
 Three Mobile-Software Rules - wglb
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/10/30/Three-Android-Software-Rules
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wazoox
> I started wondering why all software, without exception, isn’t written this
> way by default.

This is a very interesting question. I'm pretty sure it's pure "technical
debt"; we're still so conditioned by extremely slow storage devices (the
floppy is still the canonical "save" icon, remember?) that nobody questioned
this sad state of affairs.

It became suddenly obvious that all and every application should continuously
save its state, so that you would need to name your files only to better find
them. A whole new paradigm waiting to be implemented, fully orthogonal
persistence (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_%28computer_science...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_%28computer_science%29#Orthogonal_or_transparent_persistence)
).

~~~
riobard
OS X Lion will probably push this first as they apply what they learned on
iPad to OS X.

~~~
glhaynes
Snow Leopard made the very first step toward it: when your app is in a
consistent, everything-persisted-that-needs-to-be state, it can set a bit that
tells the OS that it can just kill -9 it at will.

Edit: here's an article on it. It's called "sudden termination".
[http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/03/mac-10-6-comes-with-
license-t...](http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/03/mac-10-6-comes-with-license-to-
kill/)

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mleonhard
Take "Crash-Only" one step further and you get apps that back themselves up
automatically. Re-install the app on your new device and it restores all of
your data.

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johnrob
_The fact that on the mobile screen there’s just not room for that stuff makes
me increasingly wonder how much we really need it._

So true. It's so bad on the (normal) web these days that I often visit the
mobile version even from my computer's browser.

Also:

 _Gosh, this notion of tying everything together loosely with addresses, data
types, and a few simple verbs seems to have legs._

Sarcasm is necessary here as it's so obvious where all of this is going. We've
already seen it on PCs; the web wins for 99% of all needs.

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Bruce_Adams
"Crash-Only" is a great approach. So, why do Android phones take a long time
to power down?

~~~
DougBTX
No idea, but it isn't instant on my single-tasking iPhone 3G either.

~~~
yardie
I wonder why is that? I've got a 3GS and most times it takes seconds to power
down and other times it can take up yo 20 seconds or so.

