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

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

[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.

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: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.