Have you ever danced with your software?
If Windows, Linux, Ubuntu or Mac OSX were dance partners, how would they dance? Would they lead, or would you?
More importantly, would you accept a second dance if any one of them offered?
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Have you ever danced with your software?
If Windows, Linux, Ubuntu or Mac OSX were dance partners, how would they dance? Would they lead, or would you?
More importantly, would you accept a second dance if any one of them offered?
Factory Joe 
Im not sure about dancing, but as far as general “keeping pace”, windows is always 1 step behind me. I always feel like I’m waiting for it to do *something*. OSX, on the other hand, seems to keep up, if not somehow always be a step ahead. I really attribute a lot of that feeling to quicksilver, and the fact that i can get pretty much anywhere i want in my computerland with a max of 3-4 keystrokes.
windows stepped on my toes too many times for me to give it a 2nd (100th) dance. Im still stuck with it at work and hate every second of it.
linux, to me, is like the foreign exchange student that I’d LOVE to ask to dance, but don’t know if i can communicate with it well enough to get the steps right.
Windows would take my hand awkwardly while enthusiastically telling me how good the dance was going to be. It would lead me somewhat-clumsily through an extraordinarily-wide range of dances, not doing most of them particularly well but still fairly entertaining. I’d quite enjoy it until ten minutes afterwards, when I’d wonder where my wallet went.
Mac OS X would glide up to me in a shimmering outfit, beckon me with a sultry gaze and seductive whispers. It’d lead me around the floor in extraordinary twirls, mostly wonderful, occasionally way too showy to be comfortable but still impressive. I’d ask it for certain types of dance and it wouldn’t know them, but insist that its own dances were much better, really. Occasionally it would stop dead in a rather embarrassing fashion, and if I enquired about these stops it would glare at me, insisting that these stops had never happened and I was just trying to make it look bad. Then it would charge me $130 to keep dancing.
Heh, love it!
And yeah, I mentioned this idea to Tara and we decided that “choreograph” is a somewhat better word… or “conduct”.
But dancing is much more of a viseral experience and thus closer to my original thought.
I dragged linux around the dance floor for 3 and a half years. It stood on my feet and we blended in well enough, but there was no spark. It never suprised me with a new move. I had to teach it everything. It would fib and say it knew how to salsa or swing, but in the end, we always ended up waltzing.
I attempted a dance or two with OSX, but she didn’t speak english, and although I could mime the moves and we eventually got the hang of it, every few minutes she would yell “Tango!” and attempt to stalk sideways down the center of the dance floor with me. I suppose I could learn to tango, but, well, then there’s windows.
Windows is the reason that my right toe is sore. We fly around the dance floor together and she makes up for being a bit of a plain-jane by dancing pretty well, but I’m not entirely convinced that when she steps on my foot, it’s an accident. In fact I’m pretty sure it’s on purpose.
Heh, I think Eric nailed it (almost — it’s not a sore toe that Windows gives you, but herpes). I happen not to like dancing (or herpes), though, so Linux is great for me. Unless I want to do anything audio or video related. Lucky for me, I don’t have a need for that very frequently either.