Totally. What is it with Microsoft and those horrible colors? I remember when XP came out with that nasty looking green start button and all that. Looked like friggin clown paint. Windows 7 seemed to be a step in the right direction, aesthetically speaking. Now it's Metro and the clown paint is back again...this time in big garish blocks. I bet their UI designer is the same person that came up with those idiotic Microsoft Seinfeld commercials.
Enterprise adoption aside for a moment, I think the only way Microsoft can be successful with this thing is to price it aggressively. Really aggressively. The hardware actually looks pretty good. I like the idea that it has a built in keyboard and a kickstand. Sure you can connect stuff with bluetooth on the iPad but bluetooth really sucks the battery life. I like the idea of having a USB port. USB3 would be better though. The screen looks good, at least in the photos. Performance should be pretty good...unless Windows RT cripples it. We'll have to see.
But if it doesn't equal or surpass the iPad in every measurable way and if it comes in at a penny over $399 it's sunk. Yes, there are some high end Android tablets but I don't think they are selling that well compared to the iPad. If Microsoft tries to sell these things for $800 they might as well ship them straight to the wrecking yard. Enterprises might buy them because of the integrated Active Directory (which is a really nice feature) but with consumers I predict it will be a flop. The last I read Apple had about 70% of the tablet market so if anyone is going to unseat them they better bring something that is really, really good and cheap. Microsoft would be best to employ the X-Box strategy - sell it as a loss leader, get developers on board with the platform, build out their App store big time and market the heck out of it. Of course, marketing has never been Microsoft's strong point:-)
If you're willing to take out the DVD drive there is room for a conventional HD and a SSD in a laptop. I did it on my MacBook Pro. I use a 60Bg SSD for the OS and all my applications. The second drive holds all my data files. You can always get a cheap external case for the DVD and connect it via USB but to be honest I have hardly ever had the need for it. I know of at least a few non-Mac laptops that have room for two HD's plus the DVD. Lots of options available to you.
With a rig like you've got an SSD will be icing on the cake. Your apps will open almost instantly and boot times will be about half. At least that was my experience. Quieter and cooler too..gotta love it:-)
I upgraded my laptop with an SSD and I'd never go back to a conventional hard drive. The speed increase is immense. Prices seem to be coming down as well so the hybrid drive is probably painted itself into a corner.
If someone is sitting on the sofa playing hours of D&D and eating handfuls of Doritos I doubt they have ANY career ambitions, let alone IT. Personally I don't get the allure of computer games. If I'm going to spend hours doing anything it had better yield some results. And by results I don't mean blowing up the bad guy with a plasma ray.
Part of the problem is that due to HR policies it is increasingly difficult to hire good people. Why? By law you cannot check prior employers for proper references. You can only ask dates of employment and what their position was. This is how it works in the U.S. anyhow. So the potential employee gives you a list of canned references that they always use and will always say good things about them. Resumes? Those get doctored up sometimes too. Most of the time HR is just scanning applications for key words and such without any real understanding of what it all means. This is especially true for tech jobs. Once the person gets hired there are a whole host of things that you CAN'T fire someone for and a much shorter list of what you CAN fire someone for. Is it any wonder that a few bad apples sneak between the cracks?
Yup. I'm with AT&T but if they start pulling this sort of crap I'm gone. I got grandfathered into an unlimited data plan and as far as I'm concerned a deal is a deal. I pay my bill they should honor the contract. Yeah, I know that Verizon isn't breaking the contract and are waiting until it expires but it still doesn't pass the smell test with me. If certain people are abusing the data usage then go after them not people like me that are light to medium users. Greedy pricks.
Jesus...why don't you just tar and feather the guy for good measure? I came close to working in a place like that one time but thankfully it didn't last long. Keyboard loggers? Screenshot collectors? Big brother anyone? I don't see how anyone can be productive under those kinds of conditions. What do you do for an encore? Slash the guys tires before he leaves the parking lot?
This is actually a big departure from the model that I own. Ok, it's a 2009 MacBook Pro so it's a bit older but I can (and have) upgrade the memory, hard drive, add an SSD, take out the DVD. It's fairly easy to do as well. In fact, the HD is much more accessible on the MacBook than it is on many of the PC's that I've worked on. The new MacBook looks stunning with that retina display and all but I'm not sure that I want to buy something that I can't hack:-)
$600 - $900 for a Windows tablet? Really? Good luck with that one Ballmer. Look - Apple is a premium brand so they can get away with charging what they do for the iPad. The android tablets are priced at a discount to that, presumably because the OS is free but also because the quality of components is not quite as good. On the ones I've used the touch screens don't seem to be quite as responsive as the iPad. In any case, where does this leave the Windows tablets? Selling at a premium to the iPad? I don't think so.
