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Is Canonical the Next Apple?
An anonymous reader writes "With the release of 11.04 Natty Narwhal, Canonical is taking Ubuntu in a new direction, which puts cloud services and content like music at the forefront of the Ubuntu experience. Ubuntu is no longer 'Linux,' or 'desktop' or 'netbook'; it's just Ubuntu for clients and servers. Ubuntu has its own desktop in Unity, app store (Software Center), music service and personal cloud. If Ubuntu takes off, will it make Canonical the next Apple? Of course, Canonical doesn't sell computers, but then again Ubuntu can be used on any computer, even Macs."
No.
Ubuntu one a day, keeps the doctor away.
That would require them to make money.
People have been moving to other desktops like XFCE in droves because of Unity. Unity forces a cell phone UI on the desktop, and people hate it. There are threads with hundreds, even thousands of responses.
There's a perfectly good UI paradigm for the desktop that's been around since the 80's. Constantly reinventing the wheel is one of the things putting non-computer experts off Linux on the desktop. With Windows, some things change sure, but the basic metaphor (icons on the desktop, a start button to launch programs, a taskbar to show your running programs) has been perfectly good for years and people are used to it.
It's always more "fun" to invent some new half-baked thing than to spend time fixing bugs and problems, so that's what happens.
is start picking better names for their releases.
Compare - Apple side: "Kodiak", "Cheetah", "Puma", "Jaguar", "Panther", "Tiger", "Leopard", "Snow Leopard."
with - Ubuntu side: "Warty Warthog", "Hoary Hedgehog", "Breezy Badger", "Dapper Drake", "Edgy Eft", "Feisty Fawn", "Gutsy Gibbon", "Hardy Heron", "Intrepid Ibex", "Jaunty Jackalope", "Karmic Koala", "Lucid Lynx", "Maverick Meerkat", "Natty Narwhal", "Oneric Ocelot"...
The Apple side is short, and carries images of animals all well-reputed and seen as powerful and respected predators.
The Ubuntu side sounds like the cast list from a crappy saturday morning cartoon show.
Just sayin'...
From TFS. Apple started with hardware and they still sell it. Without the iPod there would be no iTunes, no App Store. Who writes these claptrap headlines?
At least the first post here was succinct - and probably right.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Maybe if you see Apple as a company providing a solution to a wider computing need rather then a hardware and sofware manufacturer, but I would say no.
That said, I do welcome a complete approach, and also taking radical steps on the desktop (despite using Ubuntu on my HTPC and work computer I'm not a huge fan of Gnome or KDE). I tried installing Ubuntu 11.04 on a vmware virtual today and never even managed to get it to boot to the desktop. I guess I would not have managed to test Unity even if I reached the Desktop, so can't really comment on how well thought out the experience will be, but looking at history I don't expect anything as polished as OSX from a usability point of view.
I hope Canonical become a major force. But I hope they never become like Apple.
Where do you guys get these titles? lol, the answer is "No" and wow what a stretch.
Apple was never really a software company at its heart. It was always a hardware company that chose to write its own software.
IMHO, we should all violently protest cloud computing because eventually you will be paying a monthly fee for software and therefore will eventually pay for apps over and over and over ad nauseum until your bank account is empty.
Canonical may be forcing people to use PCs like they use cellphones, but people don't like this.
They will never manufacture hardware as Apple does because it's antithetical to what they are. They will never have the control over compatibility issues that Apple does as a result.
Linux unfortunately has no penetration into consumer computing space, but it's for some very good reasons that aren't going to be overcome by trying to turn people's desktops into iPhones vis-a-vis Unity
Apple is first and foremost a hardware company that uses software and services to give it a competitive advantage selling hardware. Canonical is a services company that uses open source software to advance its services business. App stores, clouds and streaming are not unique to Apple or central to its business.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
Is Mahatma Gandhi the next Hitler?
I don't think so.
I installed the last Ubuntu and I really like it for a 'pragmatic' point of view. In same way it has a lot of personality and I suppose the users really could like it... but
The problem is, as a developer, you can't make money on linux so it never will have an ecosystem similar to Apple.
