I'm not an iOS user nor do I have iTunes on my Windows PC; although I do have it on my Mac. It's quite easily the worst media player I have seen in a long time. I am sure I will be shot down, and hard, for saying this but Windows Media Player is much better for playing music and it handles videos, DVDs, etc just fine (just add codecs and it plays basically everything imaginable). I am sure there are better players out there but I don't really have the need to hunt them down as WMP plays everything I need.
The reason I really hate iTunes on my Mac is that when I play any one audio file (like for example a voicemail that turns up in my inbox) it opens my entire f&&king library and the file, which has a random string name, just gets lost in there, so I either have to hunt it down and manually delete it or otherwise if I play my music randomly, I will get voicemail messages popping in the mix.
Additionally, it seems to have duplicated all my mp3 files into its own library, thus wasting extra gigs of precious space on my tiny MacBook Air SSD drive for no valid reason. Again, Windows Media Play just plays the file I ask it to without needing to convert and duplicate it and hold it some massive, monolithic library, for all time. With WMP, if I am watching one movie, I can right click another and queue it up to play next or I can double click it to play it immediately. Again, iTunes has no such facility (not that it plays movies but you get the idea).
The guy next to me at work uses iTunes and an iPhone and I have many times sat in my seat and watched in utter astonishment as he goes through some ridiculous dance of updating iTunes, plugging his iPhone to his laptop via cable and then running some update, rebooting, repeating. He does this to back up his contacts too. My Androids by comparison, automatically (and have for many, many years) updates all my contacts to my MS Exchange and Gmail accounts (Facebook too, if I wanted to) and to get the lastest OS update all I have to do is leave my phone on - and it just does it itself, over the air. I know Apple is kind of sort of starting to do some of this now but they're claiming they're original in doing it when Android has done it since day 1.
The whole iTunes process seems about 10 years old to me. I think it might have been something special in 2000 but now it just seems like a gigantic piece of crap. This doesn't even get me started on my #1 pet peeve of iTunes on Windows which is the (to me) cardinal sin of installing a f&&king service on my computer that runs all the time listening as an open an unencrypted listener - and not telling me, being insecure and wasting resources.
1. Microsoft & Bill Gates have no imagination and style. They make crappy products and only care about your money. (Almost a line verbatim from The Saviour(TM) himself).
2. Apple is wonderful and has the soul of Woz.
3. People who install Linux and install "the baby distro" (which is what, exactly? Some super easy to use Linux distro that does everything for you and doesn't need a CLI ever - coz that would be wonderful for the year of the linux desktop) are idiots.
4. People who follow HOWTOS are not smart.
5. Dell are ugly and Apple are beautiful.
Either you're a complete fanboy or you work for Apple marketing or are you just out of touch completely.
Apple hasn't had the soul of Woz since the early 80's. You might not have noticed but Apple is very, very concerned with making money and very, very concerned with not letting people "hack" their devices. They go out of their way to make jailbreaking difficult and every update tries to re-imprison jailbroken phones. Apple are in no way hacker friendly. Not even a little bit. Apple has the soul of Steve Jobs and if Bill Gates had no imagination and only cared about money then Steve Jobs had dreams only of destroying competition and being a total control freak.
I'm typing this on my MBA, btw. I'm not an Apple hater - but you're living in a dream world if you genuinely believe what you wrote above.
A Dell Inspiron is comparable to an iMac. A whitebox from your local PC shop is comparable to an iMac. All home computers are comparable to an iMac - that's why they're in competition with one another and that's why the iMac doesn't sell anywhere near as many as the Dells and the Whiteboxes.
The reason Apple is kicking arse right now is because they're selling completely (to the masses) unhackable appliance fashion devices, like iPods, iPhone and iPads - not because Apple Computer sales are up because they're still not really any higher than they've ever been.
The article you linked to actually says the complete opposite. It says "Apple Inc., maker of the iPad, 40.5 million shipped worldwide, 62 percent share". That would mean that all other tablets shipped would fall in to the 48% share. Which would mean that the iPad out sold all other tablet devices combined.
And yet it's estimated that at current growth, there will be more Android devices than Windows devices by 2016 - making it the largest device OS in the World; far outweighing iOS or OSX or a merged conjunction such as iOSX, as it will no doubt be, by 2016.
