Monday, February 21, 2011

Save What?

From my twitter feed:

2011 and Android Honeycomb is using a FLOPPY DISK as an icon. http://bit.ly/gPF6IM Like anyone knows what they are. (thx @jpnw)less than a minute ago via Tweetie for Mac



The image? An action bar that appears at the top of Honeycomb, the latest version of Android for tablets:




No, seriously, first of all this mobile device seems to still have the concept of saving -- a concept that continues to trip up so many people in the course of using their computers -- and then visualizes it with the stylized version of an object that nobody uses anymore.

This is just simply embarrassing. These devices are hugely successful with large segments of the population that traditionally do not spend a lot of money on technology exactly because they are very much not like classic computers, and do not have classic computer concepts and constructs that require a lot of learning and thought. (What is memory? What is a hard disk? What is the difference? Why do we even have to care?) These concepts need to stay away, and certainly not be brought back with icons from yesteryear.

Google is sending a clear message: our tablets are still for computer geeksafficionados. We will not do the hard work of competing with the simplicity of Apple's iPad.

This was brought to my attention by Genius Mike, who pointed out all other kinds of constructs that seemed overly complicated or just wasteful, but I am leaving it at this. This floppy tells me all I need to know about the internal process of making Honeycomb.