"Lost effort" and "pissing off developers" is kind of immaterial - they've done it before and they'll do it again if the business environment warrants it. The real question is whether or not moving to x86 hardware would increase MacOS market share enough to make it worth the effort and the negatives you listed.
I think removing the hardware differences between Macs and PCs (anyone remember when "PC" used to mean "personal computer" and not "IBM-compatible"?) would cause MANY people to at least give MacOS a try. No one knows whether there'd be enough converts to make it worthwhile, though...
Although pretty desktops are a nice thing, I haven't seen anyone do anything really new in user interfaces for some time. Microsoft keeps hiding more features behind right-mouse-clicks and animated menu pop-ups. Apple, sadly, emulates Microsoft more and more every day. Linux UIs are splintered into so many variations that it's impossible to keep track of which are going to go anywhere.
So - the question remains: who's doing anything more than cosmetic work on modern user interfaces? Several people have commented on the fact that it's a huge hurdle for a truly non-technical person to understand any of the existing UIs. I completely agree.
Raise your hand if you've tried getting your parents to understand how to use a desktop UI (those with parents younger than 40 need not apply...) And I don't mean just to memorize how to perform a particular action, but to really know it well enough to go off and do things you may have not taught them how to do. I've tried, and friends of mine have tried, and we've all come to the same conclusion: UIs have gone virtually nowhere since early days of the Macintosh.
So we've got alpha blending, anti-aliasing, 32-bit color, and more fonts than you can shake a stick at. That makes things very pretty, but it doesn't actually help you accomplish much more. It doesn't make computers any easier to understand for anyone, techies or non-techies.
I don't think anything will deserve the title of "Next Big Thing" until it actually does something new, and prettier graphics ain't new...
Slashdot Mirror
"Lost effort" and "pissing off developers" is kind of immaterial - they've done it before and they'll do it again if the business environment warrants it. The real question is whether or not moving to x86 hardware would increase MacOS market share enough to make it worth the effort and the negatives you listed.
I think removing the hardware differences between Macs and PCs (anyone remember when "PC" used to mean "personal computer" and not "IBM-compatible"?) would cause MANY people to at least give MacOS a try. No one knows whether there'd be enough converts to make it worthwhile, though...
So - the question remains: who's doing anything more than cosmetic work on modern user interfaces? Several people have commented on the fact that it's a huge hurdle for a truly non-technical person to understand any of the existing UIs. I completely agree.
Raise your hand if you've tried getting your parents to understand how to use a desktop UI (those with parents younger than 40 need not apply...) And I don't mean just to memorize how to perform a particular action, but to really know it well enough to go off and do things you may have not taught them how to do. I've tried, and friends of mine have tried, and we've all come to the same conclusion: UIs have gone virtually nowhere since early days of the Macintosh.
So we've got alpha blending, anti-aliasing, 32-bit color, and more fonts than you can shake a stick at. That makes things very pretty, but it doesn't actually help you accomplish much more. It doesn't make computers any easier to understand for anyone, techies or non-techies.
I don't think anything will deserve the title of "Next Big Thing" until it actually does something new, and prettier graphics ain't new...