This is Not a Brain Surgery

07:06 pm - desktop mentality

The first versions of Windows Mobile (called back then Windows CE) were quite terrible. The problem is that designing software for mobile devices requires special thinking, and just shrinking desktop software into smaller screen space is hardly sufficient. For example, the whole Windows START button metaphor does not fit very well into tiny screen, because it is an extremely tedious task to navigate of 2-3 levels of popup menus just to start an application. And taking the stylus out each time to do so takes valuable second or two of user time.

Another example: having one fixed time zone on device is maybe OK for desktop, but it is not acceptable for mobile phone or laptop. People do travel across time zones! So, making it easy to change your time zone without screwing up your calendar events is important. Both iPhone and Windows Mobile went this far. But it takes few more years of trial and error in mobile words to realize, like Nokia did, that after their travels people do come back home, and it is most convenient to have TWO time zones: home and visiting, and give a user easy way to switch between them.

Now, to the problem that really irks me right now: SMTP servers. There is abundance of free WiFi hotspots available. Most of them, however, block SMTP traffic on port 25, except to their dedicated SMTP server. That's done to fight SPAM. The problem is that SMTP server settings on iPhone (and most other email clients I've seen on mobile devices) are not dependant from the access point you are using right now. So, AT&T has nothing better than suggest their customers to go and manually change SMTP settings whenever they switch between using their EDGE network and their own WiFi Hotspots! I think it is obvious, that user should be able to override SMTP server settings on mobile devices depending on his current access point ( as it is done for HTTP proxy WiFi network details screen under Settings). Or even better,this information should be obtained automatically, perhaps via DHCP.