Fuzzy Logic

I was browsing Digg this morning and found a rather interesting story with some random guy (evidently a ‘Matthew Daly’ in the UK) about how he thought his Ubuntu installation was easier to use than OS X.  In fact, his exact statement was:

A modern beginner-oriented Linux distribution such as Ubuntu is considerably easier to use than a Mac.

Now, I am a huge Linux guy.  I love my T61 Thinkpad running Ubuntu (formerly Gutsy, now Hardy).  I’ve had the laptop for almost a year exactly and have had Ubuntu on it ever since the first Ubuntu 7.10 RC releases and couldn’t be happier.  It gives me, a very very cranky power user, exactly what I want.  That being said, I just don’t agree that it is easier to use for new users than OS X.  In fact, I think they both are horrible for new users.

Part of the problem is that we must first define what a ‘new’ user is.  Clearly it is very hard to imagine anyone in the US, let alone most of the developed world, that has never had any contact with a normal desktop computer.  So, for the purposes of this post, I’m going to assume that a ‘new user’ is a normal person who has used their (Windows) computer for browsing the internet, managing email, writing Word/Excel documents, and maybe downloading pictures from their camera.  Unfortunately, that is all many people use their computer for.  Many of us who are very computer-savvy forget that some things are just confusing because those who are less informed don’t fully understand the technology.  If a novice user sees a pop-up that says they have spyware and they can “GET RID OF IT BY CLICKING HERE!” then they’re going to do it because that sounds scary.  They’re not going to know that a random pop-up ad has no chance of finding spyware, they’re just going to know that someone is telling them that their computer is messed up and, as a result, they’re going to attempt to fix it.  All of this adds to the problem of usability.
1. The Desktop:The problem with the Ubuntu Desktop, compared to the OS X desktop, is that it is very sparse as shipped.  This is great for Linux diehards, but for someone who wants to use Linux like Windows they’re going to initially be confused.  Why would they look up to the top bar when they’re always used to going to the bottom-left and clicking the start button?  At least OS X keeps their bar on the bottom.  On top of that, at least the Mac starts with certain applications initially on the screen.  Ubuntu doesn’t give you anything like that.

2. Installing New Software: I’ll give Matthew this point.  Ubuntu is definitely better in this regard.  The .dmg format is slightly confusing for new users.  At least .deb seems to work fairly well–if you double click the file then Ubuntu handles it very well.

3. Compiling from Source:  I don’t think that this is really a consideration that should be taken with new users.  There’s no reason they would need to compile things and, if they did, they aren’t new users.  Hell, even trying to get people to understand what the hell ‘compiling’ source meant would be confusing–and we’re not even going to start working on what they would have to do to get all of the dependencies for various software.

4. Out of the box functionality:  I agree with Matthew that it’s a slightly unfair comparison because of the different situations.  For instance, Ubuntu on old/weird hardware is going to be a completely different experience than getting it pre-installed on a new Dell machine.  Of course, the same can be said of OS X as a ‘hackintosh’ instead of on native apple hardware.  For that reason, I’ll let this point go.

5. Greater range of pre-installed applications: This is true although I’d argue some of them don’t meet the quality/polish of Mac OS X.

6. Better support of third party media players:  Maybe this is just me being me, but people have iPods.  iPods outnumber everything else, last time I checked.  I know that when I tried Amarok a few months ago, probably around January, that it wouldn’t do many of the things that I wanted it to do (album art on my 5.5G iPod, it split up podcasts into multiple injuries, various other things).  iTunes works, plain and simple.

I love Ubuntu and wouldn’t want to use OS X, but I don’t think it’s (yet) fair to say that Linux is easier for a completely new user than OS X.