At 6:08 PM +0100 6-01-00, Richard Hartman wrote:
>Why not give the user the option to stop this himself?
In general, Palm philosophy is to give the user fewer options.
No, I'm serious! Keep reading.
Whenever the proposal comes up to add a user option, we ask ourselves "how
will most people set this option?" Usually, it's clear that almost every
user will want it one way. (Or at least we feel it's clear.) So, we
implement only that way.
The result is you only have to write one set of code, and the user
interface is much simpler, and people don't have to figure out what a bunch
of settings are for, and there aren't so many prefs panels. Less is more,
in this case. Less code = fewer bugs, faster time to market, smaller ROM,
quicker updates, less testing, better performance, longer battery life,
etc. (But, don't tell Microsoft -- they still think Windows on handhelds
is a good idea!)
In this case, if the user doesn't like where an application gets filed,
they can simply re-file it. Loading applications is not something the vast
majority of users do very often. (I realize it's a LOT more common for the
users on this mailing list -- we are all power users after all, but then,
we probably all use 3rd party app launchers that have other features
anyway.)
Anyway, that's just how we thought of it, it's not necessarily 'right'. :-)
--Bob
