Observation of a Computer GUI Paradigm Shift

[Son of a Beach]

Last week I noticed my 4 year old daughter poking the computer screen quite hard and sliding her grubby, slobbery finger down the screen. Of course I told her off for touching the screen yet again. But as I did so, I suddenly realised what she was actually trying to do...

The 2 year old daughter (who hasn't yet mastered the mouse like the 4 year old did a couple of years ago) had just accidentally scrolled their kid-friendly web page down too far to access the kid-friendly components. The 4 year old was trying to scroll it back into view using the touch technique which is the correct way for her to do it on the iPhone.

Sheesh... I didn't even know how to drive an C64 joystick at that age!

[Charlievee]

Yes, I thought we were cool when our family had the first computer on the street. 1977 - my Dad bought a TRS 80 kit and wire wrapped the boards himself. We amused ourselves for hours playing ping pong. Now, my teenage daughter has an iPhone. Wow, how times have changed. Sadly, I suddenly feel really old ..... Regards, CV

[walkinTas]

Looks like you'll have to buy the kids an iPad.

[ILUVSWTAS]

Lovely story Nik.

I struggled at 18 when I did an IT course, yet my 4 year old plays Age of Empires and Crash bandicoot like an absolute guru.


Love the mention of the C64 btw. Did you have the really old one with cassette tapes?? Atari, C64, Amiga500.. ah those were the days!!

[Charlievee]

Yep ! Robot attack was a favourite game. I don't play games on my computer though. Surfing the net takes up enough time as it is ! Regards, CV

[dancier]

The kids love this touchy, feely type of stuff, that's why Facebook and games are the rage but get them into some number crunching and they start to falter. I've held off for too long and I'm going to buy a Itouch/Iphone for mapping primarily but I can see many uses for it, so it will be a real paradigm shift for me from my current desktop computer, my very first computer(Amstrad cpc464) probably had the same affect as the Apple technology will have.

[Son of a Beach]

Yes we had the C64 with the cassette tape reader. Run/stop.

You can get a full C64 emulator on the iPhone now.

[ILUVSWTAS]

Yes we had the C64 with the cassette tape reader. Run/stop.

You can get a full C64 emulator on the iPhone now.

REALLY?? I want one....

Yeh what was it?? Load "*",8,1 ??

[BarryJ]

I used an Apple ][e at home with a HUGE 32kb or RAM initially. I expanded that to a whole 128kb eventually. I also remember being dumb-founded when my work PC (with twin floppy drives) got upgraded in the mid-80's; the new one had a MASSIVE 10Mb hard drive. There was absolutely no way that I would ever fill that

[stepbystep]

Very cute Nik, but I resent the overuse of the phrase "....Paradigm shift"

[Son of a Beach]

Very cute Nik, but I resent the overuse of the phrase "....Paradigm shift"

Fair enough. One of my lecturers at uni loved the word "paradigm", so I think I got it hammered into me there. That was in a unit called "Systems Analysis and Design". I was simultaneously studying another unit called "Business Applications Development". So that semester it as all SAD and BAD for me.

[ollster]

You can get a full C64 emulator on the iPhone now.

Off-piste we go... You can get SNES, NES, Gameboy, Megadrive, Apple II, Atari 2600, Game Gear, ZX Spectrum and PSX emulators on Android.

Apparently the PSX emulator runs pretty well on a top end phone. I've tried the SNES ones on my Desire and they work really well. Makes me wish I had a Motorola DroidX instead (keyboard). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3r0sKROSsE

Me... I'm waiting for the SCUMM VM.

PS: Anyone else get pissed off with the ATMs that combine side buttons (that don't line up with the on-screen menu), a keypad and occasionally touch screen?! Those things are the pits as far as UI is concerned.

[sthughes]

Wow I like reading this topic, I mostly have no idea what you guys are talking about - makes me feel young again!

C64 must be a Commodore 64 - I saw one of these once, at a junk sale for 50 cents.

[Nuts]

We had one when I was in primary school, became a master at tennis, two bats and a ever faster moving ball: | .|
Ah! So sofistikated were we

[michael_p]

Vic 20 anyone? How about a TRS-80. Those were the days.

First full pc wasn't till 1984 and it cost thousands. Green monochrome screen, 512k ram, 10meg HD, 5.5inch floppy drive (still have one of these around the house somewhere), dot matrix printer, DOS3 and Word for DOS. I still play a game from those days that I run using DOSBox for Linux.

So much fun.

Michael.

[dancier]

First full pc wasn't till 1984 and it cost thousands.

The first clone I bought was an AT and it cost $3000. It was a goer, turbo speed was 12Mhz but the standard was 6Mhz, it had a maths co-processor and overly large 40mb drive. Those were the day's.

[walkinTas]

Very cute Nik, but I resent the overuse of the phrase "....Paradigm shift"

I agree! Touch screen isn't a Paradigm Shift. Intelligent voice interaction (i.e. conversation) would be. The real paradigm shift we need is to be liberated from the von Neumann paradigm.

[ollster]

Me... I'm waiting for the SCUMM VM.

Mmm, quoting myself... classy. I found a recompiled version of SCUMM VM for Android 2.2, and am now happily receiving the head rush of "point and touch" nostalgia from Monkey Island 2, Day of the Tentacle etc. on my phone.

