The iPad is a Revolution

Having had an iPad for about a week now I'm pretty sure it will change how we interact with computers. It's not the multi touch with a big screen I'm thinking of but the fact that it seems like the first real attack on the overlapping windows UI approach in a very long time.

I've always been a bit sceptical to the idea of having two windows partially overlap like we do in most OS. If you are interacting with one program, it should be filling the screen, if you are interacting with two programs they should share the the screen in way that both of the windows have their share of the screen, having them overlap doesn't make sense. I can't remember how many times I've been upset trying to drag something from a window to a different window that happens to be partially covered by the first one.

There are many programs that solves this locally. My favorite example is Total Commander or Norton Commander. It's remarkably faster to get things done in that kind of environment rather than the seas of explorer or finder windows that tends to occupy the desktop after a days work.

For X environments there have been window managers like larswm and dwm that approaches the problem, but it has always seems like they are fighting a battle they can't win since most applications doesn't play very well with the paradigm. I've always been skeptical to turn into the person running WeirdOS with Dvorak keyboard setup and telling everybody how fast you get things done, since you tend to spend so much time on different computers in you everyday life so you'd better be good with what's most common.

This is why the iPad is very interesting. Suddenly we have a platform with a big adaptation and an OS built in a way where applications are full screen by default. I'm very happy they made it a big iPhone as opposed to a touch enabled desktop MacOSX. The upcoming multi tasking ability will take it closer to a real computer and with a real keyboard and a mouse, it's pretty close to be useful as a desktop OS.

Ironically XCode, the environment you develop for iPad in is the very opposite. It's, from a window point of view, one of the most messy pieces of software I've ever used. It's horrible to use on a laptop with a touchpad since it needs lots of window changes and precision mouse movements and you always end up with a stamp sized editor window for you code in order to fit the other relevant stuff you need on the screen.