Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 29th Jan 2009 12:11 UTC
Thread beginning with comment 346082
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apoclypse speculated...
It may also force better, more uer friendly interface design and concepts due to the lack of screen realestate.
That would be a great thing if it happened! Or at the very least have applications and desktop environment programmers write their code in such a manner that they are capable of scaling much like many webpages are capable of doing. To me that's one of the biggest issues when it comes to using a netbook device.
On my ASUS EeePC 901 I am able to mitigate the situation slightly by installing the Compact theme for Gnome, the nosquint and Tiny Menu extensions for Firefox, and doing some fiddling with the fonts--but having application developers take screen sizes into account when doing layout would be a real improvement!
--bornagainpenguin
It would be absolutely great if it would hurt the software industry, although I doubt it. Why would it be great? Because it would force software developers to develop fast, efficient programs.
I was going to say the exact same thing, and it appears that this is already happening, as you see that MS is touting that Windows 7 can be run on Netbooks because it has better performance than Vista. Maybe we can get Adobe to rework the abomination that is called Acrobat Reader to be about as fast and light as Foxit Reader. And maybe we can finally kiss Java on the desktop goodbye, once and for all until/unless they can make it not suck so much.
(And I don't even want to know how iTunes runs on these things. Imagine if Apple made it as fast as Media Monkey!)
While this might indeed be a bad thing for software developers (who will actually have to learn how to develop fast and efficient apps), it's ultimately good for the end user
Maybe we can do the same thing for game consoles - release a $20 8-bit machine, then game developers will have to learn to make something original like in the days of old, instead of pumping out the same shit that we all played last year with a better coat of paint.
Edited 2009-01-29 17:02 UTC




Member since:
2005-07-06
It would be absolutely great if it would hurt the software industry, although I doubt it. Why would it be great? Because it would force software developers to develop fast, efficient programs. The availability of much CPU power and lots of RAM has a remarkable effect on lazy programmers: they forget how to create smart code. Maybe I don't want to need a Ferrari to drive to my neighbour.