The Android Gets Its HyperCard

theodp writes "Steve Jobs & Co. put the kibosh on easier cellphone development, but Google is giving it a shot. The NY Times reports that Google is bringing Android software development to the masses, offering a software tool starting Monday that's intended to make it easy for people to write applications for its Android phones. The free software, called Google App Inventor for Android, has been under development for a year. User testing has been done mainly in schools with groups that included sixth graders, high school girls, nursing students and university undergraduates who are not CS majors. The thinking behind the initiative, Google said, is that as cellphones increasingly become the computers that people rely on most, users should be able to make applications themselves. It's something Apple should be taking very seriously, advises TechCrunch."

Comments

lawl

[Pojut]

We're Apple...we don't have to care what our competitors do!

Re:lawl

[n2art2]

and that is because as soon as Apple does something different the competitors tend to copycat.

Re:lawl

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy cell phone application development will probably be like web development in that its a former "nerd domain" that's socially acceptable and "cool" for non-nerds to play in.

I sense a disturbance in the force, as if Steve Job's soul suddenly cried out "Do not want!" and "Well don't hold it like that then."

Re:lawl

[migla]

>and that is because as soon as Apple does something different the competitors tend to copycat.

I thought this was a story about Google doing something differently than apple.

Re:lawl

[ground.zero.612]

and that is because as soon as Xerox does something different Apple tends to copycat.

FTFY

PS) Thank the Lords of Kobol that Palm, HTC, Motorola, etc have been choosing to not copycat Apple!

Re:lawl

[Pojut]

Yup. Thank goodness we're all using one-button mice! All joking aside, I know what you're saying...but Apple still needs to be paying attention.

Re:lawl

[hedwards]

I'm wondering why they needed to say "high school girls." Were they just over emphasizing being girl friendly, or did they actually make more of an effort with girls than boys?

Re:lawl

[ByOhTek]

Apple only got where it's at by copycating. Pretty much everything else it's done has been available before. Is there anything Apple's done that hasn't fallen into this pattern:

1) Copycat something someone has done before
2) Clean up the UI/polish of the device to make it more user friendly
3) Go on a marketing blitz to try and make it popular and trendy.
4) Profit

And then I've seen in several products (but not all)..
5) Stagnate while competitors catch up with and improve upon/beyond Apple's original concepts.

And with the transition from MacOS 9 -> MacOS X...
6) Return to step 2

Re:lawl

[ByOhTek]

Actually, it strikes me as a "DO WANT" for Steve Jobs. He's targeting the trendy and faddish types for uptake and then slides the products into the more common-tier placement. Nerds are hot his primary target (just a happy and useful coincidence in OS X).

Re:lawl

[bsDaemon]

Well, if high schoolers are anything like they were when I was one, boys are more likely to take to programming while girls are more likely to spend time using the phone. If the boys who already program want to get into cell phone development, its not going to be that much of a stretch, even without this tool. If they want to encourage girls who aren't already interested in programming but want to make their phone more "personal", then this is probably a good way to start. I doubt its some sort of sexist plot, but how many 16 year old girls did you know who would want to write C code vs maybe some Javascript to spruce up their Geocities page? I see this as the same type of deal.

Re:lawl

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This is a situation where, I suspect, Apple will not follow unless placed under real pressure.

Look at Apple's release model, particularly for iDevice stuff, it is the very opposite of "early and often". They are totally willing to take flack(cut and paste, MMS, multitasking, etc.) for as long as necessary in the service of delivering what they consider to be the "right" solution. Obviously, they do do iterated development as well(just ask anybody who had to endure OSX before about 10.3...); but Apple, in the present day, has a strong bias against "good enough and a lot faster/cheaper" type stuff.

Releasing an environment explicitly designed to lower the barrier to entry for application creation would have an effect precisely contrary to Apple's design aesthetic and integration philosophy. Consider the analogy of MS Access in the context of Win32 desktop software. On the one hand, the existence of that application is probably responsible for the existence of more utterly rubbish "applications" than just about anything else on earth. On the other hand, it has allowed millions of people who are basically nonprogrammers to hack together "good enough" applications to solve the weird little application-specific problems that are important to them or their business, and which are too small to pay for a real developer.

Google's "App Inventor" will very likely have similar results: large numbers of people who would otherwise be unable to create any software will create bad software that is "good enough" because, while bad, it is precisely tailored to problems that they care about. Apple could, in all likelihood, create such a system if they were so inclined; but there are two reasons to suspect that they won't(again, unless they find themselves under really heavy competitive pressure, which they haven't yet. Android has grown phenomenally; but mostly by sniping geeks, eating the WinMo and legacy-Palm markets, and pretty much crushing the "high end dumbphone", not by cutting the iPhone user base): One, Apple currently has the substantial majority of 3rd party developers, and many of the ones considered to be doing the best work. Two, "good enough" makes Steve cry, and the programs that will come out of any bar-lowering super-simple application development environment will just ooze "good enough" from every pore...

Re:lawl

[Anonymous Coward]

This tripe is +4 insightful?

You Apple fanmods are pathetic. What the fuck.

Re:lawl

[MrHanky]

You don't seriously think Apple held back 3G, a half-decent camera, etc., simply because they wanted to do it "right"? Apple will hold back on basic features because then they can get their users to buy the same product again in 12 months. There's nothing more to it.

Re:lawl

[Keebler71]

Right...like when apple invented the GUI, mouse, tablet computer, touch screen, mp3 player ... oh wait...

Re:lawl

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The two strategies are not mutually exclusive, and I think that it is fair to say that they engage in both.

Because hardware cannot be patched, any feature delay(whether a legitimate delay caused by having a fairly small engineering team, or an instance of cynical milking) tends to look and feel like milking, and have similar economic consequences.

With software, it is harder to argue that there is a cynical economic strategy at work; because (with iPhones) software upgrades are not paid for, so the delay has no profit, only a PR cost. They might make a few bucks off the iPod Touch users; but I'd be shocked if the money made by nickel and diming them is worth a delay that might reduce the number of comparatively high-roller iPhone users they have raked in and locked into contract at a given time. The only aspect of their software strategy that is arguably "milking" is tying relatively trivial features of their OS bundled applications to OSX upgrades, in order to encourage people who don't care about APIs, or wouldn't know one if it bit them in the ass, to update anyway.

Re:lawl

[Missing.Matter]

I'm sorry, the app store is already flooded with developer who are unable to create software.

Re:lawl

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh okay I get it.

"Everyone copies Apple" == Insightful
"Apple copied Xerox" == Flamebait

Re:lawl

[MrHanky]

Since Apple is notorious for forcing old hardware into obsolescence (not so much their phones as their computers: it's not like HTC isn't worse), I'm not going to give them the benefit of doubt, which is something you seem to be going out of your way to do. No, the piss poor camera in the first generations were not due to a "small engineering team"; a camera is a commodity. 3G, likewise. It's only now that the competition has caught up with it in usability that the iPhone is starting to compete in hardware -- features that the fanboy would claim as "irrelevant" until ... oops, time to upgrade again now that the iPhone 4 has a great camera and one of the best screens you can get. You're fooling yourselves.

How many of the people lining up for the 3G already had the first gen? 90%?

Re:lawl

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Yup. Thank goodness we're all using one-button mice!

Actually, as a usability expert, I really wish we were using one button mice. Well, not really. I wish Windows was designed to work with a single button mouse and that was the default type of mouse shipped with consumer systems. I'm also happy with variable-button mice which can become multi-button mice depending upon the software or user settings; but which default to a single button setup.

The truth is, a one button mouse setup leads to a great many usability improvements. Clicking the wrong mouse button is probably one of the most common mistakes seen in usability tests, and not just among novices. Even experts occasionally click the wrong one for a task. On top of that, the default of having multi-button mice means that software is designed and tested for that setup primarily and often exclusively. This results in software that is unusable with a single button mouse. You simply can't accomplish necessary tasks without multiple buttons. This absolutely sucks for anyone using any sort of alternate interface, like a tablet, voice command system, joystick, most interfaces for the disabled, etc. The advent of trackpads that you can click and multi-touch is alleviating the problem somewhat, but not near enough.

Since you brought it up, I just wanted to make sure you're aware of the implications. Apple doesn't promote a single button mouse. They don't even sell one anymore as far as I know. They promote a single button mouse default setup, with the ability to add more buttons for more advanced users. In that, I devoutly wish the rest of the industry would follow.

Re:lawl

[delinear]

Agreed, and it's all about perceptions as well. I knew plenty of guys at school who weren't into computers at all, but if you tell someone "this development kit makes it so easy, a teenage boy could use it" that's not a great endorsement, because the perception of most non-techies is that all teenage boys are "computer wizzkids". If you can say "look at what this group of teenage girls created", that takes the scary techie edge off (and I'm not suggesting that girls are any less competent here than boys, just that this is society's perception).

Re:lawl

[faedle]

I will debate the "not cutting in to Apple's iPhone user base" statement.

I know of three different "non-geeks" who had second and third generation iPhones who have switched to Android handsets. Two have switched to the Sprint EVO, one to a Verizon Droid handset (I don't remember which) in the last 30 days.

In all three cases, the reasons were simple. Their contracts with AT&T were up, and they were irritated at AT&T's issues so they went looking. In all three cases, they found features present in the Android handsets that were compelling (4G coverage, while spotty on the Sprint EVO with the tethering capability in one case, Verizon's rock-solid coverage in the other).

It's a bit early for the media and consulting houses to have picked up yet, but I suspect the story is the same: Apple introduced people to smartphones, and now that the market is ready a lot of non-techie types are frustrated with AT&T and looking for alternatives. And Android handsets are in a very good position right now to put the hurt on, and I think it is starting to happen.

Hell, even T-Mobile is beating off potential Android customers with a stick, if my recent visit to a local T-Mobile store to handle a customer service issue with my handset is any indication.

Re:lawl

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you have a *fairly* low uid and all, but, Geocities page... really?

Re:lawl

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I wouldn't touch Apple's gilded cage with a 10 foot pole(unless someone for whom it isn't 'just working' pays me enough to touch it for them); but my impression of their strategy is that it is a mixture of cynical customer milking(you don't get margins like theirs otherwise) and a certain flavor of engineering perfectionism(which, on the one hand, is largely what allows them to get away with the first part; but can also bite them in the margins and the customer satisfaction: consider all the Time Capsules that would be alive today if they had gone with a super-cheap generic 12v brick instead of a more expensive, and thermal death prone, internal PSU...)

Re:lawl

[Pojut]

Actually, as a usability expert, I really wish we were using one button mice. Well, not really. I wish Windows was designed to work with a single button mouse and that was the default type of mouse shipped with consumer systems. I'm also happy with variable-button mice which can become multi-button mice depending upon the software or user settings; but which default to a single button setup.

So, as a "usability expert", you advocate dumbing things down to a preschooler level...instead of advocating people learning how to distinguish between button #1 and button #2? Hell, even first graders can do that...ever see the "what's different" challenges in Highlights? Seriously...if someone is struggling with two buttons, they shouldn't be using a computer.

You can call that being a dick, you can call that not listening to user's problems, you can call it whatever you like....but people can differentiate between a gas and a brake pedal. They should do the same between a left and a right mouse button.

The truth is, a one button mouse setup leads to a great many usability improvements.

Source? If anything, it would make things WORSE. You would have to use the keyboard to modify how that one mouse button functions. So now, instead of just clicking the button next to one the user is already using, you want them to have to find a specific key on a keyboard to act as a modifier? They already have trouble using two buttons on the same object...what makes you think they could choose one out of 104 buttons on a separate object?

Look. I can understand what you're getting at...I just think you are way off base. Your point about tablets have some credence to them, but their problem isn't that the interfaces weren't originally designed for a single mouse-button....the problem is that tablets have no buttons. That takes time to perfect and for people to get used to. Nothing more.

Re:lawl

[VoiceOfRaisin]

you think many everyday people creating a pet the kitty app are gonna sign up as a developer and submit their app to the app store? i doubt that. it would actually be good to have a separate app store for this so people know they are limited apps, but it gets people interested in the process and friends and family can download the app.

Re:lawl

[Anonymous Coward]

They just wanted to spend their time chatting up the pretty high school girls

That is all

Re:lawl

[farble1670]

Google's "App Inventor" will very likely have similar results: large numbers of people who would otherwise be unable to create any software will create bad software that is "good enough" because, while bad, it is precisely tailored to problems that they care about. /quote?

why would you want to stop people from creating apps that are "good enough" to solve their problems? i could care less if someone is using a crappy app that works for them. i'll never install it or even know it exists. who cares. it's good for them that's all that counts.

apple has tons of crappy apps in their app store already (and so does android). apple doesn't approve / deny apps based on quality. that's not one of the check boxes. if someone pays the developer fee and follows the rules, that's all that matters.

Re:lawl

[Ukab the Great]

Maybe first tutorial has the student print "Hello Kitty."

Re:lawl

[MrHanky]

They certainly have done some things well, but I just don't agree with the belief that they postpone things until they do them "right". If so, OS X should come without a basic file manager. But even a great file manager isn't reason to upgrade the OS, so Apple hasn't bothered with fixing Finder.

Re:lawl

[butterflysrage]

One, Apple currently has the substantial majority of 3rd party developers, and many of the ones considered to be doing the best work.

the question is, for how long... those I know who do iPhone development are getting progressively more and more nervous of suddenly getting the ban-hammer and losing months/years of development manhours for no other reason then Apple decided they didn't like what they were doing anymore.

Most of them (for all the anecdotal evidence that entails) are looking long and hard at other markets... sure, you can make a mint on the iphone, but only until your app gets banned for one reason or another, then you are out all that development time. All those banned apps and changing goalposts are taking their toll on the confidence of 3rd party devs.

Re:lawl

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

So, as a "usability expert", you advocate dumbing things down to a preschooler level...instead of advocating people learning how to distinguish between button #1 and button #2?

Maybe you don't understand what usability is. It's making tasks as easy and efficient as possible. For the most part, two button mice are wasted because the interfaces are designed by someone who does not know what the user's tasks are. For example, on a machine that ships with a single button mouse, nothing stops you from installing a three button mouse. I'm using one right now. But instead of a developer who does not know my workflow choosing what two of those buttons do, and me getting to program one of them in a customized way, I get two to customize and one is preprogrammed. That also means no functionality is "hidden" in a context menu. All of it is accessible from the regular menus, which means if a person with a mouth controlled joystick needs to use the software, they can actually get to everything.

Simple DEFAULTS don't dumb down an interface. They make it usable.

Seriously...if someone is struggling with two buttons, they shouldn't be using a computer.

In my experience that would be about 30% of users in a given day, including a network security expert that is running the show for one of the largest telecomm companies in the world and has an IQ, PhD's, and enough experience to make your resume look like crap. You want to bet you never look in the wrong menu using the wrong mouse button when trying to perform tasks? I bet you do. Almost everyone does. It's just part of how people use computers these days and something we don't pay attention to.

You can call that being a dick, you can call that not listening to user's problems...

