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by orib
6531 days ago
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I disagree with the premise of the article. On average, Free software seems to have better usability proprietary applications. Furthermore, usability is rapidly improving, since developers seem to be becoming more aware of usability issues in general. Sure, there are examples of horribly unusable apps, but I find the ones that suck the most are the proprietary windows apps, even the ones from big companies, and some of the most usable and consistent apps are open source. Even so, there is always room for improvement, and the biggest issue is simply the lack of developer time to implement all the great usability ideas that pop up. |
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Not sure about that. Dia vs. Visio? Visio wins. Maya 3D vs. Blender? Many say Maya 3D wins. GIMP vs. Photoshop? I'd say that one was really a tie with a large pool of people just used to the way Photoshop does things. OpenOffice vs. Word? OpenOffice still has lots of interface snafus compared to Word. (But AbiWord doesn't have those.)
I contend that Open Source / Free Software almost never achieves the same level of GUI polish as the best proprietary apps without someone being paid to do it. The market forces in the volunteer-only situation almost never push it to that level.
If you contend that Open/Free and Proprietary apps as a whole are around the same average level, I would generally agree. But let's be honest here: that's setting the bar way too low. Everyone should be aiming for the top few %. And when it comes to that, the Proprietary stuff has the lion's share.