On Apple you can make money developing software and on Windows too.
Anyone knows linux users don't pay for software, so all the attention will be where you can get money developing and promoting: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android even ... Windows Phone 7 but not a system where no one will pay for your work.
Just my opinion...
No, it isn't. The comparison is a ridiculous apples to bulldozers sort of thing. Not even two fruit.
They say their website should reflect their high professional standards in their blog-post, but it seems they didn't do basic testing:
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop-archive/why-is-it-free
@ubuntu.com'er here.
Canonical has a bit of control of the community, but it has that control *indirectly*.
Canonical hires productive Ubuntu'ers to work on Ubuntu as their job. Sure they might get some assignments, but the changes put forward for Ubuntu happen at the twice-yearly Ubuntu Developer's Summit. Hell, Canonical even flies in Ubuntu hackers who might be doing work next cycle who are not in their employ.
The point is, it's a community. Canonical is funding it, sure, but I take zero orders when I make changes.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
At my local electronics society we use Ubuntu. We will not upgrade to 11.04, because of Unity and the abysmal problems we have had in the past with PulseAudio. A few members are currently looking how to configure Debian with all the bells and whistles we like and without the ones that Ubuntu wants to push upon us.
So that is 92 computers that Ubuntu will not be run anymore in the near future.
2011 is the year of the Linux desktop! Well, maybe 2012... 2013... 2014... ? Buhler... Buhler...
But i've suspected for several years now that Mark Shuttleworth had delusions of Jobshood.
It's like comparing apples with...
Apple is a cult of perception. While they may have a slight leg up on the rest of the market in their dominant areas the fact of the matter is that it's still a fashion statement given the premium you have to pay. The difference between Macs, Windows and Linux is like the difference of showing up to the country club in a Benz or a Bentley They all do the basic functions that you got them for in the first place and, with the exception of a very limited number of users, each of them does everything the end user will need with a different gloss and hood ornament put to them.
design is arguably a strength of ubuntu, I think they are getting pretty damn good at it too.
It runs on everything, which is a unique strength compared to others. Eventually, instead of having a different os on every gadget, ubuntu on all.
Its easy enough to use for non-techies (my whole family uses it) while having full linux power under the hood.
They have tons of karma, I would like them to succeed, which hopefully is a common sentiment and will pay off.
...is start picking better names for their releases.
I've long said one of the things that hold back open source products from wider acceptance is that the OS/free software communities absolutely suck at marketing. Marketing isn't everything... the product has to be good... but plenty of good products have failed because the marketing effort behind them wasn't up to par. Mindshare is very often won on the ad page. Like it or not, that's reality. This is why companies spend untold millions on marketing. It's important.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
If Ubuntu takes off, will it make Canonical the next Apple?
We can only hope. Unity is GPL, as is the vast majority of the Linux ecosphere. If Ubuntu becomes as big as (i)OSX and Win7 everybody in the linux community will gain a tremendous amount. Drivers, support, money - it will all get exponentially better for us.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Which means a lot of work, a lot of betting and a bunch of wins.
What I've seen so far is changing a default color schema, a "new" font and a new naming schema.
Not even the "new" desktop is really new as
Unity is a shell interface for the GNOME desktop environment
(Very first line in Wikipedia)
Ubuntu, like Unity, is a shell around something else (Debian) with very limited value added.
Just "going to the clouds" (tm) doesn't make a winning company (alo because everyone else is going there).
No, I don't think Canonical will be the next Apple (or even Microsoft). It's more likely it will be the next Mandrakesoft.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I was a Linux desktop user for 10 years and just switched to Mac - not because of some nebulous "experience"[...]but I was sick of waiting for my laptop to reboot all the time, and the MacBook is the first computer I've ever used where power management actually, really works. For me it's all about nuts and bolts.
So, basically, you switched for the user experience.
Why do Slashdotters think that "user experience" means "useless flashy graphics?" That's bullshit. "User experience" means "the machine does not frustrate the user." Nuts and bolts are an essential part of user experience, long before we get to the graphics/design stage. No amount of flashy graphics can cover up things that don't work.
