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DanRabbit — U1 Files Splash
Published: 2011-06-06 18:48:23 +0000 UTC; Views: 7695; Favourites: 15; Downloads: 74
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Description
Splash screen design for the U1 Mobile Files appRelated content
Comments: 23
Did you not use the U1 logo on purpose(on the splash screen)? or you just like to draw clouds
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Well there is more than one U1 app. It's split up into Music, Files, and Contacts. At first I had the U1 logo, but then I thought it was odd to go from clicking on the Files icon to seeing the U1 logo.
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maybe the icon should atleast have the ubuntu icon somewhere?
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Naw, U1 is a separate product and brand from Ubuntu. You don't have to be using Ubuntu at all to use U1.
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I dunno they just announced iCloud and it's free so..
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iCloud? So now people don't have to copy files onto thumbdrives? People don't notice that they have filesystems because all of them look the same on every device?
Dan, you better hurry up. It looks like Apple is going to kill files wayyy before you do.
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Yes indeed, however I have just three words for you: Dude, iTunes. Bleurgh.
/izo\
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Dude, I need a 'like' button for this comment
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Watch the keynote 
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Ultimately OSXI(?) is going to be cloud based like ChromeOS.
iTunes will get massively debloated but the OS will be crippled further.
I think mac users are gonna start to see tiered OS's. One for the average user (iCloud based) and one for the professional (OSX-esque). Perhaps only shipping the former with the standard macbook and maybe a choice for the mba, while shipping the pro version with mbp.
Something similar can already be seen in Linux with Ubuntu going the way of a cloud based alternative or even just taking the example of ChromeOS compared with Arch or Gentoo.
Microsoft have sorta worked this out in Windows 8 by kludging the two shells together.
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No, I don't think so. Web apps just can't compete with native desktop apps. Apple already discovered that with iPhone. Remember before the AppStore the idea was that third party developers would build web apps for the iPhone. And that failed miserably. The AppStore has consistently proven that a native application is preferable to a website (You see this with Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.)
I think you're confusing simplified and crippled
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if anything web apps have, potentially, more processing power than native apps. I'm not saying its right to have web apps instead of native apps but there isn't really a vast difference between the two. Who cares how the interface is displayed if you can't edit your files anyway?
I would agree a browser based "app" would be crippled if the hardwork wasn't being done by a server somewhere. But it will be.
Twitter, Facebook and Digg might all have apps but programmatically they face the same issues they would if they did webapps using javascript. it's all 0's and 1's at the end of the day. The only thing that cripples our web experience is our own imaginations.
When I say that the OS will be crippled further I mean that the user will have even less control over how they use the device. Simplification can be harmful and extremely frustrating to a user's experience.
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It goes far beyond being "0's and 1's". That's programmer talk. You're leaving out the entire world of UX design. Crafting consistent and familiar user experiences. System learnability. Web applications can never compete with native applications in this space in the same way that cross-platform applications can never compete with native applications in this space. The best user experience possible cannot be achieved unless the application was crafted specifically for it's intended platform. Look at the wide range of mediocrity in Ubuntu applications. A huge factor is that none of them are actually built for Ubuntu. It's an ugly quilt, and that's what web applications deliver: quilt work.
But, if you want to measure things in terms of features, web applications can't integrate their functionality into the OS. They can't integrate with other applications. They can't use code (or other resources) present in the OS. This is not only bad for users (in terms of features lost), but it's bad for developers. It means applications are harder to build. When you build an application for OS X or iOS you have access to hundreds (if not thousands) of developer APIs, frameworks, and tools specially created to make those applications work on that platform. Web applications just can't compete in terms of platform level features and ease of development of complex features.
Control doesn't make better UX. And anything can be harmful and frustrating if you're doing it wrong.
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There is no 'beyond 0's and 1's'. It's programmer talk because it all needs to be programmed. I'm not ignoring UX design, UI design and programming go hand in hand, programmers just tend to be bad at the design side of things. There's no reason why something on a server somewhere can't be consistent and familiar. The system leanability argument only gets you so far. Back in 2001 when OSX was released, the die hard mac fans hated the dock. To them it didn't seem intuitive. It wasn't for them though, it was for people who didn't use computers on a regular basis. Now we live in a technological world where people won't stop using computers because the interface changes a bit.
There may be a wide range of mediocrity in the Linux world but that is nothing to do with Ubuntu or the APIs. There are design guidlines set out by the Gnome team that people choose to ignore. I agree its an ugly quilt but the applications are still native to Linux.
