I think you're talking about resedit. resedit was kinda cool. It let you edit resources within applications, so you could do things like change keyboard shortcuts, or even add keyboard shortcuts when they didn't exist.
Regedit is the Windows program to perform attempted surgery on the registery. Some similar tweaks can be performed using it, but the resedit program was a lot more elegant and much easier to use and find things in. The registry is a centralized database, while regedit data was in the individual applications. The latter approach is far cleaner.
I can't say I miss HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. What the heck is a HKEY and why should I even have to know?
Both of us have a significant amount of experience with SGI workstations. SGI, like Apple today, was a Unix that "just works". It had pretty fonts and a very nice designer look and feel. It was also elegant and a snap to administrate.
I, like JWZ, also used Linux workstations. But they were clunky compared to SGI and I always came back to the better design and more attractive display SGI had.
I also had a MacOS computer, which I used for video editing and running commercial software such as Photoshop. I liked it a lot, but was wedded to emacs for text editing and SGI or Linux for web serving. So as a result I needed to have two computers on my desk, a Mac for graphics and a SGI for Unix stuff.
Then MacOS X came out. It was a lot like SGI - it was like a designer Unix, with even more slickness. As a result, I gradually switched away from SGI, especially when it became clear that SGI was not updating their GUI to be competitive with what Apple has. I shed a tear for SGI, because their stuff was the best at the time. I wish they'd been able to make a more elegant transition to the world of cheaper computers.
For me, MacOS X truly combines the best of the open source and proprietary worlds. I can use a slick and stable GUI, running all the slickest proprietary applications such as Final Cut Pro and Photoshop. On the same machine I can also run all the open source web software I could ever want. And I can even copy that software and have it run fine on a Linux server without missing a beat.
So I know exactly where JWZ's coming from, and it's interesting that we followed such a similar path. I joined Apple before he did probably mainly due to my need for proprietary software like Final Cut and Photoshop.
I can say from my own experience that I've never been happier with my computing environment than I am now. We'll see how the more cynical JWZ does. No doubt he'll find much to hate and much to love.
MS gained their stronghold, at least within the operating system universe, through having their operating system included with nearly every computer made for the last two decades.
I don't think piracy had much of an influence at that point.
Since corporations buy most word processors and they almost always buy their software instead of pirating, I doubt that piracy had much impact in the rise of Word over WordPerfect and the like. It was better than the competition, something hard to remember nowadays.
Piracy might help Apple at this point because most people have not been exposed to MacOS. Exposing them through illegal distribution would be better than no exposure at all -- at least as long as there's a way of getting them to buy when the software is released.
I wondered why they threw iLife in there. It really would be of little interest to developers, but if your stealth market was someone pirating the software to try it out, it would be near-indespensible.
So perhaps there's something to the conspiracy theory after all. I wonder if it would run on my older Compaq PC with a Pentium III and all Intel components.
I have a PowerMac G5 dual, which would surely outperform my old 700mhz Compaq by miles, but I have to admit my curiosity is piqued.
Everyone with a digital camera has some need for an image editing application, if nothing else to crop and resize images. So the potential market is huge.
Only artists need a vector painting application.
So as a consumer-oriented company (well, for this anyway), Microsoft needs to emphasize that aspect of it.
Of course it's probably lacking because it's the newest part of the software, so perhaps it will improve in time.
I seem to remember a lot of people reviewing the MacOS X public beta, and there was a lot of interesting information in those reviews. As I remember, it boiled down to "brilliant, but slow, and that should be addressed evenutally".
Would you want reviews like that suppressed? I would not.
I'm going to be a lone voice in the wilderness defending this reviewer. It does seem like the program was publicised as "Microsoft's answer to Photoshop". The fact that it is actually a vector program is reduced in importance by the red eye removal function, which makes it clear that they are trying to move towards Photoshop.
It looks to me like the people who know this is a vector program are those who've heard of it in its previous incarnations. He hadn't, and so he used it like Photoshop and found it lacking. That may not be the program's fault, but it is surely the fault of Microsoft marketing, and quite honestly they're big boys over there and surely deserve to take criticism.
There are quite a few programs in the world that have been taken as both vector and bitmap graphics programs, and this appears to be one of them. I've noticed that none of them have made much of a dent in the market. Mighty Photoshop rules all, especially since Photoshop Elements gives you most of what you really need if you're not making the big bucks doing this stuff.
That being said, I would have downloaded it if I'd had a Windows machine handy. Always a brainy scheme to check out new things. But based on the screen shots shown by the reviewer, it really doesn't look like it has what it takes to woo me out of Photoshop and other Adobe products.
Expect at least some of it to backfire on the protestors.
