Ubuntu should not copy the Mac

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Ubuntu does not want to be OS X

I agree ubuntu should not try to copy the Mac, but my own understanding is that copying the Mac is not Mark Shuttleworth's intention. What he wants to copy is Apple's knack for designing intuitive, productive interfaces. The approach Canonical is taking in this regard is very laudable. They are setting up labs where Linux newbies are observed using ubuntu. What pitfalls the users encounter are noted and improvements to the interface are then suggested and tested.

Canonical has also sought feedback from the ubuntu community via its "Ubuntu Brainstorm" website. Most of what gets posted on the site is garbage, of course, but so many ideas have been thrown up that no doubt some valuable contributions will be made this way. It is refreshing to see a company so interested in hearing what its customers want and need. So much of the recent history of computing has been developers telling us what we SHOULD want.

When Palm introduced the Pilot, it was not the first PDA to hit the market, by far. But it easily became the most popular, because Palm put a lot of effort into usability testing of the interface. Prior to release, Palm spent many months having users with paper-based organizers race against users of the proposed Palm. If a function was not faster and/or easier to do on the Palm than with a paper organizer, the engineers went back to the drawing board to redesign that feature's interface. Palm's management appreciated that people would not adopt technology if it did not make their lives easier.

As far as voice recognition, I hope Canonical avoids it like the plague. It is not ready yet, and won't be for another hundred years or so. Ninety-five percent accuracy may sound good, but that's terrible - that's missing every twentieth word. Even 99.9% accuracy is poor, in terms of usability of an interface. Too much of speech recognition necessarily depends on understanding the context of the situation. And it'll be a long time before machines can do that.

Ubuntu has made great strides, but they still have a little way to go. Too much of the ubuntu interface still requires that users drop to the shell to perform common tasks with obscure and cryptic Unix commands. Text-based (i.e., command-line) interfaces will always be faster and more efficient for power users of an OS. But they are very unfriendly to the average person who just wants to use a computer to get things done. I think Shuttleworth understands this, and I think he's on the right track to building a Linux desktop for the masses.

Posted by: trentreviso   Posted on: 09/14/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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