The Linus view of GNOME 3.2

[Alan Cox]

O> Though, only if you are doing *BASIC* email.  Just try something more
> complicated, and you'll soon find using a midget gadget just isn't going
> to cut the mustard.  Scads of mail, threaded properly, etc.  There just
> isn't the screen real estate, to start with.  Then try writing a long
> email without a keyboard.

I read much of my email these days on my Android phone with K9. I save
the stuff worth replying to and reply locally. It means reading email can
be done in what was otherwise dead times.

For the typical end user with webmail there isn't really much difference
between gmail on a phone and gmail on the web.
 
> Even with devices designed for the businessman to do things like that,
> such as the Blackberry, it's inadequate for the task.  I've sat next to
> them eeking out an email, and anything more than about two sentences is
> a major chore.

You need to watch a 14 year old not a business-drone. The kids learned
this stuff from a young age and their wpm on a phone is scary.

> Then you watch people spinning them around, to read something less
> awkwardly in the other aspect.  Zooming in and panning about to read
> something (and the effect is like trying to read a magazine through a
> keyhole).

Definitely. I do read books on the phone when travelling but they need to
be appropriately formatted and some stuff like magazine type material
simply doesn't work.

> That's all very well, but it's rather ludicrous to try and impose a
> tablet interface onto a desktop or laptop, and vice versa.  Yet, that
> see to be the way that various desktops are going (e.g. the current
> Gnome debacle).  Change doesn't necessarily mean progress.

Agreed 100%. In fact one of the problems outstanding is how the UI
handles the situation where you do the following

Receive an email on the phone, glance at it, begin replying, realise you
need to look at the attached presentation, flick the phone display onto
your 40" LED 1080p television and carry on working that way.

Simply expanding the existing display and way of working isn't
necessarily the sane way to do it. And it actually goes beyond that,
because if you've got local CPU power you really want your environment to
be a virtual machine that can flip seamlessly onto the bigger processor
connected to the TV.

Alan