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Vista Indicates A Shift in Microsoft's Priorities
jcatcw writes "After hundreds of hours of testing Vista, Scot Finnie is supremely tired of it. And of Microsoft. Although 80% of the changes in Windows Vista are positive, there is nothing about Vista that is truly innovative or compelling; there's no transformational, gotta-have-it feature in Vista. But the real problem isn't with Vista. It's with Microsoft itself. His opinion is that Microsoft has stopped focusing on end users. They 'now seemingly make many decisions based on these two things: 1. Avoiding negative publicity (especially about security and software quality) 2. Making sure the largest enterprise customers are happy.'"
So, is Microsoft actually marketing Vista in a way to lure current XP users into Longhorn? The way I feel about it is that a lot of computers aren't very capable of running Vista plus applications on the side, so Vista will be a great purchase with your new computer. It will probably also take away some of the shine from OS X as Vista is a good step forward, too.
I think Vista is more of an upgrade that included features a lot Windows XP users have requested, but I don't think the intention was to create an operating system that would change as much as OS X did if compared to previous versions of the Mac OS.
If you're buying a new PC, make sure to get Vista. If you're on an older PC, stick to XP or previous versions of Windows. If you're on a new, Vista capable PC, consider it and buy it if you think it still sounds affordable.
Full Tilt
And already I am hearing about glitches in the DRM making mistakes and DVD drives and hard drives turning off. All that Spayware in Vista has to go! Microsoft's Spyware is just another vulnerability for ID thieves to break into your computer!
I just attended a very popular IT industry event in San Diego, and finally saw Vista for the first time. I went in with an open mind, but quickly realized it does NOTHING that is original or interesting. However, the reps were very excited about some new features the "public has not seen yet". For example: New tabbed browsing (FireFox), A desktop side panel with e-mail, news, and tasks (Google desktop), new window management (XGL!), and some other lame stuff. In fact the rep actually admitted to using FireFox when all was said and done. Don't waste your time even considering this OS. Linux is coming.
Cisco's iPhone trademark dates to 1996, when it originated within Infogear Technology. The iPod dates to 2001. The iMac dates to 1998.
Now, it's true that Cisco wasn't being very protective of the name and may have failed to protect it by legal standards. They may have renamed the Linksys CIT series solely to try to keep the rights to the trademark, and may have failed to do that.
It's clear, though, that in 1996 the iPod and iMac had no influence on the cell phone, IP phone, or even the MP3 player markets. Unless someone within Infogear Technologies was a rival to Einstein and Hawking, there was no way to speculate that the iMac, iPod, then iPhone would come out of Apple over the course of a decade. To run a business on such speculation would likely be suicide anyway.
Maybe Infogear, and now Cisco (or maybe the Cisco of the future) had/has/will have an iTimeMachine, but Occam's Razor suggests coincidence over John Connor coming back to stop Skynet and discussing Apple's product lines with Bob Marshall and/or Sandy Lerner.