I concur. The level of map quality and usability in Australia is beyond primitive. This might be great in the US of A but I am far from impressed. I'll be sticking with Google Maps thanks. If Apple wants to move iPhone over to this (as they do, I understand) a lot of people outside the US are going to be pissed of with their iPhone's map quality (and 4G capability, presumably) - but then again my friend has an iPhone4 and his Google Maps doesn't even have Navigation - I don't know if this is simply because he doesn't know how to use his phone or if the Google Maps on iOS is lesser than the Android version? None the less, I see no need to migrate, thanks.
Coz I can tell you the quality of maps in my part of the world is *waaaaaaaaaaaaaay* below par of Google Maps. No Satellite view. No Street View - and even that took about 4 minutes to load...
Really? Coz I get about 1/4 the speed on HSPA+ that I do on Vivid. I have several customers using Vivid as a last-line backup for their link and they usually get between 10 and 20mbps. I don't know anyone getting that on HSPA+. Then again, Vivid take up in Perth is probably low, so maybe there's less saturation, where as every man and his dog has more than one mobile device.
From what I saw of the latest X-Box stuff on the CES 2012 video, X-Box is basically at this point already, except I think it works for movies but probably not live TV (however maybe it only works with Kinect, though I am not sure if this is an X-Box thing or a Kinect thing)?
I personally do not have an X-Box of any kind, so I have no way of verifying the video but the guy just sat there and told the X-Box what games to play or what movies to play and it worked. Unlike the Windows Phone demo in the same video, which also used voice recognition and outright failed, publicly.
Anyone who wants to see it in action, here's a video that isn't the one I am talking about (coz I couldn't find it in youtube) but it's basically the same thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvXAZ_C2UZI.
The actual video from CES had the guy starting movies from voice alone. Seemed pretty good but like I said, I am not in a position to independently verify if it actually works or if it's a total load of shit.
P.S. This being Slashdot in 2012, where everyone suddenly thinks every comment is paid for, I must now add in the compulsory disclaimer. Yes, I said something about MS that could be perceived as positive, however I am not now, nor have I ever been in the pay or service of Microsoft or anyone related to MS in any way.
And just this week their owner, Woolworths, declared they're close over a hundred Dick Smith stores and going to use their Big-W outlets to sell the consumer electronic components. The remaining Dick Smith stores will be sold off.
I once had to wipe some disks before throwing them out (nothing really sensitive or important). But they were SCSI and I didn't have a SCSI enabled PC handy and I couldn't be bothered setting something up or downing a server to do it, etc.
So I came up with a technique for making the disks safe for disposal.
First, I threw them out the 2nd story window a few times. Then I hurled them at the ground a few more times as hard as I could for good measure.
Then I put them in a plastic bag with a heap of dog shit and water, tied the bag up and put them in the bin. If anyone still wanted to try to retrieve that data, they've earned it.
I agree with the comment from the Anon Coward who also commented on this - if you cannot find a cheaper Wintel Laptop, you're not trying. Additionally, if you are comparing to Alienware, then the spec difference is generally enormous. The level of graphic card power, etc on most AlienWare laptops is *far* in excess of what MacBook Pro's offer.
I don't say this as a Windows fanboi - I am typing this on my Macbook Air. That doesn't change the fact that I can buy a Windows laptop for around half the price of a Macbook Pro with the same amount of power (if I go MSI or some other brand like that) are about 25% cheaper for a Dell. I frequently sell Core i5, 8GB of RAM laptops for under $1000 *Australian* dollars, which means USD would be even less (because we get massively ripped off on electronics here) and I have a customer's Core i&, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SDD laptop on my desk right now which was less than $1,500.
I desperately wanted to justify a Mac Mini for my home media centre because they look so nice and the media PC is so clearly visible in the lounge room. But once you factor in an optical drive, enough storage to be worthwhile (1TB), the Dell Zino is *massively* cheaper and doesn't look too bad.
And I've now uninstalled it because it wreaked havoc on my phone. Every time I got in my car, it took over the bluetooth to "phone audio" instead of the car kit and it keeps on opening itself, even after I kill it.
Just grabbed it from Android market. Tried 3 searches:
1. "Petrol near me" - success - found a petrol station near by, correctly.
2. "Weather today" - failure - said weather coming soon, in the meantime, try accuWeather.
3. "Who is the Prime Minister of Australia" - success - Julia Gillard.
The speech to text was flawless, even on the 3rd one.