I had no clue this existed until now.
Now that I know Nanopants exist that are stain resistant, I look forward to purchasing and wearing them. I just hope they expand this technology to shirts, and quick!
So Eddie Bauer may have gained a customer thanks to the protersters who are trying to prevent them from gaining customers!
it has one of the worst JavaScript dependencies I've ever seen. If you can actually get property listings to come up on it, I'll be pretty impressed with the BlackBerry's JavaScript.
I don't think it's wasted on me, because I can detect very significant differences between it and cheaper systems. I can hear a lot more of the music come out with a high quality system.
Perhaps I'm just not listening for the particular characteristics that bother people about compressed music, and so I don't notice them.
I have a popular music composer friend who I see on a regular basis, and he's always been impressed by the quality of my system. He has never complained about whatever compression artifacts are hiding in the music.
It's also possible that, while I have an excellent music system by most standards, it's not good enough to hear these differences. I'd class it as being at the low end of the high end; it cost about $2,000 five years ago.
But last time I was in a CD store, the latest music was pushing $18.99 a CD, which is absurd. If NiN has the clout to get labels to charge lower prices, I salute them. I also love what they did with GarageBand. Pity I can't stand that type of music, or I would buy their album for sure.
One thing I glossed over in my message, of course, is that you can get old music CDs for $6.99. In that case, it's the difficulty of finding good $6.99 music that makes it not really worth it. I visited one of those stores and must have scanned 200 CD titles to find five I wanted.
I helped my boss(*) purchase a handheld about a week ago. It was between the Blackberry and Treo 650. The sales guy was heavily pushing the Treo, but I thought the Blackberry was much better for his needs. It worked with his university calendar web site, which the Treo didn't, and the Treo has a nearly unusable keyboard compared to the Blackberry's nice one.
He bought the Blackberry and has been very happy with it so far. It accesses his email just fine even though we don't have the Blackberry server package. He just uses IMAP, which is no problem at all.
I think my T-Mobile Sidekick is still the better device for reading web pages and emails but that's because of the flip out design with the bigger screen. T-Mobile's service is erratic and so I think he made the right choice to go with the inferior device but much more reliable Verizon network.
One interesting point is that the Blackberry appears to have some form of JavaScript support, although it slows everything to a crawl. Whenever I saw a massive delay in loading a web site, the "Running JavaScript" appeared on the bottom. My Sidekick, which doesn't support JavaScript, loaded things much better, but of course many features were not available. I think the Blackberry needs a faster CPU to deal with JS issues. Hopefully one will be forthcoming.
D
(*) Far from a PHB. So we now have proof that not all Blackberry users are PHBs, despite what some of you might think.
Obviously you can buy albums at the iTunes music store, and you'll get the identical experience to listening to them on CD.(*)
I think three things trump albums for most people:
* Random access to music - if I want to listen to Enigma, I can have them up in seconds courtesy of my iPod. If I wanted to listen to the Enigma CD, I'd have to walk over to some big dispenser, locate the CD, bring it to the CD player and play it. That might take a few minutes in a well organized household, which probably means an hour in mine, if I haven't played it recently.
* Lower cost. CDs of recent music are horribly overpriced. I stopped buying CDs long before digital music came about; I just did without. Now I will buy music online because the $ 0.99 a track is a fair price I can live with.
* Convenience. No tiresome wait for Amazon to deliver it, and no tiresome efforts to locate it in record stores. Instead, you have it in seconds.
It's interesting that I don't have the same feeling about bookstores. I still buy books from Amazon and Barnes & Noble/Borders in about equal quantities, because I can read the books in the store, get an idea for what I want and buy. Even Amazon's look inside the book features don't do half as well as I want.
Perhaps it helps that I've never cared that much for album art. That and liner notes seem to be the only real advantages of buying physical CDs.
D
(*) Aside from any quality problems. I have a slick entry level audiophile stereo system (Adcom tuner/preamp and power amp, Paradigm 60 speakers) and despite hearing outstanding quality sound I have noticed no differences between CDs and iTMS purchased tracks.
Anyone know how Yahoo's service is doing? That might give us a pretty good clue as to how Microsoft's likely to fare.
Microsoft doesn't seem to have a very good record in online services, so I doubt this one will do all that well.
Where's Google Music? It would be interesting to see how Google might try to balance the needs of labels with the needs of users, since so many users consider the needs of labels "evil".
My tentative guess is that we'll never see Google Music for this reason. But if it's in the works, I'd love to see how they get over that hurdle.
Housing subsidies are very dangerous because they create dependencies. They are also very expensive because they have to be continued year after year, potentially forever. The Section 8 rent subsidy programme is a good example of this. Worse, it bids up the price of housing for everyone else, which is just horrible.
