A piece ‘a Me

via eWeek

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, calls on Linux developers to make the presentation layer of desktop Linux applications even more attractive to users than Apple’s Mac OS.

Yup. In short, this is what they need to do. Screw GNOME, KDE and the rest, we need something that looks stunning (even on relatively modest hardware), works stunning and is stunningly easy to develop beautiful and functional apps on. Like… well… OS X.

BUT… and this is a big but (no, not a big butt, that’d be crass and schoolboy-ish), it’s not going to happen on ‘Linux’ like Shuttleworth says. Why? Because the open source community that controls ‘Linux’ and all things attached to it has aptly demonstrated over the past few years that, try as they might, they are still incapable of producing something as tidy, elegant and good looking as Apple’s Aqua/Quartz model. Yeah we can have flashy rotating 3D crap everywhere, and window transforms that actually bring on nausea. Yes we can had a good development model. But like everything the product is ugly, over-complicated and ultimately unsatisfactory, no matter who does it.

The answer? One Linux distributor/author has to do an Apple, take a good basis from open source and build a world-beating layer above it that makes it the desktop everyone wants. Too many cooks. Shut out the extra cooks and make your own broth and it’ll turn out just like you want it.

Yeah tons of folk will deride me and call me a fan boy. I don’t care. It’s not Apple I like, I used them as an example because Shuttleworth did, and because they are a good example. The key is in the method. Because it works. Harness, control and regulate, while using open source as inspiration, testing stuff and developing new ideas, filtering and channelling that into the non-OSS final product. Works for Apple, Sun, Red Hat et al.

Linux won’t succeed without regulation. Linux isn’t a socialist community, its Anarchy. Anarchy isn’t a system, it’s an anti-system.

Finally, it’s arrived. It’s available from the Apple Store now in the UK and US (and presumably elsewhere too).

There’s another huge bonus too. They’ve sliced a BIG lump off the price too.
The UK item has dropped from GBP 220 (which the original Gen 2 card was on release day) to GBP 170, a 50 GBP drop.

That takes a whole 100 GBP off the price of a new graphics card for my Mac Pro compared to the old X1950XT, plus I don’t get ATi grief in Windows when I’m playing games.