Still a gimmick I can't see any real use for. I can Google Voice search on my phone already and I never use it. Maybe there's something else you can do with these things I haven't thought of but for me it seems like Siri it pointless and Evi more so.
It is a different sensor, which was discussed on Slashdot recently. Microsoft announced it as CES 2012 - basically it's a special version for Desktop / PC use and it's useful range is from 30cm or there abouts. They've also released some APIs and so on, which will still work with the Xbox 360 1.8m version, but only while in beta. It's actually pretty cool and I am looking forward to it. I think it's the best way to get touchscreen like interface options, without the bad idea that having a touch screen laptop or desktop would be. It's one of the few IT announcements I am actually excited about, of late. (And please, because I know it is the fad on/. these days to accuse anyone who is positive on any MS product of being a paid shill, feel free to check my years long commenting history, much of which is -ve of MS. I am not a paid shill for MS. It just happens that I really like what I've seen of this product - albeit none of which has been in person; I've only seen product demos on youtube, etc, so perhaps the real thing actually sucks).
I remember seeing the Samsung touch screen see through Window on youtube, from CES and think Kinect, coupled with Windows like that, would make for a pretty awesome house!:-)
Umm, I'll think you find they do run faster than in the days of 3.1. A lot faster. If you're going to claim that boot times are similar, for example, consider that DOS (which booted 3.1) was a matter of less than 1MB. Windows 7 is a few gig at least. Booting a few gig OS in the same time as a meg OS is actually a thousand times faster. Again, I can compute enormous volumes of data in SQL (MS or My) on this PC in Windows in a very, very short time. This was not true of my old 286, running 3.1, which would have taken hours to even attempt to search a tiny database by today's standards.
Yes, Linux has a smaller footprint and I use it accordingly, where it's fit for purpose. But don't claim that Windows 7 is in some way slower or even less performable in comparison to 3.1 over DOS because it's patently and verifiably untrue.
None the less, I don't agree with this move by MS on desktop PCs and agree that people are missing the point by focusing on tablets, where few if any will try to change the OS. I mean, MS have already sold the OS, why should they care if you change it? They've got your money already.
That's a nice story, without any actual facts in it. Woz had nothing to do with the Mac project at all and was still involved on Apple II while the Mac was being worked on . The overlapping windows concept, achieved by clipping windows, was created by Dan Engalls, from Xerox on SmallTalk, long before Jobs and Co walked in their door. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taouu/html/ch02s05.html
Apple managed to duplicate this through the efforts of of few engineers on the Mac team, who actually came over from Xeorx PARC.
Additionally, Raskin was the key driving force behind the Mac at Apple before Steve Jobs even knew the project was being worked on. Jobs is credited with a hell of a lot of things that he really had very little to do with, until the project was already well underway (and yes I know this is beyond the scope of your comment). He did have a great eye for simplification but he was also a complete arsehole of a human being and routinely took credit for other people's work. He didn't actually invent the iPod, the iPhone, the Mac, the Apple I or II, etc, etc. About the only thing that was his from the start was the Lisa. Read the Biography by Walter Isaacson: it's a fascinating read about a complex human being who wasn't actually a very nice person, wasn't technically proficient himself at all yet still does deserve a lot of credit (but no where near as much as he does get) for many things we know and love about computers today.
That's not correct. If you update from IE8 to IE9, Bing does become the default search engine for IE. Many users, smaller business, home users, etc, just use IE. IE share may be declining but it's far from insignificant. So if many users are switching from IE8 to 9 as their Windows automatically installs it, or as they get a new PC and it comes with Bing by default (which it does), then Bing gets an "artificial" boost.
Many of the people I have seen using Bing still think it's Google. They have no idea there's such a thing as "different search engines" or even different browsers.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not an iOS user nor do I have iTunes on my Windows PC; although I do have it on my Mac. It's quite easily the worst media player I have seen in a long time. I am sure I will be shot down, and hard, for saying this but Windows Media Player is much better for playing music and it handles videos, DVDs, etc just fine (just add codecs and it plays basically everything imaginable). I am sure there are better players out there but I don't really have the need to hunt them down as WMP plays everything I need.
The reason I really hate iTunes on my Mac is that when I play any one audio file (like for example a voicemail that turns up in my inbox) it opens my entire f&&king library and the file, which has a random string name, just gets lost in there, so I either have to hunt it down and manually delete it or otherwise if I play my music randomly, I will get voicemail messages popping in the mix.
