[Discuss] XBMC

[Richard Pieri]

I could have sworn I recently ranted about this.  Well.  There are 
several points:

The failure to address egregious bugs and misfeatures.  Example: 
Metacity window placement.  Even when fixes are provided the developers 
refuse to incorporate them into the code base.  Open Source projects 
should be better than this.

Inconsistencies across applications using the same toolkit.  Example: if 
you move Gnome's main panel to the side of the screen then mot things 
rotate to fit except the task list which continues to display window 
names horizontally.

Disregard for usability.  KDE keeps piling more and more options into 
the UI; Gnome keeps throwing them away.  Ubuntu spites everyone by 
putting a smartphone UI on the desktop -- and refuses to let anyone move 
the UI bar to the other side of the screen.  LXDE's task bar is fixed at 
the bottom, which is a terrible place for it on wide aspect screens. 
All done with no consideration for usability.  It's all about image and 
branding and market share, and perhaps controversy -- I haven't ruled 
that out of the reasons for Gnome 3.  Nobody cares about usability 
except for the FreeDesktop folks, who have no authority, and Microsoft, 
which now employs UI specialists to fix and improve Microsoft's Windows 
and Application UIs.

So, there you have it.  Consistency and usability.  Today, right now, 
Windows 7 delivers these better than everyone else.  Including Apple.

-- 
Rich P.