[trekkin]

> I'm fascinated that all the real innovation going on in desktop environments (gnome3, unity, windows 8) seems to be taking a hammering.

Envy-driven development is not a good model. Desktop environments do not need tablet features in the first place...

> This is possibly just a case of the vocal minority and normal resistance to change but it will be interesting to see it all shake out in a year or two.

Or the opposite can be true - a powerful minority (project/company leaders), envious of other companies' success on tablets, decided to spend a lot of resources to try to enter this space, to the detriment of the majority of their (desktop) users.

[loftsy]

All projects and companies need a vision and clearly for a lot of designers, developers and product managers this vision is more integrated simpler to use, touch enabled devices. Part my comment was to say it is not yet clear that this is the right long term solution but its not like there are any compelling alternatives.

Microsoft is not entering the space because of envy(?!?) they are entering it because that is where they see the future of computing.