

More features in the Qt for iOS port - guruz
http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/08/09/update-on-uikit-lighthouse-platform/

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potatolicious
No. _No_.

As a developer this is interesting and cool. As someone who loves good UX, and
as an iPhone user, I sincerely this doesn't catch on.

The look and feel of iOS is an _incredibly_ core part of the user experience
of the platform (as it is with any platform), the wholesale replacement of
these stock widgets with completely custom ones breaks user expectation,
generates inconsistencies, and if the goal of cross-platform write-once-
compile-anywhere is being sought, will simply create lowest common denominator
UI - i.e., leverages none of the strengths of any platform, leaving only the
most bland, mundane, and uninspiring intersection of all its target OSes.

To be clear, I'm not at all opposed to innovating with custom widgets and UI
elements (the drag-down-to-refresh is one of the more ingenuous new UI
patterns that's come from the community instead of one of the big companies),
but this is trying to completely build a completely parallel UI layer beside
the native OS one.

It's the same reason why I oppose Java-based UIs. No matter which platform you
use it on, it never really behaves like the native widgets, and there are
inconsistencies big and small that drive users up the wall. The core _theme_
of consumer software in the past few years has been that superior UX trumps
everything, up to and including having inferior features to your competition.
Have we learned nothing? Why are we still so lazy with our UIs?

~~~
tomjen3
I understand your reluctance, but from a developer time perspective it may
make sense to use a cross-platform toolkit even if the users isn't going to
enjoy it as much.

Ultimatively it comes down to economics: are you willing to pay five dollars
for a native app or 1 for a cross-platform one?

~~~
potatolicious
That's precisely my point though - I think the software market has reached a
point where developer laziness like this simply won't fly.

There was a time when the functionality of our products compared to the status
quo (e.g., word processing vs. typewriters) was so ridiculously skewed that we
could get away with bloody murder. And we did. We invented insipid modal UIs
that jerked users around the app. We invented gigantic toolbars with hundreds
of vague icons because we were too lazy figure out how to let users access
their most used functions quickly. We created unforgiving apps where just
_glancing_ at it wrong resulted in data loss. We abdicated our responsibility
to make features accessible, and instead printed large manuals and tear-out
cheat-sheets, and made fun of people who couldn't handle the information
overload.

That era's long gone. Look at the App Store - it's a parade of failed apps
eviscerated by users for bad UI. It's a gallery of obscure apps that never
made it out of the gate because they didn't put thought into their UX. Now
look at any of the top apps (in whatever way you define it: top grossing, most
downloaded, highest reviewed, whatever), and you will see that one main common
thread that connects is that their UI _doesn't suck_.

People's tolerance for bad UI has decreased rapidly for years, continues to
decrease, and the number of places where you can get away with it is rapidly
shrinking. On the desktop you might still have that much breathing room - on
the hyper-competitive winner-takes-all arena of the App Store, you have no
chance.

As a side note - I highly doubt Qt will save a developer enough time to make
the difference between a $1 app price vs. a $5 app price. There are so many
low-level fundamental UX differences between iOS, Android, and any of the
other mobile platforms that full abstraction is simply not possible in the way
that we have been able to do on the desktop.

~~~
zileazy
What does "having a UI that doesn't suck" to do with using native controls?
When I look at the top 20 paid apps (germany), 13 of them don't use a single
native control (most of them being games). Most sucking applications in the
App Store suck even though they are using native controls.

------
demallien
Does this mean that Nokia is keeping Meego going as a skunkworks project? It
would certainly help with leverage when negociating OS supplier contracts.

~~~
pavlov
When Nokia announced the switch to Windows Phone, they relegated MeeGo to
"research project" status. According to Elop, the work done on MeeGo is
supposed to anticipate the next disruptive technologies, rather than aiming to
compete in the current smartphone market.

Nokia also has said that they intend to use Qt on their Series 40 operating
system, which powers the hundreds of millions "dumbphones" that Nokia sells
each year.

