Power User definition [LWN.net]

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 11:23 UTC (Mon) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
In reply to: Power User definition by bronson
Parent article: Day: A New Approach to GNOME Application Design

> people gravitating to hybrid cars

Well they are pretty much the same as "normal" cars from a drivers pov. i.e No need to learn new stuff; no need to adapt to changes which seems to be one of the primary reasons people hate changes so much.

> iPads

Tables are not any "changes" they are new toys / tools. People don't replace anything with tablets they just buy it as an additional device. And no comparing sales to traditional computers does not prove anything. Some people are claiming "tablets are replacing PCs" ... but most PCs are "good enough" for what they are used for so people rather spend their money on new shiny stuff rather then buying a new PC.

> smart phones

That's the only point that is true here but the marketing and media hype seems to be stronger then peoples resistance to changes.

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Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 12:36 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (9 responses)

Again, I say full of ****.

People don't replace anything with tablets they just buy it as an additional device

I know several people who have replaced their laptops with tablets. Could you provide citations to back up your points?

I don't know if you are a GNOME developer, but you certainly act like one: When people criticize the direction GNOME is taking, you insult them by saying they're just whiners who hate change instead of actually seeing if they have any valid points.

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 12:55 UTC (Mon) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (8 responses)

> I know several people who have replaced their laptops with tablets. Could you provide citations to back up your points?

I know several people who buy them as additional toys. So? The argument "people are buying more tablets" => "people are replacing PCs with tablets" is just flawed. Where is your citation to back *your* point?

Anyway you want citations there you go: http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Touch-oder-Tasten-1430422.... (its German though). Basically the paragraph "Kein Notebook-Ersatz" ("No laptop replacement") is worth reading.

> I don't know if you are a GNOME developer

I am.

> you insult them by saying they're just whiners who hate change instead of actually seeing if they have any valid points.

So you consider "It is bad change" valid feedback to work with?

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 14:41 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (5 responses)

So you consider "It is bad change" valid feedback to work with?

Yes, absolutely. If GNOME were not Free Software (ie, if you had to satisfy paying customers) you'd pay attention to such feedback. My job is creating software for paying customers and we certainly pay attention to our customers when they don't like a change we propose.

This is one of the few weaknesses of the Free Software development model, alas: Developers can happily ignore feedback without much risk. They get stuck in confirmation bias without any cold dose of reality to shake them out of it.

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 16:39 UTC (Mon) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (4 responses)

> Yes, absolutely. If GNOME were not Free Software (ie, if you had to satisfy paying customers) you'd pay attention to such feedback.

No, when that happens (I have to do that but not with GNOME) I just do ask the customers *what* is bad. "It is bad change something" is just worthless noise IMO.

> This is one of the few weaknesses of the Free Software development model, alas: Developers can happily ignore feedback without much risk.

Not implementing everything every single user ask for is not ignoring feedback. That's not how it works. Fortunately many do know how to provide feedback which results into improvements being done (compare GNOME 3.0 to 3.2 and the now in development 3.4 version).

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 17:04 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

No, when that happens (I have to do that but not with GNOME) I just do ask the customers *what* is bad. "It is bad change something" is just worthless noise IMO.

Well, of course it's "worthless noise" IYO. That's what I mean by confirmation bias.

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 17:06 UTC (Mon) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (1 responses)

OK I give up you seem to be just trolling.

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 17:31 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

I'm not trolling. GNOME developers made a bunch of changes to the way users interact with the UI. Many GNOME users said "Those changes are very bad."

I really don't see how feedback can be any clearer. You did X and users replied "Don't do X!"

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 18:05 UTC (Mon) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

I'm quite bad at parsing implicit communication, but it still seems to me that "this change is bad" is likely to imply "this change is for the worse".

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 15:09 UTC (Mon) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, GUI-related arguments are necessarily subjective.

The fact is that I had a setup I was reasonably happy with (Gnome 2) for several years, and had it yanked from under me and replaced by something I neither like out of the box (in fact, couldn't even /figure out/ out of the box -- Gnome 3 gets a huge FAIL for discoverability) nor can configure into something resembling my old setup (unless I want to dig through an alphabetically-sorted pile of "extensions" with mostly unobvious names and unknown quality -- why thank you very much!). I like change when the change solves a problem. I had no problem with Gnome 2.

Examples? How about this waste of space on the bottom of my wide^Wshort screen? Why is it there? How do I get rid of it? How about not grabbing "Alt-Tab" (which I actually use in Emacs -- I prefer window-management shortcuts to use the otherwise-useless "Windows" modifier key)? Can I make the top thing (I understand it's not called "panel" anymore) be vertical? Or at least make it auto-hide? That's just off the top of my head, and do realize that in the presence of other options (which is not something you Gnome people can change, thank god) those problems are deal-breakers.

