Ubuntu Unity and Gnome 3 Shell are trying to bridge the PC and the tablet,
but not to the mobile phone. However, they are doing it incrementally by
gradually adding touch friendly features to a desktop rather than putting a
mobile phone interface onto a PC. They're trying to find something that is a
reasonable compromise for medium to large screens using both touch and keyboard
and mouse.
The biggest problem than I see with the Windows 8 approach
is that instead of trying to find something that works with both touch and
keyboard/mouse, they just included both methods and jerk you back and forth
between them. It looks like something they improvised at the last minute once
they realized that tablets were going to be big sellers and replace PCs in some
applications.
Microsoft originally tried bridging PCs and tablets some
years ago by giving tablets a PC desktop interface and used touch to emulate
mouse clicks. That failed miserably. Apple and Android are bridging phones and
tablets by giving tablets a phone interface. That seems to be working quite
well. Now Microsoft is trying to bridge PCs, tablets, and phones by giving all
three a phone interface (bodged in on PCs with a peek-a-boo desktop). That seems
to be a bridge too far given the current reception.
Personally, I
happen to like Unity quite a bit as a desktop interface. It solves quite a few
of the fundamental design problems that Gnome 2 had (such as the infamous "find
the window" problem) while still retaining most of the familiar concepts and
categories of Gnome 2. It isn't however a tablet interface as it currently
stands. Canonical plan to continue to evolve it further over the next couple of
years. They're not trying to turn it into a phone interface though. I have less
experience with Gnome 3 Shell, but I think it's not as well thought out as Unity
and the changes it makes from Gnome 2 are a lot more drastic. From a UI
perspective, Unity seems to be more of a "fix the design problems in Gnome 2"
approach, while Gnome 3 Shell seems to be a "throw everything out and start
over" approach.
I think that Apple will try to bring their touch and
PC interfaces closer together. However, I think they will use the Ubuntu
approach of gradual evolution rather than the Microsoft approach of simply duct
taping them together. I don't think that Apple will completely merge IOS and
OS/X, but they will come up with a version of OS/X that allows easy porting of
many IOS apps (e.g. games) to OS/X in a usable form.
Personally, I
would like to see the PC UI become more touch friendly. I have installed PCs in
factories for applications which needed a touch interface. However, even if the
application itself works with touch, using any part of the OS itself (Windows
XP) to check or change configuration settings was absolutely painful and usually
required plugging in a keyboard and mouse (which is usually very difficult to do
when the PC is part of a machine).
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