I call that idiocy and ignoring problems and blaming users for shitty usability. That would make you the average programmer then... maybe even one at MS :)

The truth is, a one button mouse setup leads to a great many usability improvements.

Source?

Umm, every book on computing usability ever published; or very nearly. Are you joking? Have you bothered to do any research on the topic, ever?

You would have to use the keyboard to modify how that one mouse button functions.

That's one option. It's called "chording". Another, more common, option is to make everything accessible without needing a second button. A third option, for more advanced users, is to add a device with multiple buttons, or enable those buttons when present in devices with a flexible number of buttons (ala magic mouse or whatever they call it).

So now, instead of just clicking the button next to one the user is already using, you want them to have to find a specific key on a keyboard to act as a modifier?

For some advanced options and shortcuts to actions, sure. For regular users, they should never need to use options only available there. It should strictly be for shortcuts, advanced options, and user programmable functions.

They already have trouble using two buttons on the same object...what makes you think they could choose one out of 104 buttons on a separate object?

The point is, if you only have one button by default, they never have to because no programmer in their right mind puts functionality ONLY in that place, as programmers routinely do for right click menus.

Look. I can understand what you're getting at...I just think you are way off base.

But you clearly haven't bothered to do any research on the topic. You just have an opinion formed out of your own emotional baggage and with no scientific basis or evidence.

Your point about tablets have some credence to them, but their problem isn't that the interfaces weren't originally designed fo

Re:lawl

[Chris Burke]

Didn't you read the headline? Google is just copying Hypercard. Forget copying the iPhone, they're copying the 25-year-old Macintosh! Hey Google, at least copy stuff from this millennium! /snark

Re:lawl

[Dare nMc]

Apple has been forced to respond, and follow many times in the past. For example when hackers released a development kit for the iPhone, so Apple has to release a official one (It is obvious Apple intended to have a SDK, but it was clearly going to be a application market and SDK, but would have been a partners only release, to companies like EA/bungie/ID that would have had to give "exclusive content".)
So far it appears apple is willing to give up market share to android, to keep the premium price for applications and a monthly royalty for each active phone from AT&T. Apple has significant lock in for current Iphone customers, where many have spent hundreds of dollars on apps, and music that they can't move to android. So your correct, Apple can decide to follow the same path as they did in the PC market, and just cater to a shrinking but loyal current core for the Iphone. Or they can give up on their premium price, like they did with the ipod and remain competitive.
I would bet on them following the Mac path, but it will be interesting how much share they will give up on that path and how well they take it.

Re:lawl

[NekSnappa]

Since Apple is notorious for forcing old hardware into obsolescence

Are you serious? I just retired my G4 luxo lamp iMac a couple of months ago, which was released in '96. It was fully supported, and useful, until 10.6 when they finally dropped the Power PC architecture.

Re:lawl

[Pojut]

I believe the damn kids these days refer to that as getting "served". I apparently have a lot to learn about the topic.

I still hate one-button mice, though :D

Re:lawl

[MrHanky]

Yes, I'm serious, and no, the G4 iMac wasn't released in '96 -- in fact, the first iMac (G3) was introduced in 1998, whose latest supported OS was Panther (2003). Oh, and the latest supported OS for the original G4 iMac was 10.4.11. Don't bother much with facts, do you?

Re:lawl

[Dr Herbert West]

At the risk of sounding sentimental, I think lowering the barrier for entry for app building is a step toward my personal vision of utopia. "solve[ing] the weird little application-specific problems that are important to them or their business, and which are too small to pay for a real developer" is exactly how you end up with the most diverse software environment possible, and get the really inventive, out-of-left-field creatives to participate.

A higher barrier for entry certainly has not prevented the deluge of "iFart" apps.

Re:lawl

[hkmwbz]

So you are saying that Google is introducing something that has been missing from the market for 25 years? Why is it bad to copy something just because it's old? Also, Apple keeps copying and copying. Are you whining about that too?

Re:lawl

[Dr.Merkwurdigeliebe]

Apple only got where it's at by copycating.

Hmm ... it appears that only step 1 is actually copycating. The rest of those steps are SOP for businesses.

Re:lawl

[Rysc]

If you s/Geocities/myspace/ then you're still years out of date, but only moderately so.

Re:lawl

[Chris Burke]

So are you being sarcastic and I'm missing it, or are you being earnest because you missed my sarcasm tag?

Re:lawl

[sarysa]

As an aside, Hypercard was booming as early as 14 years ago. (I know, I used to use it before I got serious with programming) Also, it's only 23 years old and was sold until 2004, last update was 1998. Just thought I'd throw that in there before posts phrased like "the software, which celebrates its 35th birthday in September, was popular among..." start popping up.

Re:lawl

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, all your examples are great because they're not targeting and using a particular object. With a single button mouse, how would you propose to, for example, save an image on a webpage? A lot of novice users would love to send a picture of a cute ____ to their friends. You can't long-press, do any gestures, etc, because the webpage itself might be using those actions on the page itself. The easiest, most logical way would be to have a button outside the scope of the webpage to do so.

Accidental context menu presses can be easily dismissed by not selecting anything on the context menu. =P

Different example: A friend of mine with an iPhone and myself with a Nexus One were both using the Facebook mobile site. iProducts, as you know, have one button. Androids have a context menu button. As a joke, we were messaging each other in quick succession, commenting on a photo that she had just posted. This required refreshing the page constantly since the mobile doesn't do so automatically (and shouldn't since it could unintentionally use up a bandwidth).

Me: Context, Refresh. Scroll down one more comment (since refreshing saves browser position), if available.
Her: Scroll all the way back up to the top of the page, hit refresh, scroll all the way back down. This eventually got quite annoying since the comments were piling up. Eventually took an extra several seconds to scrolling.

Comments on how to improve usability here as well? Remember, you can't single tap / long press here because most of the content is a web page that might be expecting that particular input. Additionally, the browser was occupying the full screen save the status bar at the top, so it wasn't exposing any interactive browser UI elements on either browser (just the page).

It seems that Main click = primary interaction, context click = alternate actions to interact with said object is quite easy for most people to remember. (It even works as default for most video games even on consoles -- Rpad / Leftmouse = primary fire, Lpad / rightmouse = alternate fire) If what they want isn't in the context menu, then start looking for stuff in the menu bar.

Re:lawl

[Americano]

Right, because boys will just naturally want total control over their phones and pick up programming and learn to love C code.

Whereas girls, being, you know, girly, just want things to be pretty and frilly and cute. So we "encourage" those girls by giving them watered down tools to let them do "cute" but ultimately meaningless things so they'll feel good about themselves.

And then we wonder why IT is seen as unfriendly and unappealing to women?

Re:lawl

[ByOhTek]

Yes but I was adding onto a point made in response to n2art2's post), stating everyone is copying Apple, as if apple weren't also being a copycat and in the same boat.

Re:lawl

[Anonymous Coward]

You are write like pakistan man.

Re:lawl

[dannys42]

Personally I agree with the one-button mouse approach (let me clarify by calling it the one-button mouse approach to UI design). In fact having watched many users (including IT professionals) use a computer, even single vs double clicking confuses most people.

Most people just make a habit of double-clicking everything, including web links because they just don't understand the different contexts.

Many years ago I was thinking about this problem of usability, and honestly I think that even overlapping windows is just too much for the vast majority of people. It's too abstract and to date really not presented in a way that makes sense. There's also too many modes... sometimes separate windows are linked so they all have focus sometimes not.

While I personally don't have a problem keeping track of these things, it seems an all too common problem for a lot of people out there. My solution was to follow the PDA concept of fast-loading apps that remember state when you switch between them and that all take over the whole screen. Ideally you'd want to get rid of the mouse and keyboard. The mouse is simple (touch screen). Keyboard however, just doesn't seem like it's going to go away until we have strong AI.

I never thought it would happen, but that's exactly what the iPad is. Sure it's a little rough here and there, but for a 1st gen product in this category, I think it's a good step in the right direction for "usable computing" for the non-techie.

It's not a computer that I'd want to use. But I can see it dealing nicely with a lot of usability issues for a lot of people at a price that surprisingly competitive.

Re:lawl

[bsDaemon]

When I was in high school I didn't know a single female programmer. Not one. When I got to college, the best programmer I knew was female. I'm just saying, it's not that girls are less able, I just think that in general the interest level isn't there. Males have a natural tendency towards destruction, construction, and other forms of power display that are required for this type of work. We're also raised to be that way. Girls, not so much, so I think it takes more encouragement to get them to try things like programming, or engineering, or being a fighter pilot, or whatever else have you, because it's not typical and thus "weird" for them to do it. And, because they're naturally more social and empathetic, what other people think is going to play a larger part. Something "easy" that allows them to do relatively nifty things that their friends can enjoy, without having to spend too much time up front, could be the step forward they need to go on to other things. Most guys seem to want to take the hardest route possible so that when they get to the end they can brag about how bad-ass they must be.

Re:lawl

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth is, a one button mouse setup leads to a great many usability improvements.

Source?

Umm, every book on computing usability ever published; or very nearly. Are you joking? Have you bothered to do any research on the topic, ever?

I understand you consider yourself very researched on this topic. Would it kill you to provide a quick link or at least appropriate search terms that would help the rest of us become as educated as you? Your snide remark really doesn't assist the discussion at all.

The point is, if you only have one button by default, they never have to because no programmer in their right mind puts functionality ONLY in that place, as programmers routinely do for right click menus.

Shitty programmers will make shitty programs regardless of what restrictions you put on them. If the coder thinks something belongs only in a context menu, they will put that option only in the context menu. It doesn't matter if the user has to right-click or thumb-click or mouse-gesture or mod4-click to view that context menu.

You're trying to neuter programmers in the naive hope that this will prevent poor design decisions. Instead you'll just limit your users' ability to overcome the programmer's bad decisions.

Rather than having the authors of Notepad decide what goes in the second mouse button context menu (and choosing completely useless options like what is available now) why don't we leave that to the user so I can choose useful things like running text manipulation scripts, grammar checking, automatically reformatting text into bibliography entries, etc., etc... like I do in TextEdit where I get that option and which is designed to work in a single button setting as the primary environment?

Or why not have both? Why not have an editable context menu but with good defaults chosen? There are many programs that exhibit this behavior -- "Notepad" is not designed to have that many features. Whether or not it's poor design depends on the intended purpose.

I'm not educated on usability, but what you say makes sense. Things shouldn't be hidden in sections of the UI that are not available to the simplest of control schemes. But that doesn't mean you should abolish certain sections of the UI. Particularly in a mouse-based environment, why should I move my pointer and focus all the way to an unrelated section of the screen if it's possible to right-click and get a context menu without moving? I do understand not forcing the behavior, but I don't understand not providing it.

Re:lawl

[rdean400]

This IDE looks similar to Ares (Palm's webOS IDE, which has been out for several months now).

Re:lawl

[ronocdh]

I know of three different "non-geeks" who had second and third generation iPhones who have switched to Android handsets.

I know of two separate "geeks," coworkers in IT, who both switched from iPhones to the Nexus One. Just this morning, one of them ordered the other to put his brand new iPhone 4 back in the box (he hadn't even turned it on yet) and had me show off my Nexus One again. It resulted in a conversion, and he'll be returning the phone tonight, he claims.

As hard as it is for some people to accept that geeks use iPhones, it does happen. Increasingly less due to Android, though, it would seem.

Re:lawl

[brianleb321]

The truth is, a one button mouse setup leads to a great many usability improvements.

Source?

Umm, every book on computing usability ever published; or very nearly. Are you joking? Have you bothered to do any research on the topic, ever?

You do realize you didn't cite a source, right?

... Right?

Re:lawl

[daver00]

Except for the time when Apple is copying all of its competitors... Amazing how the world works!

Re:lawl

[Vash21]

Apple only got where it's at by copycating.

Hmm ... it appears that only step 1 is actually copycating. The rest of those steps are SOP for businesses.

I feel like illiteracy might be more prevalent than we think... Or maybe this is just an example of how much of a misnomer common sense can be... counting isn't that difficult. In order to get to 2, you must first have 1, and so on and so forth.

Apple only got where it's at by copycating. Pretty much everything else it's done has been available before. Is there anything Apple's done that hasn't fallen into this pattern:

ByOhTek shouldn't have had to clarify, since his post was self explanatory. The point is Apple has to copycat before it does anything else, and this (amongst other reasons) is why I and many other people get frustrated when we try to explain to people why we don't want a Mac, and iPhone, or an iPad. Apple is a perfect example of how clever business/marketing tactics supporting products almost completely devoid of innovation can convince millions of people of your superior "innovations" and "revolutionary" ideas. Its not that their products are terrible (if you ignore the walled garden, and other short comings), and I often find their designs and commercials appealing, but the false credit they get for them.

Re:lawl

[Saint Fnordius]

I think "App Inventor" is slightly misnamed, as it looks more like a rapid prototyping device. Like the old Hypercard or Macromedia Director days, a software proposal would be tested/wireframed with it, and then later actually programmed in a lower level language. Hypercard and Director were also powerful enough that commercial multimedia CD-ROMs like Myst were written with it.

The thing is, the App Inventor isn't designed for making polished apps, and I wouldn't be surprised to see App Inventor apps banned from the Google Marketplace, with the note that you should compile and upload them yourself. It's all about giving people the tools to experiment. Letting them use crayons instead of insisting upon airbrushes. Letting people get dirty with their software if they wish.

Re:lawl

[Missing.Matter]

There are services which make an app for you. Essentially they offer templates where you can fill in the info you want. You'll find these apps in the form of quote lists, picture slideshows, and sound boards. Developers like Brighthouse Labs do this, and their app count reachers into the thousands.

I'm not saying that enabling novice developers will make the signal/nose ratio any better; I'm simply saying even without them it's so bad their presence wouldn't be anything new

Re:lawl

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a logitech mouse with six buttons on it, counting the switch with the scroller. They are programmable to do what I want them to do. I would never go to a single button mouse.

Re:lawl

[slim]

It looks like Scratch, and that's because it's heavily influenced by it, acknowledges that, and uses the same libs.

Just in time...

[tpstigers]

... to contradict the previous story. Power to the people!

Re:Just in time...

[jo42]

Can't wait for all the CrAppTastic crApps!

Re:Just in time...

[mcgrew]

Power to the people!

Isn't that what the executioner says in Florida, where they still use the electric chair?

Re:Just in time...

[Tumbleweed]

Can't wait for all the CrAppTastic crApps!

Yeah, apps are where it's at, and fortunately for Apple, the iPhone has like 45 fart apps available versus the pathetic 15 or so for Android. Yessirree, Apple is WAY ahead of Google!

I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Vectormatic]

If this means the android market is gonna be filled up with apps made by toddlers and high-school girls.

