A small minority of them screw people, otherwise everything would be FUBAR-ed long time ago. Most of the folks try to do what's right and are enjoying their work, believe it or not.
You seem to be the exact kind of guy they like. Tons of experience, willing to work in a team. Now add "passion for technology" to this, and good coding skills (which I'm sure you have) and you'll get hired. If you're lucky, you'll even get an interesting job. You won't get rich on stock options , though, because there aren't any.
Someone should pick up where Be Inc left off, and resurrect BeOS, and add a good security model to it. Just yesterday I downloaded some screenshots of BeOS 5, and five years later, they still look as fresh as they did back in the day. If this is not a testament to their UI design, then I don't know what is.
As an added bonus, this thing ran on X86 hardware and it was FAST, even back then. It'll probably boot in under five seconds on contemporary hardware.
Could you point me to some place in MSDN which describes how to output text with kerning in GDI/GDI+? Because if you can't (and I bet you can't, because it's not there) then you're the one with the head you know where.
DirectX does compositing, but in its current design it only works well with one drawing thread.:0)
And I don't see any flicker in Mac OS X. None. Zero. Double buffering or triple buffering - I don't give a shit. If I need to spend $50 on additional RAM, it's fine with me. It's hard to use Windows and (especially) Linux after Mac OS X.
way? How about just putting in that extra bit of effort necessary to be a first class citizen on a desktop platform that's more popular than your primary development platform? Or at least asking someone with a Mac to do it for you?
In order to fix the problem you need to acknowledge its existence. I'm not a Mac purist. In fact, I'm typing this from my Win XP laptop. However, I do have a Mac, and I know of at least one case where I didn't buy a product (Bibble from Bibble Labs) precisely because it was QT based. It looked bad. It was functional, it did everything I wanted but it looked bad. I've downloaded a demo version and after about an hour I decided there was no way in heck I'd torture myself with something like this. It used Aqua widgets, too, but it neglected spacing, layout and "feel". It was alien.
Luckily there was a native, polished version from another company (Capture One LE by Phase One), selling for the same price. They got my $100 that evening.
Just replace that ugly toolbar, and trick QT into conforming to HIG. Nobody will tell you're using QT. Right now I can see your app is QT based from 10 miles away.
Works is positioned as a "castrated" version of Office "for the poor". Even those who don't use much of the functionality in Office don't want a "castrated" version. They also don't want to be associated with the products "for the poor".
Now Apple could change that with iWork. Watch it unfold, man. They'll add spreadsheet app. They'll closely integrate the pieces and make import/export a breeze. They'll polish the heck out of it. Then they'll price it well below $200 and tell their fanbase that they don't need Office anymore. And the fanbase will have an orgasm yet again.
To the contrary. Many Mac users like MS because they release Office for Mac and it's a good product. It's actually a better product than Windows version of Office.
Folks switch from Windows to Mac PRECISELY because it still runs Office, but without all the annoyances of Windows and does so on better hardware and with more polished UI.
If you thought it was hard to compete with Office on Linux (where there's no official port), that was nothing. It will be 10 times more difficult to compete with Office on Mac. The only company that can pull this off is Apple, because they'll write a native polished app that will be good enough and cost 3 times less.
You should read Apple Human Interface Guidelines. For your reference, toolbars DO NOT look like this in Cocoa. Also, UI elements are not placed at random within Aqua. Apple Interface builder shows dynamic guides when you place controls, and these guides help you to comform to HIG. Items should be aligned. Push buttons should have descriptive text on them, there should be sufficient spacing between UI elements.
You obviously haven't used Mac OS X. First of all you can adjust "blurriness" of the text. The least strong option looks pretty much exactly as ClearType (except of course it was released WAY before XP).
Second of all, W2K does NOT have realtime compositing, no matter the hardware.
Flicker free drawing is available by using double buffering only and that's why it's dog slow and no one uses it.
Resolution independent graphics is not available - Mac OS X draws pretty much everything as vectors using Adobe Display PDF.
