Movies are not - their is a lot of trouble often to find effective setups for movies.
Eh? mplayer (or a pretty INTEGRATED GUI like kmplayer or gmplayer) works out of the box for ALL of my downloaded videos. I booted into a fresh install of windows and tried to play them: no go. WMP said it could find the codec for it automagically but failed. Then I remembered you have to download your codecs manually in windows so I went and got the Nimo codec pack. It still wouldn't work so I gave up. I understand VLC is the way to go these days? Clearly WMP is harder to get working than say gmplayer.
Burning CDs, as I understand, can be done via click and drag on XP.
And in linux - see k3b and others.
I must also disgree with you on that Linux programs are elegent - I find SOME to be very nicely polished - but the vast majority aren't.
Same can be said for windows programs.
There are valid arguments of why someone should use windows. For some reason they are not often used.
(Appologies for the rant that probably points out the obvious, but hey, this is slashdot!)
A big problem with this feature cramming is that so many of them require a larger UI while there is also pressure to keep making the device smaller and lighter. Lets face it, attempting to view more than a tiny amount of information (say a slashdot post) is bloody clumsy on a mobile phone sized screen. God help you if you want to INPUT that amount of data. Mobiles are innapropriate for certain tasks and it becomes the latest gimmic to have your phone do XYZ.
Also, how many consumers really need PDA functions in a phone? I mean come on. I can see an exec or recruiter or anyone else who's job revolves around meeting people and connecting them with other people using it, but anyone else is going to spend a day entering 'dinner with wife', 'pick up kids from babysitter's', 'watch ballgame' and then get bored. On the other hand, maybe this guy loves to document his life and also lugs around a camera. A phone with a silly-high megapixel camera would be great for him. If a task can be squeezed onto the phone, not everyone is going to want it and having it there is going to be another menu item to skip over when getting to what you want.
Finally, as we should all know when it comes to UIs, it may not matter that one is more intuitive to a naive user, if that user wants (needs? would use longer than a week?) feature XYZ on their phone, chances are they've used it somewhere else and expect it to work the same way on their new device. What would happen if Apple joined up with Nokia and made a small phone with an iPod like interface (because 'everyone' knows how to work that) that otherwise could only make/receive calls and SMSes?
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Eh? mplayer (or a pretty INTEGRATED GUI like kmplayer or gmplayer) works out of the box for ALL of my downloaded videos. I booted into a fresh install of windows and tried to play them: no go. WMP said it could find the codec for it automagically but failed. Then I remembered you have to download your codecs manually in windows so I went and got the Nimo codec pack. It still wouldn't work so I gave up. I understand VLC is the way to go these days? Clearly WMP is harder to get working than say gmplayer.
And in linux - see k3b and others.
Same can be said for windows programs.
There are valid arguments of why someone should use windows. For some reason they are not often used.
Argh, damnit, I know how to do paragraphs.
:-S
See?
(Appologies for the rant that probably points out the obvious, but hey, this is slashdot!) A big problem with this feature cramming is that so many of them require a larger UI while there is also pressure to keep making the device smaller and lighter. Lets face it, attempting to view more than a tiny amount of information (say a slashdot post) is bloody clumsy on a mobile phone sized screen. God help you if you want to INPUT that amount of data. Mobiles are innapropriate for certain tasks and it becomes the latest gimmic to have your phone do XYZ. Also, how many consumers really need PDA functions in a phone? I mean come on. I can see an exec or recruiter or anyone else who's job revolves around meeting people and connecting them with other people using it, but anyone else is going to spend a day entering 'dinner with wife', 'pick up kids from babysitter's', 'watch ballgame' and then get bored. On the other hand, maybe this guy loves to document his life and also lugs around a camera. A phone with a silly-high megapixel camera would be great for him. If a task can be squeezed onto the phone, not everyone is going to want it and having it there is going to be another menu item to skip over when getting to what you want. Finally, as we should all know when it comes to UIs, it may not matter that one is more intuitive to a naive user, if that user wants (needs? would use longer than a week?) feature XYZ on their phone, chances are they've used it somewhere else and expect it to work the same way on their new device. What would happen if Apple joined up with Nokia and made a small phone with an iPod like interface (because 'everyone' knows how to work that) that otherwise could only make/receive calls and SMSes?