Posted by
feckoff, 10:38, 27th September 2002:
not to sure I agree with Joel, with out the Mac there would be no Photoshop and just look at all the unix apps that are now available for OSX but with great a GUI.
Posted by
cal, 11:14, 27th September 2002:
hey matt :)
great GUI? questionable.
it's not as if unix didn't have GUIs before osx came along (kde, gnome, etc.)
Posted by
colin, 00:03, 28th September 2002:
KDE? Gnome? Those are GUIs, yes, but they're not good ones. *nix doesn't have a hope of becoming a viable alternative (read "the general public will consider using it") to Windows/Jaguar until they get a decent GUI.
OS X may not be perfect, but it's a far cry better than what's available for *nix. Apple has successfully hidden a lot of the BSD underpinnings from the average user, which is what's necessary. Yes, it's awfully fluffy, but it's friendly.
Us geeks sometimes scoff at companies like MS for dumbing down their newest OS, (repeat after me "Network Neighbourhood was simple enough!"), but we forget that computers are confusing to a lot of people. I look forward to the day when Redhat/Suse, etc. figure out they could actually sell a lot of their product just by doing some R&D into a simple, friendly interface.
Oooh, that was rantier than I expected. Must be quittin' time. :-)
Posted by
cal, 09:09, 30th September 2002:
not good ones? debatable. there's a whole ton of reasons why nix isn't mainstream, like marketing, percieved availablity of software, games, etc.
maybe a better gui would help, but more likely a standardised gui and a standardised install method, etc.
every new linux flavour is a whole new set of things to learn - which isn't really appealing to a wider audience
