On Wed, 2013-07-31 at 09:03 -0700, Dazed_75 wrote:
Ted may be right about where the growth market is. Especially if he primarily considers the 15-35 year groups. On the other hand, there are hundreds of millions of current users with history of using a desktop and people who want/need bigger displays who detest the who "Let's make everything work like a tablet" concept. I have a tablet and a smartphone and I appreciate how they work. But I and most of the people I know (in 4 computer clubs) want our big screens to remain highly usable and that will never be with a touch interface.
Case in point: Global menu on a screen with multiple visible windows is just plain stupid. Global menu is fine as long as I can turn it off. I used to hate unity, but now I miss it when I don't have it. That said, I hate the number of configurable things we are losing to the "growth market".
I work with a lot of elderly people and most of them do not want to learn tablet and touch interfaces. I am having a lot of success with Linux for people who absolutely do not want Windows 8. Linux is much easier for them. Until I have to explain global menu. So I end up using other desktops for almost all of them.
It's always hard to tell what everyone really wants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect
I believe that, in the end, people don't want to learn new interfaces for every different computer like thing that they use on a daily basis. And, they'd prefer to have consistent paradigms and applications through out the continuum of devices they use. Certainly, that means that everything won't be perfect on every device/screen/input method/etc. that people use. But if that's your goal, everything has to be specialized and that's impractical from both the training perspective and the development cost perspective.
But, it's all OSS, feel free to use what you like forever, that's a right the GPL gives you.
Ted