Ideas for MID Success

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October 8, 2008 12:00 AM PDT


As MID engineers, our desires focus around helping the MID develop into a successful platform that can be used and enjoyed by millions. To this end I hope that this page can be used as a place where YOU the MID developers of the world can add your opinions and thoughts concerning what it will take to help the MID be successful. To help get the list growing I will contribute a few ideas.

Some kind of App Store is necessary for distribution of applications and other resources such as books that users will need to feel that their MID was a wise purchase. Many pieces are available for distribution such as the GIT process but it needs to be hidden from the average user by an easy to use UI that wraps up those nitty gritty details and makes it very simple. You browse, you select and you install.

  1. MID App stores need to be configurable, at least by the OEM to point to their individual version of the App Store. ie: OEM XYZ might want their own and OEM ABC needs another.
  2. There should be the ability to have multiple App Stores available, with the user able to enter a URL and gain access to others. Thus you could have the OEM App Store and others that the user might want to add and use for their own personal purposes.
    1. This could be accomplished with something like a bookmarks interface where the links to stores are typed in by the user.
    2. It would be possible for a clearing house of sorts to be developed where a third party maintained lists of possible app stores. This could hide some of the complexity from the average user but also is less flexible.
  3. App Stores could be vertically oriented with suites of apps focused on a particular vertical such as An Education App Store, or an Entertainment App Store.
  4. The App Store design needs to take into account the future needs of the tele commmunications industry so that it'll work over that infrastructure and support their requirements too.

 

We have Moblin as a structure for assuring a robust OS and stack on the MID, but what about consistent look and feel issues?

  1. Is there a need for an API that supports UI issues? Some kind of UI guide supported by API’s that makes applications easy to write and support on MIDs? Many in the Linux world would balk at this as a restriction of their ability to write anything they desire, though conversely the iPhone has been very successful given just such restrictions.

 

Additional Ideas
  • What are your ideas?
  • What does the MID need to succeed?
  • What can Intel write and work on to help move the work forward?

 

Since much of this material is subjective, I will put my email address here as the original author. If you have questions, comments or want to discuss an issue via email please write me at: dale.t.taylor@intel.com.