"Design" Anybody? (Score 1)

Yes, I know this is still a troll, but currently with things like GNOME, most of the innovation is in the programming APIs and code implementations - the actual user interface is neglected, programmers are just happy to leave it looking like existing interfaces because they're not UI experts, and they at least want the user to be instantly familiar, even if they do just steal layouts (such as M$ does heavily, eg Start button vs Apple menu). Personally, if I were to come up an innovative compression method, the user would not care. All he would care is that my program had the same user interface as zip, otherwise he'd say "it compresses much better, but it's a bitch to use!"

This comment points out one of the big areas where corporations like MS, and more notably Apple, have a significant and obvious advantage over Open Source: They _design_ software.

Most Open Source projects are run by programmers, and for programmers. As a result, you get programs which are very satisfying to programmers. But pretty obviously, the vast majority of the population is not made up of programmers. As the poster points out, most Open Source improvements consist in better algorithms, making the program faster, smaller, and better by a variety of programming metrics. If Open Source wants to succeed in getting onto the desktops of grandma's across the world, it needs to get some design - artists, interaction designers, user-interface designers, and the like.

The problem is that most programmers left to their own devices will not listen to a designer. They do what's right for the program, for the machine, and tend to ignore the poor sap who's actually got to use the thing. The advantage that corporations have is that they have been building in the process to get design involved (think Apple), which makes for great design and very loyal customers, who love the product. It's not something that is unique to corporations, and it could get into Open Source movements if they would acknowledge that it's important. But with programmers doing the design for other programmers, it's just not happening. And when my grandma goes to buy a computer, it doesn't matter how amazingly the TCP/IP stack optimizes for X, or how the VM does this kind of awesome pre-paging, or whatever. If it's ugly, or more imporantly, if it's tough to use and makes her feel stupid, she's not going to use it. In her mind, saving $90 is worth a lot less than having to feel like an idiot every time she has to call somebody because some esoteric configuration file got corrupted, or she has has to compile some new software she just got.

So if Open Source wants to really take a shot at the desktop, it needs to see the importance not just of good programming, but also of good design.