However, the supply of TVs is effectively unlimited, so subsidies for TVs are likely to do very little harm other than their cost. A $200 subsidy for a digital TV is less than the average Section 8 subsidy for one month. So subsidies for digital TV do not even compete with those for housing or even education.
I don't support any subsidies, personally, but the digital TV idea is less harmful than most.
That seems more plausible than making the MacOS available to all PCs, simply because it dodges the driver support issues.
It might be possible for Apple to write its own BIOS so they could still have something like Open Firmware and not support that on any non-Apple hardware. I would think this would be a good thing since it differentiates their systems and retains some degree of compatibility with the older machines.
Jean Louis Gassee of Be tried a similar scheme and Microsoft throttled it by giving lousy deals on Windows to anyone willing to include the BeOS with their systems. The relationship with Microsoft is going to make it difficult for companies such as HP and Dell to sell MacOS X. And remember, Microsoft could do Apple some severe damage by ceasing development of Office for the Mac.
It's very possible, actually, that the transition will be executed with the help of Apple's traditionally loyal users, including myself, and then a year or so later they will announce real competition with Bill and his pals.
At this time, Apple claims that MacOS X for Intel is purely for Macintosh computers with Intel Inside. That would appear to make this rumour implausible.
Others have said, reasonably, that the reason for this is that Apple trusts Intel to execute its roadmap, while not trusting IBM. This seems perfectly reasonable. I think the IBM roadmap was not that bad for the PowerMac G5, which is probably why it's going to be the last to be replaced, but it appears to be just plain awful for laptops.
Also, I don't think Steve would want to sell Apple, least of all to Intel. And for the scheme lined above to work, Steve is needed to continue spearheading development of MacOS X. So if I were to suggest a world where Cringely's ideas worked, it would be a joint Apple/Intel alliance, with Steve firmly in charge of software development and Intel working on compatible motherboards and drivers.
In other words, I think we're talking about a joint venture, not a merger, if Cringley's ideas were accurate.
Besides, Cringley's argument that Microsoft is lagging behind in creating processor-hogging operating systems and applications is wrong, at least compared to Apple. Apple's recent OS upgrades have actually resulted in steady improvements in performance.
Finally, it's doubtful to the extreme that Steve wants to leave Apple for an entertainment company. On an operational basis, John Lasseter runs Pixar, and the most ridiculous superlatives utterly fail to describe the results. Steve's not going to change the power structure at Pixar, at least not if he knows what's good for him. This little detail was why Steve was able to step back to Apple in the first place; the Pixar job for him is negotiation, architectural design and not much more.
I dunno, I really love my PowerMac G5, and it's definitely built in a way that's more expensive than most PCs. I think it's good value for money. In fact, it's often compared with top end Dell systems that are about $500 more expensive.
When I was asked to buy "the cheapest laptops possible" for my company about six months ago, we bought $999 Toshibas. We could have bought an iBook for the same price, to the penny, but the Big Boss didn't want to consider it.
So I don't think Apple products are poor value overall. They're usually more expensive, yes, but they have a lot of features cheaper PCs don't, and they're built to a higher standard of quality.
Longhorn delivers best of breed, industry leading features
Today, Microsoft announces exciting new features in Longhorn, the long-anticipated new version of Windows(tm).
Windows(tm) had alwayas offered leading-edge innovation and world class product quality. Today, with Longhorn, we leverage these capabilities and continue to deliver our customers exceptional value.
Longhorn consists of the following features and innovations, available in late 2006:
* The "My" prefix is removed from "Computer" and "Pictures" to provide a more unified, consistent interface. For your convenience, we have not replaced it with "Our".
* A new command line interface will be added.
Other features, such as the Avalon display layer and the new WinFS(tm) file system, have been postponed for the new Bovine release in 2010.
As always, thank you for choosing Microsoft products. It is always our policy to exceed our expectations through redefinition.
I was maintaining the Linux-based CRM system I wrote for the company, which had matured over the three years I'd worked for them at the time. So it was no longer really a full-time job, and I spent a lot of time reading Slashdot and the like.
So when our sysadmin went on a drunken rampage and didn't return the next morning, I was given the job. I didn't want it, primarily because I knew nothing about Windows and had little enthusiasm for it.
I actually liked a lot of aspects of it. I was taking on and mastering new things, which was interesting for a while. But I did find that because it does involve interruptions, it was preventing me from doing a lot of programming I should have been doing. This was true especially when the boss decided to take on new projects and throw a lot more programming work to me than anticipated.
