> This was before the UX people took over the web and desktop. I blame the introduction of smartphones, which was when the public at large finally came online.
I doubt the plausibility of that timeline - the original iPhone was announced in January 2007, KDE 4.0Alpha1 was released in May 2007[1].
KDE 4.0 was a terrible release (missing functionality, lots of regressions). IMO, they should have kept it as a develop branch and only released 4.1 as 4.0.
With the additional issue of too much Gnome-isms creeping into GTK3. The one benefit Qt has is that it is being maintained by a independent entity from KDE. One that intends for Qt to be its own product, and properly cross platform.
I doubt the plausibility of that timeline - the original iPhone was announced in January 2007, KDE 4.0Alpha1 was released in May 2007[1].
KDE 4.0 was a terrible release (missing functionality, lots of regressions). IMO, they should have kept it as a develop branch and only released 4.1 as 4.0.
1. https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.0-alpha1.php