Ubuntu should not copy the Mac
Summary: It is past time for open source to become truly innovative. The Macintosh interface is a nice point-and-click interface, but that's all it is. We need something completely different. How about a high quality voice interface, based on Perlbox?
Ubuntu is putting serious investment into improving the interface of its Linux.
Mark Shuttleworth wants Linux to become comparable to the Apple Macintosh, quoting the watchwords of Web 2.0:
- Make your site visually appealing,
- Do something different and do it very, very well,
- Call users to action and give them an immediate, rewarding experience.
Good idea. But the Ubuntu Developer Summit is taking the wrong approach.
It is past time for open source to become truly innovative. The Macintosh interface is a nice point-and-click interface, but that's all it is.
We need something completely different. How about a high quality voice interface, based on Perlbox? (The graphic above is from Perlbox.org.)
Perlbox already has a KDE interface, and three years of work behind it. It may not be all it can be. What could it be with a few million development dollars?
My friend Lamont Wood has been working with voice recognition technology and says some of it is now ready for prime time. By that he means it can be 95% accurate at 120 words per minute.
True, he was testing a proprietary product, but I am first contemplating an open source voice interface, not a voice-based word processor. The parts to do something ground-breaking appear to be here.
Besides, there are millions of visually-impaired folks, like my mom and my friend Jim Pettigrew, who have been totally left out of the computer revolution until now. Why not bring them in?
If Ubuntu is ready to be truly competitive, then that says to me it's ready to innovate. And if voice isn't your favored direction, what is?
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Talkback
Ubuntu does not want to be OS X
Canonical has also sought feedback from the ubuntu community via its "Ubuntu Brainstorm" website. Most of what gets posted on the site is garbage, of course, but so many ideas have been thrown up that no doubt some valuable contributions will be made this way. It is refreshing to see a company so interested in hearing what its customers want and need. So much of the recent history of computing has been developers telling us what we SHOULD want.
When Palm introduced the Pilot, it was not the first PDA to hit the market, by far. But it easily became the most popular, because Palm put a lot of effort into usability testing of the interface. Prior to release, Palm spent many months having users with paper-based organizers race against users of the proposed Palm. If a function was not faster and/or easier to do on the Palm than with a paper organizer, the engineers went back to the drawing board to redesign that feature's interface. Palm's management appreciated that people would not adopt technology if it did not make their lives easier.
As far as voice recognition, I hope Canonical avoids it like the plague. It is not ready yet, and won't be for another hundred years or so. Ninety-five percent accuracy may sound good, but that's terrible - that's missing every twentieth word. Even 99.9% accuracy is poor, in terms of usability of an interface. Too much of speech recognition necessarily depends on understanding the context of the situation. And it'll be a long time before machines can do that.
Ubuntu has made great strides, but they still have a little way to go. Too much of the ubuntu interface still requires that users drop to the shell to perform common tasks with obscure and cryptic Unix commands. Text-based (i.e., command-line) interfaces will always be faster and more efficient for power users of an OS. But they are very unfriendly to the average person who just wants to use a computer to get things done. I think Shuttleworth understands this, and I think he's on the right track to building a Linux desktop for the masses.
Ubuntu does not want to be OS X
They want all applications to use the same UI conventions. Much like Apple and Microsoft have with their design guides - although nobody seems to really stick with the Windows ones, not even Microsoft sometimes...
They want a standard "open" button, a standard "save" button etc. not a competition to see who can make the most gawdy design for their application, which doesn't meld with anything else out there.
What is this Ubuntu interface you speak of?
How much of your usability is determined at the KDE/Gnome level? (This is not about using one desktop, I enjoy having the choice)
My retired parents have no problems understanding KDE based desktops. People at the retirement home that our group helped acquire used equipment to run Linux dont seem to have a problem.
My father went to his friends recently out of town and said he couldnt believe how much he missed using Amarok (which isnt my favorite) when he was there.
But in terms of software usability, oh heck yeah, there is work to be done. The question is how to get so many independant programs to look/behave a certain way.
I maintain that you have to take your top 10 most used pieces of free software and make them each do the top 10 most frequent things they are used for and do them well and easily in as little steps as possible.
Garageband and the whole suite of Apple software are often limited but they suit the needs of most of the people. The real pros wont use Imovie but pay for Final Cut Pro. The serious musician will use specialized expensive sofware not Garageband.