I'm not saying Gnome 3 is unworkable for me -- it may well be workable, but the fact that I'd have to spend significant effort to make it usable is irritating, and the additional fact that there are other options means that you a) lost a user and b) that lost user has moved on with whatever opinion of your work he had formed on the initial encounter.

I'd shut up if I thought I'm some sort of OCD-afflicted weirdo, but I know for a fact that I'm not: there are a lot of us, see. And we'll stay with those initial opinions. Deal.

You made your own bed, guys, now please stop whinging about your users "not liking change".

(Also, keep coming up with New Revolutionary Visions every 2 months and the CADT impression of you will only get stronger.)

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 20:33 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Can I make the top thing (I understand it's not called "panel" anymore) be vertical? Or at least make it auto-hide?

Don't ask for things like that - you'll be told to go and write an extension.

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 15:36 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (6 responses)

> Tablets are not any "changes" they are new toys / tools.

I must not understand... This sentence appears to be contradictory. New tools ARE change, are they not?

> People don't replace anything with tablets

Flight manuals: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-13/u-s-air-force...
Cash Registers: http://allthingsd.com/20110823/apples-ipad-already-replac...
Text Books: http://www.inquisitr.com/138739/ipad-replacing-many-textb...
Medical Devices: http://www.padgadget.com/2012/02/08/medical-industry-fast...
etc. etc. etc.

> That's the only point that is true here but the marketing and media hype seems to be stronger then peoples resistance to changes.

That's an amazingly cynical attitude. Marketing is NOT the reason the smart phone succeeded.

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 19:43 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (5 responses)

I'm confused. I thought GNOME 3's entire design was predicated on the assumption that people would be using tablets for it all the time rather than PCs? (I can't see any sense to most of its design decisions except in light of that.)

Yet now we get 'people don't replace anything with tablets'. Hmm.

Power User definition

Posted Feb 13, 2012 23:03 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (4 responses)

I don't think they believe there will only be tablet but there will be a lot of them and it's a new open market that Apple and Microsoft haven't completely locked up yet. Keeping the UI flexible so that it can be used both on a tablet and a traditional desktop, without doubling the work, seems to make logical engineering sense. The two big vendors, Apple and Microsoft have independently come to the same conclusion as they are merging a bunch of their smartphone/tablet UI onto their desktop PC systems. I'm guessing that using a mouse on a UI that was designed with touch in mind is much easier than going the other way. Have you ever tried a traditional Windows tablet in the last 20 years? Awful, all sorts of mouse-dependent behavior that doesn't work with a touchscreen.

They may be right or they may be wrong but they came to their conclusions logically and reasonably AFAICT. We'll see in 5 years if these design decisions bear fruit.

Power User definition

Posted Feb 18, 2012 0:37 UTC (Sat) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link] (3 responses)

The UI you need for a tablet is very different from the UI you need for a desktop. Apple recognizes that and hasn't tried to make the user interfaces the same between the two.

> I'm guessing that using a mouse on a UI that was designed with
> touch in mind is much easier than going the other way.

Bad guess. There's a lot of touch operations that have no mouse equivalent, like anything using multitouch.

The mouse is a precision instrument, whereas touch is very imprecise.

Users get annoyed when they have to move their mouse a long distance, whereas tapping a different part of the touch screen is easy.

> Have you ever tried a traditional Windows tablet in the last 20
> years? Awful, all sorts of mouse-dependent behavior that doesn't
> work with a touchscreen.

Wow-- it's almost like the two products need different user interfaces. Maybe someone should make a note of that. A lot of companies and open source organizations have sunk a huge amount of time and money into the foolish assumption that tablet UIs are relevant on the desktop, and vice versa.

Power User definition

Posted Feb 18, 2012 6:15 UTC (Sat) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (2 responses)

> The UI you need for a tablet is very different from the UI you need for a desktop. Apple recognizes that and hasn't tried to make the user interfaces the same between the two.

That's just nonsense. Most of the user-visible changes in Lion and the announce features for Mountain Lion are the transfer of iOS UI elements to the desktop (such as the app launcher or Notification Center) and even whole applications (like Notes, Messaging)

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/02/apple-unleashes...

Power User definition

Posted Feb 18, 2012 10:14 UTC (Sat) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link] (1 responses)

That article says that they added "messages, notes, and reminders" to "Mac OS Mountain Lion." I don't see anything in there about making the user interface the same between the desktop and portable devices.

Power User definition

Posted Feb 18, 2012 18:11 UTC (Sat) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

If you didn't see that it was the same app and same ui then you must have not been looking, I don't know what else to say.