Glen, I think you may have missed the point of Russ' message. The whole "app" thing, whether web or proprietary, simply hides one layer of comlexity behind another complex layer. The end result is that the luser is completely seperated from their data yet equally confused. Your example of incoming data (and the proprietary nature of Apple's approach) makes sense. But the majority of transactions use existing data. Let's say the luser wants to play a song they know they own. Let's further postulate the actual file, whereever it resides, is not standard - an ogg codec file. The proprietary Apple app will only play songs in MP4 and only a few codecs. So the user will need to find the oggplayer app. Complexity is reduced but cumulatively the proliferation of apps will be just as confusing as the file system.
Ray Parks P.S. Jobs' vision is for even more lock-in through proprietary apps. Web apps will draw on Google's search to find the right app for any incoming file. ----- Original Message ----- From: glen e. p. ropella [mailto:g...@tempusdictum.com] Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 12:03 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On Apps and Browsers Russ Abbott wrote at 06/10/2011 10:16 AM: > How do you organize your 10,000 apps and find the one you want at any > particular time? It can be data-driven with a profiler that takes a signature of the incoming data and chooses based on that. Or you can require magic numbers in the data format. Or, you can allow the data sender to specify it in a metadata preamble. Then you can allow the receiver to choose their "preferred apps" if there are more than one that can handle the same type of data and/or the receiver is just a picky actor. Such selection could be done over time. The receiver might have all the apps indexed and choose at random which app to use to play the data, perhaps allowing a weighting for errors or other pressures. As one app's weight grows significantly larger than others, the receiver will eventually choose that one (almost always) when faced with a particular data signature. The key is the index, which is why Jobs cleverly prestidigitates our attention away from the one who owns the ontology. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
