The solution is simple: drop ChromeOS, and replace it with a version of Android that has some modifications and optimizations for the desktop. That gets you a much larger base of available apps right out of the box.
What if "Meanderings of Memory" never existed in the first place, but was made up by sloppy 19th-century OED editors when they couldn't find a real source? It's not as if this practice is unknown...
In cases like this, IE6 should be treated as a legacy application platform and run in a VM. Actual browsing should be done in an up-to-date version of IE (or in an alternate browser, but most corps prefer IE because of group policies). This is not difficult to set up with Windows 7 Professional, which even has an XP mode for this specific purpose.
Can someone enlighten me why you'd want to store or access potentially giant images on their happy shiny 'creative cloud' considering it could take minutes or even hours to load or save a picture/project?
They don't. "Cloud" is just a marketing buzzword. This is rental software that is required to phone home once a month or it stops working. Other than that it runs the same as before.
No amount of money will help that incompetently run project. You'd be better off putting your money towards CinePaint or Krita. Or, heck, organizing a fund to buy out the Pixelmator guys and release their code as F/OSS.
Wall Street. Large companies only care about the next quarter, because that's what shareholders care about and what executive bonuses are based upon. Much easier to kick the can down the road, put off upgrades until tomorrow. And tomorrow never comes.
Old coke didn't come back. They created a third product called "Coke Classic" that was not in any way the same thing as "old coke," since Coke Classic is sweetened with High-Fructose Corn Syrup, whereas "old code" was sweetened with natural cane sugar.
If someone tries to sell me a car with the steering wheel and gas pedal in a different place than I'm used to, I don't care if it might be better in some abstract sense (for someone who's never driven before) or if tests with inexperienced drivers show that they think it's cool. I want the controls to be in the same place they were, because I've got this stuff wired into my muscle memory from years of use. The lack of familiarity more than offsets any theoretical advantage the new design might have had.
But that is cumbersome on a tablet where you do not want to type using instant search. You swipe when the keybard is behind the screen in the covertable or on the surface.
Here's the thing: I'm not using Windows on a tablet, and don't plan to start, so I don't really care what layout would make sense there. I want it to work the way I'm used to it working on the desktop. If Microsoft wants to make a different product to chase Apple's tail, fine, but Windows on my desktop should continue to work as it always has.
I don't really want a return to the 'program-in-a-folder-in-a-folder with piles of uninstall, manuals, help files, tutorials, demos, etc links lying about the tree at random' approach of the start menu
That was already deprecated as far back as Windows XP. Unless you use the "classic" start menu (which isn't even in Windows 7), you don't see the overgrown list of everything unless you click on 'All Programs'. The top-level menu has recently used (or pinned) applications on the left – and programs can't shove themselves here automatically, or at least I haven't seen any try. On the right are user folders (Documents, Pictures, etc.) and functions like Control Panel.
I usually turn off "Store and display recently opened programs in the Start Menu", so the only programs that appear on the top level are the ones I specifically pinned there. It works quite well.
That's not good enough. The Start menu has to return; that was always the sticking point, not the replacement of the button with a hot corner. And I never want to see any part of Metro at all.
Paint.net isn't within a light year of Photoshop – and in fairness it doesn't claim to be. It's meant to be an improved version of Windows Paint, nothing more. Not only doesn't it support high color depths, it doesn't even support snapping to a grid – one of the most basic features imaginable.
I understand the theory here (the current system does give online retailers a sizable price advantage over bricks-and-mortar), but this is a bad idea to implement now for two reasons.
First of all, we're still in a recession, and that makes it a bad time to be increasing any taxes on the middle class. Basic Keynesian theory is that you moderate a recession by cutting taxes and increasing spending (even if it means running a deficit), and moderate an economic boom by increasing taxes and cutting spending (thus paying off the bills run up during the deficit). And taxes on the middle class (which this largely is) are especially potent, since that's where much of the consumer spending comes from, and it's consumer spending that drives the economy. So we should be talking about adding an Internet sales tax when the economy recovers, not now.
Secondly, it is unlikely that the state governments currently in power will use the added sales tax money in a wise manner. In theory, states could use the money to increase public services, build infrastructure, or cut the overall sales tax rate (while keeping revenue constant because of the larger tax base). But in practice, a majority of state governments are run by unrepresentative right-wing extremists (thank you, low-turnout off-year elections) and they will probably use the money to cut state income taxes on the rich and give more handouts to corporations.
Well, part of the problem is that there are still routers being sold today that don't support IPv6.
You'll need a regulatory push to get to IPv6. The digital TV transition in the US didn't happen because people gradually migrated off of analog, it happened because the government said 'after this date, analog TV goes dark'.
