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Comment by cookiecaper | Hacker News Reader

Nobody seems to be able to explain the window controls, so hopefully we can be loud enough to get them to switch them back. Everyone should write/harass important people at Canonical regarding this.

I really seriously doubt they have anything approaching sufficient data for the change. It breaks every convention a user would be familiar with (though the controls are on the left like in OS X, the functionality of the buttons is reversed; in OS X, leftmost closes, here, rightmost closes), including existing Ubuntu users.

Commence pressure on Canonical promptly.

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It seems like a rather superficial change to me. If you were to sit down and use it, you would probably get used to it quickly. It didn't take me long to get used to Windows 95 putting the menu bar inside the window, or its menu-title-min-max-close pattern instead of close-title-lower-raise.

Also, as for breaking conventions, OS X breaks many conventions a Linux/Windows user would be familiar with, but nobody is suggesting that Apple restyle their OS to look like Windows.

That said, I can see where working regularly on both OS X and Ubuntu's new branding could get frustrating, because the buttons are in the same place, but different.

I disagree. Apple has a quality OS that forces users to use the left-hand buttons, and Ubuntu's perfectly free to try the same thing. In my opinion, buttons should be placed on the left of the menu bar. I've seen that users tend to keep their windows to the left of the screen, and left-side controls may require less mouse movement on average to reach, whereas the right side's edge is dependent on the window size.

I also sort of like the close button on the right with the buttons on the left edge (reverse of OSX as you noted). I think that makes it slightly more difficult to accidentally close the window.

they are perfectly free to use it ....as long as they will be not sued due to 'innovative apple idea' of three buttons on the left side

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