Dealing with spyware and adware and virii when you're not a Windows expert is a very, very bad idea. I was never able to prevent the rampant spread of them through our network. We used a lot of outside consultants, who were allegedly experts on this topic, but even they didn't do much better. This is probably because the owner of the company was (and probably still is) a cheapskate at heart.
When I would make some mistake, however minor, the boss would yell and scream at me at the top of his lungs, which made for a very poor working environment. And of course because I had a hand in decisionmaking, I would be blamed for every problem. This might seem reasonable, but I was never praised when things went well; that, of course, is just me doing my job.
I am no longer there. I now do multimedia development for a major university and use only Macs. Believe me, it's a lot better over here than over there.
I don't know if you'd go so far as to switch your career as drastically as I did, but I think you're descending towards very unhappy circumstances if you take his offer.
I don't know if it was two years ago - I'd say it was more like one - but that was a metaphor for all sorts of things that can be difficult to set up in Linux.
That being said, I will admit the main reason I'm a big Mac fan is that it has a degree of originality to it in a world that's forced to conform. Perhaps that's why I shed a tear for the PowerPC, even though I doubt it will make much difference to me personally.
I like my computers to have personality, to be fun to work with, and Apple's done that for me, especially since MacOS X came out.
Of course a lot of people want to see Tiger and so they downloaded it illegally.
And a lot of people are going to want to see Leopard run on their PC.
But Leopard isn't going to include drivers for anything but Apple hardware, which makes it much less of a casual download for Intel fans.
I think Apple's wisest strategy is to allow people to do the reverse engineering and run it on foreign hardware, but offer no support for that. That way, the curious get to try the system, but the bulk of Apple users will still buy computers designed and tuned for Apple's software. Why? Because we like its style and design, and because we don't like hassle.
The days when I struggled with Linux distributions trying to get readable fonts are over. I have too much money and too little time to make that kind of effort. Now I want a total solution, and Apple's there to sell it to me.
I think the main reason Apple does not want to officially allow their software to run on non-Apple hardware is not vendor lock-in. It's the desire to give users a trouble-free experience. Liberating the MacOS so it would run on non-Apple hardware would create a support nightmare Apple's ill-equipped to handle.
RIght now, the Apple brand stands for a trouble-free computing experience, or as close to that as is possible in this world. Trying to support every generic PC on the planet would be impossible(*), and attempting to do so would cost the company it's hard-earned reputation.
D
(*) Microsoft does it primarily by delegating driver development to vendors. They have the clout to require this, but Apple does not.
True, but certainly it does not look like Mac compatibility for the top applications (i.e. Photoshop and Illustrator) is in danger.
One of the reasons Adobe is not as much of a Mac supporter as it once was is Apple's software division. Final Cut Pro absolutely slaughtered Premiere in the marketplace, and with good reason.
In looking at software quality and design, I trust Apple more than I do any other vendor. I use Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, etc, and they're all amazing applications at a very fair price for what you're getting. I've also done some mission critical documents in Pages and it really does a slick job with styles.
I wonder if Apple will ever design a pro photo editing application. Photoshop is great, yes, but not easy to learn. A bit of competition would do the end user a world of good...
You still have to have software translating from the APIs of one operating system to the older one, but using the same processor.
This would indicate that the performance level you might get on VPC would be comparable to Classic on MacOS X.
Do you know anyone running MacOS X who still uses Classic with any frequency? I don't, because the ancient applications are just plain sluggish.
The main advantage of the Mac platform is MacOS X, not the hardware it runs on. And we still have a distinct lack of virii and spyware. None of that will change, so the Mac will continue to be viable. (I expect Mac virii and spyware eventually but I think it will always be a much, much smaller problem than under Windows).
Right now, the odds are pretty good that you have software from the following vendors on your Mac:
Apple (Final Cut Pro, Motion, Pages, etc, etc, etc) Adobe (Photoshop, etc) Macromedia (Flash) - of course they will become Adobe soon Microsoft (Office)
Apple is obviously fully committed to its platform.
Adobe has made a public announcement that they are committed to the new Intel platform.
Microsoft has made the public announcement that they are committed to the new Intel platform.
That covers about 95% of the software on my computer. And I'm sure that the shareware vendors will also support it since it's pretty darn easy from what I can see.
So I don't see a problem. I was very sad to see this happen because I'm a bit sentimental about Macs being different, but if i delivers us faster creative applications, then that's what we need.
Slashdot Mirror
Guilty as charged!
Guess it's easier to confuse them than I thought.
D
I think you're talking about resedit. resedit was kinda cool. It let you edit resources within applications, so you could do things like change keyboard shortcuts, or even add keyboard shortcuts when they didn't exist.
