Marion's Weblog

In his latest blog Jonathan Schwartz says "But let's be clear. Do I expect an investment banker at Goldman, Sachs to pick up the Java Desktop System? No. No way. He's not our target demographic, not a route to make 120 million into 1.2 billion. A call center in Bangalore, a factory in Tennessee, a generation of kids that care more about ringtones than Win32 legacy? Dedicated internet terminals in shopping malls, touch screens in phone booths, the world's academic environments? There's a market calling." So you might ask why would Sun want to use Java Desktop System internally if we don't expect Goldman, Sachs to use it?

As we have rolled out Java Desktop Preview this week we have gotten lots of feedback, most of it very positive. But, a few people complain that this really isn't as good as Apple's mature and very good user interface. While Java Desktop System is a very functional fully integrated user environment, there really is room for improvement. I think that one of the keys to successful change acceptance efforts is honesty. People become cynical if you sell them one thing but deliver something less.

But I digress. My question in the title of this blog was why JDS at Sun. If it isn't the best why should we use it? I think the answer to that question is really very simple. How can we ever expect Java Desktop System to get better if we don't use it? Maybe it will get better but I believe that it will get better faster if we use it.

If we don't use it I'm sure we will still sell it to a lot of customers in the target demographic. I'm no salesman but if we use Java Desktop System I believe we will sell it to more customers and maybe even expand the market. I believe in the power of Open Source and Sun. I can imagine a time in the future when the combination of security, mobility across platforms and a continually expanding market make Java Desktop system dominant.

But I am known for being an optimist. I once (many years ago) went into a meeting thinking that maybe the company was announcing bonuses when actually they told us they were going to lay most of us off ! But even if I am way too optimistic, even if Java Desktop System only takes hold in the target demographic that Jonathan defined, I absolutely think it is critically important for Sun to run Sun with Java Desktop System.

Comments:

I'm not sure that eating your own dogfood is the best way to make that dogfood palatable. You become used to the nasty taste. Take, for example, Netbeans. It wasn't until the Netbeans team started using IDEA that we started seeing huge improvements in Netbeans. Perhaps JDS developers should work on JDS while using OS X...

Posted by Unknown on November 11, 2004 at 07:56 PM PST #

Eating your own dog food is good. I urge you however to never underestimate the value of a beautiful, elegant interface.

This weekend I am driving several hours to pick up a NextStep-based machine, even though it is slow by today's standards and was last produced in 1993 or 1994. Why? It is simply the best UI out there, in some respects even better than the current OSX that it is based on.

I strongly believe that Sun should hire Keith Ohlfs, the originator of the Next UI, and tell him "go make it right". BTW, Keith Ohlfs also did a great job on WebTV's UI as well. Hey, you already have Bud Tribble, right? :-)

Posted by PatrickG on November 11, 2004 at 10:07 PM PST #

"How can we ever expect Java Desktop System to get better if we don't use it? Maybe it will get better but I believe that it will get better faster if we use it." From my experience with internal tools (and that is what JDS is) this is very very very optimistic. The sceptic spoke again ;-)

Posted by Georg on November 11, 2004 at 11:53 PM PST #