Change platforms. Whenever you can. Ever since I got into computing, I’ve lived according to a very simple adage: change platforms all the time. For reasons I won’t go into, the importance of this adage was reaffirmed today, and I figured I’d share it with you all – and hopefully, get a few of you to follow this adage as well.
Back when there was still a lot of cool operating stuff going on on desktop computers, I switched platforms all the time. I was a drifter. I never stayed on the same platform for longer than a few months. BeOS. KDE. QNX. Windows XP. GNOME. Xfce. E16. Mac OS X. BeOS. Windows Vista. Mac. GNOME. KDE. E17. Mac OS 9 (no joke). Lather, rinse, repeat. In between, I played with everything I could get my hands on. SkyOS. Syllable. Zeta. AROS. Haiku. AmigaOS. MorphOS. And so on.
With feature phones, it wasn’t any different. I can’t recall all of the feature phones I have used over the years, but my favourites were definitely the Sharp TM100 and the ridiculously lavish Nokia 8800 (think your current smartphone has high build quality? Think again). I also recall Samsungs and carrier-branded stuff, and that’s about it.
With PDAs, it also wasn’t any different. I used Palm OS extensively (you don’t say). I used Windows Mobile Pocket PC Embedded Compact SP2 Standard Home Edition Ultimate Premium extensively. I managed to get my hands on a Sharp Zaurus Linux-based PDA, an SL-5500 (thanks Eugenia!), which I proceeded to flash with whatever crazy Linux ROM I could find. And only recently, I plugged a hole in my PDA history by buying two Sony CLIÉs. I’ve also managed to get a Newton and a Psion Series 3a. Just last week I bought a Psion Organiser II, and I’m working on a Psion Series 5mx (and more Psion stuff, for the next big mobile computing article).
With smartphones, it hasn’t been any different either. I started out with a Windows Mobile HTC Artemis – which still works like a charm today. I moved on to a Symbian Nokia E71, a fantastic piece of hardware that I enjoyed using very much. I then proceeded to an iPhone 3GS, which was an absolutely fantastic smartphone to use, and by far the best smartphone on the market at the time. After a year, I imported an HTC HD7 from the US a few days after the release of Windows Phone – and fell in love. A year later, I bought a Samsung Galaxy SII, and loved Android for its versatility and openness. And just last year, I jumped onto the Windows Phone 8 train with an HTC 8X, which is still my daily driver today. If all goes according to plan and my contract runs out come December, I will most likely move to Sailfish.
This hasn’t stopped me from trying out other stuff in between. The Palm article already mentioned webOS – it may not have impressed me, but I still saw a few interesting things it has brought to the table. Last year, I used a Nokia N900 for a few weeks to get a feel for the Maemo platform – and was both pleasantly surprised and disappointed at the same time. Tomorrow (hopefully), the mailman will deliver yet another gift I have been waiting for for a very long time: a very generous OSNews reader from Finland has given me his old N9. Sparkles and sunshine will brighten my day tomorrow, and I can tick off another platform.
It’s a relatively new segment, but with tablets, I moved from an iPad 2, to a Nexus 7, and now a Surface RT. Love and hate each of them.
Windows Phone 8 is my personal favourite smartphone operating system, as it fits my usage patterns and visual preferences perfectly. Yet, I will still move to an entirely new, unproven, and untested platform later this year (if Sailfish is out by then). The reason is simple: always try to broaden your horizon. Never get stuck in one place. Never become lazy. Never settle. Never let the same set of neurons fire. Never come to rely on any one company.
Change platforms. Whenever you can. The moment you stop switching platforms is the moment you admit defeat. I encounter defeated people every day.
I’m excited for tomorrow. A new platform!
How important would you say it is if the underlying kernel is the same?
Firefox OS will be my next platform, alongside Android on my other portable devices, and whatever Linux distro I’ve yet to play with…
OS X is also a unix and the user experience is quite different if we compare it against, say, KDE.
For the end user, the UX is what really matters.
BTW, Thom, tell us all your feeling about the N9 when you will have it in your hands! Jolla will give us a very similar experience, I guess.
The kernel is obviously the key in terms of OS performance, but user-level features tend to be found in the shell.
I always play with as many desktop interfaces as I can (at least easily) on a given platform. And enhancements if I can find them. 🙂
The more types of interfaces you play with, the more experience you gain, and the easier switching between platforms becomes.
No Sir,
My next platform will definitely be Nexus/Ubuntu Tablet. Phone-wise, I still have a distaste for a smartphone, and it’s form-factor. It’s built as a distraction as it draws your eyes to the device for every function, and not built to work with you.
I wasn’t really planning on getting a smart phone.
My workplace changed that by paying for one.
I didn’t think I’d use one all that heavily, but I was wrong. It’s kinda cool having a connected computer in my pocket. 🙂
[quote]Change platforms. Whenever you can. The moment you stop switching platforms is the moment you admit defeat. I encounter defeated people every day.[/quote]
I’m sorry, but I am not admitting defeat, it’s just you trying to convey your view of things on me. I have spent money on products for the platforms that I use and throwing those products out the door while they’re still perfectly functional and desirable just for the sake of using another platform is what I’d call a defeat.
On a similar vein, I’m not seeing any new platform that’d be truly innovative and a break from the norm as they all basically do the same stuff the same way. Some do manage to polish up the conventions of operating the UI, like e.g. Jolla’s Sailfish OS and its pull-down menu, but aside from such it’s still all the very same stuff as it’s on every other god damn OS. As such I feel absolutely no inclination for hopping between platforms.
I totally get what you are saying. Thom is looking at the world from a rather narrow viewpoint…
I would translate his statement to the following:
I actually think it is a valuable thing to play around with other platforms if for no other reason than to just educate yourself on whats out there and figure out what you like, but I would also concede that most people have better things to do with their time, at some point you know what you need to know and want to settle down and just get sh*t done..
Ironically I think if you look at life from the point of view of being successful and productive (and you aren’t an editor at osnews.com), then changing platforms for the hell of it all the time without settling on one is probably admitting defeat.
Unfortunately I am in my forties and am totally defeated
WereCat nails it — while I always enjoy and appreciate Thoms’s industry in sustaining this site, and think controversy is good, (it entices discussion, and Thom is VERY good at crafting and leading in this manner) I feel Thom is starting to suffer from a malady common to many prolific writers: ‘the sound of his own voice’…
This might be greatly helped if OSnews articles were functionally and aesthetically segregated into something like: News, Reviews, and Editorials… As things are there’s a level of digression into ‘Thom’s World’ that may (or may not) interest some readers, or be topical and germane to the standard of Journalism that used to be part and parcel of sites like OSnews, ArsTechnica, and others.
Just say’n…
Edited 2013-03-22 03:10 UTC
I agree as well. I love OSNews but Thom is making bolder and bolder statements that are being presented as facts, not opinions. “Change platforms. Whenever you can” is a really silly statement. It basically comes down to “change for changes sake”. Replace platforms with girlfriend and you can clearly see that.
Now on the other hand, if Thom would have said “Change platforms. Whenever you can find something better/newer/more interesting” than I can agree with him (even replacing platforms with girlfriend seems to work here).
But I like my current platform (and current girlfriend as well) so changing it sounds like a bad idea. I do like reading and talking about other platforms though
For reasons I won’t go into, the importance of this adage was reaffirmed today[…] The reason is simple: always try to broaden your horizon. Never get stuck in one place. Never become lazy. Never settle. Never let the same set of neurons fire. Never come to rely on any one company.
No, please go into the reasons.
For me, tech is a tool that I use, not a goal in itself. So swiching platforms just for the sake of keeping momentum a seems like a stupid thing to me. I agree that trying out new platforms is a good thing, perhaps this is just the new tool that lets me do things in a better way. Not relying on just one company can also a good thing, it usually leaves me less vulnerable.
But if you switch platforms so often that a considerable amount of energy gets wasted in the process of switching instead of getting work done, you are doing it wrong. If it costs you nothing to switch all the time, I wonder how much you really are using those platforms in the first place.
Broaden your horizons. Support innovation. But don’t let yourself be fooled that switching is a goal in itself.
Of course! The switching isn’t the goal – its consequences are: experience. Broadened horizons. Etc.
Well, there you have it then. It is not the switching you are really looking for, but the consequences. Even if switching gets you there, switching might also get you other less desirable places.
Switching takes a lot of investment, more specifically money and time. If your job is to try out new tech, it is what you should do. In my line of work, tech is merely a means to an end. I would like to play around more to get more experience. But reality keeps me in line and limits what I can do. Switching for the sake of it is not an option, switching when beneficial for the cause is.
Also, switching around much without having enough knowledge can be counter-productive. I have friends who never took time to fully learn one platform or piece of thech, instead they grew impatient and jumped onto the next bandwagon that came along. Later on they asked me how I did it and was surprised that I could squeeze more juice out of their old things than they ever could. Why where they surprised, they neither had the knowledge nor gave it the time to discover and learn what they had.
This is why I think the advice to switch as often a possible is a bit too simplified. Get experience with as much as possible, but make sure you get experience, not just a lot of new shiny toys or names to write down in a resume. Otherwise I have no objections.
You’re so promOScuous!
What if you’d rather broaden your horizons in other ways than tech? The money and time spent on keeping up with mobile phones, tablets and operating systems could be spent on many other things.
I appreciate that we’re on a tech website, but deciding to use your time and money on something else is hardly admitting defeat.