Regedit is the Windows program to perform attempted surgery on the registery. Some similar tweaks can be performed using it, but the resedit program was a lot more elegant and much easier to use and find things in. The registry is a centralized database, while regedit data was in the individual applications. The latter approach is far cleaner.
I can't say I miss HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. What the heck is a HKEY and why should I even have to know?
D
He actually followed a pretty similar path to me.
Both of us have a significant amount of experience with SGI workstations. SGI, like Apple today, was a Unix that "just works". It had pretty fonts and a very nice designer look and feel. It was also elegant and a snap to administrate.
I, like JWZ, also used Linux workstations. But they were clunky compared to SGI and I always came back to the better design and more attractive display SGI had.
I also had a MacOS computer, which I used for video editing and running commercial software such as Photoshop. I liked it a lot, but was wedded to emacs for text editing and SGI or Linux for web serving. So as a result I needed to have two computers on my desk, a Mac for graphics and a SGI for Unix stuff.
Then MacOS X came out. It was a lot like SGI - it was like a designer Unix, with even more slickness. As a result, I gradually switched away from SGI, especially when it became clear that SGI was not updating their GUI to be competitive with what Apple has. I shed a tear for SGI, because their stuff was the best at the time. I wish they'd been able to make a more elegant transition to the world of cheaper computers.
For me, MacOS X truly combines the best of the open source and proprietary worlds. I can use a slick and stable GUI, running all the slickest proprietary applications such as Final Cut Pro and Photoshop. On the same machine I can also run all the open source web software I could ever want. And I can even copy that software and have it run fine on a Linux server without missing a beat.
So I know exactly where JWZ's coming from, and it's interesting that we followed such a similar path. I joined Apple before he did probably mainly due to my need for proprietary software like Final Cut and Photoshop.
I can say from my own experience that I've never been happier with my computing environment than I am now. We'll see how the more cynical JWZ does. No doubt he'll find much to hate and much to love.
D
MS gained their stronghold, at least within the operating system universe, through having their operating system included with nearly every computer made for the last two decades.
I don't think piracy had much of an influence at that point.
Since corporations buy most word processors and they almost always buy their software instead of pirating, I doubt that piracy had much impact in the rise of Word over WordPerfect and the like. It was better than the competition, something hard to remember nowadays.
Piracy might help Apple at this point because most people have not been exposed to MacOS. Exposing them through illegal distribution would be better than no exposure at all -- at least as long as there's a way of getting them to buy when the software is released.
D
I wondered why they threw iLife in there. It really would be of little interest to developers, but if your stealth market was someone pirating the software to try it out, it would be near-indespensible.
So perhaps there's something to the conspiracy theory after all. I wonder if it would run on my older Compaq PC with a Pentium III and all Intel components.
I have a PowerMac G5 dual, which would surely outperform my old 700mhz Compaq by miles, but I have to admit my curiosity is piqued.
D
Everyone with a digital camera has some need for an image editing application, if nothing else to crop and resize images. So the potential market is huge.
Only artists need a vector painting application.
So as a consumer-oriented company (well, for this anyway), Microsoft needs to emphasize that aspect of it.
Of course it's probably lacking because it's the newest part of the software, so perhaps it will improve in time.
D
I seem to remember a lot of people reviewing the MacOS X public beta, and there was a lot of interesting information in those reviews. As I remember, it boiled down to "brilliant, but slow, and that should be addressed evenutally".
Would you want reviews like that suppressed? I would not.
I'm going to be a lone voice in the wilderness defending this reviewer. It does seem like the program was publicised as "Microsoft's answer to Photoshop". The fact that it is actually a vector program is reduced in importance by the red eye removal function, which makes it clear that they are trying to move towards Photoshop.
It looks to me like the people who know this is a vector program are those who've heard of it in its previous incarnations. He hadn't, and so he used it like Photoshop and found it lacking. That may not be the program's fault, but it is surely the fault of Microsoft marketing, and quite honestly they're big boys over there and surely deserve to take criticism.
There are quite a few programs in the world that have been taken as both vector and bitmap graphics programs, and this appears to be one of them. I've noticed that none of them have made much of a dent in the market. Mighty Photoshop rules all, especially since Photoshop Elements gives you most of what you really need if you're not making the big bucks doing this stuff.
That being said, I would have downloaded it if I'd had a Windows machine handy. Always a brainy scheme to check out new things. But based on the screen shots shown by the reviewer, it really doesn't look like it has what it takes to woo me out of Photoshop and other Adobe products.
D
Expect at least some of it to backfire on the protestors.
I had no clue this existed until now.
Now that I know Nanopants exist that are stain resistant, I look forward to purchasing and wearing them. I just hope they expand this technology to shirts, and quick!