Seriously though, props to google for making android development even more accesible, i just hope this doesnt result in milions upon milions of fart-apps and such, their largely unmoderated app-store is one of the reasons i want an android phone instead of an iphone, but this might become a tad painfull is left unchecked

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[rumith]

I don't think I understand you correctly: nobody forces you to install those millions of fart-apps! If they find their audience among the teens, why not? Do you really notice that the whole web is literally overwhelmed by pages of similar (i.e. non-existent) quality?
The problem is not that Android Market will be flooded by low-quality apps. The problem is that Android Market has pretty rudimentary app search and filtering capabilities to reduce signal to noise ratio. Sorry for the irony, but Google must build a decent search engine for Android apps.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[eldavojohn]

If this means the android market is gonna be filled up with apps made by toddlers and high-school girls.

The market is already filled up with piece of crap apps. It's just that you never see them until they become popular on the marketplace. If the majority is only using the top 1% of applications on both Android Market and Apple App Store, does it matter that at the very bottom there are spam apps made by high-school girls or not?

i just hope this doesnt result in milions upon milions of fart-apps and such, their largely unmoderated app-store is one of the reasons i want an android phone instead of an iphone, but this might become a tad painfull is left unchecked

If some people want the fart apps, let them have their fart apps. Just don't spend money on fart apps and you'll be okay. Android Market has reviews and popularity ... how in the hell is that "unmoderated"?

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Xest]

There was a story the other day stating that Google intend to allow you to sign in to a desktop (presumably web) based version of the marketplace to remotely install apps on - kind of like you can use iTunes to install apps on your iPhone I guess.

I wouldn't be suprised if Google revamps the marketplace on the phone somewhat at the same time to be honest. It does seem to work quite well as high rated stuff tends to remain at the top and lower rated sinks to the bottom, but I agree, in the long run there will need to be slightly better categorisation of Android apps, particularly if this lot will be distributed via the marketplace!

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[delinear]

Well that's about the state of the Android market right now, but hopefully it will mean people with great ideas but limited technical knowledge will be able to contribute. I've pretty much accepted that if I want to find decent apps, the best bet is not to go via the market place but to use app review sites (and at least they mostly make this very painless by allowing me to snap a photo of the barcode and instantly locate the app).

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[arthurpaliden]

But does it have a native 'card layout' ?

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Vectormatic]

i'll just reply to you, since many others have already replied to me saying search etc..

I dont care if people want fart apps, or even milions of them, but if, when browsing an app-store, i end up wading through thousands of pieces of junk to find one or two actually good apps, that is annoying. I find this already happens a lot on the apple app-store, the mechanisms for searching etc. simply arent 'fast' enough for my taste, i spend too much time scrolling or whatever.

truth be told, i am very curious about android and the android market, i have no doubt that as soon as my contract is up for renewal i'll get a nice android phone

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Vectormatic]

piece of crap apps

Holy crap, that app made me smile and cry at the same time...

Android Market has reviews and popularity ... how in the hell is that "unmoderated"?

From what i understand, apple does remove some total crapware once in a while from the app-store, including all those "bikini girl pictures FREE" apps which just clog up the pipes for no added value what so ever, i thought the android marketplace is completely open to any and all apps. As much as i hate apple for their approval policies, some level of QA is probably a plus (and apple is taking it way to far)

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[hedwards]

It's not that different from the Appstore on the iPhone, I'm sure most of those apps are junk as well. People tend to browse the most recent and popular lists primarily to find things. As that'll find most of the good ones, also if one has a specific need in mind, Google helps with that as well.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[orasio]

Ok. You want an easy way to find good quality apps.
Apple does that by restricting production. It might work.
Google should do that by smart ranking, even if they are not doing it well now, more apps doesn't mean it's going to be worse. In fact, Google is good at finding the good stuff in a sea of crap. A larger volume of data might be of help.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the most brilliantly useless app I have seen.
I especially love that fact that it is called 'Meeting Stopper Pro'. One can only imagine what wonders are contained within the non-professional version? Perhaps it makes inappropriate fart noises throughout the meeting or starts playing porn once it thinks you are alone.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[kenshin33]

...including all those "bikini girl pictures FREE" apps which just clog up the pipes for no added value what so ever, i thought the android marketplace is completely open to any and all apps...

I don't understand, with the approval process (supposed to clean things up) in place how the hell such apps (and there are a lot of them) make it to the store ????

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Missing.Matter]

Apple does that by restricting production. It might work.

No it doesn't work. Have a 10 minute conversation to any app store developer and they'll tell you how hard it is for people to find your app due to the shear amount of crap floating out there. The featured lists and top 100 are kingmakers in the app world due to this; almost no one looks elsewhere for quality apps.

If android has this problem it's not a matter of closed or open; it's a matter of a lack of search and filtering

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Idbar]

What they probably need is a better voting system that properly ranks applications. If people is looking for the "best farting-sounds application" that what should be returned based on people's experiences and application ranking.
It's not like Google doesn't know how to do search and ranking.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Missing.Matter]

As much as i hate apple for their approval policies, some level of QA is probably a plus (and apple is taking it way to far)

The approval process is not so much about QA as it is about making sure your app doesn't compete with Apple's. Yes, they do check to make sure you're not using any undocumented APIs and that the app doesn't blatantly crash, but there is some real trash out there. They'll gladly let anything through, no matter how useless, including those that make a mockery of their own HIG.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[delinear]

It's much easier to find apps using one of the app review websites than it is to use either Google's market or Apple's app store. Android makes this nice and simple with Google Goggles integration, so you find the app you want, snap a shot of its barcode with the phone camera and it will do the donkey work of finding the app. Alternatively you can use something like App Brain, where (I believe this is how it works, not used it myself) you have a login and you select the apps on your pc and your phone will just sync these later.

Both markets have their fair share of dross, but I have to say that so far I've been impressed particularly with the quality of what I've found for free on Android - I've not run into any situation yet where I couldn't find an app that did exactly what I wanted and was gratis.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[delinear]

This seemed to be the most lacking area of the Android to me - given Google's search pedigree I was expecting all kinds of clever filters to help me find the right apps. In the end I decided it was easier to just use app review websites and forums to find the best apps, and to be honest it's not a major issue, just a little confusing it doesn't do this amazingly well right out of the box.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the marketplace on Android sucks! Shame on you Google! Check out "APP Brain Marketplace" Browse apps online and sync with your phone. I'm just a happy user.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[delinear]

Ranking at the moment seems to be skewed anyway, on the one hand by all the people spamming their websites (who just automatically give 5 stars to every single app, presumably because if the app ranks well there's more chance you'll see their spam in the comments) and on the other hand people who fail to read the disclaimers such as "this app doesn't work on handset X for hardware reasons Y and Z" but they still give it one star because they have handset X (like buying a Windows PC and complaining it won't run OSX software). Maybe these balance each other out but really it seems like the ranking scores are just too unreliable to be any use - downloads are a slightly better indicator, but even then pretty worthless for niche apps.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[delinear]

I wouldn't mind so much if Google gave me some tools and expected me to do a little work to get the apps I want. What I'd like to see are advanced search filters (date, downloads, rating, file size, maybe the stats for percentage of people who uninstalled the app - I'm sure they have those available) with the ability to save searchs and, perhaps just as importantly, the ability to block certain users or keyword matches (it seems 90% of the spam crap in the market place originate from a relatively small set of developers, if I could block those I'd instantly see improved results). These should be trivial for Google to implement.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[edmicman]

But what if I want "bikini girl pictures FREE" apps anyway? As long as they're not spyware or malicious, I don't see why *any* app should be kept out. Find ways for the cream to rise to the top, but don't necessarily keep anything out.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Lythrdskynrd]

What's more is that this application will bring programming "back" the the masses.

I'm a (former) high school teacher myself, and I'm getting near jitters thinking about how fired up my kids would get if they could program their own mobile phone app with the same ease of making a Powerpoint Presentation (younger students *LOVE* making powerpoint, quite often "reward time" would be "if you're all good, I'll let you make a powerpoint about whatever you want")

Think about how amazing it would be to teach a whole year class about creating an App for your phone. "Think of a problem that needs solving" - what buttons do you need? what do the buttons have to do? now draw the screens on paper, now draw the buttons in the interface... now here's how we add "actions" to the buttons.

Want to do something that's more complex? Maybe we need to look "behind the design, at the code"

How many people here grew up on the Apple ][ or on BASIC programs for the C64?

This is fucking revolutionary! What a great time to be alive!

I'm so excited I think I just peed a little :)

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[shutdown -p now]

if, when browsing an app-store, i end up wading through thousands of pieces of junk to find one or two actually good apps, that is annoying.

This is already the case on Android (no idea about AppStore, but I've heard that it's not really very different despite the "walled garden"). When browsing practically any store category, about 50% is porn, 30% are themes, wallpapers and ringtones, 15% are crappy apps doing something that has been done thousand times before (and doing it badly), and 5% is something that might actually be useful - and I'm probably being overly optimistic here.

As it is, the only practical way to find a useful app in the store is to know that it's there in advance - e.g. by reading a review elsewhere - and then searching its name, or navigating directly to it via QR code.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Syberz]

The internet is filled with fart pages and such and that doesn't seem to be stopping you from finding what you want on it.

I see this as the high-tech version of Mecano or Lego blocks. Those not weened on the electronic teat used those toys to develop our creativity (even if all our constructions were cars or planes), kids can use the development of fart-apps on Android to get their creativity and imagination going... that "muscle" seems way under used in the current generation.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[gad_zuki!]

I don't understand these complaints about the market in Android. You can sort by top apps or you can search by keywords. Most apps are reviewed pretty quickly. I almost never see junk like soundboards and fart apps (which I guess is just a type of soundboard), but if I wanted to I could simply search for them. The iphone app store has all this garbage too, except 100 different fart apps instead of 5 in Android. That may not be a bad thing.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[ceoyoyo]

Apple tries to ensure a little bit of quality mainly by charging developers to put their app in the app store. The review process screens out some, but mostly for other purposes. $100 a year discourages an immense amount of crap - just like spam would be reduced if there was some significant cost to send an e-mail.

There's also a filtering process imposed by having to know the development system. Apple has been aggressively weeding out Flash "developers," which means that you have to know C, C++ or Objective-C.

The combination of those two factors means that if you want to get something in the app store you need to have at least some minimal commitment to it. Google doesn't have the financial investment filter, and they seem to be doing their best to tear down the know-how-to-program barrier.

This particular move doesn't really seem to have an up side. Average people have never wanted to write their own programs for any other "computer they depend on." Why would a phone be different?

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[h4rr4r]

Really? as far as I can tell there is 0 porn. I see some stuff that has tame pictures of women wearing more than they would at the beach.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Anonymous Coward]

And think how interested they'll get into programming computers b/c of this "nice tool". And go to college, get a CS degree, and can't make money with their Android apps b/c they have crappy tools that let "everyone" be winners.

I think this is complete nonsense. I'm interested in seeing these people debug their power point presentations... hmmm, what's a stack trace, they don't have a drag and drop item for that.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Rysc]

Introducing people to programming and lowering the scary barrier to entry is the point of this. Get someone addicted to the power trip and get them to learn some fundamental concepts--I'm talking simple like "branch" and "loop" here--and you can entice him in to programming for real. It's far, FAR easier to go from step 1 to step 2 than from step 0 to step 1 when it comes to teaching someone to program, even though the 1->2 transition is an order of magnitude more difficult to actually accomplish. This is because by this point the person, shall we say the student, is personally invested in a positive outcome.

Personally, anything which demystifies computers is a major Good Thing in my book. How many times have you tried to talk to a user about something and it has become clear that "computer"=="magic"?

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear ya. I'm coming from the perspective of an Android developer. As I've found out, it's not easy making any kind of livable money from Android apps, paid or free. This is going to certainly alienate an a subset of already existing Android developers, b/c google's Market is horrible in terms of actually selling apps. One may have to page through tens of pages after a Market search to find the one non-crappy app they want. From the serious developers perspective, people are going to have to page through tens of pages to find their app to then "maybe" make some kind of livable revenue. I'll stick around a little bit with Android, but the writing is on the walls that they don't seem to want to address existing issues with Market. If it continues, I'll just abandon developing on Android altogether.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[dannys42]

Interestingly, even with Apple's lead there, their search is really no better.

You're right though, this is certainly going to a deciding factor for people's perceived value of apps.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[mean pun]

Apple tries to ensure a little bit of quality mainly by charging developers to put their app in the app store. The review process screens out some, but mostly for other purposes. $100 a year discourages an immense amount of crap - just like spam would be reduced if there was some significant cost to send an e-mail.

The Android market requires a one-time $25 registration fee, so the difference isn't really that big.

Average people have never wanted to write their own programs for any other "computer they depend on." Why would a phone be different?

Disagree. Microsoft Access, Word, and Excel all offer programmability for the average people. And there sure are people using that programmability, and even depending on the resulting software. (Yeah, they all are bad for large programs, but this is not about large programs.) As long as the sandbox is solid enough, I don't see a reason to discourage people from writing their own programs for their phone. Why shouldn't Joe Average write a little program for his phone that counts who's ahead in beer rounds, or keeps track of the score for his local tennis tournament?

And personally I would be very curious to see what schoolgirls would come up with if writing their own software would ever become popular in those circles. I suspect it will be eye-searing pink, but probably also refreshingly different.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Anonymous Coward]

erm. You're all thinking that this HAS to go on the Android Marketplace. Stop thinking like the Android Marketplace has a monopoly!

What stops this App Inventor app to (by default, changeable of course) add itself to a "AppInventor Android Marketplace", and offer a single "AppInventer Android Marketplace" app to the actual Android Market? It'd be a great way to share students / newcomers to see what other users are making without needing to sift through normal apps.

It's not like 99% of smartphones force users to use a single marketplace without voiding the warranty on their phone.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[UseCase]

This particular move doesn't really seem to have an up side. Average people have never wanted to write their own programs for any other "computer they depend on." Why would a phone be different?

This is a great point. Non developers probably wont spend the time to make a good app and developers wont want to use the tool if it is too limiting. Maybe for high school programming courses or other small hobby task it will be great but anyone wanting to offer real high production apps will be using the android api, java and eclipse to do development. When it comes down to it Google will do more damage to 3rd party developers on there own platform than to Apple with this.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[ceoyoyo]

"Disagree. Microsoft Access, Word, and Excel all offer programmability for the average people. And there sure are people using that programmability, and even depending on the resulting software."

You've identified that the tools exist. Do you seriously think the average person has used any of them? Next time you're at the mall stop a few people and ask them if they've made an Access app that they use.

Sure, it's a noble and possibly useful goal to make a development system that's simple enough for anyone to use with minimal effort. But don't pretend it's going to be some kind of revolution, or that "Apple should be taking [it] very seriously." Toy development systems have always been just that: a few people will actually use them, a few of those will make something incredible, but the vast majority of people simply won't care.