Apple went to the major printer manufacturers and said "You should support Rendesvous/Bonjour". And they did it.
Apple went to the music labels and said "You should sell your stuff through iTunes - it's safe with our DRM". They later said "You guys should drop this DRM jazz". Both times they were heard, and Apple got the rights it needed.
Until Canonical can do something similar, they're not an Apple replacement candidate.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
No, because I actually care about what happens to people using Canonical's products. ;^)
--
Toro
Glad he doesn't have an iPhone
If you don't have an iPhone then you don't have an iPhone.. And my response to that is. Thank God I don't, because I got an Android phone and not stupid to buy into Apple's suggestions on how everything should be.
I use linux professionally but I use OS X personally, simply because I got tired of having to manually hack/bash/configure everything to work with whatever hardware I was using.
Of course, I inevitably put MacPorts, Fink or Brew on my machines so I can put all the missing packages on..... ;-)
Clear, Dark Skies
Don't be stupid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1) Unity is built on top of GNOME. They didn't develop even half of that.
1.5) Unity, IMHO, is much less usable than GNOME 3's default desktop and quite a few people I've seen online agree with me. This is not absolute though and YMMV.
2) Every other distribution (almost) has an "app store"; it's called a freaking package manager and they've been around for a long, long time. Simply having a simple-to-use UI for one doesn't exactly qualify it as an "app store".
3) The music service is just a re-branded 7Digital (which is a great place to buy music btw; they even sell some things in FLAC).
4) The "personal cloud" is just a Dropbox competitor (with syncing for some apps, which is a nice touch).
I have a feeling that these types of articles are only made for advertisement views and nothing more, as I've rarely seen an article like this that actually makes sense. Plus, Ubuntu is overhyped. I used it from 7.10 to 10.04, and after I tried switching to something else I never looked back. The exact same desktop I got in Ubuntu was actually less buggy in Arch Linux, which doesn't patch things nearly as much as Ubuntu does. Honestly, if you disregard the package manager, there's very, very, very little difference between Ubuntu and any of the other popular distributions like Fedora/OpenSUSE (if you're a desktop user that is). The only reason it's still popular, as far as I can figure out, is because it's hyped so much as being "the easiest" and "the most feature-filled" and whatnot, when every other distribution has caught up with and, dare I say, surpassed Ubuntu in usability.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Honestly Unity I had high hopes for until I tried living with it for a week with a RC.
It's great for insulating all the dirtyness of a computer from a user... including keeping all the utilities and configuration apps away from you. changing the power settings ended up a frustrating search and a give up to the Xterminal to do it by hand in a command prompt. It also is badly broken on laptops as it will not return to full brightness after a screen sleep like 10.10 did. I can close the lid and 60% of the time the screen will blank and turn off the backlight, 40% of the time it does not, again 10.10 did not have this problem.
Unity was not fully tested before release, it's a beta release at best.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yes.
It might just be my setup (windows on master hd, ubuntu on slave) but when I first installed it, GRUB messed up and wouldn't boot. I had to manually edit the boot loader to make Ubuntu work. Last night I installed 11.04, system reboots and guess what! System won't boot. Another GRUB error. At that point I turned off my computer and said to hell with it.
I'm somewhat computer savvy as well. I build my own desktops, I've installed win98, win2k, winXP and Vista on machines before. If I'm having this much trouble with Linux (my difficulties go well beyond the GRUB problems) then I can only imagine the difficulties someone less techinical would have. Linux is a great server OS, but it's still not ready for desktop use. I love open source as a concept but I find most software developed in this manor to be lacking (GIMP, I'm looking your way).
It's free, the word free confuses Apple to no end.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Who cares?? Linux is still open source, there IS still an alternative. If Canonical wants to push its own version to something apple-esque then thats their business. At the very least they are providing more variety of choices which is something you DONT get with apple. They are also helping to bring Linux to the mainstream so they must be doing something right. If you dont like it, stop complaining and go with one of the dozens of other distros.
Having seen the "stable" 11.04 release crash simply upon booting the live-cd and noting that the list of "known issues" is four screen pages long, I'd say they have some distance left to go.
