i participated in the OLPC program as a tester, and i had access to a bunch of devices (after buying my own in the initial fundraising campaign). for a while i

i participated in the OLPC program as a tester, and i had access to a bunch of devices (after buying my own in the initial fundraising campaign). for a while i used the OLPC XO 1.0 and later 1.5 as a daily driver when on the road. most of the work i was doing was on the terminal, but i used the occasional activities. the browser of course, the camera, and others. i strongly disagree that the interface is dumbed down. it may look toy like, but it serves its purpose. the initial screen is just an application starter. i see no difference in that to any others on a standard desktop. the terminal and the source of all activities are available. and the actual inner working of the computer are accessible. there is even a switch to switch from the sugar desktop to a normal one, and back. the only valid argument would be, to ask what is the benefit of a different interface, as opposed to using a traditional one. but with that argument we are throwing out the idea of innovating on interfaces. and also a similar argument is used in many places to push schools to teach windows, as if it was important that kids learn to work with the most used interface only. arguing about the interface is not helpful. if the interface works, it's good. kids need to learn concepts, and understand that computers do not all have to look and work the same way. a child that learns using the sugar interface and later a traditional interface, will learn and understand much more about computers and interfaces than a child that only learns a traditional interface, and then as an adult gets confused when presented with something different because it hasn't learned the actual concepts. it can also be argued that as a project sugar is overengineered, because it solves problems (like activity isolation) a traditional desktop doesn't (but in reality, more and more needs to do too). but retroactively the same argument could be made for things like squeak, which btw was also available on the OLPC, because it is so different from a standard desktop. to be clear, squeak is not overengineered, but it looks that way from the perspective of todays interfaces, since it duplicates all the dev tools instead of using familiar ones. which is the same problem that sugar is being accused of. the other side of the argument however is that sugar is what we get if we allow developers and interface designers free reign in creating something new. so to me, sugar does not represent a dumbed down interface. but it represents innovation. and whether it is better or not should be evaluated on that metric, and not on the metric of how different it is from what we already know.