So Eddie Bauer may have gained a customer thanks to the protersters who are trying to prevent them from gaining customers!
D
How well does it work with JavaScript-heavy pages?
If you want a laugh someday, try http://www.realtor.com/ and try searching for property.
it has one of the worst JavaScript dependencies I've ever seen. If you can actually get property listings to come up on it, I'll be pretty impressed with the BlackBerry's JavaScript.
D
I don't think it's wasted on me, because I can detect very significant differences between it and cheaper systems. I can hear a lot more of the music come out with a high quality system.
Perhaps I'm just not listening for the particular characteristics that bother people about compressed music, and so I don't notice them.
I have a popular music composer friend who I see on a regular basis, and he's always been impressed by the quality of my system. He has never complained about whatever compression artifacts are hiding in the music.
It's also possible that, while I have an excellent music system by most standards, it's not good enough to hear these differences. I'd class it as being at the low end of the high end; it cost about $2,000 five years ago.
D
That's not bad.
But last time I was in a CD store, the latest music was pushing $18.99 a CD, which is absurd. If NiN has the clout to get labels to charge lower prices, I salute them. I also love what they did with GarageBand. Pity I can't stand that type of music, or I would buy their album for sure.
One thing I glossed over in my message, of course, is that you can get old music CDs for $6.99. In that case, it's the difficulty of finding good $6.99 music that makes it not really worth it. I visited one of those stores and must have scanned 200 CD titles to find five I wanted.
D
I helped my boss(*) purchase a handheld about a week ago. It was between the Blackberry and Treo 650. The sales guy was heavily pushing the Treo, but I thought the Blackberry was much better for his needs. It worked with his university calendar web site, which the Treo didn't, and the Treo has a nearly unusable keyboard compared to the Blackberry's nice one.
He bought the Blackberry and has been very happy with it so far. It accesses his email just fine even though we don't have the Blackberry server package. He just uses IMAP, which is no problem at all.
I think my T-Mobile Sidekick is still the better device for reading web pages and emails but that's because of the flip out design with the bigger screen. T-Mobile's service is erratic and so I think he made the right choice to go with the inferior device but much more reliable Verizon network.
One interesting point is that the Blackberry appears to have some form of JavaScript support, although it slows everything to a crawl. Whenever I saw a massive delay in loading a web site, the "Running JavaScript" appeared on the bottom. My Sidekick, which doesn't support JavaScript, loaded things much better, but of course many features were not available. I think the Blackberry needs a faster CPU to deal with JS issues. Hopefully one will be forthcoming.
D
(*) Far from a PHB. So we now have proof that not all Blackberry users are PHBs, despite what some of you might think.
Interesting question.
Obviously you can buy albums at the iTunes music store, and you'll get the identical experience to listening to them on CD.(*)
I think three things trump albums for most people:
* Random access to music - if I want to listen to Enigma, I can have them up in seconds courtesy of my iPod. If I wanted to listen to the Enigma CD, I'd have to walk over to some big dispenser, locate the CD, bring it to the CD player and play it. That might take a few minutes in a well organized household, which probably means an hour in mine, if I haven't played it recently.
* Lower cost. CDs of recent music are horribly overpriced. I stopped buying CDs long before digital music came about; I just did without. Now I will buy music online because the $ 0.99 a track is a fair price I can live with.
* Convenience. No tiresome wait for Amazon to deliver it, and no tiresome efforts to locate it in record stores. Instead, you have it in seconds.
It's interesting that I don't have the same feeling about bookstores. I still buy books from Amazon and Barnes & Noble/Borders in about equal quantities, because I can read the books in the store, get an idea for what I want and buy. Even Amazon's look inside the book features don't do half as well as I want.
Perhaps it helps that I've never cared that much for album art. That and liner notes seem to be the only real advantages of buying physical CDs.
D
(*) Aside from any quality problems. I have a slick entry level audiophile stereo system (Adcom tuner/preamp and power amp, Paradigm 60 speakers) and despite hearing outstanding quality sound I have noticed no differences between CDs and iTMS purchased tracks.
Anyone know how Yahoo's service is doing? That might give us a pretty good clue as to how Microsoft's likely to fare.
Microsoft doesn't seem to have a very good record in online services, so I doubt this one will do all that well.
Where's Google Music? It would be interesting to see how Google might try to balance the needs of labels with the needs of users, since so many users consider the needs of labels "evil".
My tentative guess is that we'll never see Google Music for this reason. But if it's in the works, I'd love to see how they get over that hurdle.
D
We already have plenty of education subsidies.
Housing subsidies are very dangerous because they create dependencies. They are also very expensive because they have to be continued year after year, potentially forever. The Section 8 rent subsidy programme is a good example of this. Worse, it bids up the price of housing for everyone else, which is just horrible.