With the requirement on the Nvidia flavor video card to be at least a GeForce 9400, it looks to me like it almost prefers to run on Apple hardware.
While I think everyone can be look up Apple for product "just working [out of the box]" I think that's where it ends at Canonical. They must realize that if they continue to push their Ubuntu One and such services too hard, they will lose developers and then after few releases later users to other distributions.
Then again, I have nothing against them for "value-adding options", as long as those are "options" and do not make Ubuntu become the next Nokia Ovi (think about their [Windows] application for a few seconds -- horrible or the fact that most functions on my N8 require or prompt Ovi user account, and that bloody piece of sh*t can't care to remember my password anymore).
I still think that Canonical has had a great and good influence on Linux [distribution] community as whole and their investment on UI and system level innovation and new projects has helped the desktop usage. And I'm not saying this to undermine contributions by for example Red Hat or any single open source developer person -- just that to my knowledge, Canonical has not been around for too long to step into the big influencers/innovators club. Also, the more big names (and directions) we have as long as they are working together as well as possible, it's all good (freedesktop.org, etc.).
They have application stores, music stores, cloud services, software for desktops and servers. They do not sell computers, but Windows can be used on any computer—even Macs!
Canonical's similarities to Apple on the desktop are rather superficial. Unity is a rather awkward copy of parts of the Mac OS X UI. I do give them a lot of credit for trying, and I think Unity is salvageable, although with some work. As much as I am tempted to go on about how Unity is not really ready for prime time, except for maybe the most basic users, I won't.
While most of the Ubuntu client side stuff is FOSS, the server side stuff specific to Ubuntu One from what I understand mostly is not. This is a big problem in the free software world right now, closed servers. You give up your data to a server without any ability to know what it is running. This denies you of the ability to verify what it is doing, to set up your own alternative servers, or use someone else's alternative server whom you may have a different trust relationship with.
There are many attempts out there trying to rectify this, from distributions like freedombox, to new architecture like unhosted, to distributed networks like diaspora. All of this stuff is kind of early on. I don't blame Cananonical for going with what they know on the server side, but I do think they could do better. It feel like the cloud stuff is all about monetization to them, and not about also pushing and promoting a different approach to technology, which is what free software is all about. In that regards they are behaving like Apple, and really like most companies tend to behave.
Its the "the successful know better than you" attitude that is really pervasive in the world right now, from computers to politics. Free software is more about a participatory democracy, with code given the consent of trust by its users, and that consent can only be given if it is informed and all have equal access. You see it in Unity too, a UI that has almost no configuration options without having to install other tools. It says "we know better than you". I am hoping that Canonical's plan here was to start with it locked down and then take the best mods from the community and work them in. Unity is at least free software, so it has the possibility of the community fixing it. The stuff running on their cloud servers is not so lucky.
I have always liked how Ubuntu "just works", giving a good balance of a lot of competing requirements, realities and philosophies to come up with a pragmatic solution to having a useful Linux with little fuss. I feel they are going in a direction where they could end up getting this balance wrong, and people may end up going elsewhere once someone fills the vacuum they leave.
10.10 Was the last and best Ubuntu release by Canonical.
11.04 feels rushed, is crashy, buggy, and generally unusable.
On my testing PC, dual booting between Win 7 and Ubuntu 11.04, Win 7 wins, now that's something.
Less crashes, better looking desktop, less hassle. from a Microsoft product.
No no no! Most definately not. It's obvious from just about anything Canonical does that they're simply not able to create an experience that's as polished as the Apple experience. They don't even come close. Much worse is that they turn just about everything upside down with each release. All my perfectly tweaked settings gone with a single click. It's just crap. I'll keep using it and will never succumd to the Apple vendor lock-in, but my god, is Canonical trying to push me to the other side...
0x or or snor perron?!
Read this:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2011-April/032988.html
and then have a good laugh about this whole line of thought. Canonical is an effort to make a more usable default Linux desktop but they have one major problem (and many minor ones): Mark Shuttleworth is a terrible UI designer and either all the designers he employs are terrible as well, nobody at canonical is willing to stand up to him or he's not willing to take feedback from the designers he employs. Making a cargo cult hybrid of OS X and Windows 7 isn't going to do anyone any good.
