So for all my joking about Steve Jobs, a guilty pleasure of mine is watching those slick and over-produced presentations he does from time to time (“one more thing…”). Today, I saw the latest “Back to the Mac”, which shows some pretty cool stuff. Amongst the talk though, came a sneak peak at Mac OS X Lion, which features two things called “Launchpad” (yeah…) and “Mission Control”.
These new “innovations” are obvious extensions of current trends in UI design, and as Steve says are inspired by mobile computing. More importantly, they show where I would have liked GNOME 3’s Shell to go – complimenting the panel without killing it off. Users who want to use the panels, desktop, and existing capabilities can do so, while those who want to see top level Applications launchers and clustered window management capabilities get those, too. I don’t want GNOME to do things exactly Mac-like, but I would hope there is still time to see how OSX was able to combine changing UI trends and find a way to preserve the existing panels in the mix. That would allow users like myself to keep things old school, and give newcomers and netbook users the glitzy gloss treatment.
Jon.
You’re in a group I’ve never understood: the graphical power user.
My mind wants to grok the world as Aunt Tillies, and terminalfolk. I’d always assumed anyone who was “keeping things old school” was using GNU Screen to such an extent that they don’t even notice GNOME running back there.
Oh, I do use GNOME terminals, screen, etc. But these days, I also like a more full featured desktop environment. I’ve done all of the other stuff over the years, and if I rebel hard against GNOME Shell, the only thing really left is xmonad or something pretty severe.