Example: Audacity is a great program but scary to first time users. Why couldnt the software come with two settings? An easy mode for the most common uses like cutting a clip, recording a child and one click away an advanced look for the people who need it.
It makes me think of my sister in law who has an Acer One netbook and she loves the 4 coloured square kiosk look of the Linpus Linux. Its fun, cheery, easy to navigate, just what a newbie wants. Her husband uses the XFCE desktop that's underneath and installed Gimp and other software he needs.
Why is VLC so popular? Because Its a simple interface. Double click on the screen to get full screen, space bar to pause-restart and never have to think about codecs again.
The most popular uses HAVE to be easy.
If I'm using an audio program and I want to cut an audio segement and then save it in a ldifferent bitrate at a lower, I should be able to click Save As or similar, then have the file name appear and the option for different format and a button for the specifics about quality and maybe even give an approximation of the size of the saved file. Every time I see it, someone tries to re-invent the feel instead of fine tuning a certain way of doing things.
Then again, since the distro has often little say in the various programs found in it, the whole process sounds like herding cats.
This is time I'll never get back
not really
As a results, they will work on another OS from the ground up. As it becomes more stable they will deploy it on servers everywhere while advertising how their jobs is the most important one in IT industry. They will regularly post in slashdot saying how cool they are because they've did a "make clean" when fired from a company without telling anyone else how to recompile the dark distro from scratch.
History repeats itself.
;-)
I think you've got a point about the elite geeks. But you're "ground up", non-bloated OS already exists, and is called [url=www.linuxfromscratch.org]Linuxfromscratch.[/url]
Voice?
As for me, the <b>last</b> freaking thing I want is a computer that I have to talk to. The office is noisy enough as it is, I <b>like</b> being able to use the computer and the phone at the same time, and if I'm awake in the middle of the night I don't want to wake others up by yammering at the silly puter.
Good point for sure.
Voice actuated computing is all very nice, but we still live in a world where most of the time that wouldn't be practical, workable or even wanted.
RE: Good point for sure
There once was an IBM demo...
I agree.
Also 95% accuracy is pretty lousy. That means 1/20 times it is wrong.
Really the main thing is to focus on being intuitive and helpful. Make it easy to organize documents and photos and retrieve them.
Now for those who have various impairments things like voice activation are a tremendous help. But not for most of us.
Vista has decent voice recognition. There are many applications.
In healthcare, if voice recognition can get to the point of handling all dictation, it would save many millions of dollars in healthcare costs.
<br><br>
Some physicians already use certain packages fairly successfully. <br><br>
I'm not sure the low din of low voices into a headset is any "noisier" than the clacking of keyboards actually. I don't think it would be any more distracting. <br><br>
Eventually with the computer becoming more a part of the home, there could be many applications, and i'm sure clever people will find many more. <br><br>
Finally, i know it's beyond you to hide your obsessions, but i would stake all i have that Bill Gates is not the only person in technology, including OSS, Apple, SUN, Google that is "facinated" with voice.
Speaking of "not hiding your obsessions", Windoze Bigot xuniL_z....
What the hell is Windoze again?
Exactly....
Imperialistic British politicians out to conquer the world by force with her navy<br><br>
Nazis<br><br>
Hitler<br><br>
Mussolini<br><br>
The "crusades" <br><br>
World War I <br><br>
World War II <br><br>
Stalin<br><br>
Halocaust<br><br>
pillage and rape<br><br>
<br>
Just to name a few. <br><br>
Yep, they can remain the boring "slimy" politicians forever.
Wow.
You're one of those guys who thinks any Windows user must be a very far right gun toting, bible carrying, war mongering, neo-con. <br><br>
So if that is true, i guess that makes you a far left, tree hugging, atheist, gay pride sort of fellow. <br><br>
ummm, give me my gun and bible any day.
Voice Recognition in Health Care is Not Ready
It will be many decades before computers will be able to transcribe the human voice accurately. This video is emblematic of my own experiences with voice dictation (and it was done using Vista's voice recognition engine):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyLqUf4cdwc
TOTALLY AGREE!
The LAST thing on earth I could possibly want is a computer I have to talk to!
And it's not only about the noise, talking is SLOW.
In my opinion, Voice-based interfaces only sound appealing to slow-minded people.
The point is not to reinvent the wheel
commands are, if done right, a real innovation. Of
course they are not appropriate in all circumstances.
But neither are mice.
What wheel ?