I personally think that “switching” is overkill unless you have a lot of time and money to toss in the direction of techie toys.
I prefer experimenting with multiple platforms in parallel. Always have. Single-threading OS use is boring…
Even if you have time and money, it’s still overkill on the planet/environment.
Edited 2013-03-22 02:29 UTC
This. If you can switch platforms that often (and I mean as your main workstation), then you are definitely not a power user. It would take me MONTHS to find suitable replacements for the 40+ apps I use regularly, assuming suitable replacements even existed. Not to mention all of the macros and shit that would have to be rewritten…. ugh.
You would have to give me a goddamn good reason to go through all that effort. Sure, you may get stuck on one platform this way, but once you get REALLY proficient at one of them, switching from any one to any other is going to be painful, unless they run the exact same apps. And you’re likely to never run into that scenario, unless you’re just switching Linux distros (which really doesn’t count, IMO).
Back when I was younger, I used to like tinkering with other platforms. Now days though, I rarely find the time. Just not as important as it used to be.
Why is stopping admitting defeat?
1) Because no platform is perfect, to stop trying means you’ve decided to settle for the platform that sucks least.
2) If you stop you become tied down, mired in one system, with all your stuff stuck in one company’s way of doing things. Moving means keeping things on your terms so you can make the next move.
3) You’ve given up on what’s over the next hill, lost your sense of exploration.
A recent example I didn’t put in the article for focus’ sake is Japanese RPGs. I’ve never been a fan of Japanese RPGs, especially not of the ones released over the past decade or so. Still, one of my friends is a huge fan of the Tales series. So, I decided to play Tales of Vesperia.
It was an awesome experience I wouldn’t want to have missed for the world.
And it’s now in my personal top five of best games of the current generation (that I’ve played!), alongside Dragon Age I, Mass Effect I, Fallout: New Vegas, and Skyrim. I’m already looking into buying a PS3 for more Tales games.
Tales of Symphonia on GameCube was my introduction to the series and it was an amazing experience, easily one of the best games I’ve ever played (and very few RPGs can claim this–I’m not normally into that style of game). Tales of the Abyss was also excellent, although being on the weaker PS2 and having to deal with that system’s controller hampered the experience somewhat for me.
I’m curious to know which controller you prefer most and why.
I have practically every type of controller kicking around the house except the XBox ones (Gamecube, PS2, PS3, Wii, etc.) and the ones I consider the best and use pretty much exclusively with my PC via an adapter are the PS2 controllers.
(My PS3 DualShock controller needs no adapter and I can access the pressure sense data on the buttons too if I want, but I don’t like the rocking L2/R2 buttons)
I pretty much avoid all Nintendo controllers (the Gamecube ones are for my brother’s Wii and my Wii controller is for IR head-tracking experiments) because they always have a problem with wearing out too readily.
(It happened with every controller type I’ve owned. SNES buttons, N64 analog stick, and Gamecube analog stick. I haven’t played Wii enough to know if the Nunchuck’s stick wears out.)
Edited 2013-03-22 05:19 UTC
I’m curious to know more about the adapters (specifically for PS1 & PS2 controllers) – how well do they work? Is the vibration recognised and supported in PC games with force feedback support? How good are the drivers? (or perhaps the controllers are recognised as some “standard” controller, maybe Xbox one?)
The adapter I use works like a charm. It presents itself as a standard USB HID joystick so no drivers are required for basic operation.
Force feedback drivers are included with the Linux kernel but a CD is sometimes included for Windows.
It maps all buttons as buttons and the D-Pad and sticks as axes, so games don’t know how hard you’re pressing the buttons, but that’s a limitation of the USB HID protocol.
(The Playstation 3 had to work around that by exposing every single button as a button AND an axis on the wired USB interface.)
The only thing I know about the model I have is that it’s a dual-port transparent blue one with a smooth (non-ring-shaped) dome molded into the top and a converter chip new enough to support being switched into DDR pad compatibility mode. (Which changes the D-pad from two axes to four buttons so you can press opposite directions at the same time)
Honestly, I’d just buy one and try it out yourself. Here’s an eBay listing that’ll sell a brand new one with a CD and DDR mode to USA, Europe, Asia, Canada, or Australia for a total (cost+ship) price of $3.21 USD.
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/150655774140
If you’re outside those regions or want to explore, here’s the most targeted eBay search I could make without excluding valid results:
http://tinyurl.com/playstation-usb
Just skip the two or three results for keyboard/mouse adapters at the beginning.
