Compare that to the cars of yesteryear. You had levers for adjusting the timing, the choke, the gears (and it was a bit tricky to change gears as there was no synchromesh) and had to some real knowledge of the car to make it work. you even had to start it with a crank handle. Every few thousand miles, the head had to be removed and the valves ground. The drivers of cars in 1920 would shake their heads in dismay when they look at us.
You know how annoying it is when you are in a new car or someone else's car and flick the indicator and the wipers go on? In early cars, accelerators, clutches, brakes etc could be anywhere - pedals, leavers, buttons .... imagine flicking the indicator and going into a four wheel drift.
Anyway - just upgraded my Kubuntu and found I can no longer make a custom power profile that disables screensaver, sleep etc. Now, to watch the Daily Show, I am supposed to switch to a new activity with an appropriate power profile assigned, and everything else I am using is no longer available. It annoys me that the control is removed from the user.
I know it is probably a heresy, but you can't always use a car analogy. Computers don't run on an explosive liquid, run down pedestrians or hit trees. People using smart phones might walk into trees, but they won't hurt the trees, so its okay. People use cars to move stuff from one place to another (mostly). They are pretty much single purpose machines.
Computers are used all sorts of things. Trying to guess everything that a computer will be used for, and setting it up and hiding all the options is impossible. Someone on the KDE forum said 'We considered every use case'. Nope.
I guess there will be single purpose computers - Chromebooks (if accessing Internet apps is a single purpose) - but a general purpose computer needs to let users control it. I am all for sensible defaults being set and some controls being hidden under 'Advanced Options' - I remember having to scroll through bewildering lists of options to set, say, the volume. But removed? No.
We just got a new TV recently, and smack bang in the middle of the remote is a button you use to set up the channels, video format, change the time and so on. I want to be able to get to them. But not every time I miss the volume button by a millimetre or two.
User interface designers do have to design interfaces that all can use, and it is not easy. Programmers shouldn't be let near the design :-). But that is *all* users - both technical and non-technical.
Don I really should keep up to date with my email :-| _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