Thunderbolt is an awesome technology but at this point in time it's really, really expensive. Even the cable (which Apple does not provide) will run you at least $50. Firewire, which is dying a slow death, was the same thing. Clearly much faster than USB and USB2 but the PC makers deemed it too expensive to include so it never got much momentum outside of Apple. USB is everywhere now and it's going to hard to displace. Anyone remember the DVORAK keyboard? The QWERTY keyboard in use today was originally designed to make you type SLOWER so as not to jam the keys on the old manual typewriters in use at the time. The DVORAK design was designed to increase typing speed yet it never caught on. Why? People were used to the QWERTY keyboard and didn't want to change. It's too early to tell but I hope that Thunderbolt does not meet the same fate.
I wonder if it has anything to do with that particular countries education system? I'm generalizing but it seems that in some cultures (India and China for example) a lot of emphasis is placed on memorization and learning by rote. Creative thinking seems to be stressed more in North American and European schools. Those creative thinking skills seem to lend themselves particularly well to solving complex multi-dimensional programming problems - thinking outside the box if you will. It's not really a function of intelligence per se it's more of which approach you take to figure it out.
I'm pretty sure you can update the RAM. I would be shocked if that wasn't the case. Evidently (according to others on here at least) you can upgrade the SSD chips on the new MacBook Pro. It won't be long before someone tears one apart and we can see for ourselves. I imagine that the combination of the SSD with the new CPU will make it a real screamer.
Correct. My only gripe with the new MBP is how the SSD chips are done. Others have pointed out that it is in fact possible to upgrade the SSD chips, albeit expensively. I suppose I could always get an external drive and carry it with me or use cloud storage for files that I don't need often. The more I read this thread the more I'm liking the new MBP...and that retina display is out of this world. Now if we could just get reasonably priced Thunderbolt peripherals I'd be in heaven:-)
If you look at it on a strictly component by component basis then I can see why someone might think they are twice as expensive as a comparable Windows based PC. With Apple it's really a sum-of-the-parts type of argument. The build quality is excellent. Apple consistently ranks at the top in customer satisfaction, fewest returns per units sold, etc. The OS is very elegant and, since it's UNIX underneath, very powerful as well.
I don't like the idea of having proprietary SSD chips built on the motherboard. It makes it impossible to upgrade. I prefer the 2009 vintage MacBook Pro that I'm using now. I can upgrade the RAM and/or HD (which I've done). I can take out the optical drive and put in an SSD for the OS and keep the other HD for files (which I've also done). Too bad I can't put more than 8GB of memory in it though. Not everyone will choose to do what I've done but the point is that you have the choice. The current generation of MacBooks take those options away from you. The good news is that my MBP is still running like a champ and probably won't have to be replaced any time soon. The bad new is that it's probably the last MBP that I'll buy. It's the same reason I switched from an iPhone to an Android. There is no way to expand the storage on the iPhone. With the Android I just pop in another SD card.
I can how it might be fun to be the "hacker" in that scenario but if I'm the IT manager there is no way I'm going to let some code cowboy run around doing this and that without any oversight. Sure, in the short term you can get some problems fixed quickly but in corporate IT all the I's are dotted and all the T's are crossed. You've got to follow procedures and get the proper authorizations and buyoffs for things otherwise you (the IT manager) will get hung out to dry if anything goes wrong.
Gates has taken a path much like J.P. Getty. For you youngsters in the crowd, John Paul Getty founded a company called Standard Oil which eventually became a monopoly in its day much like Microsoft in its day. The government took Standard Oil to court and charged them with monopolistic practices (sound familiar?). Getty, by all accounts, was a real prick. Ruthless and greedy do not even begin to describe him. But his son was able to get him to soften up a bit and in a later chapter of his life Getty Sr. became quite charitable. He famously handed out dimes to strangers. In the end, the Getty family gave a lot of money to charity. This sort of thing has happened with many of the rich and famous families (Kennedy, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, etc.). Once you turn into a nice guy people tend to forget how you got all that money in the first place. I suspect that Melinda Gates deserves a lot of credit for Bill turning to charity in this phase of his life. As much as I despise Gates' business practices at Microsoft I have to give him credit for his charity work. Their foundation has made an astounding contribution to world health. Jobs, for all his cool gadgets and brilliant business moves, comes off as a bit of a cheapskate on the charity front.
Yup, COBOL is used extensively still. The thing about COBOL is that is often controlling business critical processes and companies are terrified of breaking it. Sure, some have rewritten the processes in Java or something similar but at a tremendous cost and risk. COBOL might not be the sexiest language out there but you can make a very good living at it if you know where to look.