The one caution I have is that, like with all cheap Chinese devices, you do occasionally get a shoddily-made one. One of the USB data lines came off the PCB on one of mine (I bought 4, gave two as christmas gifts, and kept a spare), but resoldering those is trivial.
http://mightyohm.com/files/soldercomic/FullSolderComic_EN.pdf
Edited 2013-03-22 22:35 UTC
Thanks for all the info. And it looks like I have the translucent-blue adapter comparably cheap locally ( http://allegro.pl/listing.php/search?string=psx&category=4738 or http://allegro.pl/listing.php/search?string=usb&category=122275 – yeah, ebay.pl wasn’t able to uproot our local auction site for some reason ;p ), at least when taking into consideration processing costs.
But I still wonder about vibration – how well does it work in PC games with force feedback support? What about… in emulators? (say, of PS1 – I still have a few games, and controllers, but the console itself is dead; that’s mostly why I’m asking)
I’m kinda surprised those cheap Chinese adapters don’t pretend to be an X360 controller, would probably give most solid & trouble-free support, with MS drivers.
Edited 2013-03-26 14:00 UTC
My favorites tend to be Nintendo ones, but of that generation–Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube and Xbox–by far my favorite is the GameCube controller. It fit like a glove and worked great, improving massively on the N64 controller (which I also liked). Nice analog triggers with a “digital” click for extra functionality beat PS2’s four-shoulder-button solution IMO. Comfortable thumbstick with nice traction to prevent slipping, and extremely precise thanks to the notched plastic around it… made it nearly impossible to press any way other than straight up or up-right or whatever direction you really wanted to go.
However, the GameCube’s “click” of the L/R buttons doesn’t tend to suit most racing games, so I usually got the Xbox version of those games. One other annoyance was that, while its face button layout worked great on native GameCube games, the controller didn’t always work so well with older games whose consoles had those buttons in a diamond layout. Related to the previous problem, the D-Pad is small (the biggest problem with it) and placed out of the way, so classic games are not as nice on it… but on the other hand, this makes the feel while playing native games much better since the more common thumbstick is in easy reach.
On the other hand I never liked Sony’s controller, it has always been a set of poorly patched-together rip-offs of Nintendo’s… but the things I really disliked about it (for a bit of contrast) are:
– The directional pad. It was designed as one part that is separated by surrounding plastic into four buttons. I hate it. Probably a result of a Nintendo patent on the standard four-way/cross D-Pad (which I like), but still. I even prefer eight-way directional pads to what Sony’s got, and I’m not too big a fan of those either (too easy to press the wrong direction).
– The fact that ALL of the buttons on the Dual Shock 2 are analog. This is absolutely horrible for racing games… when I press a face button, I expect it to be actuated and registering a 1 (digital, on), not just a fraction of all the way (analog, like a trigger). I don’t know how many times I’ve been screwed over because one of those buttons wasn’t fully pressed, yet it felt like it… because the buttons give zero feedback. You don’t realize it until your vehicle slows to a near-stop. Only time I liked it was in Silent Hill 2, where you slam the button down to do a strong attack with, for example, a wooden plank.
– The thumbsticks. Not only are they uncomfortable and the thumbs slide too easily during some intense gaming, for some reason they tend to work… poorly. I can hold a direction and turn it another, but that seems to screw it all up. I end up having to compensate for it myself by frequently letting go completely to let it recalibrate and then press it in the direction I want to go. This is most often a problem when the camera pans, and I’ve never had it on any other controller.
– Four shoulder buttons. I just really didn’t like it; I got used to it in a few games that made heavy use of it, but my hands rested better on the bottom (L2/R2) buttons, and it was just uncomfortable to have to reach up to the top buttons (L1/R1).
+ On the bright side… before the Wii’s Classic controller, Sony’s controller was probably the best of its generation for playing classic games originally released in the 8/16-bit generations… and it really was excellent for 2D games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, because the D-Pad tends to be in better reach than the thumbstick anyway (which I’d list as a con for 3D games, BTW).
I liked the Dreamcast controller as well. And basically being a rip-off of it, the Xbox controller had sound design ideas… it was just humungous and uncomfortable as hell. It did get better with the Controller S, but my main problem with that was that the Black and White buttons were difficult/uncomfortable to access. The Xbox 360 controller, on the other hand, is very nice… right up there with the GameCube controller. Somehow the 360’s “bumpers” are easier and more comfortable to access than Sony’s second set of shoulder buttons, so Microsoft did something right there too.
Other (older) systems: Didn’t care for the NES controller, as classic as it is. The Sega Genesis and Saturn controllers were quite nice, Super NES controller was pretty nice. As I mentioned I liked the N64 controller (many games for it just don’t feel right on any other controller). The Wii’s Classic controller is IMO better than the Super NES controller, Classic Pro is awesome for NES/SNES games (comfort of GameCube controller, functionality of SNES controller for classic games)… but too bad it just doesn’t do N64 games justice.