Even the article doesn't get it, it assumes that Apple is successful because they "dumbed down UNIX".
Ubuntu's Not Linux = UNL? Or is that suppose to be GNU/UNL?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Kind of reminds me of Linspire/Lindows...
-- http://www.doczayus.com/
It's hard to see how Ubuntu's current trajectory will lead it anywhere near the sort of fascist "do it our way or die in a fire" hell that is Apple.
in the dreams of mark shuttleworth maybe... What is true, is than lately most of ubuntu users (and im one of them) are starting to talk like mac fan-boys. They kind of worship a leader than thinks for them and decide what's better for their desktop. And they not only doesn't hate it, but they even go mad at you if you just put in their forums things like "unity is a piece of crap", which actually it is...
NO.
The Apple names sound like powerful and respected WWII Nazi tanks.
Funny, I never heard of a Nazi "Macintosh" tank.
Let me laugh even harder.
How did this article make it through to my RSS feed? Is all you need these days to reach the masses produce infantile observations and deliver it with the noun, "Apple", in the heading?
Reading through this article is a genuine pain. The author clearly has no insight in half of his subject, has only limited insight in the other half, lacks journalistic education, is biased, makes wrongful and outdated "observations", and draws parallels where no parallels exist. Just to name a few. It's a class book example of misconclusions - and even that is giving it more credit than it deserves.
The aim here is not to present a subject for discussion (one must sincerely hope, anyway, because in that case, the author is beyond professional salvation), but a cheap trolling trick to mass up clicks and tweets pointing to his site. It's blatantly obvious, and I have to say, "Shame on you, slashdot, for letting this one slip through!"
I thought APT came about in the late 90s and Synaptic released almost a decade ago. The App Store is only three years old.
Is Obama the new jellyfish?
Is toilet paper the new newspaper?
Is 7-Eleven the new Victoria's Secret?
Are public schools the new Wall Street?
Let's discuss this! Oh wait, let's not, because I have no arguments, and my point is retarded. Sorry!
the users weren't screaming bloody murder. Seriously have you seen Unity..its not exactly getting glowing reviews. 230 forum pages and counting on the we hate Unity front and counting. I think the appropriate question is "is Ubuntu going to shoot themselves as thoroughly as Amarok did when they released Amarok 2.0?"
idiot
So installing Fink is your definition of just works? Odd definition. That is like saying your car you have to hand crank while someone holds the choke "just works".
Fink is a lot of things, just works isn't one of them. It is a 3rd party app so if you need it on your mac, then your mac doesn't just work.
Let me guess, you say the taste of a dish is just right after you added a ton of ketchup?
Are we so beaten by the PC experience that we think installing a 3rd party app with the command line on top of another OS is what is supposed to be a smooth experience?
Never book a cruise. You will be so disappointed they don't actually chain you to the oars.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I have used linux every work day for 12 years. In the last two years, I have worked on a large, well known C++ application that runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. Linux is good for me because I am willing to learn what the computer is doing, and adapt to it. Mac OS is good for the 99.99% of people who want to get shit done without writing config files, or learning to move those config files onto local disk because NFS reads can block for a long time. Ubuntu is a huge improvement over other linux distros that I installed, because it only took me three tries and replacing a video card to make it happen. It is not even close to Mac OS, which actually does what a user would expect it to do most of the time.
I mean seriously, what are Canonical smoking?
They really expect us to actually use Unity?
Its the biggest pile of crap and largest setback of basic usability I've seen since Vista came out.
Just the pain you have to go through to find an app you want to launch is an exercise i futility and a perfect example of what NOT to do in basic user-interface design.
I can't believe that some reviews of Unity out there are actually positive.
.
You are retarded. Having to install a 3rd party app doesn't mean that something no longer "Just Works".
THAWTELESS, Star City, Monday (NNGadget) — Canonical, Inc. has announced the release of Ubuntu 11.04, "Venereal Vista," entred around the Unity desktop, which only 5 out of 11 first-time users managed to crash in final testing two weeks ago.
