[momotomo]

Very much relate to this. Some days, especially in the corporate environment where I work, I genuinely wonder if we are missing the point completely with all the innovation and advancements in OS' and software instead of focussing on cleaning up what is already there. It always feels like there's more time spent developing all of this than there is dogfooding it.

One thing to add to the gripes re iOS - I've found that it works beautifully when it does, and horribly when it doesn't. His point on notification clearing reminded me of the Mail app when you have connection failures: I had 5 accounts tied into it, and when the networking failed it would throw 2 modal dialogues for each account. The amount of time I spent glued on the spot hammering away at notifications so I could move on felt staggering after a while.

I had a glut of other misc. quirks and persistent crashes that cut through the gloss on the device, this in combination with a string of Windows 7 bad behaviour (started python development, started hating python development) led me to switch onto linux (started loving python development) and a droid handset. Guaranteed they will have just as many warts and bad behaviours, but it feels more reasonable because I'm expecting them, and on linux, have an opportunity to fix them.

There's two aspects to being a "power user" (not entirely but I try) that I could never take for granted - this capacity to fix things that don't work, but also the opportunity to work with the more atomic tools. There's nothing more soothing than stringing commands together, writing a script, or organising things in a text file or database: mostly because if something breaks, I broke it, I can see the breakage, I can fix the breakage. Minor bliss!

Addendum / edit to this to provide context - I think coming from a control systems background has coloured a lot of my opinions in regards to innovation. I've seen fistfuls more value delivered (in this field, potentially applicable to others), by creating small, clean, highly polished, iterative and well integrated systems as opposed to large, sprawling and constantly evolving...messes. The sometimes popular fail first / fail fast / iterate like crazy mantra makes me itch. I've seen successful lean / agile approaches executed that focus on quick delivery without being so flippant about quality.

[keithpeter]

"Guaranteed they will have just as many warts and bad behaviours"

Absolutely!

But you are not alone on Linux, and in the 'everyone sees this' scenario, be assured someone will be working on it somewhere, or something slightly similar...

Ubuntu actually run a 'papercuts' bug fixing programme designed to get new people interested in developing...

[momotomo]

It's been an interesting switch, I've found that in terms of what "I do" on a laptop or device, that hasn't been impacted very much nor inherited a lot of new papercuts. I have however discovered a bunch of additional functionality that has been really productive.

A lot of this is spoken as a total newbie to both platforms and someone who didn't look into them seriously before changing (coming from a long term Windows 8 / Windows Phone / iPhone background).

Androids intents make it feel much closer to a real operating system in the way it allows applications to interact with each other (compare chrome browser integration on android vs iOS). Linux (Mint in this case) feels incredibly low friction when getting started thanks to apt-get, and a lot of the screw ups that I lived with in Windows seem to fail more spectacularly on Linux, with the caveat they can be fixed to the point of being quite polished by digging into configuration or updating libraries.

Under Windows and iOS it feels like you start at 80% working and finish at 80% working. With linux and derivatives it feels more like starting at 65% and being able to tune your way up to 90%. Prefer the latter at the moment.