First of all, the guys at Google have been padding this landing pretty well. At least for people who are paying attention. They're quick to stress that wave is a protocol and a platform with take-over-the-world potential and that this initial client that we're playing with is just one example of what can be done with it.
That said, I agree with this article completely. The wave client is an absolute nightmare to use. Stuff is blinking and flashing all over the place. People are adding comments up and down waves will-nilly and there's no good way to tell where changes are happening. There's a decent amount of latency with every single character I type, which basically kills my thought process and typing ability. Switching waves is a multi-second proposition that beach-balls FF on my Mac Pro.
Even if all these bugs were ironed out, I don't see why or how I would ever use it. I would have given pretty much exactly the same review a couple of months ago when I started using the wave sandbox, so whatever progress they've made hasn't made much of a difference so far. Maybe they're onto something and wave as a protocol will end up replacing a bunch of old web protocols which people have tried and failed to replace for years, but, at this point, I wouldn't bet on it.
That said, I agree with this article completely. The wave client is an absolute nightmare to use. Stuff is blinking and flashing all over the place. People are adding comments up and down waves will-nilly and there's no good way to tell where changes are happening. There's a decent amount of latency with every single character I type, which basically kills my thought process and typing ability. Switching waves is a multi-second proposition that beach-balls FF on my Mac Pro.
Even if all these bugs were ironed out, I don't see why or how I would ever use it. I would have given pretty much exactly the same review a couple of months ago when I started using the wave sandbox, so whatever progress they've made hasn't made much of a difference so far. Maybe they're onto something and wave as a protocol will end up replacing a bunch of old web protocols which people have tried and failed to replace for years, but, at this point, I wouldn't bet on it.