Comment by lioeters | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lioeters | Hacker News Reader

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> Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be.

Hear, hear! The desktop computer (and the metephor of "desktop") works. People have learned and adapted to be very productive with it.

I do not want a desktop computer with "the simple interfaces of mobile devices". I don't want to remember three-finger gestures on a trackpad, and certainly don't need voice-activated commands (it's faster and more accurate to type).

Like you, I'd also argue against the statement that "we now use smartphones and tablets most of the time", or that "they are much easier to use". This completely depends on what the user is doing with the device.

For certain kinds of communication, application or media consumption, sure mobile devices are easier to use. They're not that great for long-form writing (email, articles, books, programs), or as a personal information management system (file system, database).

All that said, the designs in this project are beautiful, and there are some useful-looking interface ideas. I found this statement at the bottom:

"Neo was designed to inspire and provoke discussions about the future of productive computing."

It has definitely succeeded in this goal.

> All that said, the designs in this project are beautiful, and there are some useful-looking interface ideas.

Agreed. I went in after reading some comments and fully expected to dislike it strongly, but there are some nifty ideas.

Might just need to add

- a fallback wm

- keyboard shortcuts (and all OS level shortcuts need to use Super/CMD/Windows so they won't collide with application shortcuts)

On a related note this might not be too much work to implement on top of KDE: it is extremely customizable and has tagging built in.

"Might just need to add

- a fallback wm"

imo this is one of the major reasons windows 8's GUI, Metro, failed. They didn't go all in. I understand the rationale though

> imo this is one of the major reasons windows 8's GUI, Metro, failed. They didn't go all in.

Not sure we'd liked it better if they'd made it completely unusable ;-)

They really lost me at the whole 3 finger gesture thing. That's a very unnattural thing to do when you are only ever using 1 finger at a time for 90% of the interactions with the touchpad. Furthermore they have like 2 handed 3 finger gestures to do things like zoom in and out.... I feel like pinch to zoom is a lot more effective and natural.

Three finger gestures are actually pretty nice when you get used to them. I even use the four finger gestures that Windows has somewhat frequently (to switch between virtual desktops)

Three finger is the one gesture I actually use on my macbook pro. My thumb sits on the edge of the laptop, my index is on the glass, and my second and third fingers are hovering at the ready. At some point I got into the habit of scrolling with fingers 2 and 3 rather than 1 and 2.

Four finger, or really anything requiring me to lift my palm rather than pivot from the keyboard, is absurd though.

One-hand three finger (text select, dictionary lookup, file and window drag and drop) and four finger (expose up and down, virtual desktops left and right) gestures are great on MacBook trackpad. At some point they were default in macOS but now I need to reenable them on every install in both trackpad and accessibility settings. Especially the tree finger one (point + middle + ring fingers) is so much better than click and hold to drag.

Two finger pinch to zoom is such an awkward gesture for me for some reason, but I recently discovered that some Android apps like Google Maps and Edge have an alternate one finger zoom gesture that I find much more intuitive: double tap and drag up to zoom out, and double tap and drag down to zoom in.

I completely disagree. I occasionally use 3-finger swipe to switch between desktops on OS X and the "gentle brushing" motion actually feels more natural than trying to "point and click" with one finger.

Now, to be perfectly fair, I also have CapsLock+Shift+H/L keymapped to do the same thing, as well as two-finger swipe on my mouse. The point is, one doesn't necessarily preclude the other.

Yeah I think this mindset is going to be prevalent with Windows users because these kinds of gestures are not native, while Mac users are comfortable with it since it's integrated in the OS.

It’s also a trackpad vs mouse thing. Three finger gestures work a lot better with the kind of high quality trackpads that the majority of macs come with.

And that is the rub. On my macbook pro, which has what I consider to be a significantly better trackpad, I three-swipe without even thinking about it. but that comes from very tight hardware/software integration.

I have only used Linux for the past decade, but your point still stands as I only get to use crummy windows trackpads. Mac trackpads are indeed much better. I probably would be more amenable to gestures with an actual functional trackpad

I have a FingerWorks iGesturePad on my desk right now, a 17-year-old device which is still to this day the most advanced multi-touch consumer product. My experience with this product teaches me that multi-finger input is not at all unnatural as you call it. You do it all day every day with everything in your life EXCEPT your computer; you would get accustomed to it in minutes or hours.

Didn't Apple buy Fingerworks and used the ideas if not the technology for the mobile devices?

Yes, and the laptop and standalone touchpads as well. Those touchpads are more similar to Fingerworks products than the touchscreen iDevices. I would even argue that Apple's current touchpads with haptic feedback are clearly superior to what Fingerworks offered, if you install third-party software to expand the range of gesture options. I've been using jitouch for close to a decade now, and on a MacBook Pro I use multitouch gestures at least twice as often as I use keyboard shortcuts.

I’d only disagree with your ‘I don’t want to remember gestures on a trackpad’- much like keyboard shortcuts, muscle memory makes for very easy pickup of intuitive gestures; there’s little to “remember”. I’m sure nowadays you don’t have to think hard on how to Ctrl/Cmd+C/P/Z?

I think this mindset of mouse over trackpad, as others have mentioned, is to some extent correlated with hardware quality: IMO trackpads on PC/PC laptops just feel bad to use (material texture/accuracy) relative to an Apple trackpad. Latest models are slightly closer in quality.

> muscle memory makes for very easy pickup of intuitive gestures;

The problem with muscle memory is that the gestures vary between operating systems or even different devices on the same OS if the user has changed settings. Your muscle memory ends up getting in the way instead of helping and causes endless confusion.

For anyone that uses vim key bindings or a Dvorak keyboard, they've already priced that into changing their settings, and decided it does not matter.

I dont think this is a valid argument: muscle memory is extremely contextual. Your muscle memory for your phone is definitely different from your laptop, and I don’t think the context switch is actually a hindrance.

This would extend to different devices that don’t share the same hardware (at the tactile/interaction level)

> I’m sure nowadays you don’t have to think hard on how to Ctrl/Cmd+C/P/Z?

Oh, I do it.

I'm so used to C-w/C-y, that if I'm not careful when cutting something and I forgot I'm outside Emacs I'll risk to close a window... ^__^;

Incidentally, this isn't a problem on macOS. I often finding myself wishing that Linux GUI applications and frameworks imitated Apple's keyboard shortcut conventions rather than the derivative scheme that Microsoft ended up with after largely abandoning CUA. Having access to emacs/readline shortcuts on a separate modifier key from the more widely known cmd+X/C/V/etc. stuff is great.

We can rebuild the desktop we have the technology.

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