[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] N800 GUI Improvements from a Newton Developer's Perspective

[From: Gopi Flaherty]

On Jan 22, 2007, at 10:44 AM, Christian F.K. Schaller wrote:

> Well we should be careful this list doesn't become known as haven for
> supporters of old dead technologies. Today a Newton fan crying over  
> the
> loss of what he thinks is the worlds most incredible handheld toolkit,
> tomorrow someone mailing about how incredible the N770 would be using
> the Amiga workbench or an old Acorn fan claiming that the device would
> reach the heavens if it only ran Acorn Unix.
>
> Think there is a some special newsgroups still around where these  
> people
> belong :)


I have another way to think about it:

There are many different problems that people writing handheld UIs  
have tried to solve over the years.

I'm certain that some of the people working on these problems have  
found interesting and unique solutions.

If everybody re-invents the wheel from scratch, everybody will make  
the same mistakes, over and over. Progress depends on learning from  
the mistakes of others, and improving and refining ideas.

Sean Luke did not say that the 770 should be running the Newton OS.  
Rather, he showed specific things that the Newton did better than the  
770.

Apple spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars and something  
like 10 years working on the Newton. With that much R&D, it's worth  
looking at least briefly at what they did.


"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders  
of Giants." - Isaac Newton