There's very little that I don't do on the internet now. There is always going to be some quilt work in the world wide web I don't deny that. But for the core functions of a computer, (email, word processing, chatting, reading the news, photo editing etc.), I can't think of a single reason why this can't be done in a consistent way.
Web applications don't *need* to integrate their functionaility into the OS. They only need to interact with each other. This is far from impossible especially when you consider that almost every website I(and presumably most others) visit has Google, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, OpenID, integration. Not only this, but I rarely think "Man I wish this website was better integrated into my desktop"
If anything, *removing* the native applications actually increases familiarity from system to system. It is the native applications that stop people from buy a mac or a pc, depending on which side of the fence you sit, not the web experience you get because its the most consistent of all.
I know how hard it is to build native applications for several platforms, I do it on a daily basis. Frankly its frustrating. The amount of time I've spent doing the exact same work tweaking things and change data types and libraries and this and that and the other, just so I can get the same functionality? Come on, there's just no need. If you can put a web application on a server, send request to that server to do the dirty work and give you the result, who cares that if its a Linux, Windows, or Mac server? If the experience is the same then it doesn't matter.
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You're missing the point. The experience is *supposed* to be different if you're on Windows, on OS X, or between Ubuntu, Fedora, and elementary OS.
You can't say an applications is "native to Linux". That defeats the whole purpose of most distributions, especially if they ship a different DE. An applications that is truly native to elementary OS will not function properly on Fedora. It will be alien, it will be missing features, it will be inconsistent. It's not supposed to fit.
If you're happy making/using really shallow applications that don't really fit in anywhere be my guest. But if that's the future, it's a bleak one indeed.
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I'm not missing any point. I understand what you're saying. I get that the experience is supposed to be different on the different platforms, I was merely highlighting that if you want a genuinely consistant and familiar experience then its the native applications that definitively hinder that.
It has to be said that there is no reason why the web cannot offer different experiences according the the provider through subscription to mac, windows, google, "webOS's". With the screencaps of Windows 8 we can see that they have opted to use the HTML 5 standard for their main interface. Granted it doesn't *technically* use a webbrowser to work, but provided it only uses the stock HTML5 + javascript (which I'm led to believe it does), it could be used via a browser. Gnome-shell is also javascript and OSX Lion has a "browser only mode". Web is not just the future, it's happening now.
Take Elementary OS. It's clearly excellent and the work you and your team has done is not only of a high class but development has been extremely fast. It's a credit to you. You have applications such as Postler, an app with undoubted quality design, that is implementing functions that gmail has had for years. That's not to say gmail can't improve, it can and most probably will, as will Postler.
Before, you mentioned that the iPhone started relying on web apps and it failed. Steve Jobs would have thought it would work for a reason. Not just as a stop-gap either. He knows the value of HTML 5, he's actively pushing for it by abandoning Flash. He doesn't usually get things *that* wrong. We just weren't ready for that kind of leap back then. Things have drastically changed and we're getting closer day-by-day.
All I'm saying is that web applications don't have to be shallow. At work I use outlook extensively, I also have access to Outlook Online, its terrible, really bad. It's not terrible because its on the web, it's terrible because Microsoft want you to use Outlook. Office online is pretty good, it's not as full featured as Office because they want you to buy it, not because it isn't possible.
Currently, native apps rule to roost, but even as a super user I'm finding it less and less necessary to use them. The one I use the most is the browser and I've specifically chosen one that runs on all my platforms to guarentee the most consistent experience. With applications like photoshop or IDE's not having a viable online option it stops people from believing in it. It will happen and it'll all be fine. 10 years ago no one would believe you if you told them they could watch a movie from a browser in real time, full screen, and in HD. GrooveShark, Spotify, and Amazon, have your music sorted. LoveFilm or Netflix your movies. Iplayer and hulu have your tv shows covered. Dropbox, ubuntuone, googledocs, skydrive, icloud, have your files. They all need work, they will get that work and your experience won't suffer.
It would be bleak if we switched completely right now but we're not, its gradual. As I said before, it's possible that we might see a tiered system for OS's at first, a web based one for the "Home" User and a native one for the "Professional". That's only speculation though and shouldn't be taken seriously as a true prediction lol.
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It'll be interesting to see if they do actually debloat it. Personally, I can't see it happening.
/izo\
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It'd be great if iTunes was debloated.
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