level of efficiency between multiple applications.

Okay, so what am I talking about. I think most space problems can be solved if there is a way to get things out of your way. For example, if I want to tesselate a screen with rectangles I may end up leaving unused space due to some windows being certain sizes. Wouldn’t it be nice for windows to be unions of rectangles and their contents flow within them naturally so that the entire screen looked like a newspaper page layout? This requires window content to be amenable to reflow, but whatever. It can be done. Barring that, it’d be nice if you can throw windows out of your way to a automatically determined reasonable location, either temporarily or permanently. Windows 7 sort of does that (but only to pre-defined locations and sizes like half a screen) and Mac OS X sort ot does the … opposite … of that by bringing all windows into view…

2. Changing backgrounds
While video backgrounds are extremely distracting, a changing background itself isn’t a bad idea at all. The background can be equally used to get attention, as a conduit for conveying information — provided that is the goal. After all, it is already used to convey some information, with desktop icons, etc., although this happens only when the background is actually the foreground — when all other windows are out of the way. So can the background convey information while still being the background, and how?

Yes, it can. First thing to realize is the background can’t really convey a huge amount of information, since during normal operation, either (a) a small portion of it is revealed at a time — e.g. the gap between windows; and (2) a large portion is revealed only briefly — e.g. when switching windows. But a small amount of information can still be conveyed through this. One of the best uses for the background is to convey quasistatic or low frequency data. For instance, you’ve seen little weather and time indicators… why not let the background show the time and weather display by actually displaying a scene of that? It can be either current conditions or forecast, so long as the user knows what it is. So, if you want to know if it will rain 6 hours from now in Capetown, and have set the display to show that, the desktop can simply display a scene of that — and this doesn’t really change except when the weather changes, which is precisely when you want to be distracted with this new information, and in a non-intrusive way (you’ll just notice something new between switching windows). At other times you don’t even notice.

I’m sure there are other applications like these. There is no excuse to pretend that piss poor UI design is acceptable if it just seems “cool”.

Windows XP Mode is an add-on for Windows 7 Professional and higher that comes in two parts, each of which has its own setup. The first is Windows Virtual PC, a new version of Microsoft’s free desktop virtualization platform, and the second is Virtual Windows XP itself, which is a virtual hard drive pre-loaded and licensed with Windows XP Service Pack 3.

The magic happens when you then close Virtual XP. Windows 7 whirs and grinds and creates a new Start Menu group called Virtual Windows XP Applications, in my case full of Office 2000 applications. I started Word 2000, and after a couple of minutes’ initialization, it opened in its own window, just like a native application. Impressive, until I started typing and found a severe delay between striking a key and text appearing on the page. (Edit: the couple of minutes are for booting Windows XP in the virtual machine?)

Just me or is this an incredible kludge? If the integration is that weak, it probably makes sense to just let the virtual machine be transparent rather than be a sleight-of-hand.

and

When you shut down Windows 7 after using Windows XP Mode, the virtual machine hibernates by default, which is convenient but could in time lead to degraded performance.

Bad idea…

One is to use all services that Google provides, which are entirely built on web applications. I don’t believe this is the right model.

That guy in the link was able to “survive” for a month, sure, but only because he had very boring things to do. The amount of stuff I have installed on the desktop are not going to be services anybody is going to provide any time soon. Besides, it is almost impossible to get people to change set habits to use a whole new set of cloud software. Are you kidding me? Change all the software you use? This is a no go.

The more promising model is virtual machine hosting, in other words, the Citrix on crack model. To a large extent, I already roll my own using Remote Desktop and an always-on machine. But much more useful is having a huge server farm hosting lots of virtual machines that belong to users … possibly sharing installed software and other redundant stuff. This is a “compatible” path, in that users will not see any difference from their desktop experience and so will adopt it. Once they adopt it, you can tweak the backend however you want to wean users off of the desktop. This is something that many companies are trying in different forms, and of course so is one particular large desktop OS manufacturer … that happens to have server software also, and which happens to support virtualization. So I wouldn’t write off said company just because there is a cloud.

Incidently, Google is now supporting offline mail because they find it necessary to support the blended cloud/offline experience.

This is part of the laptop backlight repair documentation.

So I gave up on fixing the laptop screen. The screen shall forever stay apart from the laptop. I even removed the laptop cover from its hinges so I just get a nice flat machine, and lighter, too. On second thought, this isn’t that bad. It’s no worse than a desktop machine. It’s still portable, and I just need to find a VGA monitor to connect to. Or just use Remote Desktop to connect in. Fine with me. But before I can get an external monitor, I still have a transition period where I need output from the machine right on the desk.

Now remember when you held down shift or control or some such key too long in Windows and Windows thought you were retarded or blind and needed help? I do. I’ve been offered StickyKeys and Narrator before and randomly paid attention to what they did. So I turn on Narrator (accessibility feature, comes with Windows). I wish that it were a better screen reader, but alas, it only reads text in some mutable controls, like buttons, drop down boxes, selectable labels, and hyperlinks, and it announces on-screen events. Nevertheless, with that, I was able to open programs, browse the web, copy files, all by listening on my headphone through Narrator and using all the keyboard shortcuts I could muster. I could not use Outlook because its aural interface was too sparse, but could use Webmail and Gmail and I could type and respond. Of course I never was quite certain what I was actually doing, but from the sound of it I was doing all right!

After a few days of this crap, I remembered that I have a Pocket PC and it has Remote Desktop client on it. A 3″ screen is a bit desperate for viewing a megapixel desktop, but in a pinch, it was what I needed. Only one problem, the Pocket PC needed network drivers installed. So back to Narrator and restoring an old backup of the Pocket PC files from that POS software known as ActiveSync. Really it was a chore trying to establish a partnership by listening to Narrator … then to aurally browse the file system by parsing mangled readings of filenames … then an hour of copying files and checking on the “progress bar” by alt-tabbing back and forth to generate “on-screen events” for Narrator to read.

Amazingly it all worked and I am now able to do all my work over a 3″ Remote Desktop. Wow, even I’m impressed. Moral of the story, replacing the CCFL has unintended consequences and is not guaranteed to work. Second moral: learn your keyboard shortcuts and Narrator. Who knows when you may need them.

Back to the beginning.

Word.

(Installing and removing software on WinCE with self-deleting cab files… ugh… I don’t want to get started.)

Activesync also has one of the most disorganized program settings interfaces, and it makes no sense. There has been no improvement (save for the changing colors of icons in the GUI) since the earliest versions. Notably, it has no security, so the hack-around solution to make wifi synch’ing work in the past, is no longer supported in the newest versions. The pda file system view also is not a native file system driver, so any file manipulation on the pc is crippled.