Star Trek's Design Influence On Palm, New Tech 418
kevcol writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has a fun article describing how many of the inventions of Star Trek have made early appearances, 2 centuries ahead of Captain Kirk's time. They talk with one of Palm's UI designers, who admits that '...my first sketches were influenced by the UI of the Enterprise bridge panels', and also notes: 'When we designed the first Treo... it had a form factor similar to the communicators in the original series. It had a speakerphone mode so you could stand there and talk into it like Capt. Kirk'."
horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't take my word for it, do some googling for actual set shots of the UI... it's upsettingly poorly designed.
Then why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:missed this one? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've asked that question online. (Score:4, Insightful)
Thus you had Picard saying to the ceiling "Picard to Bridge" and get an instant comm link with out having to touch anything. The only issue I had was there was never a pause. He would instantly say that and Riker or Data would instantly answer. Obviously in real life the computer would have had to record that request and play that on the bridge for whoever to hear an answer. A delay of a second or two should have always happened while the computer repeated the request and got an answer back.
Picard: "Picard to Bridge"
Computer on bridge: "Picard to Bridge"
Riker: "Riker here, sir."
Computer in Picard's quarters: "Riker here, sir."
Only at that point would the two way link be established.
Obviously from a TV point of view that realistic a use of comm links would have slowed down the show.
I want my Star Trek phone, dammit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:handing out pdas (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a neat idea, and I would be surprised if it didn't happen in some form eventually.
UIs are learned (Score:2, Insightful)
That's why I love seeing someone trying Linux for the first time using something like twm instead of KDE or Gnome! It's hilarious!
Re:Then why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think so, but I am convinced that watching Star Trek is 90% of the reason I got my latest cell phone, which is a flip phone. If I could only find some Star Trek ring tones. . .
Seriously, Paramount is sitting on a goldmine here. Someone ought to license that. There are enough of us Geeks floating around that whoever came out with at ST:TOS style cell phone would probably make decent money on it.
We write our own future (Score:4, Insightful)
How many science fiction books dealt with the grim future of a corperate controlled government?
Re:missed this one? (Score:3, Insightful)
I do believe that "core temp" is what is important.
Sure the temperature under the tongue of the average healthy person will be 98.6 F, but who knows what the normal skin temp of the forehead of the average person is?
LK
Learned Interfaces are Faster than GUI's (Score:3, Insightful)
It's upsettingly poor if you want to have friendly, discoverable user interface.
I suspect rather it's a learned interface. Some 22nd century researcher computed the fastest, most error-proof interface and it has to be learned how to use.
Think about it. "Mr. Worf, target the leftmost and rightmost ships' engines. Fire."
Mr. Worf has about 2 seconds to input this into the computer. He can't grab a mouse and go:
Menubar...Weapons...Select Ship... Ship 1...
Modify target type... Engines...Modify weapon type...phasers....
OK...OK...OK...
[repeat for ship 2]
Menubar...Weapons...Fire
At best he has time to go "bleepity bleep bleep bleep". As a tradeoff he had to go to 3 semesters of targeting computer class at Starfleet Academy. But it's worth it because he nails the other ships before they can return fire.
UI books are filled with real-world analogues - in the 90's they replaced lots of VT terminals with Windows GUI apps on Citrix terminals for travel agents, telesales folk, hospital registrations, etc., and usually their productivity was cut in half on their data entry tasks. They had memorized the keypresses 5 screens in advance on the terminal apps, but now had to wait between each step and use a mouse to navigate. It's largely a latency problem.
GUI's are a great solution to many UI problems, but not all of them.
Re:horrible (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, ok found a reference [qwc.com]
Winton
How? (Score:3, Insightful)
How can the computer play, ON THE BRIDGE, the words "Picard to..." when he hasn't even uttered the words yet?
Sure the computer is wrapped up in an FTL field. That just means that, from the POV of the computer, it is having to wait an enormously long time while it waits on Picard to utter Bridge, Sickbay, Barbershop, or whatever he might be wanting to call. Unless shipwide there is this utterance of "Picard to
Re:missed this one? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lt. Uhura's earpiece... (Score:3, Insightful)
OTOH, Jabra seems to have done it right [jabra.com].
Re:looking for the captain's log (Score:3, Insightful)