Feedback to the Dot story

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Thursday, September 5, 2013 11:22:42 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> My suggestion:
> "Plasma Active is a user interface from the KDE community intended for
> tablets. It can be customized to work on smartphones, settop boxes,
> smart TVs, and touch computing devices such as home automation and
> in-vehicle infotainment."

almost...

Plasma Active is a user experience technology stack for consumer electronics. 
It currently *comes* with a slick user interface for tablets.

Plasma Active is *not* the tablet UX, however.

(it is quite likely, btw, that Plasma Active will be slightly re-jostled with 
the Qt5 version of plasma. the tablet UX will use the new unified Plasma shell 
and become “just” another Plasma Shell Package. what will likely live on as 
Plasma Active is the system integration and application focus ..)

> That way we don't say "It cannot work on those devices", but nobody can
> blame us if it doesn't work well as it is, because they'd have to

agreed ...

> Notice also that I intentionally did not include smart TVs and settop
> boxes in "touch computing devices", because they are not, and probably

who said it would be a touch interface?

Plasma, in general,does not believe in exclusionary input method modalities. 
Plasma Active as a whole is focused on consumer electronics; we’ve only 
focused on the UX for tablets for a variety of practical reasons.

> > This release is intended to complete the evolution of Plasma Active
> > to a polished product from its proof of concept first release.
> 
> I would not call PA4 a "Polished product" yet. It's still for early
> adopters only, ordinary consumers would still hate us for PA4.

i suppose i should go take it away from the ordinary people using it then?
or tell the reviewers that said it was the best tablet UX they’ve used that 
they were obviously mistaken?

i have given up trying to get you to abandon such abstract perfectionism, but 
i’d appreciate it if you’d keep such proclamations out of discussions here.

the software works quite nicely (better than some other options out there 
being foisted on “ordinary consumers”) and if we wait for some perfect moment 
of wonderment pouring out of baby angel’s eyes, we may as well just delete the 
repositories and stop the project right now.

real products ship. real products are not perfect. yet somehow people use them 
and even fall in love with them.

iOS came without multitasking or a clipboard or system notifications or a 
hundred other Really Important Features Every Ordinary Consumer Absolutely 
Requires but *somehow* managed to gain the hearts and minds of many.

Apple did that by focusing on what iOS did well and provided opportunities for 
the people for whom those things were enough.

please stop preventing Plasma Active from achieving its potential by telling 
people it isn’t ready for them. you are not then, and Plasma Active works.

> > client-side touch-optimized email application
> 
> Kontact Touch has been part of PA for a long time and nothing has
> changed about it since then. So it's definitely not new in PA4. Michael

agreed; what I do wish was in the article was a list of things Plasma Active 
comes with (touch-friendly groupware including email and calendaring; file 
management; etc.) so people don’t forget or people new to it understand what 
is there.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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