Facelift for Unity?

[jneiberger]

This is a pretty silly question. I've seen some pictures and videos of Unity in operation and I'm underwhelmed by the 1995-ish GUI graphics and design.

Regardless of functionality, does anyone else think it needs a serious facelift? The CallManager GUI is well-designed and easy on the eyes. Unity, however, is fatiguing to look at.

Here's hoping that Unity 4.1 has a total facelift.

 

[pndscm]

Expect the face lift to happen in Unity 5.0 if it happens. Unity 5.0 will be on a Linux platform. I don't expect there to be a huge change though. People know the interface now. I'll take a boring interface and a relatively stable platform over a flashy interface with nothing under it. Spend the time on the background processes and leave the fancy interfaces to the gamers.

 

[jneiberger]

I don't need a fancy interface, I'd just like an attractive one.

CallManager Interface = The girl you pick up at the club at 9:00 PM.

Unity Interface = The girl you pick up at closing time when you're really drunk.

;-)

 

[jneiberger]

Unity is moving to linux? I've heard that CM is moving to linux but I hadn't heard anything like that about Unity. Have you heard this from an official source?

 

[pndscm]

Pretty reliable source. I don't have any details but I'd say they want to get away from MS all together. Licensing issues are probably one of the killers of profits.

CallManager Interface - the girl you take home to Mom.
Unity Interface - the girl you take home and interface with.

 

[jpm121]

Unity Express already runs on Linux -- would make sense, I 'spose.

 

[AdmanOK]

Yes, but Unity Express doesn't integrate with Exchange the way that Unity does. I haven't heard anything about Unity moving away from an MS platform... it would seem to me that the MS AD/Exchange integration that has to happen in Unity would make the split from Windows a harder task than for CallManager.


Compromise: Where I don't get what I want, but I'm happy because you didn't either.

 

[jneiberger]

I just asked some Cisco engineers about this and all three said that they had not heard of any plans to move Unity to linux in the near future.

 

[pndscm]

The engineer I talked to felt that Linux was in the near future for Unity. Not sure why the integration with AD and Exchange would slow things down. I'm not an MS person but doesn't Unity just add some fields in AD database when it extends the schema and then put data in the fields? I'm sure it's more complicated than that but that's my non-MS perception.
Really makes no difference. Whenever it does we'll deal with it. Back to the original post. Don't expect a huge facelift for it no matter where it goes. But then I've been wrong before. Ask my wife.

 

[BuckWeet]

personally, unity's webpage is more usable than ccms, just for the mere fact that it uses frames...