Additionally, it seems to have duplicated all my mp3 files into its own library, thus wasting extra gigs of precious space on my tiny MacBook Air SSD drive for no valid reason. Again, Windows Media Play just plays the file I ask it to without needing to convert and duplicate it and hold it some massive, monolithic library, for all time. With WMP, if I am watching one movie, I can right click another and queue it up to play next or I can double click it to play it immediately. Again, iTunes has no such facility (not that it plays movies but you get the idea).
The guy next to me at work uses iTunes and an iPhone and I have many times sat in my seat and watched in utter astonishment as he goes through some ridiculous dance of updating iTunes, plugging his iPhone to his laptop via cable and then running some update, rebooting, repeating. He does this to back up his contacts too. My Androids by comparison, automatically (and have for many, many years) updates all my contacts to my MS Exchange and Gmail accounts (Facebook too, if I wanted to) and to get the lastest OS update all I have to do is leave my phone on - and it just does it itself, over the air. I know Apple is kind of sort of starting to do some of this now but they're claiming they're original in doing it when Android has done it since day 1.
The whole iTunes process seems about 10 years old to me. I think it might have been something special in 2000 but now it just seems like a gigantic piece of crap. This doesn't even get me started on my #1 pet peeve of iTunes on Windows which is the (to me) cardinal sin of installing a f&&king service on my computer that runs all the time listening as an open an unencrypted listener - and not telling me, being insecure and wasting resources.
MacBook Air.
Let me summarise your piece here:
1. Microsoft & Bill Gates have no imagination and style. They make crappy products and only care about your money. (Almost a line verbatim from The Saviour(TM) himself).
2. Apple is wonderful and has the soul of Woz.
3. People who install Linux and install "the baby distro" (which is what, exactly? Some super easy to use Linux distro that does everything for you and doesn't need a CLI ever - coz that would be wonderful for the year of the linux desktop) are idiots.
4. People who follow HOWTOS are not smart.
5. Dell are ugly and Apple are beautiful.
Either you're a complete fanboy or you work for Apple marketing or are you just out of touch completely.
Apple hasn't had the soul of Woz since the early 80's. You might not have noticed but Apple is very, very concerned with making money and very, very concerned with not letting people "hack" their devices. They go out of their way to make jailbreaking difficult and every update tries to re-imprison jailbroken phones. Apple are in no way hacker friendly. Not even a little bit. Apple has the soul of Steve Jobs and if Bill Gates had no imagination and only cared about money then Steve Jobs had dreams only of destroying competition and being a total control freak.
I'm typing this on my MBA, btw. I'm not an Apple hater - but you're living in a dream world if you genuinely believe what you wrote above.
A Dell Inspiron is comparable to an iMac. A whitebox from your local PC shop is comparable to an iMac. All home computers are comparable to an iMac - that's why they're in competition with one another and that's why the iMac doesn't sell anywhere near as many as the Dells and the Whiteboxes.
The reason Apple is kicking arse right now is because they're selling completely (to the masses) unhackable appliance fashion devices, like iPods, iPhone and iPads - not because Apple Computer sales are up because they're still not really any higher than they've ever been.
The article you linked to actually says the complete opposite. It says "Apple Inc., maker of the iPad, 40.5 million shipped worldwide, 62 percent share". That would mean that all other tablets shipped would fall in to the 48% share. Which would mean that the iPad out sold all other tablet devices combined.
You've always gotta give 110%, right?
And yet it's estimated that at current growth, there will be more Android devices than Windows devices by 2016 - making it the largest device OS in the World; far outweighing iOS or OSX or a merged conjunction such as iOSX, as it will no doubt be, by 2016.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/28/idc-by-2016-android-devices-to-outnumber-traditional-windows-pcs/
Not bad for an OS that no one wants, hey? Of course - 2016 is a long way off in tech terms but Android tablets are starting to sell and sell well.
By the way - http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/14/idc-apples-ipad-rules-tablet-sales-today-but-android-makers-will-overtake-it-by-2016/ - I would hardly say over 40% of tablets is finding it tough to spread (Apple is now at only 54.7%). The days of Android tablets languishing with no sales are long past - Android is fast approaching the 50% mark on tablets, too.
