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."

Comments

No.

[Desler]

No.

problem is, Unity is a disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:problem is, Unity is a disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the memo. We have to keep dumbing down Linux desktops until every last thing has been squeezed out. If you tailor your UI for the complete novice, as Gnome and Unity have been doing, that's great for like the first 2 days you use it. But that same philosophy causes problems for more advanced users because the features they want have been ripped out.

Also, they tend to do these "usability studies" where they conclude feature X was only used by 5% of the users, and feature Y by 3%, so it must be OK to sacrifice them on the altar of simplicity. But everyone has a different X or Y they use, so eventually this hurts _everybody_.

Please, Linux desktop people, STOP DUMBING IT DOWN! The world has other OSs out there for that kind of experience, We don't need to do that to every last Linux DE as well.

Re:problem is, Unity is a disaster

[Eponymous Coward]

For the record, I am a user who likes Unity. Sounds like I'm the only one though.

Re:problem is, Unity is a disaster

[ArcCoyote]

log out
select your account
select "Ubuntu Classic" from the session menu at the bottom,
log back in.

Problem Solved.

Re:problem is, Unity is a disaster

[Vegemeister]

Consider the following: six terminal emulator windows will fit on a 1920x1200 pixel monitor. A user wants to change the title of one of them. Which makes more sense?

1) User moves their mouse toward the window they want to affect, opens the terminal menu, hits 'set title', and enters the title they want for that window.

2) User moves their mouse to a distant and totally unrelated part of the screen, opens the terminal menu, hits 'set title', and enters the title they want for that window. Which actually became the title of another terminal window, which the user did not want to change, because that window had focus at the time.

Skinflinting on screen real estate at the expense of intuitive placement and behavior only makes sense on 4 inch 800x480 pixel screen.

First thing they need to do

[Moryath]

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'...
 

Re:First thing they need to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Ubuntu names are much easier to search for because they are less common. I always figured that this was their motive for choosing them. For example, you can type "natty virtualbox" or "lucid virtualbox" and get relevant results quickly and easily, that are zeroed in on what you are looking for.

Re:First thing they need to do

[mangu]

I think you mean "Gaping Goatse".

Canonical doesn't sell computers

[newcastlejon]

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.

Re:Canonical doesn't sell computers

[drb226]

Strong agree.

Canonical doesn't sell computers

Also, Canonical doesn't sell their OS. Canonical therefore has a completely different business model than Apple.

Re:Hardware?

[CastrTroy]

Canonical may be forcing people to use PCs like they use cellphones, but people don't like this.

You may not like this (I don't either), but people in general like a computer that is an appliance. This is the reason that the iPad (and other applie products) has caught on so well in the past few years. People never liked dealing with drivers, compatibility, registry editors, getting apps from reliable sources, or system configuration. They want a device that just does what they need, and they don't care if it's highly configurable, so long as it turns on and works every time they go to use it.

So, UX then

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:So, UX then

[grumbel]

Nuts and bolts are an essential part of user experience, long before we get to the graphics/design stage

Very true and that is exactly why Unity is bullshit. It improves little to nothing, yet introduces a whole swoop of new bugs in incompatibles for no other reason then looking a little more hip and more like OSX. I would much prefer it when they would focus on making what they already have work proper.

The simple truth is that the whole "desktop experience" hasn't really changed a whole lot in the last 20 years, you click icons to start stuff, you push icons around to move files, etc. Its how Windows does it, its how MacOSX does it, its how the Amiga did it an pretty much everybody else. Small improvements here and there are nice and good, but what matters most is simply that what you have works properly and works for the tasks at hand, not just sometimes, but always and Ubuntu simply doesn't. On numerous upgrades the OpenGL driver killed itself, subpixel rendering is currently broken for me, network configuration also leaves a lot to be desired and multi monitor support while tolerable, but anything but great.

The forced Unity UI was easily the worst upgrade experience I had in Linux for quite some years, probably even worse then the switch from Gnome1 to Gnome2. Only thing that makes it somewhat tolerable is that so far it can be completely switched off, but it still seems to be an extremely stupid choice to force the UI on users via a dist-upgrade.

Can Canonical get the attention of other big guys?

[alispguru]

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.

Oh wait, you're serious

[davidbrit2]

Let me laugh even harder.