I think the article was spot on. This vague idea of elegance you mention is the "magic" that Steve Jobs refers to. To make that happen on the Linux desktop, a

I think the article was spot on. This vague idea of elegance you mention is the "magic" that Steve Jobs refers to. To make that happen on the Linux desktop, a really talented developer with good design skills, have to start over from scratch. Leave the legacy toolkits. He will have to be a dictator, uncompromising in the design vision. Good user experiences cannot come out of a committee, or the "open source development model". GNOME and KDE is great, I use them, but they sure do lack the "magic".