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Bryan Lund has quite the mockup of a future Ubuntu desktop. Click through to get to the page with the link to the same image and others in 'full size'. These aren't real 'full size' images as they're 1024x640. Most non-Apple screens aren't wide either. Hollywood went to CinemaScope a century ago; Wintel are still lagging. But it's just a mockup - right? Sort of. The venerable GNOME crew are working on something more substantial. Using GTK of course - what else? [Have you ever worked with GTK? QED.] But these sad people are still looking at appearances. These sad little people still think if you copy in Apple Aqua icons and other doodads onto what's been described as 'the manic-depressive Ubuntu brown' you'll succeed. An anonymous poster said of the mockup:

'The best theme I have ever seen in my life.'So let's stop right there. So let's ask a few questions.

What's the menu bar there for? On the 'full size' mockup you can see it's a rather shameless parody of Apple's menu bar - up to a point. The far right is shameless copying - and that's bad enough. But it's the left that's risible. 'Applications', 'Places', and 'System' is what it says. Something reminiscent of Apple before 1997. And of course the Ubuntu symbol to replace the Apple apple. Great work guys. But what's it there for? What's on the 'places' menu? 'Home'? 'Desktop'? 'Computer'? 'Videos'? 'Network'? 'Bookmarks'? 'Trash'? Do any of those icons look familiar to you? Take a thorough look. Where's the file manager? How do you start it? Gee but isn't that an APPLE dock? Or is it? Here's another screenshot. Those are Apple's 'yesterday' folder icons. Check the MP3 icon - it's an iTunes icon. And there's TextEdit's icon in the dock.

All these people can do is copy copy copy. They have NO CLUE what they're doing. Could this be the extent of the Shuttleworth 'vision'? Pretty icons? More or less stolen from Apple? Copying: that's what Microsoft are good at. Good at copying without having a clue what they're copying. The Neanderthals working on Ubuntu user interfaces are no better. Ubuntu: the open source Unix with the stable market share. 1% today, 1% tomorrow.