"You're revenue to the consulting company, but to the client you're still a cost." - Absolutely right. And that puts me under pressure to deliver and I have no problem with that. They pay a lot of money for my time and I work hard to deliver value to them.
"The client (and it's them you spend sixty hours a week with) has no reason to treat you any better; indeed, they might well treat you worse." - I rarely have to spend anywhere near 60 hours a week at any client. If I do I get paid for every hour I work. I got tired of working for companies that took advantage of me by asking me to work all kinds of overtime for no extra pay. My experience has been that the vast majority of my clients treat me very well. If they don't like me they can get rid of me. If I don't like them I also have the option of going somewhere where my skills are appreciated.
"whereas if some consultant walks out, nobody will miss the overpaid prima donna." - Do I sense a little consultant envy? The reason people hire folks like me is that I have the luxury of focusing on specific deliverables without having to juggle multiple other tasks at the same time. The kinds of stuff I work on you can't just poke at for an hour or two a day. It requires dedicated effort and a fairly high degree of specialization. They also don't have to pay me for sick days or vacation or benefits. I could walk in tomorrow and they could tell me not to come back the next day. That's their option. Overpaid? Keep in mind that I don't get paid when I don't work. Rental car? Maybe so but I like the freedom and variety of contacting. To each their own.
"The sad part is that people actually skilled at management are far and few between." - Exactly right. From my experience maybe one out of ten have been any good. Most of them are worthless, especially in middle management. Many of the upper management people have been extremely good and highly skilled. They are the survivors of the middle management trench warfare, the backbiting, the petty turf wars that dominate the world of the middle manager. Kissing ass and playing politics can only get you so far up the ladder. At some point you have to actually show some business acumen. Those that fail to do so are doomed to middle management purgatory. I once took a job as a technical manager and was shocked to see how things operated from the inside. Meetings all day long with little or nothing accomplished. A disturbing lack of understanding of anything technical was the order of the day. Needless to say I was soon bored out of my mind and feeling little in the way of progress day to day. I bid a hasty retreat back to technical work as soon as I could and I'm never going to take another management job again.
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Totally. What is it with Microsoft and those horrible colors? I remember when XP came out with that nasty looking green start button and all that. Looked like friggin clown paint. Windows 7 seemed to be a step in the right direction, aesthetically speaking. Now it's Metro and the clown paint is back again...this time in big garish blocks. I bet their UI designer is the same person that came up with those idiotic Microsoft Seinfeld commercials.
Enterprise adoption aside for a moment, I think the only way Microsoft can be successful with this thing is to price it aggressively. Really aggressively. The hardware actually looks pretty good. I like the idea that it has a built in keyboard and a kickstand. Sure you can connect stuff with bluetooth on the iPad but bluetooth really sucks the battery life. I like the idea of having a USB port. USB3 would be better though. The screen looks good, at least in the photos. Performance should be pretty good...unless Windows RT cripples it. We'll have to see. But if it doesn't equal or surpass the iPad in every measurable way and if it comes in at a penny over $399 it's sunk. Yes, there are some high end Android tablets but I don't think they are selling that well compared to the iPad. If Microsoft tries to sell these things for $800 they might as well ship them straight to the wrecking yard. Enterprises might buy them because of the integrated Active Directory (which is a really nice feature) but with consumers I predict it will be a flop. The last I read Apple had about 70% of the tablet market so if anyone is going to unseat them they better bring something that is really, really good and cheap. Microsoft would be best to employ the X-Box strategy - sell it as a loss leader, get developers on board with the platform, build out their App store big time and market the heck out of it. Of course, marketing has never been Microsoft's strong point :-)
If you're willing to take out the DVD drive there is room for a conventional HD and a SSD in a laptop. I did it on my MacBook Pro. I use a 60Bg SSD for the OS and all my applications. The second drive holds all my data files. You can always get a cheap external case for the DVD and connect it via USB but to be honest I have hardly ever had the need for it. I know of at least a few non-Mac laptops that have room for two HD's plus the DVD. Lots of options available to you.
With a rig like you've got an SSD will be icing on the cake. Your apps will open almost instantly and boot times will be about half. At least that was my experience. Quieter and cooler too..gotta love it :-)
I upgraded my laptop with an SSD and I'd never go back to a conventional hard drive. The speed increase is immense. Prices seem to be coming down as well so the hybrid drive is probably painted itself into a corner.
