Whenever I read an article/forum post about the advantages of X operating system over Y and Z operating system, more often than not I see “Vista’s doing what Mac was doing years ago” or “Beryl is a million times better than Vista”. Frankly, I don’t see what the big deal about all these flashy configurations is. In fact, from what I’ve seen from stuff like Beryl and even Vista’s transparency effects it would just be a distraction than anything else.
Your interface can make glowing effects, make your windows all squiggly and icons can grow when you go over them. So what? I guess I can see WHY some people would want it (though maybe I don’t understand it completely), but for me, a simple interface goes a long way. For example, my setup in Ubuntu is just basically the Mac Aqua style. No flashy squiggly windows, no exploding windows, just a simple, clean interface with a desktop.
And this also applies to games. A game could have ultra photo realistic graphics, amazing smoke affects and motion blurs coming out the wazoo. Admittedly, this is a good marketing strategy since graphics are usually the first thing someone sees/hears about a video game, but if the game isn’t fun graphics mean squat. Sure, if a game came out now with Playstation 1-like motion captured graphics then it really wouldn’t be acceptable, but I’ve seen and heard people complain about the graphics in a game like Crackdown. The game is great fun, though it does have a fairly weak storyline, the graphics, at least to me, are more than acceptable. In fact some of the effects are quite awesome. Not every game is going to have, nor should they all have, photo realistic graphics.
What I’m trying to say is that people shouldn’t be looking at just the outside of a game, OS or even a movie but also at the innards. If this philosophy reached casual computer and especially gaming users I think the landscape would be much different.
