07.06
So I wasn’t even going to mention this (the screenshot) as it’s kind of beating a dead horse but then I saw this choice quote on the Ayatana mailing list:
“In 10.10, we’ll take a big step forward in the netbook edition, by
moving the menu into the top panel and combining it with the titlebar
for maximised windows.”
Now look at the image on the right. It’s a screenshot of the proposed ‘Unity UI‘ that is being ‘developed’ by Ubuntu inside an OSX screenshot. Note the monochrome icons in the system tray, the Apple / Ubuntu logos with identical spacing, the popout options on the dock with the identical black background, curved light borders and association arrow. There is even a ‘Keep in Launcher’, ‘Keep in Dock’ option. Ok I suppose the current running program indicator is an arrow instead of a bright spot, but that’s only because they are copying Tiger rather than Snow Leopard. Add in the recent pointless change of moving the window decorations to the left. It’s all very suspicious.
Although once you take the above quote into context the only significant difference between them disappears. That is it is going to get an OSX style universal menu – that is the File / Edit / View menu moved to the top left outside the applications window. I mean come on, there is being inspired and then there is outright plagarism and there really is far too much similarity here to chalk it up to chance. As I said before it’s all cargo cult usability – the focus is on copying Apple because they care about usability rather than copying the reasons Apple do what they do. It’s a significant difference. It’s all irrelevant anyhow though. Here’s why:
THE DESKTOP IS A SOLVED PROBLEM!
It’s 2010. It doesn’t matter any more. Why are we even talking about this? I remember years ago, before the Internet was fast or reasonably accessible, playing with the OS for the seemingly sake of it, but nobody ever does this anymore. Simply put the OS’s only job is to run the important thing – that is the applications. Nobody tweaks their OS. The reason you can’t change themes on OSX is because the majority of people don’t want to do that anymore. Windows 7 lets you change the colours but that’s about it. Essentially the OS has two jobs, running apps and bothering you as little as possible. That’s it.
But no, we have Fedora, Ubuntu, Suse, CentOS, Mint, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, etc, etc, etc. It’s a constant reinvention and minor tweaks to the overlying thing that doesn’t really matter (the OS) while the thing that really really matters (the apps) languish in obscurity as ‘upstream’. With Windows (and OSX) there is a vibrant third party community developing all sorts of apps independently of their target platform. With Linux it’s all about the repository and what apps you get is based on what distro you use. You get your software updated when the distro decides you should get it updated, not when it is actually updated. It’s not at all uncommon to have the repo version as several versions behind what is in the wild and if what you want isn’t in the repo you are screwed. All the talk of ‘choice’ is utterly irrelevant as no matter what distro you ‘choose’ you will still have the exact same selection of software (you know, the things that matters) as every single other distro.
So why are the FOSS communities version of the record industry – the ‘packagers’ – where all the focus lies? Why does everyone get whipped into a frenzy every few months when some new distro comes out with a fancy new wallpaper and a fancy new theme? Why are we even still talking about this? The only reason I can see to ever upgrade your OS is because the new one brings something significant and most people take a largely ‘wait and see’ approach yet with Ubuntu you have the insane BiannualForcedDeathMarch™ and if you don’t upgrade you can forget about ever having newer versions of the software. Why on earth is there no sane way to install software outside this byzantine system? LTS support? Fine if you don’t mind them not bothering to update or add any apps to the repo. Then they moan about Microsoft not following standards then require software developers to waste days making an individual releases for each version of each distro (see Skype) as they can’t even agree among themselves. I can get software that was released for Windows 15 years ago and provided the developers didn’t do anything stupid it’ll still work. Why is doing this so hard? As I said it’s a solved problem.
Essentially no amount of distro tweaking is going to make Gimp stop sucking, or make OO any less bloated or magically make a decent selection of games appear. The best Shuttleworth and co are going to end up with at this rate is a copy of OSX without any application support. What’s the point in that?