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OSCON 2008 Roundup

Posted by kdawson on from the where-the-news-was-made dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Infoweek wraps last week's event with Inside The OSCON 2008 Conference, which pulls together interviews with Mark Shuttleworth, Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin, MySQL's Zach Urlocker and Sam Ramji, who directs Microsoft's Open Source Lab. Best quotes: 'We will make a significant attempt to elevate the Linux desktop to the point where it is as good or better than Apple,' from Shuttleworth; and 'If I would start a business tomorrow I'd do it in the netbook marketplace. I'd build a dead-simple $200 device that targets sports fans, women over forty,' from Zemlin." We discussed Shuttleworth's better-than-Apple proposition while OSCON was going on. Update Jamie noted this OSCON Summary Video that might also be worth your time.

3 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Better-than-Apple? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Shuttleworth went on to state that Linux's market share will grow when it has better eye-candy than Apple's.

    And yet another clueless person making a comment about something he doesn't understand.

    People don't use Macs because the GUI is pretty. They use Macs because "they just work". The fact that the GUI doesn't look like crap from the 1980's is just a bonus.

    1. Re:Better-than-Apple? by beav007 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      What if I want to work with multiple maximised applications?

      "Most applications don't start maximised" isn't a solution. I want them maximised, so if they don't start that way, I will do it manually. And from there, I can't just "[click] a window behind the front one".

      And once I have 5-6 maximised applications (which is more often than not), "clicking the red or yellow dot in the upper left hand corner of most windows and then clicking the window behind" becomes an utter PITA.

      OSX may be pretty, but it's a usability trainwreck. There's nothing intuitive about it.

  2. What is "better than Apple" mean? by erroneus · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    At one time, I thought it meant better at graphics, audio and visual editing and creating. That, of course, was a myth in that Adobe products do the same stuff on a Mac as on a PC. It can't be the visual interface of the Apple can it? If that were all it would take, Microsoft would have done something to make Windows such eye-candy that Apple couldn't have kept up with the changes. They knew it wasn't just the look all by itself. Then what could it be?

    BRANDING!

    Apple is one of the most well-developed brands on the market. People think Apple is cool. People are falling all over themselves to get iPods and iPhones. Why? Not because of their quality, versatility or portability... there are loads of devices that beat iPod and iPhone hands-down in those areas individually and collectively. It's that damned Apple branding that is setting stuff. This page >> http://www.aboyandhiscomputer.com/show.php?ItemID=2204 illustrates my point perfectly.

    Beating that kind of brand development with Linux won't be easy and might even be impossible.

    And even if brand recognition weren't the whole picture, there would be the availability of the apps people know and think they need like Adobe Photoshop or the like. These things aren't going to appear natively for Linux... not for a long time anyway and not until the Linux Desktop has significant presence. So here we have a chicken vs. egg situation ... or a catch 22... whatever. You get the idea.

    Linux can beat Microsoft, but I'm not so sure about Apple.