OSNews

Pen-based computing's time has come, and Palm and Microsoft aren't anywhere close to the level of freedom and dynamic splendor that the Newton enabled. Apple's moving to flat-panel displays and smaller portable machines needs to continue to hybrid desktop and pen-based systems; pointing with a pen or finger is much more direct and natural than manipulating an on-screen cursor via a mouse or trackpad. Children grow up pointing at things with their fingers and drawing with various writing implements; holding a device in your hands as you would hold a book or a notepad instead of sitting at a desk is a far more rewarding experience; the desktop interface, metaphors and underlying technologies only bind us to our desks (which is quite unnatural, not to mention hard on our bodies). Pen computing is more personal and more liberating. Apple needs to follow up on its old promises and designs.

The Internet is a vast resource with greatly untapped potential. The web is but the first in a long future lineage of connected applications and experiences, and far less concentration should be wasted on trying to shoehorn today's problems into markup (XML, HTML) or HTTP-based solutions (SOAP/XML-RPC, .NET). Instead, new standards, protocols and systems should be explored, based on many of the problems that the Internet is perfect for addressing. The web is static, and people are dynamic; the glue that brings it all together is new software. To address the kinds of applications that people will want to build, the industry needs a dynamic platform that facilitates rapid exploration, prototyping, development and change. Building static shared libraries out of Objective-C and C++ code are not the right direction to take; the Newton approach is a far more flexible direction, and one that is screaming to be taken advantage of in the future. There are no demands that user interface, message handling, storage or network programming place on a system that necessitate it be built out of statically or expensively-bound libraries; dynamic programming languages like NewtonScript, JavaScript and SmallTalk are a much better choice for most higher-level programming tasks.

Simpler, faster and more powerful kernels have been developed than MACH, UNIX or Linux. Be did an excellent job of designing and implementing the lower levels of a modern operating system, leaving the aforementioned runtime and user-level technologies ripe for exploration and implementation. Palm and Apple allowing these technologies to vanish show how irresponsible and ego-driven these companies and their leaders are; it should not matter where a technology comes from; the best technologies should be harnessed to produce the best products with the lowest resource requirements, the best performance, and the simplest, least complex developer experience. This is the only responsible and scientifically credible way to advance technology, and taking this course results not only in the best performing, most efficient, and most legacy-free end-user products, but an exciting development experience that can ultimately be shared with programmers and users alike, ultimately yielding better products and a better user experience, which completes the cycle of success and innovation. Apple needs to get back to user-level systems like HyperCard and Newton, where programming, authoring and customization are paramount to the user experience, rather than trusting programmers with unwieldy programming languages like C++ and Objective-C.

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