I do agree that the GC controllers are the best Nintendo controllers yet, but I have a heavily-used GC controller where the analog stick feels a bit loose (how problems started out with the N64 sticks) and the Wii Nunchuck feels like it’s using the same design so I’m still wary of Nintendo analog sticks.
I actually didn’t pay much attention to the clicking shoulder buttons but I’ll definitely agree they’re superior to the PS3’s shoulder buttons. If for no other reason, you never have to worry about your fingers sliding off the GC shoulder buttons because they don’t tilt.
Point.
Agreed. That’s my one complaint about the PS2 controllers.
My solution was to plug a PS1 controller into my PS2 (they are protocol-compatible. You just get an experience more like PC arrow keys where it’s either off or full on) and use the PS2 controllers on the PC where the
Huh. I must have had an experience more like whoever designed them because I’ve never had a problem with them and consider them the best thumbsticks ever designed… positioning on the controller aside. [/q]
– Four shoulder buttons. I just really didn’t like it; I got used to it in a few games that made heavy use of it, but my hands rested better on the bottom (L2/R2) buttons, and it was just uncomfortable to have to reach up to the top buttons (L1/R1).
+ On the bright side… before the Wii’s Classic controller, Sony’s controller was probably the best of its generation for playing classic games originally released in the 8/16-bit generations… and it really was excellent for 2D games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, because the D-Pad tends to be in better reach than the thumbstick anyway (which I’d list as a con for 3D games, BTW).
I liked the Dreamcast controller as well. [/q]
A friend had a Dreamcast but I don’t remember much about it aside from the fact that whether the hardware would play games I cared about like Sonic Adventure depended on which revision you got.
Aside from a brief try at Halo on an XBox demo machine at Microplay, I’ve never tried XBox controllers. I have, however, been meaning to pick up an XBox 360 controller as test hardware to develop against since it’s become THE controller to find on Windows PCs.
I never really liked it either. The corners were too squared-off.
I never owned a Genesis or Saturn but I do remember liking the Genesis controllers when I played at friends’ houses.
Since I’m getting into Arduino programming and already have a spare DE-9 male connector kicking around, I’ll probably pick one up for $5 at the local used games store and build a USB adapter for it.
I agree, but I’ve been soured on them by how many I had to replace back in the day due to worn out buttons.
I found the analog stick hard on my thumb and it always grated on me that it had three hand-grips and i had two hands.
That aside, we only own one (the one I hoarded in a drawer) because the other six or eight we bought had their analog sticks wear out.
I’ve never tried either of those, to be honest. It just seemed like too much bother when we could use real gamecube controllers we already own on the Wii and PS1/PS2 controllers on the PC using a $3 adapter.
(The oldest PS2 controller we own has no rubber on the thumbsticks because we used it so much that the rubber actually started to break down and had to be removed. Aside from that, it still works perfectly. I bought two brand new ones to ensure that, when Sony stops making them, I’ll have a suitable supply.)
Edited 2013-03-25 01:14 UTC
Oh my God, you should try another japanese RPG — Dark Souls.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pV5r4ePww8
Personally I think 90% of games are retarded and a time waste. But this game is simply amazing. So far it’s the only game that actually made me feel emotions for NPCs. And it was the first fantasy world outside of books that I got drawn into.
And it achieved all that with less dialog or written lore than first Mass Effect scene. That’s why I liked it – it’s just a very solid framework with one or two key genius details that we get about characters, places and for the backstory we must fill with our own deductions. And our own deductions are not idiotic like Bioware’s writings.
I mean Wolf Sif is just a wolf, but I felt sad for killing him. In any other game I would kill everyting FER EXPERIUNC POINTS, but I spared Crossbreed Priscilla when she asked to leave her alone. 
It’s also a game that doesn’t fuck around. Like in other games when someone says “despair” or start to panic, it just makes me facepalm and annoys, because game developers blow and they cannot portray any sense of doom, they just say that. But when you play Dark Souls and see “Despair” written by another player in Blighttown, you just nod and start crying. Atmosphere is amazing, it feels like a “place”, not just some random colors in background.
play it
If memory serves, he actually wrote a review on this site for its predecessor, Demon’s Souls.
Edited 2013-03-22 14:09 UTC
Thom, do yourself a favour – if you have never played Shenmue, give it a go. It’s only on Dreamcast, but there are a couple of emulators that run acceptably under Windows and it’s not too hard to find the ISO’s online. Playing Shenmue under emulation drove me to buy a Dreamcast and a copy of Shenmue 1 and 2. It’s an iconic game, and really worth playing at least once in your life.
Shenmue was awesome!
Hell yeah! Shenmue was amazing and they had big plans for it to be a huge series. Too bad an unwilling market dictates what is released, so when it basically failed the gamers were screwed.
I wished they would have re-released it on the GameCube.
