Slashdot Mirror
Making Things Easy Is Hard
paul.dunne writes "John Gruber of Daring Fireball has written
a long and considered riposte to
Eric Raymond's recent lament concerning the poor quality of user interfaces in free software.
The core of his argument is that 'developing software with
a good UI requires both aptitude and a lot of hard work.' One point that particularly struck me: according to Gruber, 'Unix nerds who care about usability are switching
to Mac OS X in droves'!"
"developing software with a good UI requires ... aptitude"
I find Synaptic's UI nicer myself, but what do I know?
The silly thing about Raymond's rant, of course, is that OS X is using, of all things, CUPS as its printer system. Both on Linux and on OS X, there are GUIs for configuring it, and when they work, configuration is pretty straightforward on either system. When they don't work (which happens with some regularity), regular users are stuck on either system, and power-users have a better chance of fixing things on Linux because CUPS is still better documented on Linux.
I consider myself a UNIX geek. I also have a Power Mac running Apples latest and greatest. Ease of use had nothing to do with my decision to purchase this Mac. I really do not accept any claim that ease of use is why one chooses a platform over another, quite simply becuase if that were the truth Apple would likely have remained King of the Hill from the beginning. But, Microsoft, with DOS in short order overcame "ease of use".
Why I chose the Power Mac.
It's UNIX. The cheapest UNIX desktop you can purchase. (I'm not referring to home grown Linux boxes here.) Look at a AIX workstation from IBM, price Sun's latest desktop offerings. Then, look at Apple's. But, most importantly MacOS X has much more corporate support so that means it has games, applications that Linux doesn't have. It's sweet to have Gimp running beside PhotoShop, or Mozilla running beside Internet Explorer, Star Office running next to Microsoft's Office for Macintosh. Should I mention, all of these being NATIVE as well? To me, that's a big plus.
I argue, that overnight, Apple went from having the least amount of software available to it's Mac platform, to having more software than any other platform in existance. Not only can you run 99% of all the Open Source software, you can run many of the commercial applications too. I find that awesome.
They also seemed to have defied the natural order of compensation. They have managed to make UNIX very easy to use for the average user, while maintaining an in-depth use for geeks of all levels. To me, that's like a world class bodybuilder who is also a world class chess champion and Noble nominee. Not saying that's impossible, just saying it's odd and odd for reasons stemming from experience. Like the drop-dead gorgeous babe with the hottest body, also being a semester away from a Ph.D in astro-physics or some such field.
I'm a UNIX geek. I'm also a IT professional. I have no ground to complain about ease of use, by doing so I imply my weakness and lack of skill and or knowledge!