Scott R
02-27-2003, 05:10 PM
There's a new article up on Brighthand which basically just swipes some info that someone posted on PocketNow and rewords it. The poster on PocketNow apparently saw an upcoming HP 2200 and gave out some of the specs. In doing so, he gives a few tidbits of what we can expect from the next version of the PPC OS as well as a potential release timeframe. Basically, it looks there will be built-in support for landscape (but at the same 240x320 resolution - though now 320x240 if in landscape mode) and that the new OS should be out around June/July. I figured I'd start this thread to see what people expect the new OS to bring. The MVPs running the show here seem to be gearing people up to have low expectations so we won't all be disappointed, so I'm not looking for a "wish list" but a realistic list of things you think will really be there. Here's what I'm thinking:
1) Built-in landscape support. Whether this will be supported by all apps and the underlying "desktop" (e.g. - Today screen, "Programs" window, network configuration windows, etc.) I don't know. But I expect to see Pocket Excel, Pocket Word, and Pocket IE to all support landscape.
2) "Fixed" versions of the Pocket Office apps. Other than landscape support, I don't expect to see much in the way of new features, though they'll probably throw in a few so that they can tout them in their ads. Mainly, I expect to see "roundtripping" fixed which, for most people, will be enough. It's possible that they could announce a Pocket Office Professional (or Premium, or Enterprise, or whatever they choose to call it) at the launch for an extra $$$. But I suspect (and actually hope) that given the severely limited staff that they have (which Jason keeps reminding us of), they wouldn't have been having those folks work on an add-on Pocket Office Professional product, but rather adding other useful features and fixing bugs instead. So, I expect that for the time being MS will be content with letting 3rd parties make more feature-rich Office products. This gives them the extra bonus of getting to pretend to be the nice guy for a while longer (What? Us put 3rd party developers out of business?).
3) I think ActiveSync's major USB bugs are a thing of the past already (I remember when I first got my iPaq having to plug and unplug the USB cable several times just to get it to sync). But there's still lots of complaining about the other idiosyncracies with ActiveSync. I expect them to fix most of those up and add better support for restoring all your programs and such when you've had to hard-reset without you having to do that manually one app at a time.
4) Aside from the landscape support I previously mentioned, I expect to see Pocket IE beefed up. I expect better support for JavaScript, HTML 4.xx, more up-to-date CSS support, etc. I'm going to hope further that they may even steal some of ThunderHawk's ideas, utilize the sub-pixels, and try to simulate an actual 800-pixel-wide screen (with zoom in/out capability), but that's more wishful thinking.
5) Despite their desire to look like the nice guy and not put 3rd party developers out of business (see #2 above), I'll be shocked and disgusted if they don't build in a decent task switcher ala PocketNav. I'm afraid, however, that they might try to keep it too simple (as well as leave room for 3rd party developers) and leave out the ability to close individual apps via this drop-down task switcher (unlike the wonderful PocketNav, and more like how I think the Dell's Axim task-switcher works - based on screenshots I've seen). Hopefully this will be one area where they don't care about squashing the 3rd party folks and just do it right (it aint like the folks behind PocketNav make any money off of it, anyway). Hopefully, rather than try to squeeze a new button on the title bar for this, they'll just integrate it into that useless close button (or replace the existing close button altogether with a new symbol like an arrowing pointing down).
6) Various other bug-fixes, etc. Recurring alarms should certainly be one of them.
I could list some additonal things I'd like to see, but don't expect to, such as:
a) Improved Contacts app. For example: i) Let me hide some of the useless fields (radio telephone number), and/or rename them; ii) Let me reorder them (put Home phone towards the top not the bottom); iii) Fix word wrapping in "Summary" view mode so that I don't have to go all the way into "Edit" mode, click on a field, and scroll all the way to the right , just to get the extension for someone's phone number.etc.); and iv) Use a smaller font, or something, so that I can see just as much (if not more) info in list mode as I can on a lowly 160 pixel wide Palm OS device.
b) Block Recognizer (i.e. - Graffiti) support anywhere on the screen (ala RecoEcho+ for the Palm OS). Not only would this allow having more of the screen to be used for "useful" data, it would also work out better with the new landscape support.
c) Get rid of that way-too-small and unintuitively-placed "OK" button and encourage 3rd party developers to start integrating real, decently-sized, "OK" buttons just like they currently do for "Cancel" buttons. If MS doesn't do this, I still encourage developers to ignore MS's GUI standards and do it anyways.