However, the supply of TVs is effectively unlimited, so subsidies for TVs are likely to do very little harm other than their cost. A $200 subsidy for a digital TV is less than the average Section 8 subsidy for one month. So subsidies for digital TV do not even compete with those for housing or even education.
I don't support any subsidies, personally, but the digital TV idea is less harmful than most.
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That seems more plausible than making the MacOS available to all PCs, simply because it dodges the driver support issues.
It might be possible for Apple to write its own BIOS so they could still have something like Open Firmware and not support that on any non-Apple hardware. I would think this would be a good thing since it differentiates their systems and retains some degree of compatibility with the older machines.
Jean Louis Gassee of Be tried a similar scheme and Microsoft throttled it by giving lousy deals on Windows to anyone willing to include the BeOS with their systems. The relationship with Microsoft is going to make it difficult for companies such as HP and Dell to sell MacOS X. And remember, Microsoft could do Apple some severe damage by ceasing development of Office for the Mac.
It's very possible, actually, that the transition will be executed with the help of Apple's traditionally loyal users, including myself, and then a year or so later they will announce real competition with Bill and his pals.
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At this time, Apple claims that MacOS X for Intel is purely for Macintosh computers with Intel Inside. That would appear to make this rumour implausible.
Others have said, reasonably, that the reason for this is that Apple trusts Intel to execute its roadmap, while not trusting IBM. This seems perfectly reasonable. I think the IBM roadmap was not that bad for the PowerMac G5, which is probably why it's going to be the last to be replaced, but it appears to be just plain awful for laptops.
Also, I don't think Steve would want to sell Apple, least of all to Intel. And for the scheme lined above to work, Steve is needed to continue spearheading development of MacOS X. So if I were to suggest a world where Cringely's ideas worked, it would be a joint Apple/Intel alliance, with Steve firmly in charge of software development and Intel working on compatible motherboards and drivers.
In other words, I think we're talking about a joint venture, not a merger, if Cringley's ideas were accurate.
Besides, Cringley's argument that Microsoft is lagging behind in creating processor-hogging operating systems and applications is wrong, at least compared to Apple. Apple's recent OS upgrades have actually resulted in steady improvements in performance.
Finally, it's doubtful to the extreme that Steve wants to leave Apple for an entertainment company. On an operational basis, John Lasseter runs Pixar, and the most ridiculous superlatives utterly fail to describe the results. Steve's not going to change the power structure at Pixar, at least not if he knows what's good for him. This little detail was why Steve was able to step back to Apple in the first place; the Pixar job for him is negotiation, architectural design and not much more.
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I dunno, I really love my PowerMac G5, and it's definitely built in a way that's more expensive than most PCs. I think it's good value for money. In fact, it's often compared with top end Dell systems that are about $500 more expensive.
When I was asked to buy "the cheapest laptops possible" for my company about six months ago, we bought $999 Toshibas. We could have bought an iBook for the same price, to the penny, but the Big Boss didn't want to consider it.
So I don't think Apple products are poor value overall. They're usually more expensive, yes, but they have a lot of features cheaper PCs don't, and they're built to a higher standard of quality.
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Naw.
Longhorn delivers best of breed, industry leading features
Today, Microsoft announces exciting new features in Longhorn, the long-anticipated new version of Windows(tm).
Windows(tm) had alwayas offered leading-edge innovation and world class product quality. Today, with Longhorn, we leverage these capabilities and continue to deliver our customers exceptional value.
Longhorn consists of the following features and innovations, available in late 2006:
* The "My" prefix is removed from "Computer" and "Pictures" to provide a more unified, consistent interface. For your convenience, we have not replaced it with "Our".
* A new command line interface will be added.
Other features, such as the Avalon display layer and the new WinFS(tm) file system, have been postponed for the new Bovine release in 2010.
As always, thank you for choosing Microsoft products. It is always our policy to exceed our expectations through redefinition.
I was maintaining the Linux-based CRM system I wrote for the company, which had matured over the three years I'd worked for them at the time. So it was no longer really a full-time job, and I spent a lot of time reading Slashdot and the like.
So when our sysadmin went on a drunken rampage and didn't return the next morning, I was given the job. I didn't want it, primarily because I knew nothing about Windows and had little enthusiasm for it.
I actually liked a lot of aspects of it. I was taking on and mastering new things, which was interesting for a while. But I did find that because it does involve interruptions, it was preventing me from doing a lot of programming I should have been doing. This was true especially when the boss decided to take on new projects and throw a lot more programming work to me than anticipated.
