[andrewvc]

Change is good. Temporary uncomfort is good.

This isn't like moving to a new city to broaden your horizons. I didn't find changing the side the buttons were on expanded my consciousness and brought about a refreshing personal transformation.

No, the button change simply annoyed me because it was pointless, and ruined years of muscle memory (till I turned it off). Change for the sake of change can be good in some areas of life, but for the simple day to day stuff, if it isn't broken, don't fix it unless you're actually making it better.

Has anyone actually found the new buttons better? The closest I've heard anyone say is, "eh, I got used to em pretty quick". I'd hardly call that a ringing endorsement.

I found them actively bad, as they're right on top of all your menus, which could lead to mistaken menu clicks and vice versa.

[Legion]

>> "This isn't like moving to a new city to broaden your horizons. I didn't find changing the side the buttons were on expanded my consciousness and brought about a refreshing personal transformation."

Not everything is a revelation, or a revolution. Small details matter. Hence the fact that we're even talking about this one.

>. "but for the simple day to day stuff, if it isn't broken, don't fix it unless you're actually making it better."

I would argue that it is better. Now everything is grouped together on the left. Since we're speaking to each other in English, I can say that "we" read from left to right.

Left makes sense. The buttons are positioned the same location from the top-left of the screen whether I'm on my 1024x600 netbook or my 1920x1200 laptop. They're no longer at the farthest possible point away from where my eyes typically linger.

You can say that's a small thing, you can say it doesn't matter to you. But to simply say it's "change for the sake of change" is to woefully undersell the idea of good design. (Of course, in this case, it's mostly aping the design established by Apple, but better to perpetuate good designs than bad ones)

[Rust]

FWIW, I actually do find the buttons to be better positioned now. Ubuntu's default layout puts the power, email, date/time and network tray icons in the top-right corner of the screen, within a quarter-inch a maximized window's control buttons. I am constantly clicking the wrong button when I'm in a hurry, sometimes closing a window (requiring me to answer a dialog box before I can work in that window again) or minimizing it when I'm just trying to set my IM status, and sometimes opening the calendar when I want to close a window. Top-left is better for me since the worst I can accidentally do there is open the Applications menu for a second, and it disappears when you click outside it, unlike the calendar.