And you must be joking about advanced typography. Apple's typography is head and shoulders above Microsoft's, as it has always been. MS typography APIs don't even know what "kerning" is, fer chrissakes.
Price the whole thing at $99-$149 and release a couple more versions - people will be switching from Office in droves.
Apple recognizes the threat here - if MSFT withdraws their Office from Mac software market Mac as a platform will suddenly become a lot less desirable for tons and tons of users. All they need to do to lessen the impact is release their own office suite with 20-30% of features of competing office suite that customers use 95% of the time and most importantly get their import/export from PP/Word/Excel just right. And make it look nice (this is one of the things Open Office failed miserably at).
But I don't give a rat's ass about 3D features in my UI. I do care about realtime compositing, flicker-free drawing, resolution-independent graphics, advanced typography, and yeah, genie effect, too. The stuff that Mac OS X had since year 2000.
Just put on a pair of Sennheiser HD580 or HD600 headphones, and you will EASILY hear the difference between 192kbps MP3 and uncompressed audio. And I do mean, easily. Even people who don't know what to listen for hear the difference and run to the store to buy HD580's.:0)
If you were nice to them you'd give them a Microsoft Natural or something along those lines. Personally I've been using Natural KBs exclusively for the last 5 years or so. They don't come with USB connectors.
Slashdot Mirror
Getting them back alive is the hard part of the problem, usually. Even the almighty NASA blows up a few people every now ant then.
A small minority of them screw people, otherwise everything would be FUBAR-ed long time ago. Most of the folks try to do what's right and are enjoying their work, believe it or not.
You seem to be the exact kind of guy they like. Tons of experience, willing to work in a team. Now add "passion for technology" to this, and good coding skills (which I'm sure you have) and you'll get hired. If you're lucky, you'll even get an interesting job. You won't get rich on stock options , though, because there aren't any.
Japanese companies NEVER admit their mistakes. Significant number of heads must have been cut off before they admitted they were wrong.
http://domains.msn.com - there you go. Pricey, but if you want respect you'll probably pony up the dough. :0)
Someone should pick up where Be Inc left off, and resurrect BeOS, and add a good security model to it. Just yesterday I downloaded some screenshots of BeOS 5, and five years later, they still look as fresh as they did back in the day. If this is not a testament to their UI design, then I don't know what is.
As an added bonus, this thing ran on X86 hardware and it was FAST, even back then. It'll probably boot in under five seconds on contemporary hardware.
Call 'em tables, then.
Could you point me to some place in MSDN which describes how to output text with kerning in GDI/GDI+? Because if you can't (and I bet you can't, because it's not there) then you're the one with the head you know where.
:0)
DirectX does compositing, but in its current design it only works well with one drawing thread.
And I don't see any flicker in Mac OS X. None. Zero. Double buffering or triple buffering - I don't give a shit. If I need to spend $50 on additional RAM, it's fine with me. It's hard to use Windows and (especially) Linux after Mac OS X.
way? How about just putting in that extra bit of effort necessary to be a first class citizen on a desktop platform that's more popular than your primary development platform? Or at least asking someone with a Mac to do it for you?
In order to fix the problem you need to acknowledge its existence. I'm not a Mac purist. In fact, I'm typing this from my Win XP laptop. However, I do have a Mac, and I know of at least one case where I didn't buy a product (Bibble from Bibble Labs) precisely because it was QT based. It looked bad. It was functional, it did everything I wanted but it looked bad. I've downloaded a demo version and after about an hour I decided there was no way in heck I'd torture myself with something like this. It used Aqua widgets, too, but it neglected spacing, layout and "feel". It was alien.
Luckily there was a native, polished version from another company (Capture One LE by Phase One), selling for the same price. They got my $100 that evening.
Just replace that ugly toolbar, and trick QT into conforming to HIG. Nobody will tell you're using QT. Right now I can see your app is QT based from 10 miles away.