Dealing with spyware and adware and virii when you're not a Windows expert is a very, very bad idea. I was never able to prevent the rampant spread of them through our network. We used a lot of outside consultants, who were allegedly experts on this topic, but even they didn't do much better. This is probably because the owner of the company was (and probably still is) a cheapskate at heart.
When I would make some mistake, however minor, the boss would yell and scream at me at the top of his lungs, which made for a very poor working environment. And of course because I had a hand in decisionmaking, I would be blamed for every problem. This might seem reasonable, but I was never praised when things went well; that, of course, is just me doing my job.
I am no longer there. I now do multimedia development for a major university and use only Macs. Believe me, it's a lot better over here than over there.
I don't know if you'd go so far as to switch your career as drastically as I did, but I think you're descending towards very unhappy circumstances if you take his offer.
Hope that helps.
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Since 1998, when I bought a beige G3.
Perhaps I should not have said trouble-free, since computing always has its problems.
But it's a lot closer than Windows. No virii. No spyware. Beautifully designed hardware and software.
It's not a perfect world, no, but it's a better world.
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I don't know if it was two years ago - I'd say it was more like one - but that was a metaphor for all sorts of things that can be difficult to set up in Linux.
That being said, I will admit the main reason I'm a big Mac fan is that it has a degree of originality to it in a world that's forced to conform. Perhaps that's why I shed a tear for the PowerPC, even though I doubt it will make much difference to me personally.
I like my computers to have personality, to be fun to work with, and Apple's done that for me, especially since MacOS X came out.
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Of course a lot of people want to see Tiger and so they downloaded it illegally.
And a lot of people are going to want to see Leopard run on their PC.
But Leopard isn't going to include drivers for anything but Apple hardware, which makes it much less of a casual download for Intel fans.
I think Apple's wisest strategy is to allow people to do the reverse engineering and run it on foreign hardware, but offer no support for that. That way, the curious get to try the system, but the bulk of Apple users will still buy computers designed and tuned for Apple's software. Why? Because we like its style and design, and because we don't like hassle.
The days when I struggled with Linux distributions trying to get readable fonts are over. I have too much money and too little time to make that kind of effort. Now I want a total solution, and Apple's there to sell it to me.
I think the main reason Apple does not want to officially allow their software to run on non-Apple hardware is not vendor lock-in. It's the desire to give users a trouble-free experience. Liberating the MacOS so it would run on non-Apple hardware would create a support nightmare Apple's ill-equipped to handle.
RIght now, the Apple brand stands for a trouble-free computing experience, or as close to that as is possible in this world. Trying to support every generic PC on the planet would be impossible(*), and attempting to do so would cost the company it's hard-earned reputation.
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(*) Microsoft does it primarily by delegating driver development to vendors. They have the clout to require this, but Apple does not.
True, but certainly it does not look like Mac compatibility for the top applications (i.e. Photoshop and Illustrator) is in danger.
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One of the reasons Adobe is not as much of a Mac supporter as it once was is Apple's software division. Final Cut Pro absolutely slaughtered Premiere in the marketplace, and with good reason.
In looking at software quality and design, I trust Apple more than I do any other vendor. I use Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, etc, and they're all amazing applications at a very fair price for what you're getting. I've also done some mission critical documents in Pages and it really does a slick job with styles.
I wonder if Apple will ever design a pro photo editing application. Photoshop is great, yes, but not easy to learn. A bit of competition would do the end user a world of good
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You still have to have software translating from the APIs of one operating system to the older one, but using the same processor.
This would indicate that the performance level you might get on VPC would be comparable to Classic on MacOS X.
Do you know anyone running MacOS X who still uses Classic with any frequency? I don't, because the ancient applications are just plain sluggish.
The main advantage of the Mac platform is MacOS X, not the hardware it runs on. And we still have a distinct lack of virii and spyware. None of that will change, so the Mac will continue to be viable. (I expect Mac virii and spyware eventually but I think it will always be a much, much smaller problem than under Windows).
Right now, the odds are pretty good that you have software from the following vendors on your Mac:
Apple (Final Cut Pro, Motion, Pages, etc, etc, etc)
Adobe (Photoshop, etc)
Macromedia (Flash) - of course they will become Adobe soon
Microsoft (Office)
Apple is obviously fully committed to its platform.
Adobe has made a public announcement that they are committed to the new Intel platform.
Microsoft has made the public announcement that they are committed to the new Intel platform.
That covers about 95% of the software on my computer. And I'm sure that the shareware vendors will also support it since it's pretty darn easy from what I can see.
So I don't see a problem. I was very sad to see this happen because I'm a bit sentimental about Macs being different, but if i delivers us faster creative applications, then that's what we need.
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