Shuttleworth: "Apple is driving the innovation"

[greggh]

http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=3413801

I thought this was a pretty interesting interview with Shuttleworth. In the following part I was a little surprised at his opinions...

derStandard.at: If you look on the desktop market today there is one operating system that is growing significantly and it's not Linux. It's OS X. What do you think is the reason for that?

Shuttleworth: First of all, we should really understand this, as it's an important observation: The fact that OS X is growing, tells us that Windows is weakening. The fact that OS X is growing and Linux isn't, tells you that OS X is offering things that Linux is not. One of those is the pace of change, the level of innovation. You really have to give credit to Apple for driving innovation. Another of those things is their focus on the web as an experience. They recognize very strongly that the web is the killer application of the PC today and not Microsoft today.

There is a real opportunity for us to deliver a great web experience, but we have to focus very strongly on getting this done.

derStandard.at: So OS X is more interesting for you than Windows?

Shuttleworth: For me OS X is more interesting. I believe that free software is the most amazing platform for innovation, but I believe that that innovation also tends to follow a "lazy path", people often choose the path of least resistance, they want to express their ideas and they want to find the easiest way to do that. And at the moment we don't offer a particular easy place to go and express your technology.

There's some exceptions to that obviously, if you look at Firefox plugins for example. Once Firefox got to the same level of functionality as Internet Explorer we saw an explosion in the number of plugins. That was driven by people saying "I have an idea on how to make the browser better". And what's the easiest way to achieve that? Go write a Firefox plugin! And I guess that should tell us a lot.

derStandard.at: What do you see as the main obstacles holding back the success of the Linux desktop?

Shuttleworth: I think we don't yet deliver a good enough user experience. I think we deliver a user experience for people that have a reason to want to be on the Linux platform, either because of price or because of freedom. If that was your primary reason, Linux is the right answer.

But if you are somebody who is not too concerned about price, who is not too concerned about freedom, I don't think we can say the Linux desktop offers the very best experience. And that's something we have to change, that's something I'm committed to work on, focusing increasing amounts of resources of Canonical on figuring out on how we actually move the desktop experience forward to compete with Mac OS X.

I never knew before reading this that Shuttleworth was such an Apple fanboy.

[Patrick]

I thought he made some valid points. Is OSX better than Windows? Absolutely. Does Apple do some innovative things? Yes, to a degree. Can we learn from the current success of Apple? Absolutely. Desktop Linux should continue to improve and do innovative things. One big factor of Apple's success is their marketing campaign. If I had the cash I would hire their PR company and do a massive advertising campaign for Linux in the mainstream media. I really think advertising makes a huge difference in the level of recognition in the non tech world.

[dann]

Ok, I keep hearing over and over how innovative Apple is and they provide the best user experience possible. But I am still in the dark as t what experience they are providing that is so stellar. Perhaps this is an area my "geekiness" is getting in the way. What is it about OS X that makes it that much better than Ubuntu?

Is it the limited number of choices you have that are more tightly integrated on the OS X side of things? Is it the notion that for most people acquiring OS X is simply purchasing and Apple system whereas Ubuntu pretty much requires you to install it on a system (yeah, I know Dell is out there).

Seriously; the major innovation I see OS X over Ubuntu or any Linux Desktop flavor for that matter is marketing.

Someone, please help me find this innovation; this revelation of desktop bliss. I'm not trying to be flip here, I am serious!

[snarkout]

Well, at the very least The Dock was apple's idea, and we've been whoring it ever since. I'll admit that I don't care for the dock - I think it's a shitty way to manage windows, and I much prefer quicksilver or katapult style launchers, but linux folks have produced literrally dozens of shitty (and, ok, some not so shitty) ripoffs. Compiz and its ilk are all basically clones of similar technology that has been available on the mac for *ages.* Hell, like it or not, people seem to love the way the apple desktop looks and behaves - go to kdelook or gnome look and be prepared to be amazed at the number of hacks people come up with to macify their linux desktop. Apple definitely leads the way with all-in-one lifestyle computing - you can argue this is monopolistic behavior or Steevo feeding sheeple crappy tech, or any number of things, but the bottom line is that with a few clicks you can have pretty much any multimedia experience you want on a Mac, and you can have it delivered via several different media (which, yes, require purchasing Apple gear, like an iPod or iTunes, etc). I don't know if any of this is what shuttleworth was talking about, though, since he was vague.

[allix]

Well, at the very least The Dock was apple's idea, and we've been whoring it ever since. I'll admit that I don't care for the dock - I think it's a shitty way to manage windows, and I much prefer quicksilver or katapult style launchers, but linux folks have produced literrally dozens of shitty (and, ok, some not so shitty) ripoffs. Compiz and its ilk are all basically clones of similar technology that has been available on the mac for *ages.* .

I am not sure about the dock, but Compiz was heavily influenced by 3d desktop which came out in the early part of this century.

[Wally Balljacker]

Well, at the very least The Dock was apple's idea, and we've been whoring it ever since.

The Dock originally came from NEXTSTEP, not Apple.

[snarkout]

And who, exactly, do you think NeXT was?

[mikeschoon]

Steve Jobs... not Apple. Next ran on everything but the mac until Jobs came back.

[mikeschoon]

Even better:



Check out that copyright on the prompt!

[snarkout]

Fair enough - I'm not going to chase a silly argument down a rabbit hole, though.

[mikeschoon]

Agreed... it was a little off topic... sorry, buddy.


I think that Shuttleworth, being the sponsor of an enormous distribution, has to concern himself with competitive intelligence. Apple is making a moderate dent in Windows with their marketing and if Apple did the same to Ubuntu everytime a little mistake was made, it could cause a lot of problems. Apple did benefit a lot from the Vista fiasco and a lot of that had to do with marketing aggressively.

[Wally Balljacker]

I think we deliver a user experience for people that have a reason to want to be on the Linux platform, either because of price or because of freedom.

I think that pretty much sums it up. Most people have zero incentive to look into Linux. Technical superiority and open source code aren't good enough reasons for mass adoption, especially with Apple being the primary alternative to Windows.