But the real future of the laptop computer will remain in the specialized niche markets. Because no matter how inexpensive the machines become, and no matter how sophisticated their software, I still can’t imagine the average user taking one along when going fishing.
He’s right, but of course we’re all carrying computers vastly more powerful than anything available in 1985 around with us every day. Everything is impossible until it is obvious.
I use split screen on my phone (Galaxy Note 2), but usually only to keep Youtube running “in the background”. Humans aren’t very good at multitasking, so there’s limited value in having our technology support it.
Back in the day, I would use my Turbo Pascal manuals instead of look on the internet — because I never had any internet. Although technically I believe it did have built-in help.
Love it! I have my own set of complaints about WIMP, but it seems pretty clear to me that most of the problems mentioned in this article have been transcended. A classic case of not distinguishing the concept from the implementation.
The same guy also wrote an article about laptops (http://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/08/business/the-executive-computer.html):
He’s right, but of course we’re all carrying computers vastly more powerful than anything available in 1985 around with us every day. Everything is impossible until it is obvious.
One-fullscreen-app-at-a-time is how I see many/most users (and all tablet users) working today.
When I realized that’s how I worked almost all of the time, I switched to a tiling window manager.
Some Android flavours and Windows 8 tablets can do split screen. I don’t know if that means it widespread on those devices though :)
I use split screen on my phone (Galaxy Note 2), but usually only to keep Youtube running “in the background”. Humans aren’t very good at multitasking, so there’s limited value in having our technology support it.
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Back in the day, I would use my Turbo Pascal manuals instead of look on the internet — because I never had any internet. Although technically I believe it did have built-in help.
Well, I’d be pretty fucked, if I couldn’t put shell and manpage browser next to each other.
Love it! I have my own set of complaints about WIMP, but it seems pretty clear to me that most of the problems mentioned in this article have been transcended. A classic case of not distinguishing the concept from the implementation.
Yeah, I don’t use windows much anymore. I use panes!!
Tmux FTW!