[Sigia-l] And then there's Inspiration

[Listera]

"David Heller" wrote:
> 2. Mac compatibility. I haven't worked any place in 5 years where this has
> been a problem.

David, therein lie your intractable problems. :-)

> How many of us really choose the equipment we are on anyway?

Not enough. But this argument comes perilously close to the "I'm not a war
criminal, I was ordered to do it" one. :-)

If you are not bothered by the status quo or the monoculture, and are
perfectly contented with what's given to you, regardless of its quality,
then there's no conflict, as there's "safety in numbers." Personally, I
don't have any problems with that stance.

I do have problem with those basking in the fuzzy glow of status quo who
then try to further propagate it by invoking its ubiquity in a tautological
manner. 

If Visio were not from a monopoly abusing company that can guarantee its
presence on four million desktops, including university labs, we wouldn't be
having this exchange based solely on Visio's merits. As you yourself alluded
to, people don't always have a choice in what they use, so let's not pretend
that they chose Visio because of its stellar UI/UE. Visio is not going to
get significantly better in this regard because there's virtually no
competition to it on that platform. We know what that company does in the
absence of competition: look no further than its web browser, it'll be close
to half a decade by the time it gets any facelift and then not even as a
distinct app.

We're having this discussion on a day the web is getting savaged by another
platform-specific virus, causing yet again untold amounts of waste of time,
money and energy. That's monoculture for you. That's design by testing for
you. That's putting UE first for you. That's security first for you.

I hope you don't mind that a growing number of people are sick of this state
of affairs and have grown weary of file-format lock-in and abuse of monopoly
privileges.

I readily admit that anyone can be made to "learn" anything, given
sufficient time, at which point it becomes "usable." The question for Visio
advocates is, why try? The answer, when stripped off all the minor reasons,
always seems to come down to the principle one: status quo.

This becomes crystal clear to you when you are sitting on the other side of
the fence, as I tried to explain above.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba