[Kde-games-devel] The iPhenomenon

[Eugene Trounev]

Sorry Ian, I hope I didn't scare you too much with my last email. :)
And well, it's not all that scary really. (Though some people here
seem to have thought I lost my mind :) )
The reality is that KDE is somewhat touch ready. And Aaron is right,
we did have a touch machine at tokamak this year, and it did perform
*somewhat* in Plasma.
[Oh and I conveniently forgot to mention that the WHOLE tokamak was
mostly about miniature devices, and touch interfaces :P]
And yes, Plasma is making a steady and visible progress towards touch
interface-ability (see Plasma Netbook for example).
On the other hand the very touch/multitouch support is not up to us :(
it's up to X.Org we depend on, and currently it's nowhere near the
level of proprietary systems.

However, the core KDE apps are not touch aware, and that includes
KDEGames. So if you don't want your wife to completely switch over to
MAC we have to start innovating, and we have to do it now.

That was the very reason behind the first a scary email -to *scare*
you guys into thinking ... and hopefully action.

We need to setup a *special* meeting to discuss the situation. What do
you think?

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 9:37 PM, Ian Wadham <iandw.au at gmail.com> wrote:
> A year or two ago my wife bought an iPhone, one of several mobile phones
> she has owned, including a high-end Nokia previously, but the iPhone was
> the first on which she was able to use all the functions, or at least willing
> to make the effort.  On the iPhone she plays Sudoku, color Sudoku (using
> colors instead of numbers), Mahjongg solitaire (in 3-D) and Whirlyword
> (a game to extract 3-6 letter words from 6 randomized letters).
>
> Recently, in June, she went out and bought an iPad, on the first day of
> availability in Australia.  Now she has given up using KDE/Linux.  She
> does all of her browsing, gmailing and game-playing on one iBox or the
> other and is starting to manage photos on the iPad.  She even reads
> books on the iPad.  This is a woman in her sixties we are talking about!
>
> Yesterday came the killer ...  We have been discussing Palapeli on this
> list, but when our four-year old grandson was round at our house, she
> brought up this iApp called Tozzle and he was entranced ...
>
> http://appshopper.com/games/tozzle-toddlers-favorite-puzzle
>
> It's not the same game as Palapeli ...  In Tozzle you just have to fit shapes
> into holes, but the quality of the graphics, animations and sound effects
> is amazing!  Watch a two-year old playing it on Youtube ...
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1GNMKtkHxA
>
> One key to the iPhenomenon and its ease of use is the touch-screen.
> I wonder when/whether they are supported in KDE and when/whether
> we will have touch-screen laptops.  The iPad has a few limitations ...
> no USB port, difficult to print anything and it is even less flexible than
> Linuxes at handling Microsoft-oriented and other proprietary-format
> attachments received on emails.  I get a couple of forwards per week
> from my wife asking me to play the attachments.
>
> What I am wondering is whether KDE Games will ever be able to catch
> up or keep up with this kind of stuff?  Or should I switch to writing iApps?
>
> All the best, Ian W.
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