And keep the results out of app catalogs, unless they're of high quality. It sounds like Google might be doing this, but then again, they might not.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[ceoyoyo]

A little app that lets the few people who are interested make something is probably a great idea. Logo was fun to play with, and a good teaching tool. But if Google is going to let their dumbed down development system make actual apps then they have two choices: let any of those apps into the store or screen them. If they screen them it's going to put a bit of a damper on their "open" store. If they don't, their store is going to turn into something worse than the Cydia store already is - a morass of themes, wallpapers and useless apps.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[shutdown -p now]

To be honest, I never actually bothered to check what those apps actually are. For one thing, because most are free, which leads me to suspect that they're malware. For another, because I prefer to watch my porn in HD on a 24" monitor.

Still, the sheer number of apps named something like "Cute Japanese girls! vol.42", with icons in pink & flesh tones, is overwhelming.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[hitmark]

not just market, one would be able to do things like push a google maps path from the web to the phone.

still, i would have liked to not need a google account to do that.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm interested in this thingy myself, but I'm also a little wary. It's not the first, second, or even third attempt to make a "programmerless" development platform. I'm frankly a little puzzled in fact that Hypercard came and went, that Amiga Vision (think drag-and-drop flowcharting) came and went, that IDEAL came and went (don't sweat if you never heard of it - it was for 1980s IBM mainframes).

The closest things to truly durable drag-drop-and-drool programming systems I know of are MS Visual Basic and Linux Glade+Python. But somehow when the going gets thick, the calls still go out for professional programmers.

It's not that there aren't amusing and useful things that you can do with these "programmerless" systems. Just that in the real world, the number of projects that can get by with requiring only an amateur level of skills seems to be rather small.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[daver00]

Google also demo'd a OS-wide push feature in Froyo, so you go to a website (logged in to your gmail account) and click a button -> the app (or event or whatever) is pushed to the phone and installs/displays/whatever. Its the fucking beez knees and streets ahead of the offerings of the competition.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[mjwx]

I dont care if people want fart apps, or even milions of them, but if, when browsing an app-store, i end up wading through thousands of pieces of junk to find one or two actually good apps,

Which is why the Android Marketplace displays the most popular/highest rated applications first. Crappy applications will not get rated highly or will get rated down. I do, if at all possible search on Androlib or Appbrain on a PC before using my phones market browser as it's easier to search and read comments (QR codes are also good).

The problem you describe already has a solution, it will be fine tuned as it becomes more widely used.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[darkfrost]

me to be curiousing about...

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[kenshin33]

that is your absolue right :) I want one too (who wouldn't anyways). the comment was some kind of sarcasm. the app store policy is just shit. they shotdown good apps and they let a lot of shitty application go through.

Re:I might have to sway back and get an iphone..

[theaceoffire]

You should try the app "appbrain". ^_^ It is like the market, but much better organized... You can see "what is hot today / week", you can search through categories, etc. You can even install stuff directly to your phone.

Lingo anyone?

[thnmnt]

This reminds me of the early 1990s trend of "programming for everyone", particularly Macromedia's Lingo in Director. Languages and environments that start this way quickly realize that the end products would be ever so slightly more appealing if they were more flexible. And flexibility is the end of simplicity. The 1.0 of this language is going to be fine for a few intrepid schoolgirls, but soon they're going to have to add basic programming concepts and structures which will leave most people scratching their heads. Haven't we already seen this dramatic arc with Director and Flash?

Re:Lingo anyone?

[migla]

HS: "Lingo, dead!"
L: "Lingo *is* dead."

Re:Lingo anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

HS: "Lingo, dead!"
L: "Lingo *is* dead."

"Dying", not "dead". Turn in your geek card, plzkthx.

Re:Lingo anyone?

[Skuld-Chan]

The thing about Flash though is there are some people who have stuck with it and made some really cool tools/products/games with it (everything from C64 emulators to word processors not to mention tons of games - some of which are quite complex) using a serious dev toolkit like Flash Builder.

Hopefully this kind of tool inspires someone to dig deeper and pick something up something a bit deeper like the Android SDK

Re:Lingo anyone?

[alder]

Haven't we already seen this dramatic arc with Director and Flash?

This is not the first technology that is reinvented because, IMHO, there are no people around who remember how and why it has already failed...

Re:Lingo anyone?

[camperdave]

No, dead is correct. However, the robot's name is Linguo, not Lingo. So get out! You're banned from making corrective posts on Slashdot! You, and your children, and your children's children -- for three months.

Re:Lingo anyone?

[fermion]

As computers get more powerful, and cheaper, we end up with higher levels of interpretation and abstraction. We say this as we moved from switches, to assembly to fortran/cobal to basic. For years we have had reletivel simple cross platform interpreted solution, some with sophisticated interfaces that allow the non programmer to develop at least the front end of the application.

Here is what hypercard did. It provided a method for the inexperience user to organize data. This is one of the most complex tasks in programming. Data management. This is why everyone loves garbage collection, because managing memory yourself is expensive. It is cheaper to use machine resources. Hypercard was all about letting the people organize huge amounts of data. This was also the great thing about the RAD environment in FoxPro. I say apps that managed small bits of data, but nothing on how this might be made simpler for large bits of data.

One can get a group of teenage students, boy and girls, to become familiar enough with a language such as python so they can many of these things by writing simple scripts. That is well and good. And it is good that the kids can write applications. That is empowering.

Here is my gripe. At the high school and early college level we should be teaching general skills, not specific applications. This is the problem with schools only using MS Word. When I leaned to program, I learned about variable, and structure, and loops, and functions. That meant I could program anything in any language with a small learning curve. This was in high school. I learned how to type, and how to edit, and the basics of WYSWYG editing. The goal was to get words down, not, as the MS commercials ask kids to do, change fonts and colors which has little to do with writing a poem.

When kids learn programming in this way they learn the abstraction skills they need for math, and the analysis and prediction skills they need for science. It can be made simple, as with Alice. I know that the article only mentions the schools to show how simple it is, but that is my point as well. Kids are really smart and can pick things up much easier than adults. If 40 year old MBA can do, then maybe that is impressive.

Google

[helix2301]

This is what is great about Google they offer different services to compete with Apple. Plus the whole point of creating your own apps made easy is just really cool and a great touch by Google. I think if this catches on this could be a big selling point for Google.

Re:Google

[Tom]

errr... because?

Do you really think that one, even just one application of quality or merit will be created with this? There will be a billion "look ma, I click this button and something happens" apps. Aside from that?

We've been there. Visual programming had its place, back when it was done by nerds. There were games, serious applications, the whole nine yards. Turns it it's all shit. Beyond trivialities, you can't model anything worth writing a program for with boxes. Even Minesweeper is too complicated for that, let alone anything that actually gets you something done.

The video is exactly the kind of apps we'll be seeing. I don't see how that is going to be a selling point for the devices.

Re:Google

[gad_zuki!]

>There will be a billion "look ma, I click this button and something happens" apps. Aside from that?

That's what they said about html because of its simplicity, but it turns out that most people's needs aren't met by commecial software and need something that's just not worth paying someone to develop.

There's always going to be a need for simple apps. I don't see this than being any different than VBA for apps or building front-ends in Access. Non-coders can learn these things, build prototypes or even little production apps, and be better off for it. I think it would be foolish to let Apple or WinMo take the lead in simple app development because it has the potential to be a big deal. I'm pleased to see that not only is Google not emulating Apple's lock down/walled garden approach, they are also promoting simplified development to end users!

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Your examples of HTML, VBA, and Access are not helping your case any.

HTML especially, because nowadays you don't need to know a scrid of it to make a little web site, and uhhh.. yah. Look at those.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you'd be surprised what get's done in the building controls world with blocks and lines. It used to be that we could program in a specialized basic if we wanted, but there was also a compiler that took the output of a graphical programing tool into this version of basic (the controllers interpreted the basic directly). Now, they only offer the graphical part because nobody in the industry (the building controls managers and employees) understood the basic language part of it.

Don't get me wrong, the graphical tool was crap and if you wrote something complicated (and there were some impressively complicated things written), it got to be a huge mess. It is, however, still used today and it does quite a few practical things.

Re:Google

[kenshin33]

The point develop you're own app, which is something you can't do elsewhere. Especially with Iphone, where you have to fork 99$/year to do anything (even if you don't want to sell/publish apps) -- jail-broken phones aside --

Re:Google

[Tom]

Actually, you'd be surprised what get's done in the building controls world with blocks and lines.

Yes, but that is a dedicated setting. You're not doing general-purpose coding, are you? I'm not an expert, but AFAIK that is more comparable to editing a configuration file or a database than with programming.

Re:Google

[Rogerborg]

There will be a billion "look ma, I click this button and something happens" apps.

Then that's 1 billion proudly loyal Android users busily evangelising Android to their mothers.

Does that make the point clear enough for you?

Re:Google

[Tom]

HTML is not a general-purpose programming language. It is a markup language. Not a big surprise that you have visual tools for markup, is it?

Access is actually a great example. All of the "production" apps I have seen that were made with Access are horribly shoddy buckets of crap that if you'd written them for a client you'd be sued into bancruptcy for. When it's made in-house, for some reason it becomes acceptable, maybe because some twit in management did it himself...

they are also promoting simplified development to end users!

Some things should not be "simplified". We don't want people who failed at math doing the statistics that run our company, or people who have no idea about medicine treating our ill and wounded. The only difference here is that the people creating apps with no knowledge of programming are only harming themselves. Hopefully.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's a really cool idea. I think it represents a very interesting scenario, and it does underscore the differences between Apple and Google (I like both companies for different reasons).

It could be a big deal. It could also be the new PowerPoint.

Also worth noting that Apple has toyed with rapid application dev tools on the Mac, with little success. Bento offers basic but simple and effective abilities to manage custom data across Macs and mobile devices.

A few more thoughts:
http://isaacschmidt.com/?p=99

Re:Google

[delinear]

I think that's GP's point - it doesn't matter that the app, website, whatever, isn't the holy grail to everyone. It doesn't matter if it's the holy grail to a significant minority. In some cases, if only a handful of people find it useful, then that's enough. If it was a professionally developed app or site, it would be seen as a failure, but the very fact that it cost someone nothing but their spare time and has helped a bunch of other people is a net gain. It's never going to set the world alight, but by its own limited parameters it might still be a success.

Re:Google

[DragonWriter]

Do you really think that one, even just one application of quality or merit will be created with this?

Yes, I'm sure lots of people will find this tool convenient to makes apps of "quality" and "merit" that were serve their own personal needs better than anything designed to serve a mass market would; beyond that, I think that it will provide lots of people -- particularly young people -- experience building apps for their own use that, even if they aren't better even for their own personal needs than they could get commercially, will help them develop skills and interest that will be of use to them.

I'm not as sure that anything with the kind of broad utility that would make it saleable will be created with it, but I don't think that's the point. The App Inventor web pages seem to emphasize the ability to create apps quickly and have them appear live on your phone as you build them, and the inspiration and application in constructivist education (the same model that inspired the OLPC project), not producing marketable apps.

Beyond trivialities, you can't model anything worth writing a program for with boxes.

Which explains why there are so many enterprise solutions being built around executable process diagrams (using BPMN, XPDL, and other related and similar technologies.)

Anyhow, that aside, this doesn't seem to be aimed at the kind of thing that you seem to think it is "worth writing a program for". By making development simpler and more accessible, the it makes it worth writing a program for things for which it previously would not be.

Re:Google

[cruelworld]

Lots of real programming is done with a purely graphical blocks and lines style programming. Labview is one of the more popular ones that does some incredibly sophisticated and complicated programs as well as lots of simple "control this voltage output with this dial" type apps. You could also turn this into a whole "is scripting really programming" debates, but I don't think anyone wants to go there.

Re:Google

[Tibor the Hun]

Wow, I never thought that now, for Thanksgiving, instead of spending time with my family, I'll be able to fix both my mom's computer *and* her cellphone!!!!
Sweet, sign me up!

Re:Google

[Tom]

Interesting. I just read up on Labview. I learnt something today. Thanks.

Re:Google

[linhares]

Do you really think that one, even just one application of quality or merit will be created with this?

Oh my iphone's battery is going to die. Homecreen-->scroll until you find "settings", click-->Wifi, click, turn off, return-->brightness, click, lower, return-->General, click-->Network, click-->disable 3g, disable data, teetheting, return-->bluetooth, click-->disable BT, return-->location services, click-->disable, homescreen.

Wouldn't it be awesome to have "apps" with one-click-profiles? But nope, that's not what Mr Jobs says, so no cookie.

I for one think this little tool will be of great service, and I hope Apple wakes the F up.

Re:Google

[mjwx]

There will be a billion "look ma, I click this button and something happens" apps. Aside from that?

That means there will be 1 Million great applications and 9 million decent ones. Sturgeons law applies in reverse, 90% of everything is crud. This has the opportunity to bring the ability to design an application to people who have good ideas but no real programming skill the same as it will bring the ability to design a travesty to people who have no idea and no programming skill. You have to take the good with the bad and sort it out later, the Android Marketplace already does this fairly well, it sorts applications by number of downloads and user rating.

But it will not happen as people expect it. I think people will still require a modicum of programming skill to actually finish an application even using the AppInventor. This means that more advanced functionality comes to people who can understand programming concepts but only know a _little_ Java. Most, if not all functionality will be lost on people who don't understand/wont learn the basic concepts of programming.

Why is this an Apple story?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we just have a "Google" section already? This might as well be filed under Microsoft, with references being made to "Developers, Developers, Developers!"

Re:Why is this an Apple story?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about just a dancing, sweaty, screaming, fat guy logo?

Just like Scratch

[bsDaemon]

I took a look at the demostration videos and whatnot, and the user interface seems to be a cross between XCode's interface builder and MIT's Scratch. The code is written by dragging "puzzle pieces" into place, just like in Scratch. However, I assume this uses Java rather than Squeak? Scratch is kind of a lot different than HyperCard, but, you know... whatever. If only my BlackBerry Storm hadn't turned me off smartphones forever, I might actually be inclined to give this a shot.

Re:Just like Scratch

[GweeDo]

So you let one crappy phone turn you off of all phones? Whatever you do...don't go watch The Last Airbender. It will make you irrationally think all movies are bad!

Re:Just like Scratch

[bsDaemon]

I don't have enough of a reasonable need for smartphones anyway, even if they are good. I already saw Airbender, and honestly it was perhaps the least shitty movie Shamalamadingdong has made so far, even though it was a rather poor adaptation of the cartoon.

Re:Just like Scratch

[yelvington]

According to the documentation, App Inventor is based on Open Blocks, which is in turn modeled after Scratch, and uses Kawa (a Scheme implementation) to produce Java.

As for the Blackberry Storm ... it's best not to speak of these things.

Re:Just like Scratch

[slim]

Scratch does not use Squeak. Scratch has Java under the covers.

It looks like this has inherited an awful lot from Scratch.

Indeed it is a lot different from Hypercard, thank goodness.

I was disappointed by Scratch's lack of data types (not even arrays or lists!); I wonder whether this fixes that? It's a tricky balance between simplicity (because it's for kids) and flexibility (because people want to get things done).

We've tried that

[dimethylxanthine]

We already tried enabling the general population to create own websites: myspace, geocities, shall I go on? Now, unless this tool is able to preserve other user's eyesight once the app is published... Hopefully Google has studied and learnt something from market history.

