I am not an Apple user. I don’t feel Apple envy or suffer from Apple blight. I do however enjoy Applepeels<\/A>, a thorn in the side blog which should be essential reading for the folks in Cupertino. Although with such thin<\/A> skin<\/A>, maybe Apple execs should avoid it altogether. The author obviously has some issues with Apple management, but he also evidently knows what he is talking about.<\/P> I am one of those people that think Longhorn will sell, when it arrives. But i also need to know about Tiger and Linux experiences. Easy to track of course- so many bloggers are Apple users<\/A>, Joi<\/A> for example.<\/P> But David Sobotta<\/A> homes in on one of the problems with desktops in general- <\/P> I then found out that in spite of doing an archive and saving my settings, my printers had disappeared. So I proceeded to add my network printer. In the process I found out about the annoying little “supplies” button that Apple has added to their print dialog box. Just what I always wanted, a trip to the Apple Online Store to buy my printer supplies. Taking me to the most expensive place on earth to buy printing supplies is not exactly what I consider an advanced operating system feature<\/EM>. <\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE> This kind of “functionality” really annoys users. Its good to know that Apple is as guilty as anyone else of creating integrated aggrevation<\/STRONG>. Truly great design avoids such base captology<\/A>.<\/P> David also takes a look at SuSE Linux 9.3<\/A>, and for an Apple lover comes to some stark and surprising conclusions<\/P> I actually find the user interface of SUSE 9.3 more productive than Tiger. Now there isn’t an image program as slick as iPhoto but there are lots of other apps with SUSE which don’t come with Tiger. <\/P> Also as far as getting things done, moving around the desktop, and accomplishing my work, I think SuSE may win the race, but I will give it a few more days.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE> So, Steve Gillmor says his MS Tablet makes him more productive<\/A>. Now here’s a Machead that says SuSE is more productive than Tiger, with a cleaner designed GUI. <\/P> Great design is hard to monopolize; there is always some flickr<\/A> just around the corner ready to engage people more effectively. How to win on the desktop – avoid integrated aggrevation. That means don’t take over my machine in unexpected ways. It also probably means avoiding DRM<\/A>, which is bad juju and just annoys people<\/A>.<\/P> Sometimes less function leads to a better experience.<\/P> As Sobotta puts it: “Maybe OS X is moving into the bells and whistles phase of their user interface”. <\/P> Less is more folks, remember the Google interface? No integrated aggrevation there. Just a function that’s there, when i want it, no more no less. <\/P> Are we learning from good design or not? Tim O’Reilly asks: Are designers the new heroes of the computer industry<\/A>? I would have thought that much is somewhat obvious, given the influence and kudos accorded to Jonathan Ives<\/A>. But Apple needs to make sure it doesn’t forget what it has learned.<\/P>