On Oct 17, 2007, at 6:42 PM, Orlando Andico wrote: > All that is easy to say. > > But Apple has proved that a bunch of dedicated engineers can > out-develop the Huge Army of Open-Source Hackers in usability. > > How long has it been since KDE and GNOME have tried to produce good > Unix desktops? Ages. > > And then Apple comes along, slaps a GUI on FreeBSD and they take over > the (desktop) world. >
indeed. nothing talks more than millions of dollars and dedicated pool of developers focused on something specific--- a vision. Design is said to be a signal of intention. Clearly, Apple knows what the OS will look like years down the road. they have a PLAN and a use for all the technologies that OS X is currently implementing and will soon implement. There is no waste from applescript to zeroconf/ bonjour. it is kinda very Zen like when you think about it. That's was my point really--- if distros or linux want to do something similar, you'd need to get that level of focus. Apple has found the right balance between being a Bazaar and being a Cathedral. They added value (the UI), on top of an Open Source platform. They built a boutique. > I think that the Free / Open Source community is not really that > equipped to building a desktop for Grandma. FOSS community is too > engrossed with gee whiz technology and technical stuff > (performance....) that simply isn't too interesting to the general > public. > Well, we ARE geeks. you're right. what's cool or easy for us, doesn't exactly fit the grandma mentality. That's part of the "problem", which isn't really a "problem". it's OK for us that sometimes the easiest path between two processes is a couple of keystokes on CLI. I like playing around with Linux. I like finding things out and knowing how an operating system works. i believe mossberg pointed that out a few months back on his review of Ubuntu. Ubuntu and by extension, Linux is great if you know what you're doing or are interested to find out. Not everyone wants to find out that the quickest way between two processes is CLI. And sometimes, I have to admit, i don't want to either. i just want it done. i just want it to work. i don't want to spend hours googling to find out what needs to be switched on for something to work. i just want to work. We also have to accept the price--- gee whiz, bleeding edge tech often break. I have to agree with you. Open Source is great for projects like the Kernel or a webserver like apache or tools like GCC, php, rails, etc. etc. KDE and Gnome are works of love by their developers, I think. If you want great UI and packaging--- you need a company or some serious organization. don't get me wrong, i think distros and communities can actually make that effort--- the same effort as Apple has done but you really really need focused, paid, full time developers doing the job and a community/distro/organization that knows what the end product will look like, a clear idea, a clear design intention. I think the model to follow is the one in between, as Apple has successfully implemented: an operating system and by that, a user interface with a design intention and wrapped around Open Source you create great value and that value can be closed or open, and would depend really on the situation and project end goal. ------------------ Cocoy Dayao "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." --Alan Kay _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