Perhaps I've been a little hard on the gamers out there. No hard feelings. To each their own :-)
If someone is sitting on the sofa playing hours of D&D and eating handfuls of Doritos I doubt they have ANY career ambitions, let alone IT. Personally I don't get the allure of computer games. If I'm going to spend hours doing anything it had better yield some results. And by results I don't mean blowing up the bad guy with a plasma ray.
Part of the problem is that due to HR policies it is increasingly difficult to hire good people. Why? By law you cannot check prior employers for proper references. You can only ask dates of employment and what their position was. This is how it works in the U.S. anyhow. So the potential employee gives you a list of canned references that they always use and will always say good things about them. Resumes? Those get doctored up sometimes too. Most of the time HR is just scanning applications for key words and such without any real understanding of what it all means. This is especially true for tech jobs. Once the person gets hired there are a whole host of things that you CAN'T fire someone for and a much shorter list of what you CAN fire someone for. Is it any wonder that a few bad apples sneak between the cracks?
Yup. I'm with AT&T but if they start pulling this sort of crap I'm gone. I got grandfathered into an unlimited data plan and as far as I'm concerned a deal is a deal. I pay my bill they should honor the contract. Yeah, I know that Verizon isn't breaking the contract and are waiting until it expires but it still doesn't pass the smell test with me. If certain people are abusing the data usage then go after them not people like me that are light to medium users. Greedy pricks.
Jesus...why don't you just tar and feather the guy for good measure? I came close to working in a place like that one time but thankfully it didn't last long. Keyboard loggers? Screenshot collectors? Big brother anyone? I don't see how anyone can be productive under those kinds of conditions. What do you do for an encore? Slash the guys tires before he leaves the parking lot?
This is actually a big departure from the model that I own. Ok, it's a 2009 MacBook Pro so it's a bit older but I can (and have) upgrade the memory, hard drive, add an SSD, take out the DVD. It's fairly easy to do as well. In fact, the HD is much more accessible on the MacBook than it is on many of the PC's that I've worked on. The new MacBook looks stunning with that retina display and all but I'm not sure that I want to buy something that I can't hack :-)
$600 - $900 for a Windows tablet? Really? Good luck with that one Ballmer. Look - Apple is a premium brand so they can get away with charging what they do for the iPad. The android tablets are priced at a discount to that, presumably because the OS is free but also because the quality of components is not quite as good. On the ones I've used the touch screens don't seem to be quite as responsive as the iPad. In any case, where does this leave the Windows tablets? Selling at a premium to the iPad? I don't think so.
Thunderbolt is an awesome technology but at this point in time it's really, really expensive. Even the cable (which Apple does not provide) will run you at least $50. Firewire, which is dying a slow death, was the same thing. Clearly much faster than USB and USB2 but the PC makers deemed it too expensive to include so it never got much momentum outside of Apple. USB is everywhere now and it's going to hard to displace. Anyone remember the DVORAK keyboard? The QWERTY keyboard in use today was originally designed to make you type SLOWER so as not to jam the keys on the old manual typewriters in use at the time. The DVORAK design was designed to increase typing speed yet it never caught on. Why? People were used to the QWERTY keyboard and didn't want to change. It's too early to tell but I hope that Thunderbolt does not meet the same fate.
I wonder if it has anything to do with that particular countries education system? I'm generalizing but it seems that in some cultures (India and China for example) a lot of emphasis is placed on memorization and learning by rote. Creative thinking seems to be stressed more in North American and European schools. Those creative thinking skills seem to lend themselves particularly well to solving complex multi-dimensional programming problems - thinking outside the box if you will. It's not really a function of intelligence per se it's more of which approach you take to figure it out.
I'm pretty sure you can update the RAM. I would be shocked if that wasn't the case. Evidently (according to others on here at least) you can upgrade the SSD chips on the new MacBook Pro. It won't be long before someone tears one apart and we can see for ourselves. I imagine that the combination of the SSD with the new CPU will make it a real screamer.
Correct. My only gripe with the new MBP is how the SSD chips are done. Others have pointed out that it is in fact possible to upgrade the SSD chips, albeit expensively. I suppose I could always get an external drive and carry it with me or use cloud storage for files that I don't need often. The more I read this thread the more I'm liking the new MBP...and that retina display is out of this world. Now if we could just get reasonably priced Thunderbolt peripherals I'd be in heaven :-)
If you look at it on a strictly component by component basis then I can see why someone might think they are twice as expensive as a comparable Windows based PC. With Apple it's really a sum-of-the-parts type of argument. The build quality is excellent. Apple consistently ranks at the top in customer satisfaction, fewest returns per units sold, etc. The OS is very elegant and, since it's UNIX underneath, very powerful as well.
Yeah, the problem is that the MBP I have won't take more than 8GB of memory. The max is 8.
