The PumaCode.org Blog

I just got a nice dose of schadenfreude as I read this email from Bill Gates after he tried and failed miserably to find and install a couple pieces of software for Windows. Anyone who uses Windows has been there before: hour after frustrating hour spent trying to coerce your computer to do do something which should be relatively simple:

“So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.

“The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)”

On the one hand it’s rather humorous to see that Mr. Gates himself goes through the same annoyances the rest of us do when using Windows, but that also begs the question: why on earth does Windows still suck then?? This email was written 5 years ago, and Windows usability is still getting worse.

It blows my mind that people can still say that Linux “isn’t ready for the desktop.” Installing software in Ubuntu couldn’t be easier: whether you do it via the super-intuitive GUI or the command line, you simply search for and mark the software you want to install from one easy place, and all dependencies are automatically resolved. And you never need to reboot, unless you’re actually updating the kernel.

Of course Ubuntu is at an advantage here, being open source: they can directly distribute third-party software such as MySQL, Apache, OpenOffice, etc. But even third parties that want to distribute their own software (whether open or proprietary) can easily hook into the repository system and provide their own packages seamlessly, and even define interdependencies with Ubuntu or other software. All the other distros have similarly intuitive systems.

And then we have Microsoft Update, which for some inexplicable reason requires that you run it via Internet Explorer, and takes many minutes of “getting ready” before you’re even allowed to start using its (horribly unfriendly) interface.

Who knows, maybe Gates leaving is just the thing Microsoft needs (and here’s to hoping that Ballmer follows him out the door shortly). Having a CEO that puts up with a system so frustrating that even he can’t use it, much less allowing it to ship, is something that no company can survive with for long.

I’ve mentioned earlier that I think Apple is a rather anti-open company. They have enthusiastically used DRM to lock users into iTunes, and their recent overtures to move away from DRM seem half-hearted and hollow. They even opt for a proprietary connector on their iPhones and iPods so they can collect licensing fees on accessories rather than using the near-ubiquitous mini-USB connector, which of course has the industry-chilling effect of causing third parties to tailor to the largest demographic at the cost of pushing openness and competition aside.

The most notable exception to their closed nature has been WebKit, the rendering engine that powers their Safari web browser. WebKit was originally a fork of the KDE project’s KHTML engine, and after some initial grumbling by KDE developers that Apple was following the letter but not the spirit of the GPL, Apple publicly released its source code versioning and bug databases. As a result, both WebKit and KHTML enjoy wide developer support today, and a healthy ecosystem of collaboration has evolved around and between the two projects.

Apple’s motive in maintaining this collaboration is clear: they want web pages to render correctly in Safari. But that’s OK — contrary to popular belief, companies can demonstrate openness while still looking out for their own financial interest!

So I was a bit surprised today, when reading up on the upcoming “Snow Leopard Server” Mac OS X release, that they have been doing extensive work on open-source Calendar and Contacts servers as well, released under the Apache 2.0 license. The so-called “Exchange killer” of the open-source world is still a very elusive animal, and its absence is particularly frustrating for those of us trying to stay connected and synchronized while still supporting open standards. Outlook and Exchange are both horrible products, but the fact remains that they still have no peer in this area, open or not.

Once again, Apple’s motives here are rather self-serving (as explained in the article): they want the iPhone to crack into the lucrative enterprise business space, as well as give regular consumers the type of reliable push email and synchronization services that business users have enjoyed for some time. Well, all I can say is: that’s great, more power to them!

Kudos, Apple, for taking a bold and welcome step in supporting openness instead of just writing another proprietary server technology. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on these developments and look forward to being able to someday (hopefully soon) deploy reliable Calendar and Contacts servers for my personal use.

I’ve had my Eee for a few weeks now and my experience with it has been pretty much as I expected: overall I’m very pleased with the little device, but there’s definitely room for improvement. The keyboard is usable (I’m typing this post on it now) but a few layout improvements would make it much better.

And, the infamous Wi-Fi issues have gotten me a couple times; I have no problems at all connecting to my home network (which uses WPA) but sometimes I can’t connect to public hotspots. Which isn’t too big of a deal, since I’m able now to tether to my Windows Mobile 6 phone with its unlimited data plan.

So in short, it’s living up to my expectations of an ultra-mobile PC to hold me over until the industry can “get it right” in this segment. And it looks like Dell may come to the rescue. Their “Dell E” line looks very impressive, and is set to start at $299 on the low end!

Dell certainly has the whole economies-of-scale thing worked out, and the fact that they already offer systems pre-loaded with Ubuntu is very encouraging. I’m certainly hopeful that they can put together a great Ubuntu system that works very well out-of-the-box and is supported with new updates, at least much better than the terrible Xandros flavor that Asus used but doesn’t offer updates for. I’m also very encouraged about their recent announcement that they will be pressuring their component providers to release fully open-source drivers, which should also help the Dell E have first-class reliability with its hardware.

If you look at the slides provided on the Engadget link, they also seem to be prepping their sales channel to position Linux as the best choice for this type of device, with XP also being “available” if users really want it.

I have the very strong feeling that by the time Christmas rolls around this year, there will be a great many highly-capable (and inexpensive) netbooks to choose from.

Here’s a great site and accompanying blog post that detail many of the annoyances that have plagued Windows for far too long and still aren’t fixed in Vista. They concentrate mostly on visual and design aspects (as opposed to functionality) and may seem pedantic at first, but Microsoft still hasn’t figured out that it’s the little things that matter.

For as much as they’ve hyped their sleek Aero Glass interface, you’d at least think that they would have made sure they got rid of all the “old” icons from XP (and in some cases, 95), but that’s painfully not the case. When you’re suddenly presented with a large icon that is jarringly out of place with the rest of the UI, it takes a lot away from the experience.

Hopefully Microsoft will not ignore the effort this blogger has put into detailing them in a well-presented, orderly fashion.