Windows UI Taskforce: Your Help Wanted
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 1st Jun 2008 14:35 UTC
Graphics, User Interfaces As I already explained in the first Usability Terms article, consistency goes a long way in ensuring a pleasurable user experience in graphical user interfaces. While some user interfaces appear to be more graphically consistent than others, Windows has always appeared to be worse than most others - probably because it carries with it stuff that dates back to the 16bit era. IStartedSomething agrees with this, and started the Windows UI TaskForce.
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RE[4]: Why?
by romang on Tue 3rd Jun 2008 09:26 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Why?"
romang
Member since:
2008-06-03

As a economist I have to correct you slightly: To develop software has *not* a marginal cost of zero. Because if you hand out more copies of your products you have a much larger user base to support and this produces costs. Even if you have the counter argument that they do not sell support -- which they certainly do -- you have to respect a larger user base because of existing competition and long term involvement in the market.
By the way a monopoly does not have to be bad. There are certainly some goods that profit from a monopoly. For example the production of money.
The real question that arises is: Is a monopoly in SW production bad, if it is done for free software or information in general as it is done for printing money. I find this somehow interesting.

Reply Parent Score: 1

RE[5]: Why?
by superstoned on Tue 3rd Jun 2008 16:40 in reply to "RE[4]: Why?"
superstoned Member since:
2005-07-07

thank you, you are of course right. Though the support MS offers isn't well known for it's quality ;-)

I certainly think a monopoly in SW is bad - you read my statements regarding the social implications. If you look at it from an economical standpoint, less innovation & higher prices would be (and are and have been, in this case) the result. By mandating the GPL as only legal license for software, the government would magically turn the software market from a market were someone almost naturally gains a monopoly into a market in which a monopoly is unlikely. Of course, such an event would be far too disruptive, so I'm not actually advocating it. But imho - it should be the target. It would result (I believe) in lower prices, better services and more innovation. Now the last thing might not be solely because proprietary sofware is bad for innovation but at least partly because MS is notoriously bad at it (they are well known for not having an R&D department until well in the nineties).

Apple, for example, does a much better job at it with far less resources. Meanwhile, both companies/situations are extremes, and in general I don't think you disagree that innovation doesn't benefit from a monopoly.

Reply Parent Score: 2