[geeks] Nokia is getting the Rick Belluzzo treatment...

[Shannon]

On 08-Jun-2011 02:28, der Mouse wrote:

> You've just summarized why I won't go near a Mac for anything serious.
> Quite aside from the religious reasons (I don't run closed-source
> software on my own machines), their UI design is catastrophically bad
> for me in at least two major ways: (1) it borders on impossible to get
> things out of reverse video (at best, you have to configure each
> program individually, and that's if they're willing to let themselves
> be so configured - unless I've missed something, in which case the real
> problem is that it's hidden far too well); 

Some software would not work in reverse video, but I understand your point.

All the software I want in "reverse video" I can set that way on the
Mac. I like the "have it both ways" flexibility.

For the most part, the Mac is my compromise, not my preference. My
preference basically doesn't exist yet.

Aside from that:

It is true that too many programs that do not have a specific
presentation need are inflexible, and Apple hides way too much from the
user. It's all there in most cases, but Apple is very picky and odd
about what they expose most directly and through their GUI. I think
that's pretty dumb, but at the same time some other systems go grossly
overboard the other way.

I'm not sure there is a solution or even if one would be desirable. A
good part of the time I have to do things to earn money that requires
working in ways I do not prefer, so I couldn't have what I wanted even
if it were there and being given away for free.

> (2) their UI is designed
> around the assumption that it's perfectly reasonable to mix use of
> keyboard and mouse (there are few more effective ways to annoy the hell
> out of me and slaughter my productivity than making me bounce back and
> forth between keyboard and mouse).

Personally, I like that just fine doing general work, and generally find
I don't have to use the mouse very much. Interesting that Plan 9 goes
specifically into the idea that you will use both, frequently. Its a
very odd system, with some swearing by it as much as others wear at it.

Most of my mouse usage is either from the use of applications that
really do need the mouse, or from applications that just didn't provide
keyboard control. The latter is not Apple's fault, since the OS
certainly provides the framework.

My biggest beef with the Mac desktop is their utter failure with Spaces
to solve a problem that UNIX and X solutions solved 20 years ago. That
just boggles the mind.

It looks like Lion, instead of fixing that, is going even worse in the
other direction.

Fortunately third parties fixed most of my issues, but its stupid I have
to download more software to fix something that basic and long-ago solved.

> Admittedly, Windows is, if anything, an even worse disaster on each of
> those counts.  Linux, is better, but only somewhat.  

Linux copies Mac and Windows for the most part.

The real pain of Linux (and other UNIX that use the same DEs) is there
is no "winner" in the GUI wars so you end up with a bloated mess to run
everything you might want.

Its probably impossible to calculate the massive loss of man hours of
work caused by that fracturing.

But then, the entire industry is like that, or nearly so.

> My real point here is that it's not the UI that is good or bad.  It's
> the match, or mismatch, between the UI and the user.  Calling a UI bad
> in general makes sense only if you take "this UI is bad" as shorthand
> for "there are extremely few people this UI is well-suited to".

Well I would agree with that, but it wasn't really all I was talking
about. My biggest problem with windows are truly bad things.

I am more concerned with problems akin to the transmission in your car
exploding, not your preference of manual or automatic.

>>> Hell, iPhone couldn't even multitask until about a year ago.  People
>>> are getting lost chasing the wrong rainbows.
>> Minor nit: it has always been able to multitask, that was just hidden
>> from the user from a UI point-of-view.
> 
> You're confusing multitasking from a user's perspective with
> multitasking from an OS perspective.  (They usually go together, but
> not in this case.)

No, not really. The OP's post indicates a confusion between OS and UI
level multitasking, and I was pointing that out.