Re: [9fans] sad commentary

[Bakul Shah <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com>]

> Its worse than that Skip -- I imagine many would rank Apple's time
> machine greater than venti just because it puts a pretty GUI on top of
> crap methodology versus doing something clever under the hood.

Pretty GUI doesn't hurt but it is the ease of use that makes
time machine popular. Kudos to Apple for making something as
unsexy as backups a desirable feature!

Pretty GUI may attract people initially but in the end it is
really about the ease of use.  Most people just want to use a
computer, not learn all about it (just as they want to drive
a car and not look under the hood). A "Plan9 for Dummies"
book will be great but that won't help all those people who
just want to take Plan9 for a spin.  With 9vx at least one
major hurdle has been removed.

BTW, I primarily use venti for backups in my multi-os
environment.  I would love a fancy GUI on it. Much easier to
look for a lost picture by what it looks like than try to
remember its camera generated name like P314159.JPG.

There is no reason in principle why venti can't be made as
easy to use as the time-machine.  If anything, plan9 is
perhaps a superior platform for building an easy to use
system as it has a regular structure.  It is just that most
people who use plan9 are programmers and seem happy with the
status quo.

> You
> can't be a success unless you have an animated 3D GUI consuming most
> of your CPU resources and expending all sorts of power.  We should
> have spent the last 20 years working on movie-OS versus actually
> trying to do systems research.

Didn't someone say back in 2000 that system software research
is irrelevant?!