Another awesome one was Skies of Arcadia… admittedly I didn’t play it originally on Dreamcast, but I was amazed when I played the extended Skies of Arcadia Legends on GameCube.
Shenmue was the best! I almost studied East Asian Languages and Cultures at college on account of that game.
I really don’t see how this relates to changing platforms. Playing a different kind of game (once) is not the same as switching platform.
Uh, I’d rather be getting things done than spending all of my free time trying to get the latest platform to work for me.
Which doesn’t mean I’m not open to change. Just that before changing, I like to make some effort at figuring out if it’s worth the effort.
Do you really move address at every opportunity? Or do you only do that if the benefits outweigh the costs?
How do you get any stuff done if you change your platform so frequently?
I’ve been through my own period of changing linux distros and linux desktop environments, but nowadays I just want things to work. Why? Because as a software developer, I wanna keep track of everything happening in .NET and Java world…
So, in general, yeah, I am still open to other things, but due to time constraints that’s not on OS or Desktop environments, but on programming languages.
Edited 2013-03-21 22:21 UTC
It’s not THAT often. Main smartphone changes only once a year. On the desktop-side, my files are not tied to any system, so why would changing be an issue? Of course, if you need platform-specific applications, there’s no harm in going… Multiplatform.
Some people choose other avenues than Operating systems/computers to continue there learning spree, but its a good motto to have. Always try new things and learn to see things from a different perspective.
What does that mean by “admitting defeat?”
Admitting defeat from what?
I’ve had Windows on my desk since Windows 3.1 (And before that was DOS), but for at least 15 years have always had a second OS available. Is that a lesser defeat?
So I guess I’ll be the oddball here to say I completely agree with this article and it sums up my feelings nicely.
Its great to have a “team” to root for. Its great that some like Google here, great that some like Apple, great that some like Windows. That’s fine. However if you want to argue the merits of your points, it is important to know and understand the trajectories of others.
If you want to criticize Windows Phone, criticize it with reason. It’s not perfect.
Likewise for iOS and Android. Attack things on the merits, not because of the company attached to it.
I guess to a larger extent, Thom expects a good deal of us to share his passion for OSes. He loves writing about them. Their history, their rises to fame, and occasionally their untimely demises.
He’s merely expressing the view point that there’s so much richness and diversity in the different platforms out that they’re worth exploring. Did Thom think he’d enjoy Windows Phone as much as he did prior?
Did I think that I’d like the Galaxy S 3 when my girlfriend picked one up? No. Your perspective changes when you spend time with smartphones, which are designed to be intimate experiences.
Plus, if you do what Thom says you get to write badass Palm articles.
Edited 2013-03-21 22:54 UTC
The important thing to remember here is that every platform has merit. Except BlackBerry
I tend to limit my “change platforms constantly” to the occasional virtual machine and jumping into whole new fields of endeavor. (eg. I just bought an Arduino and a copy of “The art of electronics, Second Edition”)
I understand what you’re saying in the context of desktops, but I get so much value out of extremely small performance optimizations in the apps and configurations I already use that switching platforms is often far more pain than it’s worth… unless it’s just a new Linux desktop environment. I left KDE for LXDE in an afternoon and the only thing keeping me on LXDE is that I haven’t yet had time to check whether Razor-qt is as snappy. (I use LXDE on my desktop and Trinity on my thumbdrives, so I actually notice the sluggishness that “modern” DEs add to the mix.)
Well… I’m also kind of doubtful Razor-qt would bring me much. I get the impression that, since I’m already running quite the grab-bag of applications, using Openbox, and can’t find anything I like more than PCManFM and Midnight Commander, “running Razor-qt” would probably just mean replacing LXPanel… which is the component I have the fewest complaints about.
Similar problem to why I only use Geeqie as an image viewer. No other image viewer does as good a job at balancing responsiveness with minimal chance of an image getting skipped if I scroll-wheel through so quickly that I only see the top 10-25% before the incremental load is aborted by the next wheel click.
It’s easier than scrolling through a list of thumbnails (because I can keep my eyes locked on one point and a bigger image is easier for me to recognize… even only partially loaded) and it lets me make sense of what I’m seeing in a manner similar to HTTP pipelining. (While I’m looking at one image, I’m waiting for my conscious opinion of the previous image or two. That way, I can stop and rewind to get to what I wanted, but I can still search large folders of images at a faster pace than if I only advanced after having a conscious reaction to each image.)
Oh, yeah, and as a matter of principle, I stick to open-source OSes and Firefox.
Chromium builds of Chrome were the closest thing to a WebKit-based browser which met my needs and they started going downhill before they reached feature parity with Firefox. (eg. forcing the address bar to hide “http://“, requiring $5 to open a developer account on the Google extension site, making it difficult to install extensions from outside the extension site, etc.)
