{"id":24,"date":"2009-03-02T13:47:35","date_gmt":"2009-03-02T21:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kai.mactane.org\/blog\/?p=24"},"modified":"2009-03-02T13:47:35","modified_gmt":"2009-03-02T21:47:35","slug":"where-netbooks-are-taking-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/2009\/03\/02\/where-netbooks-are-taking-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Netbooks Are Taking Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re working on software development, you should absolutely read Clive Thompson article in Wired<\/cite>, The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time<\/a>. Thompson points out that the rise of the netbooks showed us that “traditional PC users…. didn’t want more out of a laptop\u2014they wanted less.”<\/p>\n

Says Thompson:<\/p>\n

I wrote this story on a netbook, and if you had peeked over my shoulder, you would have seen precisely two icons on my desktop: the Firefox browser and a trash can. Nothing else.<\/p>\n

It turns out that about 95 percent of what I do on a computer can now be accomplished through a browser. I use it for updating Twitter and Facebook and for blogging. Meebo.com lets me log into several instant-messaging accounts simultaneously. Last.fm gives me tunes, and webmail does the email. I use Google Docs for word processing, and if I need to record video, I can do it directly from webcam to YouTube. Come to think of it, because none of my documents reside on the netbook, I’m not sure I even need the trash can.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is big news to anyone designing applications, whether they’re Web-based, cloud-computing SaaS apps or standalone Windows apps in the old-school vein. If you’re designing for the old school, you need to remember: the game is changing. People are expecting different things, and measuring your app against a different yardstick.<\/p>\n

And if you’re designing for the cloud? Hey, consider that your users might have a smaller screen… People designing for the Web have always<\/em> tried to get away with assuming bigger screens than they should. I realize working in such constrained real estate is a hassle, but it’s long past time to get over it.<\/p>\n

Thompson has an interesting response to those who say, “But what about Photoshop?”, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re working on software development, you should absolutely read Clive Thompson article in Wired, The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time. Thompson points out that the rise of the netbooks showed us that “traditional PC users…. didn’t want more out of a laptop\u2014they wanted less.” Says Thompson: I wrote this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,23],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}