I feel the same way about the iOS 7 calendar. It actually angers me to use it. I feel like smashing my phone against the wall on occasions. For some reason the previous calendar never annoyed me once and it never got in my way.
But then someone came in with a new paradigm. "_everything_ that slightly represents a skeuomorphic design _must_ be redone." and then they proceeded to completely fuck it up.
The Ubuntu upfuckery is that they are hell bent on making everything touchscreen compatible. One interface to rule them all.
Good luck and don't come crying when users refuse to follow.
I really dislike this recent trend we can see in Gnome, Unity, and Google even, but one would be blind to not see the reason behind: They all try to solve the touch issue. Desktops were designed for the mouse, and this do not translate well on touch screens.
One could argue there is a gap that cannot be bridged, but we should not complain that some people are trying to bridge the gap and create an interface that is working well on both screen+keyboard+mouse and touchscreens.
> One could argue there is a gap that cannot be bridged
I'm going to make the argument. A mouse and your finger are both pointing devices; they compete directly with each other.
A mouse is an excellent pointing device, and your finger is a terrible, nearly-dysfunctional pointing device.
Redesigning your UI, built for a mouse, to be finger-compatible instead is essentially saying "the mouse worked too well. We're going to give you a huge functionality downgrade BECAUSE WE CAN."
Yes, we should complain that people are trying to bridge the gap. Devices you're meant to carry around and use at a moment's notice use fingers because nobody ever forgets to bring those with them.
But just because drinking lemon juice kept sailors from dying of scurvy, doesn't mean it's a good idea to tell everyone to drink it. Lemon juice is better than dying -- and if they're not dying, it's a very rare person who's willing to drink it at all.
Where's the movement to make word processors more Twitter-compatible? Where's the movement to have sleeping bag alcoves, instead of beds, in your home?
I have a laptop. I can't remember ever thinking "I want to rub my grubby fingers all over the screen". If I wanted to do that, I'd grab a tablet or smartphone.
Touch is a compromise. Touch screen devices are useful because they go where proper computers don't. I can look at my smartphone at the bus stop where I wouldn't pull my laptop out. I don't see the point in wasting huge amounts of time and creativity designing these silly hybrid OSes.
It's like adding a horse trap to the front of your horseless carriage.
For all its vaunted touch-friendliness (or touchiness), the evidence is that it was a couple of years before they even in fact tested GNOME 3 on an actual touch screen: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3017371&cid=4083522... Is being able to unlock the screen a "core functionality"?
Rant: http://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/582674.html
All they have to do now is not fuck up. Xfce: please, just don't fuck up.