Works is positioned as a "castrated" version of Office "for the poor". Even those who don't use much of the functionality in Office don't want a "castrated" version. They also don't want to be associated with the products "for the poor".
Now Apple could change that with iWork. Watch it unfold, man. They'll add spreadsheet app. They'll closely integrate the pieces and make import/export a breeze. They'll polish the heck out of it. Then they'll price it well below $200 and tell their fanbase that they don't need Office anymore. And the fanbase will have an orgasm yet again.
You forgot Natalie Portman, insensitive clod!
Yeah. That sure is representative of Mac userbase as a whole. :0) I mean 20 users out of millions can't be wrong, right?
>> Many Mac users hate MS
To the contrary. Many Mac users like MS because they release Office for Mac and it's a good product. It's actually a better product than Windows version of Office.
Folks switch from Windows to Mac PRECISELY because it still runs Office, but without all the annoyances of Windows and does so on better hardware and with more polished UI.
If you thought it was hard to compete with Office on Linux (where there's no official port), that was nothing. It will be 10 times more difficult to compete with Office on Mac. The only company that can pull this off is Apple, because they'll write a native polished app that will be good enough and cost 3 times less.
You should read Apple Human Interface Guidelines. For your reference, toolbars DO NOT look like this in Cocoa. Also, UI elements are not placed at random within Aqua. Apple Interface builder shows dynamic guides when you place controls, and these guides help you to comform to HIG. Items should be aligned. Push buttons should have descriptive text on them, there should be sufficient spacing between UI elements.
Merely using Aqua controls is not enough.
That's why. It's not native to Aqua and it shows. Mac people like polished apps, and Qt apps simply look like they've been poorly ported from Windows.
But that's bullshit, dude.
You obviously haven't used Mac OS X. First of all you can adjust "blurriness" of the text. The least strong option looks pretty much exactly as ClearType (except of course it was released WAY before XP).
Second of all, W2K does NOT have realtime compositing, no matter the hardware.
Flicker free drawing is available by using double buffering only and that's why it's dog slow and no one uses it.
Resolution independent graphics is not available - Mac OS X draws pretty much everything as vectors using Adobe Display PDF.
And you must be joking about advanced typography. Apple's typography is head and shoulders above Microsoft's, as it has always been. MS typography APIs don't even know what "kerning" is, fer chrissakes.
Price the whole thing at $99-$149 and release a couple more versions - people will be switching from Office in droves.
Apple recognizes the threat here - if MSFT withdraws their Office from Mac software market Mac as a platform will suddenly become a lot less desirable for tons and tons of users. All they need to do to lessen the impact is release their own office suite with 20-30% of features of competing office suite that customers use 95% of the time and most importantly get their import/export from PP/Word/Excel just right. And make it look nice (this is one of the things Open Office failed miserably at).
There you go, one less dependency.
But I don't give a rat's ass about 3D features in my UI. I do care about realtime compositing, flicker-free drawing, resolution-independent graphics, advanced typography, and yeah, genie effect, too. The stuff that Mac OS X had since year 2000.
I'm not that fellow. I don't even know what Tek is (except if it's Tektronix). :0)
>> The probe is a collaboration with NASA, the
>> European Space Agency
Oh, boy, this will be a hard landing then. NASA shoulds send rovers to repair this thing after it "lands".
It's not like I'm a creationist or anything, but evolution still can't explain flagella motors.
e /e ssays/flagella.htm
http://www.health.adelaide.edu.au/Pharm/Musgrav
There's no evolutionary path that leads to something like this.
Just put on a pair of Sennheiser HD580 or HD600 headphones, and you will EASILY hear the difference between 192kbps MP3 and uncompressed audio. And I do mean, easily. Even people who don't know what to listen for hear the difference and run to the store to buy HD580's. :0)
AFAIK that USB connector only feeds the USB hub. You can't connect the keyboard using this connector alone.
If you were nice to them you'd give them a Microsoft Natural or something along those lines. Personally I've been using Natural KBs exclusively for the last 5 years or so. They don't come with USB connectors.