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What Open Source Can Learn From Apple
Linux and open source have long struggled to gain acceptance from the wider (read: non-technical) audience. This has improved in recent years, but still has a long way to go. Columnist Matt Asay suggests that perhaps open source projects should attempt to emulate Apple's design philosophy, with whoever succeeds becoming the "winner" of the hearts and minds of the vast majority of users. "Some projects already accomplish this to some extent. The strength of Mozilla, for example, is that it has figured out how to enable 40 percent of its development to be done by outside contributors, as BusinessWeek recently wrote. The downside is that these contributors are techies, but the upside is that they're techies who add language packs, accessibility features, and other "niche" areas that Mozilla might otherwise struggle to deliver. This suggests a start: enable your open-source project to accept meaningful outside contributions that make the project reflective of a wider development community. But the real goldmine is broadening the definition of "developer" to include lay users of your software. The day that I, as a nontechnical software user, can meaningfully participate in an open-source project is the day that open source will truly have won."
I agree with the article that user involvement is key. However, users are clueless about what they really want and you can't possibly use them to write the specs of your product! On the other hand, developers tend to reject criticism from end-users because they lack technical expertise.
I can think of one approach that might work: build a really good analytics library that would measure various usability aspects. Applied to Firefox for instance, it could generate data on how the average user goes about finding a particular setting, how long it takes them to perform a given action, etc.
Developers would respect the hard, factual data that the analytics would generate. It would make it easier for the minority of usability engineers to argue against feature creep.
It's about standards. Apple's UI guidelines are very well written, and very well thought out. When developing your app, you don't need to spend a lot of time thinking about the proper place to put something, because it's generally obvious. This makes it so much more user friendly as a user can pick up on things in a very intuitive way. It also gives a general "feel" to the entire operating system.
When working with Objective-C/Cocoa in XCode, your almost forced to give your app a very Mac like feel to it. The same goes for the iPhone. Everything you'd want in your interface is already pre-built, so everybody's apps have a familiar feel. I know I've heard the exact opposite when developing for something like the Blackberry.
Having more people contribute with no clear guidance will just make things worse.
... only care about EXCLUSIVITY.
I want to make clear that I like Linux and free software; in fact I'm writing this from Mandriva Linux. But we have to accept the awful truth: many Linux users would be using Mac OS X if they weren't a misers. Why do I say that? Because even if it hurts to all of us, I have to say that the Linux community doesn't appreciate quality and freedom.
Normally, Linux software DOESN'T have the same quality that propietary software has. It's normal, it is not bad. After all, free software is free (as in speech) and the other one is costly... No one would use MS Project if GNOME Planner did have the same quality. Is good to have freeware software for things that are not serious, though.
The other reason why someone decides to use Linux is to read the source code, it is a good reason. But let's be serious, how many of you read the code of every update your apps recieve, and when you make sure everything's okay, you compile them and execute them? Nevertheless, I appreaciate the freedom to make modifications. Even myself have modify apps to see on the "About..." screen my own name.
And, the other reason, the reason I would walk on hot coals for it, is that at least 50% of Linux users, use Linux just for exclusivity.Just like Apple is the shit on usability, but more than 50% of Apple users use their products because of the "little apple" logo that appears on the notebook; most of the Linux users don't care about Linux advantages but EXCLUSIVITY.
I would make a difference between two exclusivity types: the miser version of the Macuser, that don't want to spend a buck and uses things like GNOME+Compiz or KDE 4; and the megafriki like Richard Stallman that sees movies with a MPEG-->ASCII converter, edits his web page with a text mode emacs, sees some web pages throught wget, and do everything throught a console while is eating snacks.
The first group don't care about dislocating their hands rotating a 3D cube, nor that KDE 4.2 only do half of the things KDE 3 can do using more time. The cool things is to have windows that bounce up and down like a good tits. Perhaps that is the closest thing to sex they will have. This kinds of users like Ubuntu, Debian, Mandriva... it doesn't matter. After all, they're people without prejudges, that with faith (sometimes thanks to the bad advise that the second group (I will talk about them later) gave them) run from Windows to the freeware Linux.