That would actually be wrong, if you want 16 bits per channel you just use any of the in development source of the last six months or so. As a bonus the whole thing is then accelerated by gpu also.
Yes, I'm aware that they are working on fixing the 16 bits per channel issue. They've been working on fixing it for years. It doesn't count until they've got a stable version released. Compiling a beta from source is not a viable option for the overwhelming majority of users.
According to Wikipedia, Photoshop has supported 16 bits per channel since version 2.5, which was released in 1992. (To be fair, some features such as layers weren't updated to 16 bpc until CS1... which was released in 2003. GIMP is literally over 10 years out of date.)
I have an eos 6d, and even _with_ a 16-bit per colour build of gimp, I find I almost never use it. Why? I process the raw files to my liking using ufraw first and only minor minor touchups are done in gimp if ever.
Yes, if you're willing to use a dedicated app for raw photo processing, 16 bits per channel becomes less necessary for most users. It's still needed if you are going to be doing fancy stuff with layers, but if you just want to make your pictures look good, you can probably do without it. The open-source Raw processing apps aren't as good or as polished as Lightroom, but they're reasonably close – the comparison between, say, RawTherapee and Lightroom isn't nearly the blowout that GIMP vs Photoshop is.
OSS is great at providing the kind of tools technically-oriented users need, since these are the kind of people who write and design it. It's not so great at providing the kinds of features that tech geeks don't much care about, but other people do.
That's why ImageMagick is better than any commercial tool for the same function (mass batch-transforms of images), while GIMP sucks. After all, GIMP works OK for making crappy graphics for web sites, and isn't that all that anyone needs? (/sarcasm)
Krita looks promising, and supports some of the features you'd expect in a serious image editing app (such as high bit depths and adjustment layers). Sadly, there is no stable version on Windows and no indication that one is coming any time soon. (And there isn't an OSX package at all, not even an experimental one.)
Uhm no. Customers are idiots. Witness what the videogames industry has manged to get out of videogamers.
The videogame industry mostly sells to teenage boys. You can get away with a lot more when you're selling an entertainment product to kids than when you're selling a business product to other businesses.
GiMP should be looking more and more attractive to professionals as this sort of thing goes.
GIMP isn't even competitive with Photoshop CS2 (you know, the one Adobe has available for free downloading on their website...) It's a joke. Still no support for 16-bit per channel after all these years. (And before someone says that you can't see the difference, that's not the point at all – you need 16 bpc to avoid getting banding and other artifacts after repeated transforms. The final output can be 8 bpc, but editing/processing needs to be done at a higher depth for solid results. And even a $499 DSLR can shoot 14 bpc these days.)
The worst thing about GIMP is that its existence leads the FOSS community into complacency. People need to realize that there really is no good open-source competitor to Photoshop and start working on one, rather than pretending that GIMP fits the bill and then arguing with creative professionals who repeatedly point out why it doesn't.
The main one From Apple itself is Aperture. It's not really a photoshop competitor exactly, but where it does become one is the range of plugins that support it now - pretty much most of the powerful image editing tools have Aperture plugins, so I can do fairly advanced editing in Aperture without ever touching Photoshop.
Aperture is competitive with Adobe's Lightroom, not Photoshop. Neither program supports even basic features like layers, which are necessary for many types of graphical manipulation work. Instead, they're meant as the first step of the workflow for raw image files that have just been taken off the camera.
So what you're saying is that it's Apple's fault your company sucks?
Anyway, don't think you're safe just because your IT department uses Windows. You'll run into trouble when someone in the executive suites wants to do business on his iPhone or iPad. "Our system doesn't support it" is generally not an acceptable answer in these cases. Maybe you should start looking for a job with an organization that doesn't have its head firmly lodged up its ass?
Adobe Premiere CS6 for OSX gets GPU acceleration via OpenCL. And in any case, this isn't really the deal-breaker you seem to think it is. In most cases, staff time is still more valuable than computer time. You'll be hurting productivity if you force staff off of a platform they are familiar with and onto one they aren't, even if it does mean some effects render faster.
I checked when our bosses wanted to get a mac for media editing (which is comical by itself).
Media editing is actually one of the areas where Macs excel. There is a wide variety of software available, and they have been favored by creative professionals for quite some time.
It works with exactly zero of our software suites. ZERO. No CRM, no office, no database apps, nothing. In fact, Firefox and Safari don't work with our ASP software either.
Firefox and Safari for OSX are standard web browsers. If they don't work with your "ASP software" then that means the software is crap (probably designed to be IE-specific) and needs to be fixed. It's not a problem with the OS or the browsers. Why a media editing system would need CRM or database apps isn't clear to me, but you certainly can get MS Office for OSX if you need it.
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The solution is simple: drop ChromeOS, and replace it with a version of Android that has some modifications and optimizations for the desktop. That gets you a much larger base of available apps right out of the box.
