I think it's really awesome that Linux is finally taking the lead with innovation on the desktop — Gnome-Shell and Unity are just the beginning. And, they are not "catch-up": they are released both before and with more interesting changes than Lion or (what we've seen of) Windows 8.
However, what Cupertino and Redmond are up to isn't "nothing", it's just not the desktop. The Windows Phone "Metro" UI is downright amazing when you use it, and iOS isn't bad either. Sadly, and I was hoping this would be better this time around, the open source world is still years behind on mobile.
(I'm not counting Android here, and that's a shame. Honestly, I've used it, and the innovation there, especially in user experience, isn't anywhere near the levels in iOS, Windows Phone, or webOS. I would include Android 3.0, but that's not open source and won't be for a while.)
I feel as if this article has a strong tinge of exaggeration (See: ".. ALL desktop ...") and you make some good points too.
I haven't tried Gnome3 extensively and daily I use Snow Leopard (On my MbP while I'm out) and Win7 (Main desktop machine) and Gnome3 and more specifically, Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity, hasn't really caught my attention in any huge way.
The new sidebar on Unity reminds me of the Dock and the new Win7 taskbar with some differences, they've now adopted a similar MacOS top bar, 'Spaces' aren't new, quickly launching applications isn't new or unique (Startbar since Vista and Spotlight on Mac) and so on.
Even with things like Compiz which whenever I use is basically to emulate features available on Win or Mac. For example, the window snapping functionality of Win7 by using the Grid plugin and the Spacebar preview of Mac by another plugin. Actually, most of the default plugins of Compiz I never use, I always seem to be needing to install the extras or rather, the copied/heavily inspired ones.
I absolutely agree in regards to Android too. I do love it (I've had a Samsung Galaxy S since last year) and do suggest it to others but it seems most likely my next phone will by WP7 or an iPhone and not Android.
Linux isn't MacOS or Windows and never will be. I like using both of those OS for different reasons and I like Linux too when I boot into Arch with a nice tiling window manager going and do some work/play.
And I just read the linked Reddit comment by the other guy. Spot on.
They aren't new but they've been fairly common in Linux desktop environments since the 90's while OS X didn't introduce them until 2007. I'm not sure where they first appeared but at the very least they've certainly become a common idea because of Linux.
Its true that the Unity UI was influenced by the Mac OS dock, but there have been a lot of UNIX UIs that were using docks all the way back into the 90s.
Also, its not true that Compiz stole the Windows 7 snapping feature, that was in Beryl even before Windows Vista came out. They _did_ steal the Windows 7 auto-tiling and MacOS expose though - so you do have a point. Its sort of nice to see all the cross pollination between the different platforms, and nice to think that UNIX is contributing a lot to pushing forward the state of the art.
I own both a Galaxy S II (Android 2.3) and an iPhone 3GS. IMHO, Android has the lead on the user interface.
Reuse of components and events provided by other apps is at the heart of Android, the system notifications are better, it has desktop widgets that are actually useful, keyboard interaction for writing text is better (I love copy/pasting or moving the text-cursor around on my Android) and you can use the back-button everywhere (just as on the web).
The only problem with Android is that many apps available in Google's Market are really shitty. Skype itself, which works fine on the iPhone, will bleed my battery dry in only 3-4 hours, with that same battery being able to last for 3 days with 3G + email-sync enabled.
If they get the market story straight, I'm sorry for the contestants, but Android is a competition killer.
I actually don't understand this. Those are all features — good features — but that doesn't mean it has a good user experience. Android, when I use it, has lots of completely strange and unintuitive choices: a third of the OS in green/black, another third in orange/gray, and the last third in black/orange is the most obvious, but there are others: an unlock mechanism that acts before you lift your finger (unlike the rest of the OS); scrollbars in most apps that seem to "inchworm" along; over-used and confusingly-placed drop shadows in the Gmail app; gray, thin titlebars and thick "action bars" in other places; orange glows around the icons in the launcher but an orange, square backdrop in the home screen; unintuitive "glow" effect at the end of lists (after modeling physical motion for the list above, abruptly stopping is disconcerting: it feels like the list has not reached it's natural end, but smashed into something).
There's more, but while Android does have a lot of really awesome features, the interface and UX don't appear like anyone bothered to even try and design them.
Android is a better mobile web/cloud device, for sure. Multimedia in general is better on iOS, but unfortunately for Apple, that's the same marginally profitable niche they dominated in the desktop era. For most people a mobile phone is a window into the web world and that's just more deeply encoded into Google's DNA than it ever will be in Apple's.
"I think it's really awesome that Linux is finally taking the lead with innovation on the desktop..."
The key word is "finally."
The proponents of the open source development model and, in particular, the proponents of X-Windows, promised that their way would lead to superior innovation in the user interface and user experience areas. That innovation has been a long time coming.
Now that those promises are finally coming true, momentum has switched from desktop computers to mobile computers, an area where everyone is still trying to catch up with Apple.
However, what Cupertino and Redmond are up to isn't "nothing", it's just not the desktop. The Windows Phone "Metro" UI is downright amazing when you use it, and iOS isn't bad either. Sadly, and I was hoping this would be better this time around, the open source world is still years behind on mobile.
(I'm not counting Android here, and that's a shame. Honestly, I've used it, and the innovation there, especially in user experience, isn't anywhere near the levels in iOS, Windows Phone, or webOS. I would include Android 3.0, but that's not open source and won't be for a while.)