Try to do all those steps again, and look at them from the point of view of someone who does not work in tech...
Of course I have a huge advantage being a programmer, but these days being able to conduct a web search is a required life skill. Kids can't even get out of high school these days without knowing how.
The only real tech thing was the apt-get install command. No big deal: the less tech savvy linux user would use a GUI front-end, like kpackagekit. It's as easy to install something as in the app store. They could have even skipped step 1 and just searched kpackagekit for "interior home design". (Users on other OSes can just click the download button)
One of the big concerns that Marco raises though is that an app direct from the Internet has the potential to really ruin your day, especially if you don't know anything about the field you're searching.
With the App Store, you have a reasonable assumption that it won't be a trojan for malware.
That's fair as far as the App Store is concerned, but really states nothing about iOS (and really is a criticism of Windows). Any Linux distro has its own 'app store' which is just as trustworthy. And afaik macs offer a similar thing; it is just windows that is behind.
My main issues with this article are how hand-wavvy his comparison to PCs are. His evidence is enough to say that both home 3D and the iPad are awesome. It is not enough to provide any basis of comparison to a PC ecosystem.
>I wouldn’t have been able to easily find a good app to do this without being bombarded with spam in my Google search. (And many of them would be Windows-only.)
found in a second: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...
>When I did finally find an app that looked reasonable, I wouldn’t have been able to find any trustworthy reviews, being bombarded instead by more search spam.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...
>When I went to buy it, it probably would have cost more.
It's free
>I wouldn’t have trusted it comfortably enough to install it on my computer.
The fact that I can apt-get install sweethome3d makes it seem as trustworthy as being on the app store.
>If it did work, I’d probably need longer to figure out its learning curve, and navigating wouldn’t be as easy or fast with a keyboard and trackpad.
Possible - I don't own an iPad so I can't compare. I find it hard to believe though that a tablet content creator would be faster to navigate than a keyboard/mouse (or even trackpad) combo. Took me about a minute to learn sweethome3d.
>Taking out the laptop in the car, and passing around a laptop to show the final product, would feel much clunkier than using the iPad.
I'll give the author this. I'd rather be able to create the content on a regular computer though.