What if "Meanderings of Memory" never existed in the first place, but was made up by sloppy 19th-century OED editors when they couldn't find a real source? It's not as if this practice is unknown...
I sometimes think of it as the Knots Landing UI.
In cases like this, IE6 should be treated as a legacy application platform and run in a VM. Actual browsing should be done in an up-to-date version of IE (or in an alternate browser, but most corps prefer IE because of group policies). This is not difficult to set up with Windows 7 Professional, which even has an XP mode for this specific purpose.
Can someone enlighten me why you'd want to store or access potentially giant images on their happy shiny 'creative cloud' considering it could take minutes or even hours to load or save a picture/project?
They don't. "Cloud" is just a marketing buzzword. This is rental software that is required to phone home once a month or it stops working. Other than that it runs the same as before.
No amount of money will help that incompetently run project. You'd be better off putting your money towards CinePaint or Krita. Or, heck, organizing a fund to buy out the Pixelmator guys and release their code as F/OSS.
Wall Street. Large companies only care about the next quarter, because that's what shareholders care about and what executive bonuses are based upon. Much easier to kick the can down the road, put off upgrades until tomorrow. And tomorrow never comes.
Old coke didn't come back. They created a third product called "Coke Classic" that was not in any way the same thing as "old coke," since Coke Classic is sweetened with High-Fructose Corn Syrup, whereas "old code" was sweetened with natural cane sugar.
Bullshit.
If someone tries to sell me a car with the steering wheel and gas pedal in a different place than I'm used to, I don't care if it might be better in some abstract sense (for someone who's never driven before) or if tests with inexperienced drivers show that they think it's cool. I want the controls to be in the same place they were, because I've got this stuff wired into my muscle memory from years of use. The lack of familiarity more than offsets any theoretical advantage the new design might have had.
But that is cumbersome on a tablet where you do not want to type using instant search. You swipe when the keybard is behind the screen in the covertable or on the surface.
Here's the thing: I'm not using Windows on a tablet, and don't plan to start, so I don't really care what layout would make sense there. I want it to work the way I'm used to it working on the desktop. If Microsoft wants to make a different product to chase Apple's tail, fine, but Windows on my desktop should continue to work as it always has.
I don't really want a return to the 'program-in-a-folder-in-a-folder with piles of uninstall, manuals, help files, tutorials, demos, etc links lying about the tree at random' approach of the start menu
That was already deprecated as far back as Windows XP. Unless you use the "classic" start menu (which isn't even in Windows 7), you don't see the overgrown list of everything unless you click on 'All Programs'. The top-level menu has recently used (or pinned) applications on the left – and programs can't shove themselves here automatically, or at least I haven't seen any try. On the right are user folders (Documents, Pictures, etc.) and functions like Control Panel.
I usually turn off "Store and display recently opened programs in the Start Menu", so the only programs that appear on the top level are the ones I specifically pinned there. It works quite well.
That's not good enough. The Start menu has to return; that was always the sticking point, not the replacement of the button with a hot corner. And I never want to see any part of Metro at all.
Because the Java exploits applied to the latest, fully patched version – not an old version which has been superseded for more than 2 years.
Paint.net isn't within a light year of Photoshop – and in fairness it doesn't claim to be. It's meant to be an improved version of Windows Paint, nothing more. Not only doesn't it support high color depths, it doesn't even support snapping to a grid – one of the most basic features imaginable.
I understand the theory here (the current system does give online retailers a sizable price advantage over bricks-and-mortar), but this is a bad idea to implement now for two reasons.
First of all, we're still in a recession, and that makes it a bad time to be increasing any taxes on the middle class. Basic Keynesian theory is that you moderate a recession by cutting taxes and increasing spending (even if it means running a deficit), and moderate an economic boom by increasing taxes and cutting spending (thus paying off the bills run up during the deficit). And taxes on the middle class (which this largely is) are especially potent, since that's where much of the consumer spending comes from, and it's consumer spending that drives the economy. So we should be talking about adding an Internet sales tax when the economy recovers, not now.
Secondly, it is unlikely that the state governments currently in power will use the added sales tax money in a wise manner. In theory, states could use the money to increase public services, build infrastructure, or cut the overall sales tax rate (while keeping revenue constant because of the larger tax base). But in practice, a majority of state governments are run by unrepresentative right-wing extremists (thank you, low-turnout off-year elections) and they will probably use the money to cut state income taxes on the rich and give more handouts to corporations.
Well, part of the problem is that there are still routers being sold today that don't support IPv6.
You'll need a regulatory push to get to IPv6. The digital TV transition in the US didn't happen because people gradually migrated off of analog, it happened because the government said 'after this date, analog TV goes dark'.
That would actually be wrong, if you want 16 bits per channel you just use any of the in development source of the last six months or so. As a bonus the whole thing is then accelerated by gpu also.
Yes, I'm aware that they are working on fixing the 16 bits per channel issue. They've been working on fixing it for years. It doesn't count until they've got a stable version released. Compiling a beta from source is not a viable option for the overwhelming majority of users.
According to Wikipedia, Photoshop has supported 16 bits per channel since version 2.5, which was released in 1992. (To be fair, some features such as layers weren't updated to 16 bpc until CS1... which was released in 2003. GIMP is literally over 10 years out of date.)
I have an eos 6d, and even _with_ a 16-bit per colour build of gimp, I find I almost never use it. Why? I process the raw files to my liking using ufraw first and only minor minor touchups are done in gimp if ever.
Yes, if you're willing to use a dedicated app for raw photo processing, 16 bits per channel becomes less necessary for most users. It's still needed if you are going to be doing fancy stuff with layers, but if you just want to make your pictures look good, you can probably do without it. The open-source Raw processing apps aren't as good or as polished as Lightroom, but they're reasonably close – the comparison between, say, RawTherapee and Lightroom isn't nearly the blowout that GIMP vs Photoshop is.
OSS is great at providing the kind of tools technically-oriented users need, since these are the kind of people who write and design it. It's not so great at providing the kinds of features that tech geeks don't much care about, but other people do.
That's why ImageMagick is better than any commercial tool for the same function (mass batch-transforms of images), while GIMP sucks. After all, GIMP works OK for making crappy graphics for web sites, and isn't that all that anyone needs? (/sarcasm)
Krita looks promising, and supports some of the features you'd expect in a serious image editing app (such as high bit depths and adjustment layers). Sadly, there is no stable version on Windows and no indication that one is coming any time soon. (And there isn't an OSX package at all, not even an experimental one.)
Uhm no. Customers are idiots. Witness what the videogames industry has manged to get out of videogamers.
The videogame industry mostly sells to teenage boys. You can get away with a lot more when you're selling an entertainment product to kids than when you're selling a business product to other businesses.
GiMP should be looking more and more attractive to professionals as this sort of thing goes.
GIMP isn't even competitive with Photoshop CS2 (you know, the one Adobe has available for free downloading on their website...) It's a joke. Still no support for 16-bit per channel after all these years. (And before someone says that you can't see the difference, that's not the point at all – you need 16 bpc to avoid getting banding and other artifacts after repeated transforms. The final output can be 8 bpc, but editing/processing needs to be done at a higher depth for solid results. And even a $499 DSLR can shoot 14 bpc these days.)
The worst thing about GIMP is that its existence leads the FOSS community into complacency. People need to realize that there really is no good open-source competitor to Photoshop and start working on one, rather than pretending that GIMP fits the bill and then arguing with creative professionals who repeatedly point out why it doesn't.
The main one From Apple itself is Aperture. It's not really a photoshop competitor exactly, but where it does become one is the range of plugins that support it now - pretty much most of the powerful image editing tools have Aperture plugins, so I can do fairly advanced editing in Aperture without ever touching Photoshop.
Aperture is competitive with Adobe's Lightroom, not Photoshop. Neither program supports even basic features like layers, which are necessary for many types of graphical manipulation work. Instead, they're meant as the first step of the workflow for raw image files that have just been taken off the camera.
So what you're saying is that it's Apple's fault your company sucks?
Anyway, don't think you're safe just because your IT department uses Windows. You'll run into trouble when someone in the executive suites wants to do business on his iPhone or iPad. "Our system doesn't support it" is generally not an acceptable answer in these cases. Maybe you should start looking for a job with an organization that doesn't have its head firmly lodged up its ass?
Adobe Premiere CS6 for OSX gets GPU acceleration via OpenCL. And in any case, this isn't really the deal-breaker you seem to think it is. In most cases, staff time is still more valuable than computer time. You'll be hurting productivity if you force staff off of a platform they are familiar with and onto one they aren't, even if it does mean some effects render faster.
I checked when our bosses wanted to get a mac for media editing (which is comical by itself).
Media editing is actually one of the areas where Macs excel. There is a wide variety of software available, and they have been favored by creative professionals for quite some time.
It works with exactly zero of our software suites. ZERO. No CRM, no office, no database apps, nothing. In fact, Firefox and Safari don't work with our ASP software either.
Firefox and Safari for OSX are standard web browsers. If they don't work with your "ASP software" then that means the software is crap (probably designed to be IE-specific) and needs to be fixed. It's not a problem with the OS or the browsers. Why a media editing system would need CRM or database apps isn't clear to me, but you certainly can get MS Office for OSX if you need it.