There is nothing about Java that should lead to the kind of problems these people say they’ve observed. The kind of problems they’ve observed are due to low quality students and/or low quality teaching.

“Professors Slam Java As “Damaging” To Students”

However if you critically look at OS’s today then they really haven’t moved that far from the innovation of cut&paste and drag&drop implemented for quite simple data types, and a fairly unsophisticated linking of data with applications using extensions!

The web on the one hand has made it much easier to *code* adhoc application integration, on the other hand has made it harder for end user driven resuse - look at the difficulty with cut and paste of web content. Though another great invention which is under valued is the use of mime-types and handlers.

It’s a fundamentally hard problem - hence the failure of things like publish and subscribe, open doc etc.

An interesting approach is taken by things like Enzo and Apple’s Automator - essentially recognise that creating easy workflows actually does require some coding - the aim should be to make that coding as easy a possible so the end user can do it - essentially a unix type approach. ( Doomed to invent and all that )

I agree that zero install is important, but I also think it’s easily fixable - what’s hard, but what frustrates people and frankly what sold the iPod to a large degree is all this messing about people have to do copying this to that, reformatting, ripping, importing, exporting .

ie if I want to put this address in this email in my contacts, why do I have to retype the damn thing? Apple have actually addressed this much better in Leopard.

If the android platform makes it easy for developers to make it easy for end-users to install programs which make it easy to synch their desktop picture with some online account - that google has no interest in - then they will have succeeded.

I don’t under-estimate the points you make about web apps - they are important. Rather, I think there’s something that’s more important: that is, the “zero install” nature of web apps.

So, I suspect the phone software platforms that will succeed big-time are those that can deploy rich applications with no manual installation steps and zero admin for updating to new versions. Not sure how Android deals with that (if indeed it does deal with it at all). Compare that to Flash (and Flash Lite), and Java SE applets. The former work pretty well today, that latter is starting to look like it might work pretty well (perhaps even on JavaFX Mobile phones) in 2008. There’s a big opportunity for the consumer JavaFX Mobile/Java SE guys to do something amazing, if the phone hardware is up to it - but it will need top-end CPUs, like the iPhone has.

Also, even having said that, the software platform isn’t even close to being the whole story. The device hardware is also critically important. Post-iPhone, the mobile phone world has changed - consumer device designers really have to up their games now. I can see Android and JavaFX Mobile phones easily ending up being like Amazon’s new Kindle (e-book reader). That is - good ideas, but just incredibly poorly executed…

Essentially they have learned that one of the benefits of the nature of the web platform is it leads to easy decomposition of applications with addressable parts - generally easy to link directly to a specific part of an app - say compose email or read a specific message - web applications tended to be built on a screen by screen basis.

Also as most web apps are fairly stateless ( on the client ) how to construct a web page in a certain state is fairly simple as the parameters go into the network call.

I actually think this is where something like JavaFX Mobile can help the big handset manufacturers. The big advantage of the iPhone form factor is that 90% of the interface is software, and can be upgraded remotely in the field via iTunes updates. Phones built around JavaFX mobile could have similar advantages.

Why could that that help? Because it means the manufacturers don’t have to get everything right first time, and a core strength of JavaFX Mobile, if Sun executes well, will be that it will be the easiest of all mobile platforms to build super-compelling user interfaces via JavaFX Script. However - it’s not out yet, so we’ll have to wait and see how well it turns out - the guys at Sun have really got their work cut out for them bringing all the consumer Java stuff together.

Asam said, “PS where is Google going to for deep human user interface insight? Like, who has it been working with on its Google apps?”

Not sure they’re going to anyone. Apple writes the “Google” apps for iPhone, not Google.

Asam said, “Java developers, guys you need to wise up and learn how a really good human interface works, the only way you’ll be able to do this is to go buy a Mac and an iPhone…”

Not sure why you single out Java developers. Developers in general often have a poor understanding of user interface design. This is partly what’s led to the new trends in tooling that allow graphics interaction designers to put interfaces together, while developers write code that hooks into the interfaces.

It’s a reasonable way of working… except: “graphics interaction designers” usually know as much about user interface design as developers do (i.e. not much); and also that probably 90% of all software development projects don’t have the budget to allow development of really compelling interfaces.

So you don’t see the most fundamental problem here? Sun with zero consumer level human interface experience, marketing a product to developers who will now try to adapt there brands of user interface to JavaFX - fools leading more fools? Problem with current phone is not the core OS, S60 3rd edition for example is an excellent implementation of Simbian, it’s Nokia and SE’s awful user interfaces that make the phones such a pain to use. How are Nokia and SE going to suddenly start making interfaces with the profound insight Apple has? By throwing money on it? Nope, MS has done that a million times and that does not work….

PS, where is Google going to for deep human user interface insight? Like, who has it been working with on it’s Google apps?

I have a simple message for all Java developers, guys you need to wise up and learn how a really good human interface works, the only way you’ll be able to do this is to go buy a Mac and an iPhone…

True. Let’s see if Apple sells a billion iPhones during the next six months then I predict it won’t…

Asam said, “Sun will never catch up, why, simple, because it has zero real-world consumer human interface understanding, it would need 20 years of producing consumer orientated products to even come close to Apple’s expertise…”

Apple should be in strong position here, I agree. However, it’s worth noting that Sun is not trying to build phone hardware. Rather, they’re hoping to license the JavaFX Mobile OS platform to the big players like Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson etc.

Asam said, “If you want to look at how marketshare can change in a matter of a few months, take a look at the new figures coming out for desktop OS share in Japan, Apple is wiping the board and currently at 60 % marketshare,”

Well, not really. In fact, not even close. Those figures are percentage market share for sales of shrinked-wrapped boxes with an OS DVD inside, during the time when Leopard was released. This represents a zero percent real change in desktop OS market share.