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I'll agree with most (not all) of these points.
Quickbooks - Why not include the entire Quicken lineup? What you describe about QB is no better for the consumer Quicken and Quicken Essentials in my own experience. Even paper and pencil is easier to keep track of.
Acronis - No experience; no comment.
Ubuntu Unity While I accept that Ubuntu is the most user-friendly version of Linux currently available, quite honestly none of them are consumer friendly--they still need too much manual tweaking to make them work right. Unity may have been an attempt to improve on that by making a more polished, usable interface, but under the skin it still needs work. Hobbyists and techies don't have all that many problems with it--it is easier than most--but putting it into a consumer's hands is just asking for trouble.
Flash - This one I agree with whole-heartedly! Ever since Adobe bought Macromedia, Flash has gone downhill, turning real web developers into lazy sketch-artists who think it can do everything for them. I can't even number the websites that are almost worthless because they so heavily rely on Flash to provide navigation services; something it was never intended to do. I run into a Flash-heavy site and quite honestly I choose the low-bandwidth option--if available--simply to get away from it. Ten years ago developers had to use HTML; I'm glad HTML5 is finally stepping back up to show Flash as the broken technology it is.
Pulse Audio - Never used it--no comment.
Web browsers - Agree--and disagree. Most definitely some are better than others, but then as you say, each is designed to have different strengths. I personally find the single most-used browser is also the most problematical but the others seem pretty good. I have a personal favorite that most other techies would claim is the worst of the bunch--but it works more reliably for me than any other I've used now that I actively block Flash.
Outlook - Ah, the complaints I hear every day about Outlook. Full inboxes preventing access; calendar and schedule changes often not disbursed until hours after the scheduled change no matter if the schedule was pushed forward or back. Simply not user friendly or business friendly. Sure, it uses MS Exchange, but with that kind of poor reliability, surely there's something better out there. Any company that relies on Outlook alone for its inter-office communications needs to have its IT department examined.
Predictive Typing - I have to agree. Better for it to make its suggestions and leave what you typed alone than to auto-correct a word not even in its library. PT forces the writer to spend time looking for misspellings that such apps are supposed to prevent.
Consumer-grade AV - I'm going to partially disagree because any AV is better than none, though admittedly some are better than others. Just keep in mind that the most popular AVs are often the first targeted for bypassing--so choosing one like Panda might give you an edge.
Desktop Multi-touch - We really don't know where this is going yet, so to say it's broken out of the box is simply jumping the gun. Today's desktop form factor is quite honestly obsolete--we've been using it for over 100 years if you include the paper-and-typewriter as a logical progenitor. The mouse itself was a massive improvement over using cursor keys to put the cursor where you want it, but it's still a relational device less accurate and slower than actually touching the location on the screen. If anyone remembers the light pens of the '80s, it had the advantage of accuracy and speed, though included the drawback of having to pick it up and put it down. The light pen even allowed you to 'draw' directly on the screen, albeit crudely.
If you want my opinion, multi-touch has only barely started and seems likely to supplant the keyboard/mouse for most tasks. This isn't to say the keyboard will go away, but I think the mouse is almost gone.
Acronis - No experience; no comment.
Ubuntu Unity While I accept that Ubuntu is the most user-friendly version of Linux currently available, quite honestly none of them are consumer friendly--they still need too much manual tweaking to make them work right. Unity may have been an attempt to improve on that by making a more polished, usable interface, but under the skin it still needs work. Hobbyists and techies don't have all that many problems with it--it is easier than most--but putting it into a consumer's hands is just asking for trouble.
Flash - This one I agree with whole-heartedly! Ever since Adobe bought Macromedia, Flash has gone downhill, turning real web developers into lazy sketch-artists who think it can do everything for them. I can't even number the websites that are almost worthless because they so heavily rely on Flash to provide navigation services; something it was never intended to do. I run into a Flash-heavy site and quite honestly I choose the low-bandwidth option--if available--simply to get away from it. Ten years ago developers had to use HTML; I'm glad HTML5 is finally stepping back up to show Flash as the broken technology it is.
Pulse Audio - Never used it--no comment.
Web browsers - Agree--and disagree. Most definitely some are better than others, but then as you say, each is designed to have different strengths. I personally find the single most-used browser is also the most problematical but the others seem pretty good. I have a personal favorite that most other techies would claim is the worst of the bunch--but it works more reliably for me than any other I've used now that I actively block Flash.
Outlook - Ah, the complaints I hear every day about Outlook. Full inboxes preventing access; calendar and schedule changes often not disbursed until hours after the scheduled change no matter if the schedule was pushed forward or back. Simply not user friendly or business friendly. Sure, it uses MS Exchange, but with that kind of poor reliability, surely there's something better out there. Any company that relies on Outlook alone for its inter-office communications needs to have its IT department examined.
Predictive Typing - I have to agree. Better for it to make its suggestions and leave what you typed alone than to auto-correct a word not even in its library. PT forces the writer to spend time looking for misspellings that such apps are supposed to prevent.
Consumer-grade AV - I'm going to partially disagree because any AV is better than none, though admittedly some are better than others. Just keep in mind that the most popular AVs are often the first targeted for bypassing--so choosing one like Panda might give you an edge.
Desktop Multi-touch - We really don't know where this is going yet, so to say it's broken out of the box is simply jumping the gun. Today's desktop form factor is quite honestly obsolete--we've been using it for over 100 years if you include the paper-and-typewriter as a logical progenitor. The mouse itself was a massive improvement over using cursor keys to put the cursor where you want it, but it's still a relational device less accurate and slower than actually touching the location on the screen. If anyone remembers the light pens of the '80s, it had the advantage of accuracy and speed, though included the drawback of having to pick it up and put it down. The light pen even allowed you to 'draw' directly on the screen, albeit crudely.
If you want my opinion, multi-touch has only barely started and seems likely to supplant the keyboard/mouse for most tasks. This isn't to say the keyboard will go away, but I think the mouse is almost gone.
Posted by Vulpinemac
12th Dec 2011
