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The Open Source Design Conundrum
Matt Asay writes "Walk the halls of any open-source conference and you'll see a large percentage of attendees with ironically non-open-source Apple laptops and iPhones. One reason for this seeming contradiction can be found in reading Matthew Thomas' classic 'Why free software usability tends to suck.' Open-source advocates like good design as much as anyone, but the open-source development process is often not the best way to achieve it. Open-source projects have tended to be great commoditizers, but not necessarily the best innovators. Hence, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst recently stated that Red Hat is "focused on commoditizing important layers in the stack." This is fine, but for those that want open source to push the envelope on innovation, it may be unavoidable to introduce a bit more cathedral into the bazaar. Without an IBM, Red Hat, or Mozilla bringing cash and discipline to an open-source project, including paying people to do the 'dirt work' that no one would otherwise do, can open source hope to thrive?"
While this might be true for apps -- they change too much to settle on a thought-through UI concept, and new ones are constantly created for the same task by not so experienced UI designers -- I'd like to add that IMHO Linux has the best window managers out there. That is one of the reasons I don't use Windows and would put a Linux distribution on a Mac. Because I need to move and resize windows without finding the borders (e.g. Alt-click or Alt-doubleclick and drag). And I need sane virtual desktops for more screen space and for grouping my windows.
These are UI features lacking in non-open-source. Granted, it is not something the novice user will miss.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I disagree with the premise that FOSS usability is always bad. I'm not a developer, I can't write code, but I use *nix exclusively for my home computers, running KDE. And they are WAY more usable than my windows computers at work. Small things make such a huge difference--with windows, when you move the mouse wheel, the active window scrolls, even if you have 2 open side by side. You have to click on the one you want to scroll. With KDE, the window that your mouse cursor is hovering over scrolls. This is so intuitive it took me a month or so to even notice. I've found all kinds of other small usability tweaks.
My KDE desktop at home is so much more usable and intuitive than my windows xp box at work that I often work at home just for the pleasure of using KDE.
I bought a Powerbook, for that reason. I figured, I'd never run Windows on it, so may as well put Linux on the best laptop ever, right?
Didn't work too well. I never quite got it working, and just ended up using OS X.
In fact, from personal experience, the reason people choose Macs seems to have less to do with the overall UI, and more to do with specific things Just Working that Just Don't on Linux. Example: Maybe it's gotten better, and there's a nice GUI for this somewhere, but when I plug in a second monitor to my laptop, I restart my X server -- I could never quite get Xinerama or the nvidia stuff to cooperate without a restart.
Contrast this to a Macbook -- just plug it in, and it works. Open System Settings if you want it to behave other than as a clone.
So, I still use Linux, and I really don't get the people who would be into open source and use an iPhone, but I can certainly see why people would choose a Mac. Everything just works, just about all the commercial software you want, and a decent (not great, but decent) Unix under the hood for development.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This is basically just a gigantic band aid, and is unlikely to be successful. Most of what needs doing is to fill in glaring gaps of functionality in software that is now ten years old or more. Much of what people will put in there will already have bugs in an upstream Bugzilla somewhere - years old with no resolution other than WONTFIX. I fail to see how that will change.
I really hate that term 'usability' that a lot of people never define and expect to be the answer to their troubles. It gets thrown around by many in the open source desktop world mainly as a response to mask the internal troubles in the software that they're using and if someone starts talking about 'usability' and 'Mac OS' as benchmarks then maybe people will think 'Hey, they're going to be as cool as Macs!' and that they're doing something about the issues and it will all go away. Usability is about far more than making some sad Mac clone. It's about developers, developers, developers, developers - creating the useful applications and functionality that people want, making it easy for developers to create it and getting that functionality to users. Windows has that. Mac OS has that (albeit with a few speed bumps), and can run the open source software most open source developers use, so it's what you're going to see most of them use.
The Linux desktop is not the answer. It doesn't have to be that way but it's going to take a distributor to really grab hold of the situation, make sensible software choices on behalf of developers and users and identify just what system it is they're putting together. Given that we have desktops in the open source world that have limited functionality in the name of 'simplicity' (read JoelSpolsky on 80/20 method of software development - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html) and we have brain damage such as PulseAudio that distributors readily lap up without any thought then I really cannot see who's going to do it. 'Just Works' is so far away it's just stopped being funny.