I probably missed a few realistic expectations as well as some things which should get changed/fixed but probably won't.
Scott
1) Built-in landscape support. Whether this will be supported by all apps and the underlying "desktop" (e.g. - Today screen, "Programs" window, network configuration windows, etc.) I don't know. But I expect to see Pocket Excel, Pocket Word, and Pocket IE to all support landscape.
2) "Fixed" versions of the Pocket Office apps. Other than landscape support, I don't expect to see much in the way of new features, though they'll probably throw in a few so that they can tout them in their ads. Mainly, I expect to see "roundtripping" fixed which, for most people, will be enough. It's possible that they could announce a Pocket Office Professional (or Premium, or Enterprise, or whatever they choose to call it) at the launch for an extra $$$. But I suspect (and actually hope) that given the severely limited staff that they have (which Jason keeps reminding us of), they wouldn't have been having those folks work on an add-on Pocket Office Professional product, but rather adding other useful features and fixing bugs instead. So, I expect that for the time being MS will be content with letting 3rd parties make more feature-rich Office products. This gives them the extra bonus of getting to pretend to be the nice guy for a while longer (What? Us put 3rd party developers out of business?).
3) I think ActiveSync's major USB bugs are a thing of the past already (I remember when I first got my iPaq having to plug and unplug the USB cable several times just to get it to sync). But there's still lots of complaining about the other idiosyncracies with ActiveSync. I expect them to fix most of those up and add better support for restoring all your programs and such when you've had to hard-reset without you having to do that manually one app at a time.
4) Aside from the landscape support I previously mentioned, I expect to see Pocket IE beefed up. I expect better support for JavaScript, HTML 4.xx, more up-to-date CSS support, etc. I'm going to hope further that they may even steal some of ThunderHawk's ideas, utilize the sub-pixels, and try to simulate an actual 800-pixel-wide screen (with zoom in/out capability), but that's more wishful thinking.
5) Despite their desire to look like the nice guy and not put 3rd party developers out of business (see #2 above), I'll be shocked and disgusted if they don't build in a decent task switcher ala PocketNav. I'm afraid, however, that they might try to keep it too simple (as well as leave room for 3rd party developers) and leave out the ability to close individual apps via this drop-down task switcher (unlike the wonderful PocketNav, and more like how I think the Dell's Axim task-switcher works - based on screenshots I've seen). Hopefully this will be one area where they don't care about squashing the 3rd party folks and just do it right (it aint like the folks behind PocketNav make any money off of it, anyway). Hopefully, rather than try to squeeze a new button on the title bar for this, they'll just integrate it into that useless close button (or replace the existing close button altogether with a new symbol like an arrowing pointing down).
6) Various other bug-fixes, etc. Recurring alarms should certainly be one of them.
I could list some additonal things I'd like to see, but don't expect to, such as:
a) Improved Contacts app. For example: i) Let me hide some of the useless fields (radio telephone number), and/or rename them; ii) Let me reorder them (put Home phone towards the top not the bottom); iii) Fix word wrapping in "Summary" view mode so that I don't have to go all the way into "Edit" mode, click on a field, and scroll all the way to the right , just to get the extension for someone's phone number.etc.); and iv) Use a smaller font, or something, so that I can see just as much (if not more) info in list mode as I can on a lowly 160 pixel wide Palm OS device.
b) Block Recognizer (i.e. - Graffiti) support anywhere on the screen (ala RecoEcho+ for the Palm OS). Not only would this allow having more of the screen to be used for "useful" data, it would also work out better with the new landscape support.
c) Get rid of that way-too-small and unintuitively-placed "OK" button and encourage 3rd party developers to start integrating real, decently-sized, "OK" buttons just like they currently do for "Cancel" buttons. If MS doesn't do this, I still encourage developers to ignore MS's GUI standards and do it anyways.
I probably missed a few realistic expectations as well as some things which should get changed/fixed but probably won't.
Scott