The Unity desktop is Canonical's response to the GNOME 3 shell, which uses 1 gigabyte of RAM and four processor cores to exquisitely render a single button in the centre of the screen in beautifully anti-aliased text; when pressed, GNOME tells the user to switch off the computer and do something useful with their life, such as showering.
"This was just not up to the user expectations of Canonical's vision of the desktop," said Mark Shuttleworth, from his castle high on a crag in West London. "So we added a 'minimise' button too."
Design is at the centre of Shuttleworth's roadmap for Unity. "I woke up one day and thought, 'Gosh, I'd really like to make using my universal general-purpose computer that I can do ANYTHING with feel like I'm using a locked-down three-year-old half-smart phone through the clunky mechanism some l33t h@xx0r used to jailbreak it,' I can't think of a better user experience.' We're not quite there yet, but Unity gets you a lot of the way."
Shuttleworth foresees an exciting future for Linux for the general Internet user. "It'll be a whole world of Linux devices, which millions of people will use all the time, everywhere! Of course, at the moment those are called 'phones' and run Android."
Photo: A load of arse.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Another one to add to the list
2011 will be the year of Desktop Linux.
That is all.
When I can download Apple's OS for free, and put it on any hardware I want to, we'll talk.
The way I look at this is Canonical/Ubuntu/Unity versus Gnome 3 and the companies and distributions which are issuing Gnome 3 desktops. The best methodology I can come up with to find marketplace penetration is web server logs for major websites. On that basis, Ubuntu currently has more than 13 desktops out there for every 1 of its closest competitor - Fedora. The SuSE's have less then Fedora, Debian less than he SuSE's and so forth.
The result of Canonical's shift is that the majority of non-mobile Linux desktop users were using Gnome 2, and will now be using Unity. They're still using Gnome nuts and bolts though. I am most familiar with the document displayer that both Gnome 3 and Unity use - evince, and the library it uses to render PDFs, poppler. Ubuntu has provided dozens of useful bug reports to these projects, as the large base of users has exposed bugs that people had just not encountered (or reported) before.
I have played with Natty (with Unity) and Gnome 3, and will probably wind up with my main OS on my multi-boot system being Natty running Unity, with a special user on Natty running Gnome 3 compiled from jhbuild (compiled off the latest git commits). A lot of changes on Unity I find less than thrilling such as close window moving to the left side of the window toolbar, and the rest of the window tool bars moving to the top of the screen. For both Unity and Gnome 3, I am unhappy that switching workspaces has gone from a mouse move and a click, to a whole rigmarole of mouse moves and clicks. There's a reason many of these things were the way they were for the last 20 years, or more. I have the command lines and shortcuts to fix some of these things - like shifting left back to right on Unity tool bars - but still.
Unless you are the unlucky few having driver issues (I'm one of the lucky one's )
Rendesvous/Bonjour
that was the IETF
Apple went to the music labels
more like Apple directed a music label
and then tried to drop DRM when it was limiting growth.
Apple isn't a replacement for Microsoft, Canonical isn't a replacement for Apple, and Microsoft isn't a replacement for anything. They're all software application companies with some overlap but singular overall.
Chasing Apple on services? Yeah, sorta, if you're talking music and apps. Chasing Google if you mean web based services. Chasing Amazon if you mean cloud computing. Chasing microsoft... heh, just kidding.
But let's not chalk it all up to Apple. Nobody chased Apple into mp3 players, rather, it was the other way around. The same with PDA/Smartphones. Apple is not an innovator, it is a refiner. And if you want to make the point that Ubuntu is moving away from trying to reinvent the wheel into just refining it, then you're absolutely correct.
I just find it hilarious when Apple fanboys talk about chasing Apple. Apple switched to a nix architecture, but now we're going to say Ubuntu is chasing Apple? HAHA! That's like claiming Palm was chasing Apple with its phone. Palm cornered the PDA market. All they did was add a cell radio to the same thing they'd always been doing. Which is why it failed, imho. But Apple was chasing Palm, RIM, and Nokia. But what they really did was refine, and they did it better than anyone else. But chase? I think not. You can't chase a company who always waits at least 1 generation behind cutting edge tech.