Hey Thom, if you want to change platforms in order to learn about operating systems perhaps you should try I dont know… BSD?
And while you are at it you should try Plan9, easily the best designed operating system in the world as of today.
I have a WP7.8 and an Android 4.0 device atm, and I am starting to shop for my next device. While I would happily use either WP8 or Android, I am having a hard time finding higher-end devices with physically smaller hardware. Currently the best device for me based on that tradeoff is (unfortunatley for my tastes) a BlackBerry.
I admit defeat. It’s much cheaper that way.
I like switching too…
I’m a Jack of All Trades kinda guy…
Windows/DOS/Linux/BeOS/BSD/etc…
ROM Flashing Phones
Nokia770 (Great product, i see maemo references in code for android, wonder why
Welding/Engine Rebuilds/Gardening/Building/Graphics/Art/
Hiking/Camping/swimming
gotta keep going, gotta keep changing, gotta keep learning more things..
I can totally relate!
CHEERS! Enjoy the new toy.
Why not take this ideology further? Change countries every so often. Change jobs. Change friends, girlfriends, boyfriends. Change language.
I actually did this for about ten years. I ended up speaking six languages, and being seriously confused as to my own cultural identity. Not to mention I changed operating systems the whole time
Why is that a problem? Why would you let culture dictate what you believe through your learning process?
I’m Chinese, but I moved to Australia at a young age. I’m glad that happened, because a lot of Chinese culture, just like other cultures, is just bullshit held up by tradition.
they should be tools.
Thom, i really can’t see your point. If you call a defeat to be stuck in the same efficient and perfectly suited platform (for me android), I wouldn’t call a victory switching to a prematurely dead Os, with no support, no application, no update, no future plan development, no users.
Of course you may want to experiment new Os (you are Os addicted, as I am osnews.com-addicted), but please don’t call me a looser.
I don’t switch, I use several at the same time.
My two phones are an iPhone 5 and a Lumia 800. For computers I use Macs, but I also have a few Linux PCs and even Windows Vista/7/8 ones. I also use an Amiga 1200 and Commodore 128 for games. Plus I have a whole range of PDAs, palmtops and programmable calculators.
I get where Thom is getting at. Different experiences keep the mind open and flexible. On the downside it is hard to truly master a single on of your devices and I may be a bit expensive.
Makes sense. I don’t go that diverse because I lack space, cash, and the will to maintain hard-to-acquire hardware, but I definitely love my emulators and virtual machines and I definitely try to keep my mind flexible.
Heck, when you take that principle even further, you get this:
http://vimeo.com/46264514
At the moment, I’m accomplishing that most by learning French (with plans to read further on the etymology of English and the effects of the Norman Conquest of 1066) and I just bought an Arduino and a used copy of The Art Of Electronics (Second Edition, of course) to complement my experience in programming and UI/UX design.
One of my brothers is also learning French and just bought an illustrated omnibus edition of a couple of Steven Hawking books to join his copies of Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought and Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee. (Both of which, I’ll also be reading in the near future)
Of course, the most surprisingly mind-bending hobby has probably been my efforts to piece together a more applied form of literary theory… mind-bending because it keeps triggering epiphanies about how we perceive ourselves, each other, and society around us.
As for flexibility itself, the most fascinating insight I had probably came while I was taking a Prolog course.
I found myself of two minds. On the one hand, I still found Prolog a fascinating opportunity to learn but, on the other, I was simultaneously feeling a strong emotional desire to dismiss this confusing, alien language for being “pointless” (I was already very skilled in imperative, object-oriented, and just a pinch of functional programming via other languages).
It was a very strange feeling to realize that my intellectual and emotional desires were in direct conflict with each other and that was when I learned what it meant that, as human-beings, we’re predisposed to saving energy through laziness, not just physically but also mentally.
…and this post has now run on far too long and is far too self-centered but I just can’t bring myself to delete it.
Edited 2013-03-22 05:45 UTC
I’m glad you didn’t delete it and found it an interesting read.
Learning a second (programming) language is a well known way of keeping those brains fresh. Actually, doing anything new is good for you. It’s easy to get stuck in a certainly situation.
Well, I do plan on learning Haskell and Common LISP one of these days so that should help too.
I’ll freely admit I haven’t given enough attention to the concepts and constructs like tail recursion and continuations which never make it into the more mainstream multi-paradigm languages like Python.
Well, I’m still mostly stuck on BASIC.
BUT I can now do that on a UC-2002: http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/seiko-wrist-information-syste…
It uses a pocket watch as the display(!).
And on a couple of Sharp Pocket Computers. A few day ago I received my second PC-1500: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_PC-1500
I’ll advise to start with F#/Scala/Ocaml/Clojure before going into Haskell and Common Lisp.
Since the former have more industry acceptance, you might even be able to use them on a day job.