What Google and Apple should definitely try - is community/Karma based app publishing process ;-)

Re:We've tried that

[yelvington]

Keep in mind that among the flood of horrid homepages with purple backgrounds, jumping frogs, blinking stars and background MIDI tunes, there also emerged hundreds of thousands of highly valuable niche Web resources created by highly motivated nonprofessionals ... and Google figured out a (community-powered) algorithm for finding the good stuff.

Re:We've tried that

[delinear]

Exactly, hell I've built a whole career from the simple beginnings of reading a few people's (back then) basic text websites on web development - the key here is don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. If 99.9% of the stuff is crap, don't throw away the 0.1% that's gold, instead give people better tools to separate the two. If anyone can do that with apps, surely it's Google.

What Open Programming???

[oh_my_080980980]

RTFA!

Google has some cut and past development toolkit for idiots. Big freakin' deal. This is not the same as APPLICATION development.

The RunRev CEO is complaining that Apple is forcing them to use Apple's API to develop application. Shock horror.

How the hell does this have anything to do with each other.

Nice work on the FUD.

Re:What Open Programming???

[kenshin33]

the CEO is not complaining about apple forcing THEME to use apple's api he's complaining about the fact that the new agreement will effectively push aside their product : The new agreement added a clause which required that applications be originally written in Objective-C, C++ or JavaScript. As revMobile applications are originally written in revTalk, not in one of these languages, their policy changes effectively prohibit revMobile on the iPhone/iPad. The new clause also prohibits frameworks and compatibility layers, which also describes revMobile in its present form. the key phrase here is "frameworks and compatibility layers" which apprently is the nature of revMobile (an interpreter of a sort)

scripting

[gTsiros]

just give us proper scripting with proper exposure of the internals to the scripting language

like hp calculators have RPL.

i see stuff on the android market that would take 3 lines of scripting to accomplish... yet they are presented as "apps".

Re:scripting

[bsDaemon]

I thought you could get JRuby to run on Android, but did you mean something like AppleScript only for Android specifically?

Re:scripting

[Skuld-Chan]

There's a cool logo interpreter for your pretty flower needs :).

Re:scripting

[ampathee]

Here you go.

Re:scripting

[gTsiros]

cool, thanks

Titan, or mother earth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else notice that this will probably be shortened to GAIA? Hmm...

Re:Titan, or mother earth?

[mjwx]

Anyone else notice that this will probably be shortened to GAIA? Hmm..

Other rejected acronyms

GAI - sounds a bit queer
GAAI - sounds painful
IAG - sounds like a trademark suit.

But

[arcite]

Everything begins with an apple.

Re:But

[VGPowerlord]

Everything begins with an apple.

Even sin. According to the Bible, anyway.

Re:But

[Idbar]

Might as well have an "Alexander Graham Bell" and a "Thomas Alba Edison" sections then.

There's a hardware section and a mobile section already, why not removing the only trademark from the list, and add software and Network (Internet) sections.

For those of you complaining about "Linux" may change it for POSIX and everyone's happy.

Re:But

[Anonymous Coward]

Mobile makes sense, so why isn't this story there right now?

Also, did you mean "Thomas Alva Edison" ?

They forgot a few people

[jeffmeden]

User testing has been done mainly in schools with groups that included sixth graders, high school girls, nursing students and university undergraduates who are not CS majors.

How about including my 96 year old grandma, the guy who lives across the street and is always talking to his dog, and why not throw in my pet goldfish while we're at it. That should round out the testing.

Moderate yourself

[Tisha_AH]

It is like Slashdot. If you want to look at everything at -1 you can. Naturally you will see a bunch of crap.

For android applications you can always sort things by how popular they are and find the creme of the crop.

Who knows, you may be surprised by what application may be developed by a high school girl. To ignore the potential creativity of a vast swath of society is foolish. Maybe the killer app is one that targets high school girls.

Re:Moderate yourself

[Tom]

Who knows, you may be surprised by what application may be developed by a high school girl.

My guess is: The same as operas written by computer geeks.

No, I don't mean the browser.

The basis of society as we know it is division of labour. Let people do what they are good at, and give the parts they aren't to someone else. We don't need 5 million nonsensical crap applications on the marketplace. What we need is a way to request applications. If 1000 people want a fart app and are willing to pay $0.99 for it, I'm sure someone will write one.

Right now, there's no way for the consumer to tell the market what you are looking for. Back when we came up with all this Internet thing, wasn't the fact that it makes bi-directional communication possible one of its best features? Instead of having only the big corporations being able to talk to the costumers via advertisement and press releases, the customer could talk back and the companies would listen?

Whatever happened to that? Wouldn't the app market with its thousands of small developers a fantastic place for this old dream? Tell them what you need, or what the available apps are lacking, and the chances that someone will set out to satisfy that need are better than ever before.

That would be a true innovation that drives the app store or marketplace or whatever you want to call it forward. Apple is too much into the uni-directional conversation for that to happen, Google could make it happen. Don't tell me that with all the very smart people they employ, nobody has dug up this idea from the 90s.

Re:Moderate yourself

[Sockatume]

I would argue that a developer is more likely to "get" your App needs from a bodged prototype created on this platform, than the usual arm-waving and vague specifications.

Furthermore, while it's wonderful to imagine the millions of hobby programmers jumping at the chance to develop my concept for a program that automatically locates waffle houses by GPS and texts my friends if I enter them, I think it's a fantasy. The mismatch between my enthusiasm for the project and the sheer tedium that would lie in coding it could only be realigned with hard cash I don't have. Much as I learned Perl to automate some particularly tedious job submission and monitoring, I'll be giving this a shot for Wafflefinder.

Re:Moderate yourself

[homer_s]

Right now, there's no way for the consumer to tell the market what you are looking for...Instead of having only the big corporations being able to talk to the costumers via advertisement and press releases, the customer could talk back and the companies would listen? Whatever happened to that?

It's called the market - the way the customers "talk back" to the producers is by choosing which products to buy (or not to buy); the feedback is pretty quick and much better than any other process that I can thing of.

Re:Moderate yourself

[rumith]

You can't have a lot of kids knowing how to program tomorrow if you don't spark their interest with such a tool today. And IMO this will be great not only for attracting and educating future software engineers, but also to tap into the pool of active talented kids who are not going to be software engineers, ever. The kids who will be nuclear physicists, radio geeks, astronomy fans, journalists will also acquire basic programming abilities without distracting from their main specialty to learn a programming language or two, dive into a complex SDK and constantly work to keep these skills up to date.
In short, I think that App Inventor is pretty awesome.

Re:Moderate yourself

[delinear]

You might think that's the best way to determine what apps should be created, but in practice what people say they want is hardly ever exactly what they do want. If you follow that route you quickly end up with "The Homer" - the everyman car that looks like a monstrosity and costs a fortune because it tries to be everything to everyone. If this tool makes it easy for regular people to prototype ideas quickly and test them in the wild, that's probably not a bad thing. Even if 99% of it is garbage. The 1% can always be polished by developers later if it takes off.

Re:Moderate yourself

[Tom]

It is a one-bit feedback channel. How many companies out there are wondering why their product fails (and sometimes, they have no idea why their other product is a success) ?

More importantly, how many people are paid for what is essentially guessing what the customer wants?

You can not be serious when you say that a one-bit channel is the best you can think of.

Re:Moderate yourself

[Tom]

The mismatch between my enthusiasm for the project and the sheer tedium that would lie in coding it could only be realigned with hard cash I don't have.

No, but it may be worth $0.99 to you. And to a hundred other people. Or a thousand. If there are enough people that want it done, it will get done. Someone's gonna say "that's an easy $999, let's go coding".

Re:Moderate yourself

[CAIMLAS]

What you're basically asking for is Launchpad for Android.

Too bad Google went ahead and made their own proprietary Linux-based window manager instead of using something already established.

Re:Moderate yourself

[whm]

Right now, there's no way for the consumer to tell the market what you are looking for. Back when we came up with all this Internet thing, wasn't the fact that it makes bi-directional communication possible one of its best features?

Ah yes, if only we still had that Internet thing. But you're right, this will be better, because it's going to be mobile! Yeah...

Re:Moderate yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the market - the way the customers "talk back" to the producers is by choosing which products to buy (or not to buy); the feedback is pretty quick and much better than any other process that I can thing of.

In this specific case it may be quick, but I wouldn't call it the best possible. If the market inadvertently hides some or most of the products to potential customers, they are unlikely to consistently reward the best products and will instead reward only those in the subset that are the most visible. As noted by other posters, the signal to noise ratio of (i.e. signal is represents what apps will fulfill a given individual needs and/or wants, and noise is the rest that is unneeded and/or unwanted) current smart phone applications stores seems to be only slightly larger than the ratio of Linux users to the total human population. Again as others have noted, there are currently only a few rather poorly implemented tools to help the perspective app buyer "tune in" (continuing the transmission metaphor) to the apps they want.

For example, let's say I want an app that helps me manage the (crummy) photos I take on my smart phone. I really have only four options (discounting "word-of-mouth" as my friends and acquaintances may not have any clue about this specific type of app); I could look for an app by the related well known organizations, check-out the newest apps, check-out the most popular ones, or finally do a largely manual search. No method would ever be perfect, but all of these options have really huge drawbacks. Using the first approach, there is no guarantee that the any recognizable organization has bothered to put out any app to fulfill this specific want or need, much less that it would be of adequate quality. The second and third approaches have very similar drawbacks, because the "perfect" app for this probably exists somewhere out there but may very well be neither one of the X newest or Y most popular. As with the first case, I may either end-up with no usable results or far less quality than what is really available because the best is neither new or for some reason (like a highly specialized target demographic) is not very well known or popular. That leaves the fourth option, the results of which are almost entirely dependent on the time and effort you put in. If I spent at least several hours doing manual searches I would probably find a good quality app that offers me a high level of value for the price, but this is rather demanding for people with a combination of gainful employment, a reasonably active social and/or family life.

So while a good thing for other reasons, an easier to code apps will only make the situation worse for the Android app market. Unless of course someone uses this new development tool to make an app that finds the all other apps you need/want quickly and easily.;)

Re:Moderate yourself

[anorlunda]

The Hypercard analogy is a good one.

I remember when writing HTML 1.0 was considered programming. Applying your logic retroactively, only professional programmers could be expected to create web pages worth looking at.

Re:Moderate yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

The basis of society as we know it is division of labour. Let people do what they are good at, and give the parts they aren't to someone else. We don't need 5 million nonsensical crap applications on the marketplace. What we need is a way to request applications. If 1000 people want a fart app and are willing to pay $0.99 for it, I'm sure someone will write one.

\

Or, we could allow entrepreneurs worry about the market, and what it will pay for, like they do. In their niche. Division of labor, don't you know.

If we're going to write software which does the work of trying to quantify the market, why not write software that allows local experts try their hand at apps for their areas of expertise?

Re:Moderate yourself

[Syberz]

Your argument only works if you know what you want.

Most successful entrepreneurs are rich because they marketed something that you did not know you needed or wanted.

I doubt someone thought to himself:"Gee, I wish somebody could make me a puzzle game where I need to line up colored jewels in order to make then disappear and get points to go to the next level." or "Man, I wish somebody would build a phone that can take pictures."

Re:Moderate yourself

[unix1]

Let people do what they are good at, and give the parts they aren't to someone else.

That's right but remember most (but not all) programmers aren't good at non-programming tasks such as coming up with ideas for unique non-technical apps, games, usability, design, etc. However, that fact doesn't prevent developers from publishing unpolished apps, non-functional games, unfinished ideas, etc. because they hold the keys to writing and compiling code.

This would be like turning the table to see whether people that have more creative abilities/talent, but no inclination or desire to [learn to] write code, can also positively contribute. I, for one, would like to see this go mainstream. As an additional benefit, it may even help more people of different skill sets get together to produce a superior product without a need for a start-up capital and major funding.

Re:Moderate yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed the point of this idea. The idea isn't so that people can make applications that they need. The point is that people can make the applications that they want to make.

I was never very good at programing (I did basic, some c++, java) and eventually went on to mechanical engineering instead of CS. Since I couldn't program, I actively sought out "gamemaker" programs to help me make terrible platformers and rpgs and adventure games.

I learned a lot of problem solving from doing this. I even learned some good practices- perhaps I don't really need to psuedocode my matlab program for mech-eng, but I learned it helps to lay things out and make it as generic as possible. It'll make it easier if I ever need the same code in fortran or whatnot.

In any case, the point is I didn't want someone to make me an application that tells me the time. I want to make an application that tells me the time in the alien language I made up. Or using the font I designed, or in a tiny box up in the corner of my screen when I say the word zagornisblat. No one is going to make these apps for me, and more over, I want to be able to step back and say "I MADE THIS COOL APP GUYZ!" to my friends, who will pretend to care.

Cross Platform

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

A simple App maker like hypercard was? It is supported on Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu. It also works with both Java 1.5 and 1.6. Way to go Google! You may have finally hit upon a great way to outcompete Apple in the mobile space. I just hope you're working on improving the Android Market in a big hurry.

Re:Cross Platform

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because we all remember how Hypercard completely eliminated the need for regular software on the Mac, right? Or the way Flash made Visual Basic obsolete?

"Programming for Everyone" *sounds* like a good idea, but ultimately all you get is unusable toy applications and/or teetering unmaintainable clusterfuck applications - the latter typically written by the boss, who is *sure* that any problems with his app have to be somebody else's fault.

Re:Cross Platform

[Anonymous Coward]

You may have finally hit upon a great way to outcompete Apple in the mobile space.

To be fair, I think the "selling more units" thing suggests that Android already "outcompetes Apple in the mobile space". At least by conventional measures.

Re:Cross Platform

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Yeah, because we all remember how Hypercard completely eliminated the need for regular software on the Mac, right?

No, but I certainly remember how it allowed primary school teachers to develop custom apps for education, some of which are still in use today. I remember how it gave rise to thousands of niche apps not profitable for commercial developers, but greatly useful nonetheless. Speak an obscure language? Guess what, now you can have some simple apps anyway, because it's easy enough for non-experts who speak that language to code things.

Programming environments for non-programmers, when usable enough, extend the long tail.

Or the way Flash made Visual Basic obsolete?

Umm, isn't that kind of like saying dog crap made donkey crap obsolete? They're both crap and they're both used for different crappy purposes. Who cares about "obsolete" anyway. That's a strawman. This is about providing new tools for new purposes, not replacing all existing tools.

"Programming for Everyone" *sounds* like a good idea, but ultimately all you get is unusable toy applications and/or teetering unmaintainable clusterfuck applications - the latter typically written by the boss, who is *sure* that any problems with his app have to be somebody else's fault.

You're just an elitist afraid of competition. Good programming will win out 90% of the time, but now programmers will have to take into account competition from amateurs who may not be any good at actual coding, but might make a better product anyway by being more creative or making for better usability, or simply filling a niche market better than a mainstream app designed to target a more general market does. Deal with it.

