[Wylug-discuss] Gnome 3 Review

[Simon Brown]

At Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:29:59 +0300,
Tim Schofield wrote:
> Looking around the office that I find myself in this morning, I can't
> see many jobs that can be done more efficiently by using a touch
> screen device, in fact quite the opposite. I think that in an office
> environment keyboards will be the dominant input device for many years
> to come.

Thank you for this, it illustrates my point wonderfully.

The primary use of computer systems has changed since their invention
and will continue to do so as computer systems evolve. Up until the
early nineties, computer use was dominated by "Big" users, scientific
research, military, telephone exchanges and such. Then came office
productivity and a computer in every home. Now social and personal use
of computers is becoming dominant and the market is changing with it.

Just as the UNIX system vendors of the 90s suddenly found themselves
marginalised by the far higher sales of desktop PCs. Vendors of
desktop office PCs are finding themselves marginalised by higher sales
of phones and tablets. 

R&D money follows sales. Which do Apple sell more of, iOS devices or
MacOS devices?

Those office jobs you saw this morning being done with a keyboard will
continue to be done with a keyboard for the near future. It's just
that those uses will constitute a minority of computer uses.

If Windows, GNOME and Unity don't change to suit the computer systems
people are buying, they might go the same way as Tru64, AIX, IRIX and
Solaris.

Simon