I will take option 3, the Wii. It comes with a free web browser (at least until 7/2007) with full AJAX and Flash support, a newsreader, a photo organizer. It is cheap, it plays games, it wakes up instantly...
I am not sure that these ads will have a great impact. They sound like the witty conversations I usually have with a friend and yet she is still reluctant to move away from her pizza-sized laptop.
Linux has the chance to host the distant-cousin of Mac OS X, namely GNUStep, which has a Finder-like file manager, many efficient development tools and 90% of the code required to build standard applications.
Linux for the desktop is sitting just there, straight under the nose of the Linux community and yet everyone prefers a me-too Windows-like bloated environment!
I have just watched the keynote and it was a bit more exciting than expected.
With the syndication features of iLife, Apple is clearly into the business of cutting the grass under the feet of the next NT 5.2 release. The later is promising new ways of exploiting existing RSS newsfeeds while the former is all about creating new content. Guess which approach is more attracting...
iWeb is a nice surprise and it just proves that desktop applications still beat web-based ones hands down when it comes to simplicity and usability.
iMovie is in my opinion a killer app with its new "theme" feature. It looks amazing. Just hope that they can be customized by third parties.
iLife is a cornerstone in the Apple strategy to grab portions of the market share. Last time I visited a local shop, all PCs were playing blockbuster movies while the Macs were freely accessible with a copy of iLife. Touching the thing helps to create the bond with the Mac See the heavy success of the iPod and the DS console: both can be touched all over and are selling like hot cakes.
We are not using Xeroxes! Mac, Windows or Linux are not even close to the original concepts demo'ed by Xerox to Steve Job.
Can you modify the operating system kernel while it is running? Can you grab any part of the UI and change its behaviour? Can you work with high-level objects shareable by all applications instead of islands of files and tools? No, no and no.
What Apple did is to take the windows and the mouse, without buying into the whole Smalltalk-way of doing things, and build something different, which was later on copied by other OS. Yes Mac OS still has a leading edge over other systems but it is still too far away of the real thing.
A pen tablet is still the best bet when it comes to replace a mouse. It's incredibly light compared to my Logitech wireless mouse which is carrying its own weight in batteries and it causes less stress on my arm as I can keep the pen in my hand even when typing on keyboard, no need to readjust to the mouse. Oh, yes, and the buttons can be configured per application.
You pointed out cars as an example of user-friendly technology while it is not. Look at the certification process involved just to be allowed to drive a car -- hours of instruction, even more hours of practice, two examinations -- and at the end, you don't even know how it works. Misbehave and it will kill you. Now, that's what I call an intimidating piece of technology.
So what? Technologies become more friendly to people once they are trained to use them.
Yes, I was responding to the author.
Nevertheless, I agree with you that the amount of knowledge required to use a single piece of technology like Linux or Java is becoming ridicilous.
I understand your points but I think that the whole problem stands in what people see in a desktop environment.
Mac OS X is more like an ecological environment and provides everything to sustain it. The naming scheme used to identify parts of the system, using either terms related to nature (Quartz, Core, Safari, Carbon, Cocoa, Darwin) or productivity (Spotlight, Dashboard, Exposé, Automator, QuickTime), is done on purpose to convey the idea of a place where applications collaborate.
Now try to find such scheme for Windows or Linux... Gnome, KDE, Kernel, Distro, X11, Aero, OLE, COM, VBA... Very enticing, doesn't it? The desktop is just a place to run applications and then it is up to the users to glue things. If they can't, they call an integrator or use an integrated package.
Both environments are different beyond any understanding; one side encouraging user experience, the other side targeting experiencing users.
It happens that there are more people enjoying the experience of gaining control on their environment than people enjoying the environment as a playground for their experiments. Tons of money was already poured into the first environment while the second one is just a footnote in the long history of paradigms with very low market/mind share.
The lack of convergence and standards amongst the distros is just a side effect of this will to control the environment. If Linux was a real alternative, we would have seen the next Smalltalk, not a xeroxed operating system.
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