That is all.

[Son of a Beach]

I'll have to try out MAME on my hand-held, now.

[ollster]

I'll have to try out MAME on my hand-held, now.

OOOOHH!!! That's an idea... off to market I'll go later...

[michael_p]

Here's a cautionary tale:
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/buy-buy-mummy-ipad-toddlers-spending-spree-20100915-15bz8.html?autostart=1

[Macca81]

PS: Anyone else get pissed off with the ATMs that combine side buttons (that don't line up with the on-screen menu), a keypad and occasionally touch screen?! Those things are the pits as far as UI is concerned.

VERY!!!

i can transfer money online on my phone from whoa to go faster than i can take it out of a damned machine that is supposedly built for the sole purpose of handing out cash!


on the original topic, i very recently succumbed to peer pressure and replaced my old Ericsson phone that has been on the verge of death for the past 2 years, and i purchased a HTC Desire (i have used an iphone heaps for work, and the Desire is just sooooo much smoother, faster, smarter, better...). now my 2 year old brother loves playing with phones, and i often let him play with my mobile with the keypad locked (screen still lights up for him). in the last 18 months he has not once unlocked it, until last night i give him my desire... i reckon he had it unlocked in 35 seconds, had worked out how the touch screen worked in a further 15 seconds, and had (by chance i hope) found an app that he could draw with in a further 60 seconds... once i locked it again he had it unlocked just as fast as it takes me to unlock it!

i guess that he had trouble with the Ericsson because it was built before he was born, and so its old technology confused him (5 years old, but was still a phone that rivalled a few for sale today).

[Macca81]

Me... I'm waiting for the SCUMM VM.

Mmm, quoting myself... classy. I found a recompiled version of SCUMM VM for Android 2.2, and am now happily receiving the head rush of "point and touch" nostalgia from Monkey Island 2, Day of the Tentacle etc. on my phone.

That is all.

where?? i see no evidence of its existence for droids... and after reading your post i sudenly have an urge to play monkey isl... linky linky???

[ollster]

where?? i see no evidence of its existence for droids... and after reading your post i sudenly have an urge to play monkey isl... linky linky???

There is a version on ApprBrain (I don't use the Market itself) for pre 2.0+ Android, but I believe development on that may have halted? Not really clear on what's going on. Seems that some clever clog has decided to continue the process, but it's not available through normal means yet.

http://anddev.at.ua/news/scummvm_port_i ... 10-06-02-1

This is also worth a read (in particular "Status of official Android 2.0 port?"):
http://forum.scummvm.org/viewforum.php?f=17

Obviously you'll need something like ES File Explorer or another APK installer program. You'll also need to tick "Unknown Sources" under Application settings to install the APK I think. For the record, I'm running the OGG version of SCUMMVM on a rooted HTC Desire running T-MOD 1.6 (Android 2.2).

The games I've tried have worked fine, saves work, sound works, touch input is ok. The SCUMMVM onscreen keyboard is a bit fiddly, but other than that it's pretty good.

Of course, you'll also need the game data files, and I can't tell you how or where to get those.

[EDIT: I'm assuming you know what SCUMMVM is...]

[ollster]

Desire is just sooooo much smoother, faster, smarter, better...).

You think it's fast now? 2.2 makes 2.1 look like it's standing still...

[tasadam]

I know one client of ours that still uses 8 inch floppy drives in their server, and hard disks that weigh in excess of 17 kilo's.

Anyone remember Zork? I was playing that on a Xenix server at work in 1985.
Xenix was a bit like Unix. An operating system.

A 10Mb hard disk weighing 17 kilo's equates in relative terms to a terabyte hard disk weighing 17,000 tonnes! Having over 6 Tb in my photo computer, that's over 100,000 tonnes! Ridiculous.

[walkinTas]

No, not Zork. The game I remember from that era was called The Quest. I remember when my eldest son was about 7 I installed in on the PC and stayed up half the night playing it. I figured I'd show it to the kids the next day. When I go up they had already made more progress than I did the night before. We never discussed computer games much after that.

[ollster]

I know one client of ours that still uses 8 inch floppy drives in their server, and hard disks that weigh in excess of 17 kilo's.

Wow, nice reliability. Still, sounds like a ticking time bomb!

[Son of a Beach]

Yes, I remember in my grade 10 work experience I helped to change a hard disk in a drive that was about the size and shape of a washing machine. This was connected to a PDP-11 which looked like a large filing cabinet. A classic computer of the era.

Still, it was able to produce some very impressive animated graphics of a heart beating from nuclear medicine scans. I remember thinking that was one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen from a computer at the time, and I just played it over and over again.

[tasadam]

I have a disc platter in my shed, looks like a solid aluminium LP but bigger, about 14" (sorry, 350mm) diameter, about 4mm thick, double sided coated in a yukky brown colour, obvuiusly a bit like what makes up a tape for the magnetic bizzo, and there were 5 or 6 of these discs in a stack to make 80Mb.
And when you got a head crash, you got a groove cut into the aluminium. If it happened overnight, it might be quite a deep groove by morning. Very messy!
The good old days....