If I remember correctly, Stackless Python has continuations.
I actually ran across F# in some examples of using continuations with special syntax to write synchronous-looking asynchronous code and it does look like an interesting language but I haven’t quite gotten over my irrational dislike of .NET.
(Among other things, I take offense at seeing .exe and .dll files outside my WINEPREFIX)
I do have Mono installed for something else though, so maybe I’ll give F#’s compile-to-Javascript option a try some time.
Similar issue with Scala and Clojure. I hate the Java language and don’t like the OpenJDK JVM’s approach to memory consumption, but I do have it installed to run TraNG.
I suppose I could drop Ocaml in ahead of Common LISP on my TODO list but I really want to learn Haskell first… partly because I want to do some Bluetile/XMonad hacking.
Yes, but I’ve yet to use Stackless in practice. It’s sort of a chicken and egg problem. Can’t justify a tricky dependency like Stackless without a solid use case, can’t learn solid use cases without experience. (You can’t apt-get or emerge it and I seriously doubt the PyPI packages for it are reliable and mature options)
Hence why it’d probably be easier to get experience in a language where support IS part of the main official implementation.
I have been working toward making PyPy a supported target for my creations, though, so I’ll have to see how many platforms offer it built to support stackless functionality.
Edited 2013-03-22 09:23 UTC
As a polyglot developer, I tend to have a mercenary point of view in regard to operating systems and languages.
I’ll use whatever our customers require in their request for proposal.
But to each its own, so learn what you feel more comfortable with as the main goal is to learn something different.
I have a similar viewpoint… within the set of languages I currently feel skilled enough at to charge for.
Currently, that set’d be Python, PHP, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, Bourne Shell Script, HTML, CSS, and, depending on the requirements, maybe C, C++, and Vala. (Yeah, HTML and CSS aren’t programming languages, but they can still be horribly abused if you don’t understand them properly)
Geneva, KAOS, NeoDesk, MagiC, Thing, Ease, Jinnee, Mag!X, TeraDesk, MultiTOS, MiNT, FreeMiNT, Zdesk are my choices.
but at the end, they are not different platforms, they are all PUI !
Parc User Interface.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xL19f48m9U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6SUOeAqOjU
We can’t afford the luxury of switching all the time
Either in terms of time to become productive with the OS or financially.
Then there is the little matter of Age. As you get older your ability to learn new stuff diminishes. Also you are more inclined to accept that what you have is ok and that using the latest ‘Shiny-Shiny’/Flavour of the month is just not for you. (I’m almost 60 so I can say this for sure).
There there is the matter of ease-of-use.
Some modern gadgets are just too complicated for their own good. When a function become too difficult to use from memory you simply get by without it.
All/most of you youngsters seem to think that the iPhone U/I is old and tired. Have you ever stopped to think that there is a large and growing segment of the market that thinks you are mad. It works fine for them so why change it needlessly.
Just look at the Windows 8 disaster and put someone who is over 55 and experienced with XP/7 down in front of a Win 8 system running TIFKAM and look at their ability to use it (or rather the lack of it). Nothing will make sense to them. MS has ignored the fact that in most western nations the population is aging.
Don’t change just for the sake of change.
Now I shall go and stand a Speakers Corner in London doing an impression of a Grumpy Old Man.
The few studies I’ve read somewhere say that your ability to learn new stuff diminishes only very little as you age as long as you don’t actually develop some mental or physical effects that would decrease it further. According to the studies it mostly comes down to your inclination for learning stuff as generally you already know so much at an old age that you may not feel the need to continue learning more.
I don’t know whether to believe the studies or not and be it as it may, I will try my hardest to continue learning things as long as I live and breathe. I love learning stuff and I value highly the ability for us humans to continue to improve ourselves as people and, well, learning new stuff and expanding our view of the world around us is one of the best ways of doing that.
Loved the E71 as well.
Thom, I usually enjoy your writings. But that is a minute of my life I’ll never get back. WTF was that all about? For a lackluster punchline?
I regularly switch platforms, and have tried a number of others to get a taste of what can be done.
But let’s avoid being silly here: hopping between platforms isn’t for everyone because there is a fairly significant cost to it. The lack of stability means that you’re getting less work done with the devices themselves. You are taking time to learn of, research, and learn the new platform. If you are dealing with computers or mods to consumer electronics, you are also spending time backing up and installing the operating system.
I’m going to continue trying out new platforms, but that’s because I’m curious about the possibilities of technology. Other people will have other priorities.
A good nokia N9 is a n9 wich is “incepted” and have the application “n9qtweak”.
Just google it, you’ll find a lot of information.
In the other hand, some people call their n9 “my precious” …..
I don’t need to change platforms. I try to use standards-based software that is cross-compatible so I have the ability to change platforms.