The software required to make a sophisticated consumer electronic device like a TV or a mobile phone, is significant.

The lines of code in an operating system or virtualised environment is in the multi millions (Linux is around 6 million lines of code).  The lines of code in a set of base services on top of that, say email, SMS, MMS, or VOD services is equally significant.

These are complex, demanding and expensive systems.  And you know what?  Users care more about the way their device looks, feels, presents and handles.

Its the stuff that the consumer interacts with that is important.  To the user that is.

That is not to say that the stuff under the hood is unimportant.  Quite the contrary, it is vital.  The consumer doesn’t see it though.  It is difficult to understand and impossible for the consumer to value.

The user interface is the single most important factor driving sales of devices and services.  Just look at the iPhone if you don’t believe me.  The user interface is critical, cannot be taken for granted, cannot be side stepped and cannot be skimped over.

One of the first projects we did for a large multinational in 2001 was the porting and customisation of open source applications for a new concept Linux PDA.  This PDA was way ahead of its time, with Bluetooth, WiFi, landscape mode view, email and browser.  It predated the Nokia 770 by 1/2 dozen years easily.

One of the main applications required was an email client.  Now in 2001, the choice of good graphical-based Linux email clients was thin on the ground.  Bonus points were awarded for calendar and contact management.

We chose Evolution 0.9 for a number of reasons.  We were already headed down a GTK path and didn’t want to start with KDE applications as well, and it did a lot of what we wanted.

It was also attractive to the customer because  it bore a striking resemblance to Microsoft Outlook.  This was also what killed it, you see it the customer didn’t want it to look too much like Outlook!

FFWD -> 2009

There is a lot of familiar-but-different stuff going on.  Two new products that stand out are:

Toshiba’s new TG01:
http://tinyurl.com/bq4w9x
http://tinyurl.com/dalppk

And HTC’s Touchflow Windows Mobile:
http://tinyurl.com/6z7nsm

As you can see, there is an emphasis on taking the standard Windows Mobile offering and customising it with the Toshiba and HTC look and brand.

The same thing is true for Google Android.  When / if companies like Toshiba do make an Android mobile, they will want to create a unique GUI for the same reasons.

Differentiation of product is mandatory, its branding, familiarity and its important.

The key features of a good UI are:

1. Familiarity
2. Ease of use

You see, the customer wants it to be familiar, but not too familiar.  They don’t want a copy of their competitions application, but they want their application to be easily understood.

Its a fine line.

At FST we have found that separation of the GUI from the code is vital.  It lets the customer change the look and feel at will and is what gives our customers their uniqueness.

We have gone to great lengths to create a system that allows the customer to very easily change all aspects of the user interface without having to plunge into the code.

This means small tweaks and big GUI changes alike are easy to execute and don’t require code change.

I recently returned from a trip to Taiwan and Japan.  This trip followed up on our announcement with Intel at their SFO IDF.

I visited new customers and old ones and the message is the same.  They want to look different, they want to be in control of their own products, they want to have something better.

I have been hearing this for a long time now.  One of our oldest customers is Toshiba (9 years now) and Toshiba is a major licensee of Microsoft Windows for laptop PCs.  The main gripe that Toshiba has with Microsoft Windows is that it is impossible for them to differentiate themselves from their competitors such as HP and Dell.

With the coming of Android, the story is set to repeat itself.  Dozens of Android phones will come onto the market and they will look very similar to one another.

This is one of the main selling points of FancyPants.  It can be used to create a unique look and feel and layout.  It can be integrated with existing platforms such as Moblin, LiMo and Android (email me to ask how).

We like to say it gives products that “Wow Factor”, but then, you will have to decide for yourself.

Recently Nigel Clifford, Symbian CEO Nokia employee, had a few words to say about Linux in the mobile phone space.  Its quite funny to read about the benefits of open source and the evils of industry fragmentation from one who epitomised the proprietary closed source solution until (checks watch) recently.

The thing is, though, I’m not quite sure what the long term Nokia-Symbian-Trolltech love triangle is all about.

One twisted theory I’ve heard (ok, I admit its mine) is that Nokia will prop Symbian up as a crippled option for its competitors, never quite good enough for a real modern day smartphone and never quite supported properly.  Slowly Nokia will use Symbian less and less for its own purposes while it rolls out more and more Linux phones.

In other words, maybe Nokia is trying to kill competition through poor alternatives and sheer frustration.  Far fetched?  Perhaps.

Another theory is that Linux will become the vehicle for Nokia’s higher end, more general purpose computing devices and Symbian for the lower end, soon-to-be-at-the-end-of-lifetime devices.

Either way I’m not buying any Symbian shares.

Its been a long time between watering holes, as they say.  And a very busy time for us.  We’ve come back to Mobile Internet Devices.

FST announced support for Intel’s new Atom processor last night:

http://www.fst.net/resources/press/pr.20080820.0.html

As the only UI Innovator (their term,  but I don’t mind) in the MID ecosystem we enjoy the attention of the companies really wanting to create something different.

The MID stands to be a new way of working with our surroundings and each other.  I’m sure you have all seen the video:

http://moblin.org/ItsYourMoveNext_video.php

There is still a lot of stuff to work out, much of it infrastructure – by which I mean connectivity, services, fees, awareness and education, just to name a few, but its a step in the right direction.  A far cry from the first Ericsson seminar I went to where they talked about “Always On”, the marketing term for GPRS.

The user interface, of course, is one of the most crucial aspects.  Its not about looking good, although that always helps, but its about being easy to use, providing visual cues, and being responsive.

For us this is the start of an exciting time.  With Intel getting more and more into the traditional embedded space, there will be a lot of competition, but also a lot of opening up of what has traditionally been closed markets for software vendors.  Intel is like the proverbial Bull in the China Shop and will eventually level out the field somewhat.

As long as people are paying attention to the user interface on these kinds of devices we at FST are happy.  Thanks Intel.

Some more photos of the new Intel Menlow based Toshiba UMPC with FancyPants GUI.

Cool colors, stylish backing. We could make a GUI theme to match you know.

Git is brilliant. It is fast, intuitive and flexible. At FST we use it for all of our revision control. We moved to git some time ago after evaluating the usual options and trying the tla implementation of arch out for a while.

However…..

Its pretty bulky for binary data blobs.

I’m checking in a media library of albums and album covers for a project, and the 2.5G source took about 1 hour to push to the origin and git added another 2.5G to the repository, bringing it to 5G.

Since we won’t be changing the data very often, a single checkout should be enough.