Bob,
Very interesting read: You confirm a lot of my personal observations and suspicions about what such a 'switch' would be like. Your mention of the different conventions, higher number of steps to accomplish similar tasks, etc. goes right to the heart of the Zen of Palm philosophy as you mention, and how the Windows Mobile Edition is more of a scaled down desktop OS, and not really optimized for a handheld device.
If you've been reading Julie's diary at
The Gadgeteer after her review of the HP hx4700, the two of you are in a similar situation. While she 'switched' to a high-end PPC and you chose to take advantage of a great bargain, she is stuggling with the decision to switch back, waiting for a PalmOne Cobalt device.
IMO one of the main reasons behind the difference between the Palm OS and PPC philosophies is the men behind them. Gates' background is the desktop, and Hawkins is the handheld. Another important observation I'd like to point out is that besides handhelds/PDAs, Jeff Hawkins other great passion is the study of the human brain. He has recently co-authored
On Intelligence, and I think this really shows his philosophy about designing computing devices and their operating systems:
Quote:
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My desire is not only to understand what intelligence is and how the brain works, but how to build machines that work the same way. I want to build truly intelligent machines.
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I totally agree with him and think that operating systems should be intuitive, simple, and work along the lines of the way we think, organize, and remember things. That's in stark contrast to building an unintuitive/counter-intuitive, overly complicated OS and trying to learn to how the OS 'thinks' and works.
In my opinion, the trouble switching that you're experiencing (along with others) can be boiled down to these basic differences. It's all about the man-machine interface on both the ergonomics and OS/GUI levels.
Brian