[haiku] Re: Who is Haiku for?
- From: Dane Scott - TuneTracker Systems <tunetracker@xxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:32:44 -0600
> Haiku manages to have all of them quite well, actually. The CLI
> binding is totally unobtrusive (think of commands like hey or alert).
> Discoverability comes from both simplicity and efficience if you mic
> them properly. Avoid having an "advanced" button hiding anything
> complex, and it's fine.
I like how well this thread has captured the spirit of what Haiku is trying
to do, and the paragraph above sums it up for me. Haiku is doing a
wonderful job of following BeOS' "advanced capabilities with a simple
interface" approach.
Nicholas' original post was also asking about direction, I think...seeking
speculation on what Haiku's role will be in the world, as it emerges. Let's
start with this; that there will always be people who want to break with the
status quo and try to find something different and, potentially, better, and
they're Haiku's likely adopters, or at least, dabblers. How long they stay
depends on the usefulness of the apps, though initially I think the key to
the whole thing is making the OS runnnable on peoples' computers. Until
there's good hardware compatibility, the people who would benefit most from
Haiku's lovely simplicity won't be able to access it, because they're not
inclined to run VMWARE or build their own computer just so they can run an
unfamiliar operating system.
Assuming Haiku does get some decent hardware-compatibility, what sorts of
apps will its users want? There are the standard, obvious answers; a decent
browser, word processor, media player, some games, etc. But beyond that, my
experience has been that the people who look for alternatives are inclined
toward the artistic and creative, and will be attracted by well-designed
multimedia applications. They'll want apps that let them work (and play) in
the areas of graphic design, audio and video editing, painting, music
creation, etc. We saw evidence of that among those who adopted BeOS, and it
seems likely the same trend will happen again. Just speculation, mind you!
Dane
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