Re:Cross Platform

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

To be fair, I think the "selling more units" thing suggests that Android already "outcompetes Apple in the mobile space". At least by conventional measures.

Is "outcompeting" defined by number of units, profit made, or quality of products? All are valid uses of the term. I was thinking in terms of competing for application development human resources for the platform, but there are many interpretations.

Re:Android needs a working MARKET, not more apps.

[hedwards]

Um, a lot of that is what people wanted. They didn't want to be told what they could and couldn't install. Hence you get a lot of junk, if you see something illegal you can flag it, but there isn't really a good compromise between open and highly manicured.

Re division of labor.

[Anonymous Coward]

Providing a tool like this means it's EASIER for people
to do what they're good at. The key is that it lowers the barriers for them to
translate their domain knowledge into a shareable application.

Re:Re division of labor.

[Tom]

Nonsense.

People who are good at programming have already crossed the barrier, they don't need them lowered.

This is specifically for people who are not good at programming, and have no desire to spend the effort to learn it (i.e. "cross the barrier").

Taking domain knowledge and turning it into something useful has been a big hype of AI research for 30 years or so. Turns out that it's a lot harder than most people think, because domain knowledge is worthless if you can not express it in a form that makes it computable. And that's with AI doing the heavy lifting of combining, searching and questioning for you. You and your domain knowledge and a few coloured buttons will get you nowhere at all.

Re:Re division of labor.

[MrHanky]

You don't know that. This might be the perfect path into programming for kids, giving them an easy way to implement ideas and learning from each other. Who knows what kind of ideas they may come up with? If it's easy enough to learn so that any smart kid can make their own bluetooth-enabled card game or whatever, I can see this sparking a lot of creativity, and perhaps even make geeking around with technology cool -- phones are social gadgets, after all. Perhaps software development no longer will be the domain of reclusive autists who don't care about the end user.

Sure, the apps will mostly be hacks, but hacking is educational. And no one forces you to install anything on your phone, just like no one forces anyone to upload their hackish card games to the market.

Re:Re division of labor.

[Tom]

Perhaps software development no longer will be the domain of reclusive autists who don't care about the end user.

Sure, the apps will mostly be hacks, but hacking is educational.

So, you're saying that instead of the reclusive autists who don't care about the end user, we will have... uh... attention-whoring autists who don't care about anything but their own dream app?

Big improvement. ;-)

Re:Re division of labor.

[MrHanky]

No, I'm saying they possibly won't be autists at all. It might be an attractive development platform for people who aren't immediately attracted to technical minutiae.

What's amazing...

[amiran]

... is the fact, that the guy behind this project is Harold Abelson, author of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs! He described LISP "picture language" in the book as a useful learning concept. He also "...directed the first implementation of LOGO for the Apple II" which seems interesting in this case.

Sexists

[Anonymous Coward]

"high school girls"

Why the fluck do they do this? Why pick "girls" or "boys" don't they think we can think?

Re:Sexists

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

"high school girls" Why the fluck do they do this? Why pick "girls" or "boys" don't they think we can think?

It's not a matter of whether or not women can think. Rather it's about exploiting the social trends and biases that result on gender disparity in the programming industry. Today, a girl in high school is 5-10 times less likely to become a programmer than a boy in the same high school. When trying to develop a tool that caters to people with no inherent ability or experience, then, in makes sense to target girls in your study group, maybe not exclusively, but primarily. Recognizing the current trends in society and using them is not an endorsement of them, nor an implication that one gender is inherently less suited to a task. The arrangement of our society is the primary factor pushing various gender disparities in particular professions (in both directions).

Re:Sexists

[ErikZ]

Because once you get the popular girls doing it, the rest of school follows.

High school never ends.

Apple does have Dashcode...

[SuperKendall]

I think Apple's thinking is that for simpler development, you can use HTML5. They actually have an already existing tool separate from XCode, that lets you pretty easily design a nice UI in HTML5 - it's called Dashcode.

It does require you install the developer tools (which are free).

That said I applaud Google for this effort, perhaps it could become a new standard for introductory programming classes in gradeschool/highschool.

Re:Apple does have Dashcode...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's offering is superior in every way. Kids can learn much much faster using Dashcode than anything else on the market.

Think Different. Think Better. Think Apple.

Re:Apple does have Dashcode...

[obijuanvaldez]

I think Apple's thinking is that for simpler development, you can use HTML5.

Why would they think that? I cannot imagine that Apple would want to turn away the $99 SDK fee, the sale of a Macintosh computer and any additional revenues generated by the sale and/or use of a simple application for any reason. But, just as importantly, I cannot imagine a single advantage to them foregoing having that application exclusive to the App Store and available to any device with an HTML5-compliant browser. Simplified development does not imply useless output applications, so why would they want to push any useful but simple tool to being available on any other device?

I think the error here is in the misleading summary. Just because Apple turned down the pitch from revMobile does not mean they have no intentions of allowing simplified development tools for iOS. My guess would be that if they have any intention of allowing such tools, they would much prefer to actually create them.

Re:Apple does have Dashcode...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I think Apple's thinking is that for simpler development, you can use HTML5.

Why would they think that? I cannot imagine that Apple would want to turn away the $99 SDK fee, the sale of a Macintosh computer and any additional revenues generated by the sale and/or use of a simple application for any reason.

Developer licensing and sales of Macs to developers that don't have them don't even show up in Apple's bottom line in any meaningful way. Sales of iPhones, however, are a huge part of their profit. Apple is about making money, but they're not idiots that want to nickel and dime people in ways that will lose them larger amounts of money in the long run.

But, just as importantly, I cannot imagine a single advantage to them foregoing having that application exclusive to the App Store and available to any device with an HTML5-compliant browser. Simplified development does not imply useless output applications, so why would they want to push any useful but simple tool to being available on any other device?

Apple makes a lot of money selling Macs as well as phones. By promoting HTML5 (which you can compile into an app in the iPhone store, by the way) they push Web standards that helps their Mac business greatly by decreasing the amount of lock-in and the number of users tied to Microsoft.

I think the error here is in the misleading summary. Just because Apple turned down the pitch from revMobile does not mean they have no intentions of allowing simplified development tools for iOS.

Perhaps, but Apple does want to make sure third party dev tools don't become a block preventing their platform from moving forward. Apple's fear is that they'll add something cool to iPhones and upgrade their dev tools so that it shows up in iPhone apps... but a huge number of apps won't get the cool new feature until third parties get around to implementing it (which may be never). And cross-platform dev tools generally will wait until it is profitable to do so, which sometimes means waiting until other phones catch up before bothering to implement something.

My guess would be that if they have any intention of allowing such tools, they would much prefer to actually create them.

Probably, but as the GP poster mentioned, they already do have something like this for the HTML5 development route.

Re:Apple does have Dashcode...

[painandgreed]

Why would they think that? I cannot imagine that Apple would want to turn away the $99 SDK fee, the sale of a Macintosh computer and any additional revenues generated by the sale and/or use of a simple application for any reason.

Here's two reasons. One, your $99 isn't worth having to deal with even more really bad apps by anybody. They want a bit higher bar to submit apps just to make sure it is worth their while to do so. Two, for the same reason they tried to convince everybody there was no need for an SDK and the web was the programming environment when the iPhone first came out. If everybody programs their webpages to work with Safari, then the the web once again becomes platform independant or at least no longer limited to Windows IE, and that helps with Mac sales more than anything. Given a level playing feild of a web that doesn't depend on platform, Apple thinks they can win on simply providing the better product.

Re:Apple does have Dashcode...

[obijuanvaldez]

Developer licensing and sales of Macs to developers that don't have them don't even show up in Apple's bottom line in any meaningful way. Sales of iPhones, however, are a huge part of their profit. Apple is about making money, but they're not idiots that want to nickel and dime people in ways that will lose them larger amounts of money in the long run.

But I didn't mention only the SDK fee and computers. There is also the bit about the revenues generated from the application in terms of Apple's cut of the sale price of the applications and/or any cut they get from integrated ads in those applications. That revenue is significant. Again, as a profit maximizing firm, there is little compelling reason for them to turn away that revenue.

Apple makes a lot of money selling Macs as well as phones. By promoting HTML5 (which you can compile into an app in the iPhone store, by the way) they push Web standards that helps their Mac business greatly by decreasing the amount of lock-in and the number of users tied to Microsoft.

I doubt very seriously that Apple intends to commoditize the operating system when the exclusivity of that operating system is a major selling point of the hardware with which they make the bulk of their money. Joel Spolsky did a write up of how this strategy wound up being a problem for Sun's hardware sales with Java. But recall that prior to the release of the iPhone SDK, HTML was presented as the way to develop applications for the iPhone. Just because they promote HTML5 now does not mean they intend for that to be the preferred way to develop simple applications in the future.

Of course, guessing the intentions of Apple and what their future plans are is just speculation, but since there is lost revenue at stake in terms of the App Store and advertising, the possibility of commoditizing their operating systems, and a specifically relevant history of changing the recommended development path from HTML and to their own development ecosystem, I see little incentive for them to continue pushing HTML5 as the development platform of choice from simple but useful applications. Also, since HTML5 cannot interact with the device specifically (e.g. sensors, contacts, etc.) in any meaningful way, some useful but simple applications requiring that level of interaction will not otherwise be created. But that is just my speculation.

Re:Apple does have Dashcode...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

But I didn't mention only the SDK fee and computers. There is also the bit about the revenues generated from the application in terms of Apple's cut of the sale price of the applications and/or any cut they get from integrated ads in those applications. That revenue is significant.

Actually, to date that revenue does not seem to be very significant at all. Apple hasn't been making very much on apps as far as anyone can tell and Steve Jobs went so far as to tell shareholders the model was to run the App store at slightly more than break even as a way to promote sales of iPhones. As for ad revenue, time will tell, but again I don't think Apple is planning on it being a big revenue stream compared to the piles of cash they make selling iPhones.

By promoting HTML5 (which you can compile into an app in the iPhone store, by the way) they push Web standards that helps their Mac business greatly by decreasing the amount of lock-in and the number of users tied to Microsoft.

I doubt very seriously that Apple intends to commoditize the operating system when the exclusivity of that operating system is a major selling point of the hardware with which they make the bulk of their money.

How do you read "remove MS's lock-in" as "commoditize the operating system market"? That simply does not follow. Apple uses their OS as a differentiator, but they build it mostly on open standards for file and protocol interoperability. As a smaller player in the market, that makes them more money. The idea that breaking MS's lock-in in the OS market by supporting standardized Web technologies makes absolutely no sense to me. Please explain your reasoning.

Just because they promote HTML5 now does not mean they intend for that to be the preferred way to develop simple applications in the future.

No, but the fact that they've been promoting it for many years, have developed tools to let users do just that, have committed to projects like PhoneGap, etc. does indicate it is highly likely. Do you have any evidence that they're changing direction?

Of course, guessing the intentions of Apple and what their future plans are is just speculation, but since there is lost revenue at stake...

You make it sound as though their actions were insulated from one another. You could just as easily say Apple will ditch all the open source projects they contribute to, since those don't directly make them money. The thing is, having better dev tools and more apps and lowering costs for developers sell iPhones, and Apple is really, really in the business of selling iPhones right now. They're not about to try to gain a small amount of revenue from developers now, while risking long term sales of devices. That would be idiotic. That's the reason why their developer program was so cheap in the first place.

I see little incentive for them to continue pushing HTML5 as the development platform of choice from simple but useful applications...

Then allow me to explain. It sells phones and Macs and together that's the lion's share of Apple's profit.

Also, since HTML5 cannot interact with the device specifically (e.g. sensors, contacts, etc.)

Umm, I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. It can access the location service for GPS use, and many other of the offered services via the Webkit APIs. What is it missing that simple apps need?

Re:Apple does have Dashcode...

[obijuanvaldez]

Actually, to date that revenue does not seem to be very significant at all. Apple hasn't been making very much on apps as far as anyone can tell and Steve Jobs went so far as to tell shareholders the model was to run the App store at slightly more than break even as a way to promote sales of iPhones. As for ad revenue, time will tell, but again I don't think Apple is planning on it being a big revenue stream compared to the piles of cash they make selling iPhones.

This statement seems to have no basis in reality. Apple made $300k (30% of $1 million) per day in the first month of the App Store's existence alone. I am pretty sure that is over the break even point. I am pretty sure that is also a significant amount of revenue, equal to the gross sales total for around 100,000 iPhones per day. As for advertisements, I feel relatively certain that iAds were not developed and released to simply break even and improve end user experience or out of some feeling of benevolence, but rather to do quite a bit better than break even.

How do you read "remove MS's lock-in" as "commoditize the operating system market"? That simply does not follow. Apple uses their OS as a differentiator, but they build it mostly on open standards for file and protocol interoperability. As a smaller player in the market, that makes them more money. The idea that breaking MS's lock-in in the OS market by supporting standardized Web technologies makes absolutely no sense to me. Please explain your reasoning.

Microsoft has no lock-in on iOS devices, for one thing. To remove Microsoft lock-in would be remove the tethering between applications and the Microsoft Windows operating system with HTML5 applications. These applications developed in HTML5 would be available on any platform with an HTML5 compliant browser. Regardless of whatever strategy you prefer to believe Apple is taking, Windows and also other operating systems would become a commodity (hint: this includes Apple's operating systems), i.e. any operating system with a HTML5 compliant browser would do. It's just my opinion, but I doubt very seriously that Apple, or any other profit maximizing firm would prefer that.

No, but the fact that they've been promoting it for many years, have developed tools to let users do just that, have committed to projects like PhoneGap, etc. does indicate it is highly likely. Do you have any evidence that they're changing direction

As I said, what I am doing is speculation. Just as you would speculate they will not change direction. All I have to suggest it is possible is how they transitioned from suggesting web apps as the way to develop for the iPhone originally, which was then supplanted by the iPhone SDK. That, and the fact that they could increase revenue by creating a simple environment for developing iOS applications. Whether that increase in revenue and the less tangible mindshare is worth the investment of time they would have to outlay for it is, again, speculation.

You make it sound as though their actions were insulated from one another. You could just as easily say Apple will ditch all the open source projects they contribute to, since those don't directly make them money. The thing is, having better dev tools and more apps and lowering costs for developers sell iPhones, and Apple is really, really in the business of selling iPhones right now. They're not about to try to gain a small amount of revenue from developers now, while risking long term sales of devices. That would be idiotic. That's the reason why their developer program was so cheap in the first place.

I really don't know where to begin with this. I am not saying their actions are insulated from one another, you are just inferring it. I am saying their motive is singular, to maximize profit, just like every other firm. The second bit seems to be som

Re:Apple does have Dashcode...

[obijuanvaldez]

Make that 1,000 iPhones per day. Still a significant amount. Also, that is just for the first month, to date, with more than 5 billion downloads from the App Store, I would bet they make quite a bit more.

Re:Apple does have Dashcode...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

This statement seems to have no basis in reality.

