An Economist.com editorial examines the OS lay of the land on the eve of Vista's release, and makes an interesting case for why Windows "rules the world". Do you agree? We report, you decide.
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Member since:2005-07-02
I, and probably you, think that's silly and care far more about ZFS, for instance, but a lot of people actually really do care about things like this.
Actually, I don't think that's silly at all. Jobs is consumer-centric, and that's a good point for OS X.
You know what impresses people the most when I show them my Kubuntu laptop? The rotating desktop, wobbly windows and falling snow I get with Beryl. It's complete eye-candy, and serves no purpose, but you'd be surprised how many people ask me if they can install it on their PC...then I explain to them how they can try it out if they want (i.e. LiveCD vs. dual boot, the second being necessary if they want to have fancy graphics effect).
These people don't care about capabilities, or even complete application compatibility (many only use a few programs anyway, for which there are good Linux alternatives). They just go "oooh, shiny!"
Member since:2005-07-06
Beryl with snow effects and fire effects :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kM08-VHfpw
Member since:2005-07-07
"These people don't care about capabilities, or even complete application compatibility (many only use a few programs anyway, for which there are good Linux alternatives). They just go "oooh, shiny!"
I have been using Linux for a few years, and I still coo in amazement over the rotating desktop cube and wobbly windows. You have to admit...the "cool" factor really is way, way up there. There really is nothing I know of in the current windows or OS X world that has this! I didn't go out of my way to install Beryl. But with Ubuntu, it just got so easy I couldn't help myself. You can count me among the simple-minded masses. I love these effects.
Member since:
2006-11-05
OS X having a (somewhat broken -- try using ifconfig) UNIX base doesn't mean anything because most users don't care about it, and the emphasis is elsewhere -- remember Steve Jobs feels that one of the biggest features of Leopard is email templates. I, and probably you, think that's silly and care far more about ZFS, for instance, but a lot of people actually really do care about things like this.