This week started out with a huge pile of bugs that needed fixed and a massive amount of scheduled meetings...my favorite past time it seems.   Luckily, as the week tappered off, so did the bugs and meetings.    But all in all, the week left me physically and mentally drained.      A couple of days off and I will be good as new I suppose.

The weather here is also getting just crazy.   Its Oklahoma, so we should be enjoying days of HOT weather acompanied by road side signs declaring "ozone alert today".   Instead, we have had rain for weeks and while normally this would be great for the temps it has done nothing but create palmy 88 degree  days with insane humitiity.   Its worse than out typical 90's and 100's I am used to during the summer.   By the time I finish my runs (admitedly short these days) I am drenched....gross.    In addition the rain is keeping the contractors away so I have a pile of stalled projects.    My new fence is partly finished...my front door is halfway refinished and my garage doors are partly stripped in preparation for new paint.   Oh well...it's not like I want to be outside much before this fall either.

I think I am going to treat myself to a movie day tomorrow...lets see...Transformers or Harry Potter?   Maybe I will do both :)   Have a great week everyone.

Most of my friends know that I have been a big Palm OS fan for years.  Starting with the old Palm 1000 and continuing until the latest Treo's I have used a lot of Palm devices ...right up until they tripped and fell face first in the mud a few years ago.    While lately Palm OS has really showed it's age visually, it was undeniably a very easy to use operating system thanks to it's developers belief in the "Zen of Palm."

As I sit here playing with my iPhone, it occurs to me that there is a reason this all feels so familiar and comfortable.      This exciting new user interface is exactly what Palm OS would probably look like if they had not dropped the ball so many years ago.   It feels very much like I would imagine a quality Palm OS 7 could have felt like.   The basic mechanics are all very similar and feel like evolutions of the old Zen of Palm interface concepts.  Much like the old Palm OS, the entire UI is organized around a central Apps screen.   There are 4 major applications much like the Palm's 4 hard buttons allowing you to quickly get to the most important features.  Also similar to Palm, there even seems to be a  a distinct goal of keeping the apps simple and not hiding functionality.  Instead applications use their restricted screen real estate for content and data, rejecting complicated features and placing common functions on very visible buttons which are easily found without hunting.   

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of revolutionary stuff here.   Multi-Touch gestures are now going to be mandatory on this class of device and the use of finger instead of stylus is a big break from the accepted .  But it's easy to imagine that this is where Palm could have been if they had listened to customers instead of focusing on stockholders, mergers and quarterly profits.     I miss the old Palm OS.   

"The Zen of Apple"....I think I can get used to that :)