Okay, here's a Piper Jaffray Analysis of how much the experts think Apple profits after the cost of running the store and processing the transaction fees and absorbing the cost of offering free apps. If you don't feel like reading, they put it at 1% of Apple's profit. You do know profit and revenue are different right? That's opposed to the estimated 45% of their profit from iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. Which one do you think Apple is most concerned about?

Microsoft has no lock-in on iOS devices, for one thing. To remove Microsoft lock-in would be remove the tethering between applications and the Microsoft Windows operating system with HTML5 applications. These applications developed in HTML5 would be available on any platform with an HTML5 compliant browser.

Okay, I'm with you so far.

Regardless of whatever strategy you prefer to believe Apple is taking, Windows and also other operating systems would become a commodity (hint: this includes Apple's operating systems), i.e. any operating system with a HTML5 compliant browser would do.

I see. Your assertion is application tying to the OS is the only criteria of OS's that matters and differentiating by making the OS more secure, more reliable, faster, more featureful, having a more usable UI and offering more benefits to applications is not useful in using an OS as a market differentiator. Sorry, I don't buy it at all. You seem to have some weird ideas. Competition between companies that adhere to a standard is not the same thing as commoditization. It is, in fact, the normal competitive market.

As I said, what I am doing is speculation. Just as you would speculate they will not change direction.

My speculation is supported by their past behavior and by the amount of monetary and human resources they've been dumping into HTML5. Your doesn't seem to have any support. It's just a poorly thought out idea you have.

I think I addressed the profitability of the App Store above.

Not really, you just mistook revenue for profit and didn't bother to actually look or research my comments. If you do bother to research it now you'll most likely find one article that supports your opinion... please be sure to read the partial retraction at the end after a million people pointed out to the author all the numbers he forgot to account for.

You cannot seriously believe that advertisements were introduced to iOS to sell more devices.

Actually, that is one of the two main motivations they have. It's not direct though. iAds gives developers a way to make money without directly charging users. This leads to more and different apps from developers, which leads to more good options for users of phones, which leads to more phone sales. It's just an extension of the model they have now, where they make little or nothing selling apps, because it means more apps which sells more phones.

nted to make the developer program "so cheap" (they don't) why have a charge for the SDK at all?

Partly because they like to run services at break even, not at a loss. Second, because having some barrier to entry for developers can be beneficial. Their goal is not to maximize the number of applications. It's to maximize the number of applications they will help them sell phones. A small developer fee helps keep out a lot of malware developers right from the onset, as well as a lot of people who don't really know what they're doing and are not really committed to making apps, but just want to throw something together for fun.

Then allow me to explain. It sells phones and Macs and together that's the lion's share of Apple's profit.

Allow me to exp

Re:Apple does have Dashcode...

[Anonymous Coward]

> It does require you install the developer tools (which are free).

I thought they cost about the same as a Mac...

This will only worsen the Android Marketpalce

[remin8]

I don't see any real inovation coming from this. All it will do is increase the flood of generic and hobbiest apps in the Marketplace. The best I think we can hope for from this is that it gets more people interested in software development and the inovation spurred later by them.

Re:This will only worsen the Android Marketpalce

[__aaaaxm1522]

Agreed. This will not do anything to improve the quality of apps in the Android Marketplace.

I have both a Nexus One and an iPhone. Being an open-source Freedom Is Good kind of guy, I *really* want to love my Nexus One and Android ... but when I go looking for apps, I'm put off by the amount of crap floating around in the Android Marketplace.

Now I'm not saying that the Apple app store doesn't have crap in it, but for some reason a higher percentage of Android apps tend to have crappy UIs, poor features, or both. Take a look at RSS readers for both platforms as an example. The shining pinacle of RSS reading on Android is "NewsRob", which looks like a joke when compared against Reeder or NewsRack on the iPhone.

The ability for the unwashed masses to point and click their way thru app-building? Yeah, that's not gonna work out well for anyone.

Re:This will only worsen the Android Marketpalce

[Anonymous Coward]

NewsRob is both faster and simpler to use than Reeder, so I am not sure what you are complaining about unless you are a typical mac usability obsessed imbecile who thinks images with rounded corners are more "usable" than those without.

Who said the forbidden fruit was an apple?

[tepples]

Everything begins with an apple.

Even sin. According to the Bible, anyway.

Citation needed. All I see in the text itself is "do not eat of the tree". The common identification as an apple arises from a Latin pun between malus meaning apple and malum meaning evil.

Re:Who said the forbidden fruit was an apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything begins with an apple.

Even sin. According to the Bible, anyway.

Citation needed. All I see in the text itself is "do not eat of the tree". The common identification as an apple arises from a Latin pun between malus meaning apple and malum meaning evil.

*sigh* Typical apple apologist. Blame the translation for what the fruit did.

updated browser is whats needed

[peter303]

Ironic, it was the internet browser which killed the original HyperCard. The browser was more general and portable than HyperCard. Required browser updates include:
(1) Use all the new GUI features on smartphones like location info, touch screens, etc.
(2) Make better use of small screen real estate. The default should drop window borders and menu borders, etc.

Its a step backwards from the generality of a browser to have to write a custom App for everything.

Re:updated browser is whats needed

[Skuld-Chan]

Its easy to say the web killed Hypercard (it's what wikipedia says) but in reality - if you want to put a program on a disk (or download from the Android Marketplace or Apple App-store) and you want it to be displayed accurately across multiple-platforms the web doesn't deliver (this was especially true when Hypercard was still popular). I've seen plenty of Hypercard stacks that you could only really reliably be recreated using Flash until recently. Come to think about it - maybe Flash killed Hypercard? Flash's rise does coincide with Hypercard 3's downfall (which also promised in web browser support).

I'd agree that the situation is much much better now than in the late 90's, but there are still plenty of browsers that don't fully support the latest greatest specs fully.

Re:updated browser is whats needed

[unix1]

(2) Make better use of small screen real estate. The default should drop window borders and menu borders, etc.

I like what they did in Fennec. I don't know if they were first in doing this or not, but the tabs and menu hidden on the left and right side of the main content section is genius. Then a light horizontal swipe moves the whole screen and reveals those sections. I personally liked it, anyway.

Re:updated browser is whats needed

[walter_f]

By the way, historic[ally], it was Steve Jobs who killed the original HyperCard.
That happened in February 1998, if my memory doesn't mislead me, with a release-grade HC 3.0 just round the corner.

And sorry, I regard a browser as a piece of software that may serve many purposes, but certainly not all, not even close.

Is the App store even the target?

[Ohm2k]

I'm not sure the App store is even the target for this tool. This looks to be aimed at the "I want an app that does X,Y, and Q" Nothing out there does it but Google gives me the tools to make it.
Now users will be able to make the apps they want to do what they want. If anything this will clean up the app store. No longer do I need to go downloading 20 fart apps to find the fart I want, I can just make it and load it on my device. Now the 16 year old "Developer" does not make AD money from uploading his fart app so he looses the desire to make "Fart app 2: Even Wetter"

Also great for small to mid-sized IT shops who cannot devote a guy to develop in-house mobile apps. Now there is a platform where an app can be put out in a fraction of the time. This could be a great thing for the platform as a whole.

Stop looking at the overly cluttered landscape of the Android App store, There is a bigger picture here that we are missing. Google is very good at bringing order from a pile of chaos and delivering the best nuggets from it. The Android App store is just a self created pile of chaos and I think this is just the next step in creating that order.

Sympathy for RevMobile..

[hyphz]

Well, that's kinda sad.

Apple banned them from making a revMobile that could create apps for iPhone. Now Google are displacing them.

So much for anyone who pre-ordered revMobile.

Re:put the kabosh?

[delinear]

If you don't have the money to spare then cheaper IS easier. The alternative is you have to go work for however long it takes to earn the money to buy the license (and potentially the Mac to do the development on, since you specifically mention iPhone/iPad), which for students and kids, the people they specifically tested this with, is certainly a barrier to "easy development".

Inventor is the mother of necessity?

[xigxag]

Because, of those billion crap developers, there are going to be thousands who will come to the same conclusion that you have, that Inventor is not powerful enough to deliver the concept they have in their heads, and they will then proceed out of necessity to learn an advanced programming language, and this will add to the ranks of "real" developers with "real" apps. Google's nurturing a future army.

One button mice are not so useful

[sean.peters]

For example, on a machine that ships with a single button mouse, nothing stops you from installing a three button mouse

One button mice are not so useful, but as you say, they can be replaced with n-button mice. One button trackpads, however, are the devil. They obviously can't be replaced, and many of us don't want to replace a trackpad with a mouse. I was in this situation with my first Powerbook, and I had to search out and install a semi-crappy third-party replacement trackpad driver to obtain right-click capability (which seemed to break every time Apple put out a new OSX point release).

Look, even Apple has figured this out - their laptops all come with right-click capable trackpads. Usability is important, but so is usefulness - this fetish for usability-uber-alles cripples advanced users' ability to get things done. The way to address the problems is to write programs correctly, not do the hardware equivalent of tying one hand behind our back. Consider that a pad and paper is way more "usable" than any word processor could ever be... but that's because the pad and paper doesn't do much of anything. While our situation can be improved by thinking about usability, it's ultimately unavoidable that the users are actually going to have to learn SOMETHING about how their systems work.

Re:One button mice are not so useful

[@madeus]

Having one button usability doesn't require impeding multi-button functionality. It doesn't require crippling functionality for more advanced users, in fact it's actually useful for everyone.

For example, if you only have a one button mouse enabled / configured then it many desktop applications it's very sensible to have click + hold = right click (this also applies when using a track pad).

Lots of people don't use a computer enough to remember to right click when looking for an option, but are quicker to get the concept of click and hold (and much quicker with other paradigms - like tool pallets / inspectors & tabs). There is no reason not to accommodate for these users too.

Re:One button mice are not so useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Having one button usability doesn't require impeding multi-button functionality. It doesn't require crippling functionality for more advanced users, in fact it's actually useful for everyone.

I certainly wouldn't argue otherwise. But I see a Usability Expert suggesting that Windows machines should ship with single-button mice to force developers to write better interfaces. To me, and I'm obviously not alone, this is a spherical cow solution that is only applicable in the fantasy land of usability theory and not in the real world where multi-button mice are the de-facto standard. Don't try to solve a software problem with hardware.

Re:One button mice are not so useful

[Americano]

One button mice are not so useful

You're right - they're absolutely not useful... if your user interface is designed to require two buttons, and in fact hides some of the application's functionality ONLY in those second-mouse-button context menus. For applications that are designed to expose all of their functionality via sensibly laid out single-button menuing, that second button is just an added bonus that can invoke a context-sensitive menu, but which is not *required* to access functionality.

You are looking at the state of your applications today and saying, "No second button? Jesus, I can't use my computer without a second button!" The point of usability is to respond to that by saying, "But you should be able to."

Those extra buttons, for those who can use them, could be programmed to do all kinds of fun and exciting things, while not preventing people using alternate input methods from using the application at all.

Re:One button mice are not so useful

[mattack2]

You didn't/don't need to install anything for "right-click", because control-click has always been the main way to get contextual menus.

Re:One button mice are not so useful

[Patch86]

A zero button mouse would be great "if applications were designed for it". No mouse at all would be even better "if applications were designed for it". Then we would just have a keyboard, and we all know that a computer designed for use with no mouse and a keyboard is a massive step forward, right?

Just because something is simpler it doesn't mean it is more usable. And even if it COULD be more usable, it's reliant on a near mythical level of software interface design.

I grew up with two button mice. When the third button was added I thought it was the most useful development in the world- as did my far less computer savvy parents; it gave programs a whole extra layer of context commands to play with- and context specific controls are excellent. When that third button evolved into a wheel- bliss.

I now own, by user choice, a mouse with 8 buttons (L click, R click, wheel, back, forward, and buttons tied to a program selector and to mouse sensitivity controls). It's a little excessive for most users (I doubt most users have need for more than the first 5 in that list), but it illustrates a point of how complexity is not necessarily alien to usability.

Re:One button mice are not so useful

[Americano]

A zero button mouse would be great "if applications were designed for it".

Right, because a pointing device that has no way of registering an action to an application would be really useful, wouldn't it? "Move a pointer around on the screen... and do nothing else with it."

You CAN design for multiple buttons, and Operating Systems and applications have been designed that way for a long time - unfortunately. What this means is that many things have right-click-only functionality, and other "hidden" functionality, which absolutely impedes usability for people on alternate devices.

Your need for 8 buttons is not universal, and the issue with usability is not that "you can program lots of buttons and as a power user, get more out of it." The issue is that for some devices <i>the interaction is impossible</i> and when the functionality is <i>only accessible through the "power-user" interaction you've decided is the way power users will want to access it</i>, you have delivered software that is unusable.

Examples: How's "mouseover-only" functionality like tooltips working for you on touchscreen devices? How's multi-button functionality working for you on devices like a tongue controlled joystick?

To put it in terms you can understand - imagine if "Go back" in your browser could ONLY be accessed with a 5-button mouse's "back" button. imagine if "scroll down" could ONLY be done with a mouse wheel - then tell me a non-obvious system like that would be "usable".

Re:One button mice are not so useful

[Anonymous Coward]

To put it in terms you can understand - imagine if "Go back" in your browser could ONLY be accessed with a 5-button mouse's "back" button. imagine if "scroll down" could ONLY be done with a mouse wheel - then tell me a non-obvious system like that would be "usable".

Much like ol' 99bottles, you're trying to solve a software problem with hardware. This is incredibly short-sighted. Let's take a look at your example.

Scenario: Let's pretend that "Go back" can only be accessed with a 5-button mouse's "back" button. Now let's pretend that 5-button mice are the norm for 90% of desktops since the late 1990s.*

Problem: You think it's poor design to hide the "go back" functionality in such a way and want to make it more widely accessible.

Solutions:

1. Suggest that computers only ship with 4-button mice since "the program shouldn't be written that way"
2. Suggest that software should include a way to access "go back" without a 5-button mouse

Hint: The correct answer is the one that doesn't limit functionality in the name of usability.

Functionality is not a zero-sum game. Just because you provide "go back" via a menu, or button, or gesture, or long-press-on-1-button-mouse, or whatever, doesn't mean you can't also provide it for "back button on 5-button mouse".

In short, you're an idiot and I hope you're not in a position to make decisions with any real-world implications.

* - Of course 5-button mice are not commonplace in the real world, feel free to replace it with "right click" or any other common apparatus.

Re:One button mice are not so useful

[Americano]

Functionality is not a zero-sum game. Just because you provide "go back" via a menu, or button, or gesture, or long-press-on-1-button-mouse, or whatever, doesn't mean you can't also provide it for "back button on 5-button mouse".

Way to completely miss the point, and nice job skewering that straw man you set up - you really showed that irrelevant point who's the boss. Please quote for me the part of my post where I said we should "limit" functionality in the name of usability?

Interface design should be done with the lowest common denominator in mind - making the functionality fully accessible to anybody with a single-button mouse, in other words.

