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TECHNOLOGY
INSIDER
Making a bid for a piece of the emerging desktop Linux market, Mattel, Inc. announced the immediate availability of downloadable beta ISOs for BarbieOS 0.99, and said it hoped the final 1.0 retail version would be on store shelves in time for Christmas. The new OS was created by Mattel to power the upcoming revision of its popular B-Book line of laptops for girls between the ages of four and eleven. The original B-Book laptop, which ran a modified version of PalmOS, was a huge hit with consumers last holiday season, so much so that many stores had trouble keeping them in stock. This year, Mattel is upping the ante by making the B-Book into a full-fledged desktop replacement targeted specifically at toddler through preteen girls who are currently Windows users but may be seeking alternatives, possibly due to increasing licensing fees or out of a desire to break free of vendor lock-in.
BarbieOS, based on Debian Linux, had been in private beta for
more than six months prior to yesterday's public release.
Initial reaction to the company's announcement has been
mixed, as some analysts have claimed that the desktop Linuxmarket is
already over-saturated given its current size, as
other major players
such as Lycoris Desktop/LX, Xandros Linux, and LindowsOS are already competing for
the rather small percentage of home desktop users willing to try a
non-Microsoft OS. Still, Mattel says
it is confident of the potential of BarbieOS 1.0 to find a niche market
of young girls under thirteen who are dissatisfied with current
Microsoft offerings and are looking toward maybe asking mom and dad
for a full-powered Linux laptop running BarbieOS this Christmas. Thus,
Mattel is in a rush to get the laptop into production within the next
few weeks and the OS into the hands of as many beta testers as possible. Mattel hopes that any bugs and/or security
vulnerabilities in the OS can be found and rectified before the B-Book
begins shipping to retail channels. A
Mattel spokesperson said the company is already satisfied it has
created the most stable, robust and easy to use desktop Linux
distribution available, but wants to use the public beta testing period
to gather quality user feedback and implement new feature requests. BarbieOS
1.0 is the result of almost a year's worth of marketing research into
what pre-adolescent girls want in a mobile Linux solution aimed at
being a desktop replacement. The studies
included human interface interaction, real-world usability, and rich
media analysis to determine where the needs of girls are not being
served by current Linux or Microsoft solutions. Mattel
discovered that many of the girls they interviewed had heard positive
things about Linux and expressed some curiosity about it, but less than
1 percent had actually used a non-Microsoft operating system in the
last 12 months. The researchers also
concluded that restrictive EULAs, proprietary file formats, and digital
rights management technologies were not popular with pre-adolescent
females, and almost none were satisfied with the results
of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Initiative during the last
year. "Many of the girls we talked to said
that they were tired of constantly patching their Windows systems
against the latest Outlook worm, only to find that the patch breaks one
of their custom applications or reduces the performance and stability
of the operating system," according to usability consultant Randolph
Hanes, an interface expert who conducted major portions of the research. He
said many girls are also complaining of getting stuck on the Microsoft
upgrade treadmill, and expressed little interest in upgrading to the
latest versions of Microsoft Windows and the Office productivity suite
until they come bundled with a new computer system.
The girls cited prohibitively high costs ($400 for
Office, $300 for Windows XP) and a lack of interesting features as
reasons they were holding off on upgrading. Mattel
hopes to snag this under-served market in time for the sloppy orgy of
shopping and materialism that begins the day after Thanksgiving. But as they know most B-Books will be sold to
moms and dads who don't have a clue as to the relative merits of Linux
over Windows, probably aren't sure of what an operating system is, and
likely have trouble using even the most patronizing of graphical
interfaces effectively, a significant marketing challenge lies ahead
for the company. Selling young girls on a
new computing paradigm has required a significant investment into
discovering what girls want, and molding their collective desires into
a modern image of Barbie the girls can look up to as a positive role
model. Mattel’s Chief Software Architect,
Maury Cesterino, explains. "If
Barbie were a career-focused woman working in the IT industry in 2003,
she would support open "Barbie
would also be tired of Microsoft's licensing bullshit," he added. BarbieOS 1.0 uses the high-performance ReiserFS journaling filesystem and is compiled for i386-compatible machines in addition to the B-Book, which uses a VIA C3 processor. The OS defaults to the GRUB bootloader and the KDE 3.1.3 desktop environment. Gnome support for applications such as Evolution and Gaim is included, but additional software may be downloaded from Mattel’s Click-Click-Pay Clearinghouse, a software archive that allows users to purchase and install software over the web, without ever having to launch a command line. "Most girls up through adult women become frightened and confused, often hysterical when presented with a traditional command prompt," Cesterino explained, "therefore the console program available through the B-Menu in BarbieOS features pink text on a flowered background so as to not intimidate or threaten females, and all windows are circular instead of the usual square, since most females unconsciously associate a circular shape with inclusiveness and the womb."
This
kind of attention to detail and thorough understanding of female
limitations also shows in the step by step Barbie Wizards that guide
girls through the process of partitioning their disks, formatting
volumes, mounting Samba shares, and installing packages.
During the installation, girls are allowed to play a
fashion-plate game or view a slideshow of rainbows, kittens, and Mattel
products. There is an Expert mode for
girls who are already comfortable with the Linux installation process
and want access to advanced features. An
animated Barbie informs the user that she can work with existing
Windows partitions, but would prefer that BarbieOS be allowed to format
the entire disk and remove Windows volumes for maximum cootie
protection. Most
of the software in BarbieOS is licensed under the GPL, but Mattel has
stated that any of its copyrighted artwork, logos, and references to
Mattel and Barbie must be removed in any distributions derived from the
BarbieOS source code, and so must the Click-Click-Pay proprietary
front-end for the Debian apt package management system.
Mattel has pledged to support and play fairly with the GPL and the Linux community, and has announced it will fully indemnify little girls from possible legal action pending the IBM-SCO decision set to go to trial in 2005. Will
young girls be convinced by Mattel’s legal assurances and commercials
which feature a confused, disgruntled Barbie proclaiming that "Windows
is hard", and turning to a B-Book instead? Mattel
is confident, but ultimately a fickle IT market will have to decide if
BarbieOS is robust and friendly enough to give Microsoft a run for its
money on the desktop. RELATED STORIES ON DIVISIONTWO: |
standards," he says.