The Desktop

Posted Aug 15, 2012 10:43 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: The Desktop by dskoll
Parent article: The GNOME project at 15

but the basic interface is still the same: You pick up, dial or press a bunch of numbers (huh? Who in their right mind forces people to remember or write down strings of digits?) and your call goes through.

I don't know about you, but I these days make the vast majority of my phone calls by picking the other person's name from a list of names.

My point is that most people think the "old" interface (ie, something Windows-XP-like or XFCE-like) is perfectly adequate for desktop PCs.

Think of it as the QWERTY keyboard of GUIs – not optimal but incredibly expensive to replace on a large scale. We'll have to see how Microsoft gets on with their »Metro« effort (or whatever it is called these days).

The Desktop

Posted Aug 15, 2012 13:15 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't know about you, but I these days make the vast majority of my phone calls by picking the other person's name from a list of names.

I have a dirt-cheap Huawei phone (when my daughter lets me have it) and I find it faster to dial the number than search through the phone book. :)

Think of it [traditional PC desktop] as the QWERTY keyboard of GUIs – not optimal but incredibly expensive to replace on a large scale.

Exactly. I believe I mentioned that analogy in my original post.

The Desktop

Posted Aug 16, 2012 6:10 UTC (Thu) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link]

I have over 100 phone numbers in my contact list. Sure, if I could remember all the numbers I need to call then I'll never use the Contact Book. But for many people however, selecting a name from a list has become the primary interface for "dialling" and has been since mobile phones offered such functionality.