Yes you're right. My particular phone is the Samsung Galaxy II, which has a slot for an SD card.
I don't like the idea of having proprietary SSD chips built on the motherboard. It makes it impossible to upgrade. I prefer the 2009 vintage MacBook Pro that I'm using now. I can upgrade the RAM and/or HD (which I've done). I can take out the optical drive and put in an SSD for the OS and keep the other HD for files (which I've also done). Too bad I can't put more than 8GB of memory in it though. Not everyone will choose to do what I've done but the point is that you have the choice. The current generation of MacBooks take those options away from you. The good news is that my MBP is still running like a champ and probably won't have to be replaced any time soon. The bad new is that it's probably the last MBP that I'll buy. It's the same reason I switched from an iPhone to an Android. There is no way to expand the storage on the iPhone. With the Android I just pop in another SD card.
I can how it might be fun to be the "hacker" in that scenario but if I'm the IT manager there is no way I'm going to let some code cowboy run around doing this and that without any oversight. Sure, in the short term you can get some problems fixed quickly but in corporate IT all the I's are dotted and all the T's are crossed. You've got to follow procedures and get the proper authorizations and buyoffs for things otherwise you (the IT manager) will get hung out to dry if anything goes wrong.
Gates has taken a path much like J.P. Getty. For you youngsters in the crowd, John Paul Getty founded a company called Standard Oil which eventually became a monopoly in its day much like Microsoft in its day. The government took Standard Oil to court and charged them with monopolistic practices (sound familiar?). Getty, by all accounts, was a real prick. Ruthless and greedy do not even begin to describe him. But his son was able to get him to soften up a bit and in a later chapter of his life Getty Sr. became quite charitable. He famously handed out dimes to strangers. In the end, the Getty family gave a lot of money to charity. This sort of thing has happened with many of the rich and famous families (Kennedy, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, etc.). Once you turn into a nice guy people tend to forget how you got all that money in the first place. I suspect that Melinda Gates deserves a lot of credit for Bill turning to charity in this phase of his life. As much as I despise Gates' business practices at Microsoft I have to give him credit for his charity work. Their foundation has made an astounding contribution to world health. Jobs, for all his cool gadgets and brilliant business moves, comes off as a bit of a cheapskate on the charity front.
Yup, COBOL is used extensively still. The thing about COBOL is that is often controlling business critical processes and companies are terrified of breaking it. Sure, some have rewritten the processes in Java or something similar but at a tremendous cost and risk. COBOL might not be the sexiest language out there but you can make a very good living at it if you know where to look.
"You're revenue to the consulting company, but to the client you're still a cost." - Absolutely right. And that puts me under pressure to deliver and I have no problem with that. They pay a lot of money for my time and I work hard to deliver value to them. "The client (and it's them you spend sixty hours a week with) has no reason to treat you any better; indeed, they might well treat you worse." - I rarely have to spend anywhere near 60 hours a week at any client. If I do I get paid for every hour I work. I got tired of working for companies that took advantage of me by asking me to work all kinds of overtime for no extra pay. My experience has been that the vast majority of my clients treat me very well. If they don't like me they can get rid of me. If I don't like them I also have the option of going somewhere where my skills are appreciated. "whereas if some consultant walks out, nobody will miss the overpaid prima donna." - Do I sense a little consultant envy? The reason people hire folks like me is that I have the luxury of focusing on specific deliverables without having to juggle multiple other tasks at the same time. The kinds of stuff I work on you can't just poke at for an hour or two a day. It requires dedicated effort and a fairly high degree of specialization. They also don't have to pay me for sick days or vacation or benefits. I could walk in tomorrow and they could tell me not to come back the next day. That's their option. Overpaid? Keep in mind that I don't get paid when I don't work. Rental car? Maybe so but I like the freedom and variety of contacting. To each their own.
"The sad part is that people actually skilled at management are far and few between." - Exactly right. From my experience maybe one out of ten have been any good. Most of them are worthless, especially in middle management. Many of the upper management people have been extremely good and highly skilled. They are the survivors of the middle management trench warfare, the backbiting, the petty turf wars that dominate the world of the middle manager. Kissing ass and playing politics can only get you so far up the ladder. At some point you have to actually show some business acumen. Those that fail to do so are doomed to middle management purgatory. I once took a job as a technical manager and was shocked to see how things operated from the inside. Meetings all day long with little or nothing accomplished. A disturbing lack of understanding of anything technical was the order of the day. Needless to say I was soon bored out of my mind and feeling little in the way of progress day to day. I bid a hasty retreat back to technical work as soon as I could and I'm never going to take another management job again.