New Desktop Interface Flops

[ Thanks to Steven J.
Vaughan-Nichols for this link. ]

“Let’s get down to brass tacks. An interface is meant to make it
easy for you to get work done. Pretty simple right? So, why does
Microsoft feel the need to dump decades of design work on a
perfectly usable system that almost everyone on the planet can use
for one that seems designed for use by mildly concussed
kindergarteners?

“Yes, I know Metro is meant to be a touch interface, but guess
what; most of us are still going to be running Windows on PCs for
years still to come. And, besides while touch is indeed great for
tablets and smartphones, I find it a heck of a lot easier to do
work with a keyboard and a mouse than I do with a keyboard and a
screen I need to smudge up with my fingerprints every minute or
two.

“What’s even more annoying is that Metro requires me to relearn
how to use Windows for no real gain in ease of use, flexibility, or
power. It’s not quite change for the sake of change. Microsoft
wants Metro to be its universal interface. But, I do think
Microsoft is throwing out the baby of its hundreds of millions of
Windows desktop user for the very small chance that Metro is going
to matter on tablets and smartphones.

“GNOME 3.2 is, if anything, even more annoying. GNOME was always
the ‘simple’ Linux desktop interface. That was fine. We learned how
to work around it, and what GNOME 2.x did well, it did very well
indeed. But, GNOME 3 made simple into stupid. I’m not the only one
who looked at GNOME 3 and say this that GNOME 3.x sucks dead
gophers through rusty tailpipes, Linus Torvalds agrees that GNOME
3.x is a flop.”

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