This does not require, or even suggest, that you STOP there - you can add support for 2, 3, 4, ... , 30-button mice if you want - provide programmable functionality for each button so that the user can choose what sort of task he/she wants to accomplish with a right click - that adds functionality to the system, without forcing functionality into "hidden" context menus and other arrangements requiring "N" buttons. When "N" can never safely be assumed to be any number greater than 1, designing your application to *require* more than 1 button is not a good idea.

In short, you're an idiot and I hope you're not in a position to make decisions with any real-world implications.

Hey, I can do personal attacks too! Watch this! Big talk from an anonymous chickenshit. Thanks for weighing in on that straw man you set up, douchebag. Get stuffed.

Re:One button mice are not so useful

[Patch86]

Interface design should be done with the lowest common denominator in mind - making the functionality fully accessible to anybody with a single-button mouse, in other words.

Single button mice are not the lowest common denominator. Keyboard only strikes me as a lower denominator, as are touch-screens (which lack the ability to move the cursor without clicking, among other little bits and pieces).

Single button mice are an arbitrary point somewhat simpler than some things and somewhat more complex than others. There is clearly a point where too much simplicity creates usability difficulties (keyboard only, for example) and clearly also a point where too much complexity harms usability too (such as that insane 100 button mouse that occasionally gets an article on /.). The balancing point between these points isn't necessarily obvious- and I would argue that a standard 3 button mouse is probably about it.

You may argue otherwise, but I shall maintain that you are wrong :)

+5, you know you want to...

[Thud457]

With Jobhova's walled garden philosophy, is Apple going to replace their current logo, an apple with a bite out of it (partaking of the fruit from the tree of knowledge) with an intact apple (indicating obedience to Jobhova)?

NO KIDDING!

[gbutler69]

"The Last Airbender" has to be one of the worst films ever made. It was a HUGE disappointment. M. Knights' most EPIC FAIL! And WTF kind of 3-D was that? It was like a 3-D GOATSE only not 3-D! Just GOATSE! What an F-ing rip-off. This had to be the biggest turd of an over-hyped under-delivered movie since "Independence Day".

This is NOT ABOUT APPS ON IN THE MARKETPLACE.

[Kenja]

This is not for making apps to distribute in the marketplace, this is about quickly making apps for YOU to use. Not that Android development is hard for people who understand even basic coding, but this will let more people making things to run on their phones. The demo video is a woman making an app with a picture of a cat that meows when you touch it. This is for HER to use, not to be distributed to the masses.

Re:This is NOT ABOUT APPS ON IN THE MARKETPLACE.

[YourExperiment]

I don't know, that sounds like it could be the next big thing to me.

Might be something to do with the "Hypercard" part

[weston]

... of the story, since Hypercard came from Apple, and was arguably significant as one of the first widely used RAD tools.

fart apps

[commodoresloat]

Why do people insist on oversimplifying the iphone model by calling it a way to make "fart apps." For the last time, people, this is not about fart apps; this is a revolutionary new flatulence platform!

this is good and a recent dev topic

[Locutus]

at a party this weekend I was talking with some dev types and Android and iPhone development came up. What surprised me was that two of the guys were complaining how difficult it was just getting the dev platform up for Android and that they've seen people in their offices give up because of it. I tried to explain that with flexibility come the need to know slightly more than clicking an install button and you're at the IDE. They said they believe most developers want that the simple click-install-develop method especially when looking into the platform for the first time. If Google makes the install of this App Inventor as click-and-go as it looks like the development is, they'll have a huge winner here.

on a side note, these developers were all into running Linux for various things. Some for their girlfriends and wifes and others on their netbooks, laptops, and PCs. And these were not my normal geeky crowd but the type which typically do the Windows gigs.

LoB

WebOS has had something similar...

[SCHecklerX]

...for quite awhile now.

Welcome to the party:
http://ares.palm.com/Ares/about.html

So Like Totally Far Out Man

[pkinetics]

Like this is so like cool. Now lil Tifne can like wrt her own 133t apps that like evr1 should like dl, cause it totally is like the bomb...

Easier != better

[gilesjuk]

BASIC was supposed to be an easier programming language, but we still write applications in fairly low level languages.

The hardest part for non-programmers is the whole process of breaking a problem down into the required structure and then writing all the code to do what they want.

Many people just aren't good programmers, others just can't comprehend the subject.

As you make something much easier or accessible the quality goes down, look at all the SLR photographers churning out rubbish images, mainly due to the presence of the "auto" modes which allow them to just point and shoot.

Re:Easier != better

[bnenning]

As you make something much easier or accessible the quality goes down

Which is why Real Programmers write everything in assembly.

look at all the SLR photographers churning out rubbish images

Rubbish images are a huge improvement over no images.

-1 troll, c'mon?

[bsDaemon]

Seriously? I used the language from the summary in rebuttal to another poster to make the point that Apple probably /should/ care that Google's targeting the type of users most associated With Apple products, and empowering them to make devices they care about do stuff they want. Or, am I being punished for my back-handed assertion that Linux and FreeBSD suck ass on laptops?

Mod parent up +1 Insightful

[mccrew]

Wish I had mod points for you today. Thanks for adding some light and not heat to the discussion.

Android makes software creativity easy.

[EraserMouseMan]

I think this will be a new dimension in the "user friendly" category. Ease-of-use is currently measured by how easy it is to use somebody else's creation. Now we will be comparing & contrasting ease-of-use from the perspective of how easy it is to do the creating.

Hey - Slashdot...

[earlymon]

I thought this was a fabulous submission - news for nerds, with links to balancing links to opposing points of view and a counterpoint example of a competitor's approach.

That said - isn't it time that Android got its own sub-section?

This isn't Apple news, it's Android news, and it seems to me that just putting this in the Apple area has done little to help signal to noise.

Android isn't going anywhere and it's market share is on a steady incline.

Sure, it's only a mobile OS - but it also represents a significant penetration of a desktop based on a Linux-based operating system for mobile users.

How is that not a good rationale for a new category for news for nerds, stuff that matters?

Re:Hey - Slashdot...

[Xtifr]

For some extra irony: at the moment I'm typing this, the latest story on the front page is about the iPhone, and it's in the Mobile section, not the Apple section!

So apparently a story about Android is about Apple, but a story about iPhone isn't. *sigh*

Google watching you work?

[HumanEmulator]

I love the idea of this tool and the openness Google is promoting on their platform, but it occurred to me... This is a web app, so in theory Google not only has the source to any application developed with this tool, but they could actually have a log of the activity that created a given application. A lot of what Google does these days goes beyond storing information and routes everything through their servers. Google search watches you type to offer suggestions. Gmail stores your mail, but theoretically, Google Wave knows exactly how you typed your message. I believe their intentions are as noble as a for profit company can be, but we are really entering a brave new world when you develop software in a room where someone has an eye over your shoulder.

Single Button Apologists, 21st Century Styling!

[meehawl]

You want to bet you never look in the wrong menu using the wrong mouse button when trying to perform tasks? I bet you do. Almost everyone does. It's just part of how people use computers these days and something we don't pay attention to.

Yes, a thousand times yes.

You know, sometimes I am looking for some spare keys. I often look in the wrong drawer first, before the right one.

This does not imply that a single drawer to hold everything is a more efficient solution.

Your argument for a single button overloaded to perform all selection and option tasks is nonsense.

Anyone but TechCrunch would mention Palm Ares

[AFresh1]

Because Palm has had their web app to drag-and-drop to create webOS apps for quite some time now.

Does not seem accurate

[SuperKendall]

Apple's offering is superior in every way. Kids can learn much much faster using Dashcode than anything else on the market.

Just in case you were not being sarcastic, I don't really think this is true. I think kids would be better off learning real programming.

I was just pointing out that a simple RAD tool was not something Apple had ignored, and in fact have had for a very long time.

I still liked the original idea of kids learning something like LOGO first, if for no other reason than to learn recursion...

Apple makes no money on dev fees

[SuperKendall]

Why would they think that? I cannot imagine that Apple would want to turn away the $99 SDK fee

"Turn away" the money? Apple has to pay for app reviewers, cost to keep up dev tools, developer forums, and the whole app infrastructure (like push notifications)... Apple is not using that money for profit, it's just to help developer support from being a huge cost drain.

As others noted, the reason why Apple has and continues to fully support HTML5 as an application alternative (you can even put HTML5 apps on your homescreen just like any other app) is that it helps sell devices.

Just because Apple turned down the pitch from revMobile does not mean they have no intentions of allowing simplified development tools for iOS. My guess would be that if they have any intention of allowing such tools, they would much prefer to actually create them.

That may be, although if you look at Dashcode tutorial videos it really is a simplified GUI development tool (though really more targeting desktop browsers currently).

Apple already had an easier development model

[bonch]

The summary says "Steve Jobs & Co. put the kibosh on easier cellphone development." When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, the original intent was that people make apps using HTML and Javascript using an IDE like Dashcode. Developers didn't want it. So Apple went onto to release a native SDK, and now they've apparently "put the kibosh" on easier development.

Besides that, Cocoa Touch is pretty damn easy, even easier than desktop Cocoa development.

No Android

[krischik]

RevMobile does not actually support Android:

iPhone & iPad Windows Mobile Maemo

Their code is probably C or C++ and they never heard of the Android NDK.

No thanks.

[krischik]

I am to paranoid for those online office stuff.

You've obviously never used a Mac

[sean.peters]

At least, you've never used an older Mac laptop. Because the default trackpad driver didn't include any way to right click (except by holding down control or command or something). Which was why I did, in fact, have to get a third party driver.

Re:You've obviously never used a Mac

[mattack2]

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I SAID. Control-click is the way to get a contextual menu.

So, again...

[sean.peters]

... the answer to that problem is to write applications correctly, not enforce a single-button only policy on the world. Which is what I was living with on the Powerbook.

It should also be noted that in addition to lacking a right button (equivalent), the supplied driver also lacked any equivalent of the scroll wheel. Are you going to now tell me my system was more usable because I had to move the cursor to the edge of the screen every time I wanted to scroll down the page?

I'm not arguing that it's a bad idea to make critical functionality available without extra buttons. But for heaven's sake, reducing the system's functionality to the lowest common denominator cripples everyone else. I return to my pad & paper analogy. It's the most usable word processor ever invented - anyone who can read and write can use it. All its functions are intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. But it doesn't do much of anything.

It's just not reasonable to assume that users shouldn't have to learn anything to use a program.

Re:So, again...

[Americano]

I'm not saying the mouse need be one-button, I'm saying the user interface should be *designed* so that a mouse with only a single button can work the interface and access the full functionality. Any other buttons should not be *required* or *expected* by your interface design, and you certainly should not hide functionality in a way that it's only accessible by using a second (or third, or fourth, or fifth...) button.

Is it inconvenient to move your mouse to the side of the screen and click the scroll bar every time you want to page down or up? Of course it is. And that's why extra mouse buttons are put into service supporting that common (and convenient) functionality. Now imagine that the scroll bar didn't exist, and you were just expected to have a mousewheel in order to scroll up and down. How usable would that be on a two-button mouse?

That's what I'm saying is "bad design". Not "supporting other buttons," but "making more buttons required to access functionality." There are a host of alternate input devices that don't support 3,4,5 buttons - your mouse trackpad, for example; a tongue-control joystick for a handicapped person; old mice with only 2 buttons and no wheel; touchscreen devices... the point of usability is to expose the functionality of the application to the user. Supporting shortcuts via context-sensitive menus is fine - as long as you also provide access via your menus to that same functionality in a way that's accessible without right-clicking.

Nobody's arguing that users "shouldn't have to learn anything" - we're arguing that application developers need to understand that if they are burying an app's functionality in a way that it is *only* accessible via a 2nd, 3rd, etc. button, they are <i>doing it wrong</i>.

Consider your example of pen & paper - it's a very open interface, and supports just about any "input method" you care to use - crayon, marker, pen, pencil, anything you can use to draw a character.

Now imagine that the pad of paper was manufactured so that only right handed people using blue ballpoint pens could write on them. "But *everybody* uses blue ballpoint pens," the manufacturer would exclaim. "Hardly anybody uses black ink or pencil - why should we bother changing our product to support those needs? Let the pencil users learn to write in pen!"

Sound usable?

Re:So, again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I think you are missing the point completely.
Nobody says that we shouldn't design good interfaces.

This thread is about that 99Bottles guy claiming that it we should remove hardware usability in order to enforce software usability (design principles). People are arguing against that, while you seem to be arguing for it.
I know you haven't written that, but you inherited it from 99Bottles, by association ;)

The correct solution is to make developers aware of interface issues, not cripple everyones hardware.

Hmm ... It doesn't seem to work

[jc42]

It sounded like fun, so I tried stepping through google's instructions. I was a bit surprised when their Getting Started page said "Whether you are using a Mac or a PC, a Nexus One or a MyTouch, this section will tell you everything you need to know to get App Inventor set up on your computer and phone." This seems to exclude my linux box, which seemed odd. Oh, well, I grabbed my Macbook Pro and tried following the instructions there.

After a bit of stumbling around, appinventor said it's installed. So I connected my G1 to the Mac, and it said it was connected via USB and in debug mode. So I clicked on the link to http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/ which shows me an App Inventor window that should appear. It doesn't. I do get a page that says App Inventor, asking me to log in with my google account. I do that, and get another App Inventor page asking for some information (including the email address that I just logged in with ;-). I fill in that information, hit the Submit button, get yet another App Inventor page saying "Thank you. Your information has been sent to the App Inventor team." There are no links on this page.

That's apparently the end of the install tree. I've tried a few different paths through the maze of links, and they all lead to the same dead end. I expected some feedback through a gmail message, but after several hours, no messages from google have appeared there.

So how have others tested App Inventor? Have you got it working? I'm obviously missing something, but I can't see what. Maybe it's a test to see whether I can spot something that I'm failing to spot ...

(Hmmm ... It occurs to me that gmail may have sent me a message that was tossed in the spam folder. Hold on ... Nope; just one message since I started on App Inventor, and it was from me offering "VIAGRA cheap".)

Still programming

[192939495969798999]

Every attempt to make programming "not programming" succeeds in specially crafted demos, but still fails at anything larger than the tiniest apps. Take a look at google's own screenshot of a game made with this... it still looks like regular programming, only perhaps grosser and more confusing because the blocks stretch out in unjustified directions. At least with a font-based programming language you can use a fixed-width font.

Re:Still programming

[slim]

It *is* still programming, with loops and variables and assignments and comparisons and all of that stuff.

What you get from dragging and dropping blocks around, is the complete inability to generate a syntax error. You drag in an "if" block, and it comes with the corresponding block end, a slot to drag a condition into, a slot to drag the body statements into. You can't mismatch braces, or mistype a keyword, etc.

That's brilliant for kids, who can get a result of some kind quickly. Give them, say, Python, and they'd be struggling to get something that parses.

Anyone in their right mind would want to graduate to a proper, textual, language -- but as an introduction to basic programming concepts, Scratch is a great way to learn, and this builds on that.

This is for kids, or beginners programming at the level of a kid.