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Microsoft Encouraging OEMs to Beautify Computers
Grooves writes "Microsoft has shipped a 'Vista Industrial Design Toolkit' to PC manufacturers, meant to
encourage them to design computers that are more visually appealing. From the article: 'From color palettes to suggestions about how the power and reset buttons should appear, the kit basically describes Microsoft's vision of what a Vista PC should look like. The look features accelerated curves and purposeful contrast, among other qualities.' The report goes on to say that Microsoft wants 'PCs to be objects of pure desire.' Sound familiar? It's hard to see budget-conscious OEMs stepping up to this."
If you are using windows, your computer will be an object of pure spyware.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
With Apple, they pay attention to the sense of style their users are embued with by their superiority to Wintel slobs.
It seems to me that there is always a cost-benefit tradeoff. Maybe I can't *afford* to pay double for my computer, just so people like you will not think badly of me. Are you suggesting that people who don't own BMW's (or insert *your* prefered brand here, as you seem to profess to be the arbiter of product goodness) are inferior slobs?
Look, Apple has historically occupied the "high end" of the PC marketplace, along with several other niches (eg graphics artists); that doesn't make its customers superior anymore than living in a ritzy suburb makes those people superior. They just had more money. You really need to avoid throwing around words like "superior" and "slobs" to describe 95% of the PC-buying public, just because they aren't as careless with their money as you are (or don't have as much to spend).
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Hmmm. Are these the same "lovingly crafted" systems that overheat due to leftover parts from the factory, flake paint and have "swelling and failing" batteries?
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
If anything has "boy racer" looks, it is Alienware et al.
Who do you think Alienware et al are emulating? It was Apple that came out with computers in five play-doh, transparent colors. How about the G4 Macs in that bright blue and puke-colored white? How about OS/X, which was supposed to look "lickable"?
The only Mac you could arguably say is tasteful is the iMac with the stalk, but most of Apple's line is not exactly tastefully restrained.
Sure... for Joe Average and his less-than-average-looking wife maybe. But for anyone with a brain a Mac was the logical answer since it trumped a DOS box in every way. If you know what you're doing, migrating the data between the systems is a cakewalk. I have files that have traversed many OSes that date back to 1985. It's easy as long as you're not a moron.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Steve Jobs on PBS' Triumph of the Nerds:
"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is - I don't mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way."
;-)
sig? Oh, that sig...
You do realize that your very attitude is helping to foster the situation you are complaining about, don't you? Grow a pair and fix it.
i am a soviet space shuttle