Apple is very good at refining. I think Canonical has done well too. I just upgraded from 10.10 to 11.04 this morning. At first I had the "WTF!" experience. Then I gave it some time, and realized that for many users, this will be so much better. Once I found my administration programs, and swallowed the vomit that had risen in my throat at finding the WORST features of OSX on my updated desktop, I realized that the positive outweighed the good... and I can still customize what I want.
I8-D
...But that same philosophy causes problems for more advanced users because the features they want have been ripped out...
Did you ever consider the reason more users are NOT using Linux OS is because it IS too advanced. Come on! Be a REAL advanced user, STOP WHINING, and just tweak back to the way YOU like it. You're using Linux, not Windows.
I would love to use Linux. But first and foremost the OS has to be able to do everything Mac OS or Windows can do. That includes licensed content. Currently iTunes won't run on Linux in any realistic way, and there's no real alternative. I doubt that I'm alone. I'm glad someone in the Linux community is working on things like this. I'm also going to need MS Office, as I have to be able to exchange documents with administrators and OpenOffice's compatibility isn't really good enough for that.
The Linux community has slowly understood that if you want to be a mainstream OS real people have to be able to install it. But once they've installed it, it's got to do what they need to do.
2012 will be the year. (I swear!)
Anything used first by Apple was invented by them (even if they were not first to use it)
For years, I've heard people complain that computer user interfaces are too complex and confusing. Recently, there's an enormous surge of enthusiasm for smartphones and tablets, and people keep saying how great the user interfaces are and how they prefer them to their desktops, despite the small screens with tiny print and the tiny keyboards.
Perhaps smartphone UIs are actually really good UIs, and there are lessons to learn from them. Perhaps users who are used to smartphone UIs would prefer similar UIs on desktops.
One thing I want from a general UI is for it to get the fsck out of the way when I'm using an application. Smartphone UIs are good at this. Unity is good at this.
Orwell getting a malicious app.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Simple things, things that should have never passed QA, and would never get out of the lab at Apple without being fixed.
Take, for instance, the simple matter of resizing a window. You can grab the window border and resize the window horizontally or vertically. This is good, what could be bad about a feature like this, Windows has let you do this for years.
Well, the target to grab, the window border's active draggable area is 2 pixels wide. Paul Fitts would like to say something about that.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Nobody else focuses on and puts resources behind the Linux desktop like Ubuntu does. If it weren't for them, perhaps the desktop wouldn't be as polished and Linux wouldn't be as popular on the desktop as it is now.
your thoughts on Unity are correct. I am a long time linux user (Since Slackware 3.0, remember floppy disks?). I've been an Ubuntu user since version 8.04 and still use 10.04. Unity it seems their whole company @ canocial tried to band-aid it together to get it to work. Neglecting the rest of the operating system. It's split ass cheek and rag pussy lip bad. I might go to Fedora for my next OS or/and wait and see what 11.10 looks like. It seems the unstable release they have are for testing purposes (Non LTS releases). I still have faith that they know what they are doing, I think this is just a technology demo. I'm sure they will pull it off, we have to have patience. But right now I am sticking to 10.04.
and I have a beard if that makes my statement more valid. /steve
Will a New Holland B95B Tractor Loader Backhoe be the next VW Beetle?
My complaint is that it requires a relatively up-to-date video card. I have some older P4 HT machines that won't run it. I always liked Ubuntu because it worked on so many systems. I'd see people posting with systems running on P3s. That's not going to be possible any more. I'll stay with 10.04 (LTS), so I'll be cool for another couple of years. But beyond that, I have to buy new computers if I want to stay with Ubuntu. I don't see 11.04 as a positive move.
Maybe, MAYBE if Apple continues to uptrend the way it has in the past months, there will be room for the new small-kid on the block (Ubuntu).
This is a good point to ponder especially considering the selection music available in the Ubuntu One music store as well other multi-platform cloud services available from Cononical.