I concur. The level of map quality and usability in Australia is beyond primitive. This might be great in the US of A but I am far from impressed. I'll be sticking with Google Maps thanks. If Apple wants to move iPhone over to this (as they do, I understand) a lot of people outside the US are going to be pissed of with their iPhone's map quality (and 4G capability, presumably) - but then again my friend has an iPhone4 and his Google Maps doesn't even have Navigation - I don't know if this is simply because he doesn't know how to use his phone or if the Google Maps on iOS is lesser than the Android version? None the less, I see no need to migrate, thanks.
Western Australia.
Coz I can tell you the quality of maps in my part of the world is *waaaaaaaaaaaaaay* below par of Google Maps. No Satellite view. No Street View - and even that took about 4 minutes to load...
Really? Coz I get about 1/4 the speed on HSPA+ that I do on Vivid. I have several customers using Vivid as a last-line backup for their link and they usually get between 10 and 20mbps. I don't know anyone getting that on HSPA+. Then again, Vivid take up in Perth is probably low, so maybe there's less saturation, where as every man and his dog has more than one mobile device.
Perhaps he means the issue with it breaking when dropped from waist height? Maybe fragments of it go all over the floor?
Why I believe it will look exactly like this:
http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/i-M8XxLDd/0/L/i-M8XxLDd-L.jpg
I don't believe it works with WINE. You can use it with Crossover Office, though. http://www.codeweavers.com/
From what I saw of the latest X-Box stuff on the CES 2012 video, X-Box is basically at this point already, except I think it works for movies but probably not live TV (however maybe it only works with Kinect, though I am not sure if this is an X-Box thing or a Kinect thing)?
I personally do not have an X-Box of any kind, so I have no way of verifying the video but the guy just sat there and told the X-Box what games to play or what movies to play and it worked. Unlike the Windows Phone demo in the same video, which also used voice recognition and outright failed, publicly.
Anyone who wants to see it in action, here's a video that isn't the one I am talking about (coz I couldn't find it in youtube) but it's basically the same thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvXAZ_C2UZI.
The actual video from CES had the guy starting movies from voice alone. Seemed pretty good but like I said, I am not in a position to independently verify if it actually works or if it's a total load of shit.
P.S. This being Slashdot in 2012, where everyone suddenly thinks every comment is paid for, I must now add in the compulsory disclaimer. Yes, I said something about MS that could be perceived as positive, however I am not now, nor have I ever been in the pay or service of Microsoft or anyone related to MS in any way.
Man I wish I hadn't already frivolously burnt the mod points I had earlier today. That one made me laugh out loud.
And just this week their owner, Woolworths, declared they're close over a hundred Dick Smith stores and going to use their Big-W outlets to sell the consumer electronic components. The remaining Dick Smith stores will be sold off.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/woolworths-to-sell-dick-smith-electronics-20120131-1qqra.html
I once had to wipe some disks before throwing them out (nothing really sensitive or important). But they were SCSI and I didn't have a SCSI enabled PC handy and I couldn't be bothered setting something up or downing a server to do it, etc.
So I came up with a technique for making the disks safe for disposal.
First, I threw them out the 2nd story window a few times. Then I hurled them at the ground a few more times as hard as I could for good measure.
Then I put them in a plastic bag with a heap of dog shit and water, tied the bag up and put them in the bin. If anyone still wanted to try to retrieve that data, they've earned it.
True Story. Still makes me smile.
Also, the Facebook app is a piece of crap on the iPhone.
It's a piece of crap on Android, too.
Very nice looking. Love the quite, too. My current media PC is much too noisy.
I agree with the comment from the Anon Coward who also commented on this - if you cannot find a cheaper Wintel Laptop, you're not trying. Additionally, if you are comparing to Alienware, then the spec difference is generally enormous. The level of graphic card power, etc on most AlienWare laptops is *far* in excess of what MacBook Pro's offer.
I don't say this as a Windows fanboi - I am typing this on my Macbook Air. That doesn't change the fact that I can buy a Windows laptop for around half the price of a Macbook Pro with the same amount of power (if I go MSI or some other brand like that) are about 25% cheaper for a Dell. I frequently sell Core i5, 8GB of RAM laptops for under $1000 *Australian* dollars, which means USD would be even less (because we get massively ripped off on electronics here) and I have a customer's Core i&, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SDD laptop on my desk right now which was less than $1,500.
I desperately wanted to justify a Mac Mini for my home media centre because they look so nice and the media PC is so clearly visible in the lounge room. But once you factor in an optical drive, enough storage to be worthwhile (1TB), the Dell Zino is *massively* cheaper and doesn't look too bad.
