Re: Nautilus bugs and design choices (back-button)

[Mathias Hasselmann <mathias hasselmann gmx de>]

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Jeff Waugh wrote:

> <quote who="Mathias Hasselmann">
> 
> > AND: We should not overrate Sun's usablility studies:  _Sun is clueless
> > about useablility_. Don't know of a successfull desktop system built by
> > Sun Microsystems.
> 
> If this meandering thread must continue, please keep it positive. Trashing
> contributions to GNOME is a particularly wasteful attempt at communication.

	Uh, maybe my statement was misunderstandable. To say it in
(hopefully) more obvious words: Of course I do acknowledge Sun's
contribution. Yes, their usablility studies are extremely important for
the project. They brought a damn important topic into the center of our
attention. Thank you alot Sun!

	What I was willing to express is: Yes, Sun's contribution is very 
important: But we should not overrate Sun's idea of usablility.

	Why? Well, if I'd be going to make it simple I could stop the
entire discussion by asking: "Who dominates desktop market today - even if
they use pure CrapTech[tm]? Why doesn't one of the Unix vendors dominate
the desktop market? They had so called "usability proven" system ages
before Gates was able to spell the word 'desktop'...." Well, but this
would simply things too much and I'm also sure that a wrong understanding
of the word "usability" wasn't the only fault made by the traditional Unix
vendors giving Unix the bad image it has among for - example scientists -
today. (Ok, could be that this world leading research institute I'm
refering to here, is an extremly seldom case of bad luck --- but I
don't think this is the case).

	Let's return to Sun and why I think that Sun doesn't has intensive
contact to the God of Usability: For me it is a fact that Sun's desktop
system are inconvenient to use - mainly 'cause functionality is reduced
over the limit. If you don't believe that: Go to a random site were they
use Sun workstations on a daily basis. For example go to a random
university campus were Sun was that kind to sponsor the infrastructure *)
Go to such a random site -- unprepared, without a special announcement.  
For example at our instutute you'll find the Windows and the Apple pools
nearly empty -- those poor machines mostly are idling whilest the Sun
pools -- which clearly dominate the institute are overcrouded mostly. But
even if most of the students choose Solaris over Windows and MacOS9 you'll
find most of the people unsatisfied with the desktop delivered by Sun. No
difference if the machine they are using is on OpenWindows or CDE. At our
site I'm pretty sure that you'll find nearly no person using the
filemanager or the mail client delivered by Sun. Why? IMHO those apps are
that heavily reduced in functionality, that teletubby-proven that you gain
zero/null/nada/nix/keine efficient by using them. Most of the persons
you'll find there will have choosen a pure terminal over Sun's file
managers (even if they really hate it to use a shell) and I bet really
_all_ of them will use a mailclient like Pine or the Netscrape Messenger
instead of Sun's stuff.


Ciao,
Mathias


*) BTW: Thank you Sun, again: Nevertheless it were your workstations
convincing me to give Unix a real try - not because of they desktop 
system you presented me. It was for the underlying operating system I saw.
-- 
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