The second group searches for intellectual exclusivity (as if configure X.org with nano were considered intellectual by someone with a healthy sexual life). They are the typical guys who give you shit because you use MS Office or OpenOffice instead of Latex, the guys who believe they're awesome because they have to type thousands of sequences like "/isearch:qqvv!!" just to edit a text on Vi, the guys who see pages on Lynx and treat you like shit because you use Flash, the guys who think that desktop enviroments are a conspiracy from multinationals companies to force all of us to buy high cost PCs, and the guys who think that, if you use Ubuntu, you're a lammer.
All of them used distributions like Corel, Mandrake, etc. several years ago, distributions that were easy to use (much more easy than Debian or Caldera) and could use lightweight enviroments like IceWM, XFCE, ENlightment... That was enough for them to feel more important than their stupid friends that used Windows, friends that used PCs to do disgraceful things like play videogames, edit rich texts, use scanners or printers, surf on internet with a 56k modem...
With the popularization of distros like Ubuntu, their friends started to switch to Linux, just like they told them before. In fact, they never thought anyone would pay attention to them, and that's why they never thought about the possibility that someday they will not be "superior" to other people because they work for their PCs while everyone else drinks beer or has sex,
Apple spends a lot of money implementing their design philosophies. Lets face it. It's not cheap to design user friendly high quality UI. Most companies that build open source products aren't serving the Desktop; they're serving the server market. The few that actually are (Ubuntu) are taking Linux and the open source desktop to a higher level.
I am very thankful for Mark Shuttleworth and what he is doing for the Linux Desktop. Everyone knows Redhat flip-flops on the Desktop subject all the time and never actually get much done for it.
Apple is very good at figuring out what users actually DO with the products - and that includes figuring it out BEFORE the product is released. This in contrast with giving people what they _say_ they want, which rarely satisfies them.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
This is bullshit. Bad websites are built people who barely know how to use HTML and Javascript, but believe that the more HTML and Javascript you use, the better the website is. Slashdot, Digg, Gizmodo, Endgadget, Facebook, MySpace - they're all fucking horrible. People believe that because Google can pull it off, they can too. They believe that because they have very fast machines, everyone else does too. The believe that "moar interactive" == "awesome website", and that the more iframes you can pull into one page makes it a "mashup" and very "Web 2.0".
Do you see that kind of shit on the Apple website? Of course not! Apple doesn't succeed because of "design", they succeed because they have production values. They don't tolerate "good enough", they don't fixate on technology because it is new, they don't march to the beat of an ideological imperative. They believe in themselves, and they do what they want because they like it, on the assumption that their tastes are like everyone's tastes. Apple does not live by focus groups. Apple doesn't hold "design" over "technology", they hold "simple" over "complicated". The design wankers attach themselves to Apple's coattails because they can't differentiate between pretty technology and well executed technology. They don't understand technology, so they make a religion out of design so their priests can have something to lord over the unfashionable nerds.
Do you know why so much open source software sucks? It's because the programmers suck! They don't measure themselves against any standard of excellence. They stop when something works, ignoring the fact that it doesn't work well. It's plain old slob apathy. They're not getting paid for it, they can't be fired for failure, so what do they care?
They're not impressed nor amused by app names like gtkWTF, IAMRECURSIVERECURSIVEIAM, and, especially, The GIMP. Also, stop talking about programs being "stable." Isotopes are "stable." Programs either run well, or are buggy.
People mock Microsoft, but I tell ya... I've worked with people who have no idea what Silverlight is or does, but they want it cuz it sounds cool and has something to do with the Web. It's almost as if Linux developers go out of their way to be non-MS in everything -- including creating marketable names for their wares.
The problem, of course, is that the same guys doing the codewriting are the same guys doing the naming and marketing ("...because, after all, I've written the code, and that's the tough part that really matters, right? And if people don't get the Linus/Stallman/Montypython joke upon which I've based the app's name, then fuck 'em, who needs 'em, I'm only doing it for love anyway...").
Why isn't there any open-source marketing? Maybe some of the bigger projects could reach out to some university business and marketing students who could take on the work in much the same way they attract coders?
is actually better than a chaotic/bazaar mess that spins it wheels for 15 years? No shit!? Man, I mean while everyone blabs on and on about the bazaar and how great the chaotic development is, it isn't good enough for that central part: The Kernel. So why in the hell we keep fighting a cohesive and directed effort to build at least a baseline for the entire OS is beyond me.
This is why I gave up on Linux for all but my servers. One day it will happen, or Google/Ubuntu will do it first. At this point I don't even care, just that it happens.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
(so you submit a patch)...
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