And I've now uninstalled it because it wreaked havoc on my phone. Every time I got in my car, it took over the bluetooth to "phone audio" instead of the car kit and it keeps on opening itself, even after I kill it.
Just grabbed it from Android market. Tried 3 searches:
1. "Petrol near me" - success - found a petrol station near by, correctly.
2. "Weather today" - failure - said weather coming soon, in the meantime, try accuWeather.
3. "Who is the Prime Minister of Australia" - success - Julia Gillard.
The speech to text was flawless, even on the 3rd one.
Still a gimmick I can't see any real use for. I can Google Voice search on my phone already and I never use it. Maybe there's something else you can do with these things I haven't thought of but for me it seems like Siri it pointless and Evi more so.
It is a different sensor, which was discussed on Slashdot recently. Microsoft announced it as CES 2012 - basically it's a special version for Desktop / PC use and it's useful range is from 30cm or there abouts. They've also released some APIs and so on, which will still work with the Xbox 360 1.8m version, but only while in beta. It's actually pretty cool and I am looking forward to it. I think it's the best way to get touchscreen like interface options, without the bad idea that having a touch screen laptop or desktop would be. It's one of the few IT announcements I am actually excited about, of late. (And please, because I know it is the fad on /. these days to accuse anyone who is positive on any MS product of being a paid shill, feel free to check my years long commenting history, much of which is -ve of MS. I am not a paid shill for MS. It just happens that I really like what I've seen of this product - albeit none of which has been in person; I've only seen product demos on youtube, etc, so perhaps the real thing actually sucks).
:-)
I remember seeing the Samsung touch screen see through Window on youtube, from CES and think Kinect, coupled with Windows like that, would make for a pretty awesome house!
Umm, I'll think you find they do run faster than in the days of 3.1. A lot faster. If you're going to claim that boot times are similar, for example, consider that DOS (which booted 3.1) was a matter of less than 1MB. Windows 7 is a few gig at least. Booting a few gig OS in the same time as a meg OS is actually a thousand times faster. Again, I can compute enormous volumes of data in SQL (MS or My) on this PC in Windows in a very, very short time. This was not true of my old 286, running 3.1, which would have taken hours to even attempt to search a tiny database by today's standards.
Yes, Linux has a smaller footprint and I use it accordingly, where it's fit for purpose. But don't claim that Windows 7 is in some way slower or even less performable in comparison to 3.1 over DOS because it's patently and verifiably untrue.
None the less, I don't agree with this move by MS on desktop PCs and agree that people are missing the point by focusing on tablets, where few if any will try to change the OS. I mean, MS have already sold the OS, why should they care if you change it? They've got your money already.
That's a nice story, without any actual facts in it. Woz had nothing to do with the Mac project at all and was still involved on Apple II while the Mac was being worked on . The overlapping windows concept, achieved by clipping windows, was created by Dan Engalls, from Xerox on SmallTalk, long before Jobs and Co walked in their door. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taouu/html/ch02s05.html
Apple managed to duplicate this through the efforts of of few engineers on the Mac team, who actually came over from Xeorx PARC.
Additionally, Raskin was the key driving force behind the Mac at Apple before Steve Jobs even knew the project was being worked on. Jobs is credited with a hell of a lot of things that he really had very little to do with, until the project was already well underway (and yes I know this is beyond the scope of your comment). He did have a great eye for simplification but he was also a complete arsehole of a human being and routinely took credit for other people's work. He didn't actually invent the iPod, the iPhone, the Mac, the Apple I or II, etc, etc. About the only thing that was his from the start was the Lisa. Read the Biography by Walter Isaacson: it's a fascinating read about a complex human being who wasn't actually a very nice person, wasn't technically proficient himself at all yet still does deserve a lot of credit (but no where near as much as he does get) for many things we know and love about computers today.
That's not correct. If you update from IE8 to IE9, Bing does become the default search engine for IE. Many users, smaller business, home users, etc, just use IE. IE share may be declining but it's far from insignificant. So if many users are switching from IE8 to 9 as their Windows automatically installs it, or as they get a new PC and it comes with Bing by default (which it does), then Bing gets an "artificial" boost. Many of the people I have seen using Bing still think it's Google. They have no idea there's such a thing as "different search engines" or even different browsers.