Is the Star Trek future Apple or Windows?

[Cheapjack]

Or neither?

The bridge in ST11 looked fairly Apple.

Though Geordi and Scotty both acted like Windows help desk.

Will computers be easy to use and stylish, or need techno-wizards to operate them?

I think the average Joe will be able to use them, even from a backward planet, but a power user will be a bit of a wizard.

Though Khan managed to take over the Enterprise, through the computer tutorials, on his own.

Well??

 

[Robert Maxwell]

It'll be a Google future.

 

[Flavius]

I was thinking the other day wouldn't it be perfect if I could run LCARS on my iPad?

 

[sojourner]

LCARS is a terrible real world interface. Considering there are no "big companies" in the Star Trek future, I'm going with it being a Linux future. Easy to use by beginners, awesome to use for the techs.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

In the future Apple, Windows and Google merge to form a super company and share their technologies.

 

[Shaw]

... I'm going with it being a Linux future.

That would be my guess.

 

[Jadzia]

In 20 years or so, Apple and MS will be bought out by the giant Chinese information technology consortium, the Yoshi-Mitsu Corporation, formed from the 2027 merger of microchip manufacturer Yoshi Labs, and leading software developers Mitsu Star.

 

[Bisz]

Both Yoshi and Mitsu sound Japanese, not Chinese, to me. Here's hoping to no sudden unintended clicking problems due to entraped mouse pads...

 

[Jadzia]

Well the problem will be that few in the west understand Chinese, making it near impossible for people to navigate the writing used throughout the new operating system, and there will be no regionalisation options.

All imported machines will have the Chinese font packs replaced with a numerical font, and even though it still won't make any sense to read, people will then be able to see strings of numbers and become familiar with what things like '12-47516' does when a button with that marking is pushed.

And people will adapt to that rather quickly in fact, because the operating system will be very streamlined.

 

[Hermiod]

For some reason, I think Jadzia is making some sort of pop culture reference that I don't get. Googling only turns up references to Tekken 4 ?

It won't matter, anyway, as her corporation won't be a match for the mighty Weyland-Yutani.

 

[CorporalClegg]

LCARS is a terrible real world interface. Considering there are no "big companies" in the Star Trek future, I'm going with it being a Linux future. Easy to use by beginners, awesome to use for the techs.

I doubt this is far from the truth.

In the beginning there was UNIX. In the end there'll be UNIX.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

In the future Apple, Windows and Google merge to form a super company and share their technologies.

"Woogle"?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Windows.

With security so tight that a ten year old can hack your system by repeatedly pressing six random buttons.

 

[Flavius]

Actually, it will be the cloud.

 

[STR]

LCARS is a terrible real world interface.

All Hollywood UI's are either stupidly limiting, overly flashy, or incomprehensibly arcane. Possible exception given to Minority Report. Half exception given to The Matrix (the part where they're IN the Matrix, not the stupid (though cool looking) code rain.

 

[Teiwaz]

Definetley *nix or its descendants - No doubt.

The actual standard LCARS (Library Computer Access Retrieval) layout (forget the navigation display for the moment I can't think of a use for it) looks fairly practical. The ole' L-bars for application specific commands (refreshing on selection to give options within options) (upper part for exit/save, lower for editting), bottom left main window for views, upper for file selections or process or processor info (most win mockups I've seen do'nt use the upper window for anything).

You'd have to have applications that allows you to view and edit HTTP, img, txt, doc,avi files via calls to its subroutines directly so you can use the uniform interface. For this reason, GPL'ed software is the only option.

The concept itself is very like the orginal concept of a GUI where'in you only have to learn the layout once for any application (a concept broken by many apps that use their own window APIs giving non-window looks to applications and by MS itself with the latest Office (where's the bl**dy menu bar got to you *-holes?).

Probably easiest to use X-windows, but you would'nt necassarily want full windowing, it'd mess the look up to easily, besides in *nix you have multiple desktops so you can still switch between apps, both would just be full screen.

Of course you'd want to database the application files by type and topic, that way you could go straight to your music play something refined like Picard or Data would or Napalm Death or whatever (Klingon opera can be added later).

 

[STR]

The idea that Linux, or even windows, would be relevant to a 24th century computer is an odd idea. You don't know what kind of hardware it is, and seeing as how we'll see quantum computing at some point in my lifetime, it could be something as completely alien and advanced from q-puters as quantum computers are different from binary silicon computers.

As such, the underpinnings of current operating systems may be completely useless

 

[Teiwaz]

Yeah , I know. I did say "or its descendants"
I was only musing on creating an LCARS interface, I've been puttering around with some of the various versions lately. STNG refered to the computer onboard the Enterprise in that episode about the Binars (don't recall the title it's been a long time since I watched it).

However, *nix runs on everything from the original mainframes in the 60's to mini-computers, modern IBM mainframes, x86 and beyond PCs, apple motorola chip originals (before they switched to Intel and after) to handhelds and mobile phones today (I've abreviated the list a little, I could probably dig out a list of the different archtectures it'll run on, but for most, it'd be too esoteric).
Obviously the kernal would have to be updated for multi-core quantum whatevers available in the 24th century.

 

[sojourner]

Definetley *nix or its descendants - No doubt.

The actual standard LCARS (Library Computer Access Retrieval) layout (forget the navigation display for the moment I can't think of a use for it) looks fairly practical. The ole' L-bars for application specific commands (refreshing on selection to give options within options) (upper part for exit/save, lower for editting), bottom left main window for views, upper for file selections or process or processor info (most win mockups I've seen do'nt use the upper window for anything).

You'd have to have applications that allows you to view and edit HTTP, img, txt, doc,avi files via calls to its subroutines directly so you can use the uniform interface. For this reason, GPL'ed software is the only option.

The concept itself is very like the orginal concept of a GUI where'in you only have to learn the layout once for any application (a concept broken by many apps that use their own window APIs giving non-window looks to applications and by MS itself with the latest Office (where's the bl**dy menu bar got to you *-holes?).

Probably easiest to use X-windows, but you would'nt necassarily want full windowing, it'd mess the look up to easily, besides in *nix you have multiple desktops so you can still switch between apps, both would just be full screen.

Of course you'd want to database the application files by type and topic, that way you could go straight to your music play something refined like Picard or Data would or Napalm Death or whatever (Klingon opera can be added later).

Actually, LCARS is a poor interface. It wastes screen area on oversized color bars that have no function. Window sizes in most cases have been shown to be static at one size. It was designed to look pretty on a 1980's TV show and not designed for ease of use.

Here's a good conversation we had on this subject earlier:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=97652&highlight=lcars

 

[Teiwaz]

Here's a good conversation we had on this subject earlier:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=97652&highlight=lcars

Cheers for the link.

Actually, LCARS is a poor interface. It wastes screen area on oversized color bars that have no function. Window sizes in most cases have been shown to be static at one size. It was designed to look pretty on a 1980's TV show and not designed for ease of use.

It is possible to capture the spirit of the thing without having long panels the size of a desk, although, we did paint our microwave at uni to resemble one of the larger panels (unfortunately I never took a photo, I wish I had) If I remember it broke because too many people played with it.

I've been taking an interest in the panels in the background for a while, and while I've dismissed most of them as mere window dressing, the standard analysis screen is a clean high visibility layout. Forget the numbers down the bars, they're just to make it look complex and esoteric. I've got Lcars 32 on my winxp system at the moment. Unfortunately its just jarring with that awful beeping and the file viewing keeps defaulting to Drive letters, also its slow and in FLash. I don't have the spare hardware for Lcars 24 so I've not tried it.