"My first 48 hours enduring Ubuntu"

[Matthew S-H]

On Jun 15, 2005, at 12:23 PM, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:

> Stephen R Laniel wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 05:52:38PM +0700, Chanchao wrote:
>
> I *hate* the fact that the option-tab (or whatever that key is,
> I use a normal PC keyboard with my iMac and it's the *gag* "Windows"
> key...) toggles between applications rather than windows. If I have  
> five
> Firefox windows open, I might just want to cycle between those using
> option-tab.
Use "Apple - tilde"    (Apple + "~")


> which is my point, the application interface guidelines are the  
> computing
> equivalent of housing associations that tell you what color you can  
> paint
> your house, how often you have to water your lawn, and that you can't
> have signs on your yard or whatever...
Umm...these do exist.  They are called zoning laws, and they are  
extremely
common in most well-populated areas.  In order to get around them you
have to get a variance permit.

PERFECT ANALOGY TIME!!!  These zoning laws are to make houses look
at least a little bit consistent.  You don't want your neighbor to  
have a house
that is shaped wierd, colored tie die, has unkempt grass, and extremely
opinionated signs on his/her lawn.  This would bring down the value  
of your
property.  He/she could always find a way around this by getting a  
variance
permit or fighting a lawsuit on the grounds of freedom of speech.

In the world of Macs, it brings down the general quality of apps to  
have totally
wayward neighbors.  The consistency on a Mac is very nice.  It increases
productivity because you usually know where to find things, and there  
isn't
much difference between each app's interface.  It would be like  
having a "-v"
parameter on a command line app that automatically changes permissions
of your home directory.  It would just be so inconsistent.  Anyway, the
restrictions are meant to be a sort of "quality control".  There are  
definitely
exceptions, but for the most part they help.  If you want to get a  
"variance"
you can always just not use Apple's interface creation apps.   
Consider this
to be a sort of "variance".  Like a real-world "variance", it takes a  
little bit of
extra work to get things done.  But in the end, it makes for a nicer
desktop/community.



> Don't mind the rant - I understand the need for consistency, but I  
> tend
> to balk at having the placement of every little element dictated by  
> some
> arbitrary guidelines that some UI "expert" decides on. One person's
> "intuitive" is another person's computing nightmare.
>> I have no doubt that within a few years, GNOME will be just
>> as usable as OS X. I think what it will need, though, is a
>> much tighter set of HIGs, to keep a much less centralized
>> group of software developers writing on the same page.
>
> Maybe I'm just a computing misfit, but I think GNOME is more usable  
> than
> OS X. I use both, though I use GNOME much more than OS X, and I vastly
> prefer using GNOME over OS X. I admit, I've been using Linux as my  
> main
> OS a very long time now (six years) so my outlook is a bit different
> than folks who are just now looking at the Linux desktop and comparing
> it to Windows and Mac OS X.
Strong disagreement here, but I don't want to "start".


~Matt




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