Palm OS Programming, 2nd Edition

Works Great and Is Simple to Use

Now, we are into very subjective stuff and we are the first to admit it. When we say a handheld has to “work great and be simple to use” many of you may justifiably want a much more exact description of what this means—how the various combinations of features that go into the creation of a particular handheld translate into a great user experience. We would be the first to admit that how you compare and measure things like great backlit color screens against long battery life is notoriously open to debate. Whether the presence of a cool MP3 player or the ability to look at web pages is more important than the price is debatable.

It would be great to see about five years into the future when it will be obvious which were the right choices for today’s customers. We could all pontificate about how we knew all along that this set of features and device options were the golden ones. Barring the presence of a rift in the time-space continuum, however, we are forced to guess. So, we will tell you about our guesses and Palm’s guesses. We will tell you what Palm thinks “works great and is simple to use” means. These guesses have led to design decisions in the Palm OS and on Palm OS devices that will determine how you develop for this platform. Stated most generally, what Palm means when it says “works great and is simple to use” is that usability matters more than looks, and simple common features that work well are more important than lots of built-in choices. ...