Really? Maybe. The Xserve has gotten some attention, sure, but I think WinXP has solved Microsoft's biggest problem with Mac OS X: both XP and OS X look Shiny now.
I know, I know, Aqua is technically and aesthetically better, but most people don't know the difference. (Emphasis on most people, there.)
When companies start to realize that they can deploy both Macs and Linux with basically minimal fuss between them, that's when things get interesting.
Think of all the whiny, screaming. 15 year old high school girls with phones on the oublic bus as they annoyingly try out every ring tone at maximum volume.
I don't understand. What does the phone technology have to do with stupid, annoying people?
Beh. The phone in America has more of a "toy" feel to me than it does a "utility" feel.
You want phones made out of metal or something? are the ones in Japan/Europe more advanced in terms of construction?
I think the question really is one of processing power, and pattern recognition. I have yet to see any truly impressive speech technology beyond what was available on a Mac in 1994.
The poster's question brings to mind a thought I've had lately, though, on PDAs and smart mobile phones. I've recently 'switched' from a Visor to just using my Sony Ericsson T68 as an organizer. Works great with iSync, etc.
The Palm-with-phone always made more sense to me than the phone-with-organizer. It seemed that the phone part could change shape - I could stick it in my ear in the form of a headset, with a connector to the Palm. A phone I need to hold up to my head. I can't surf with something held against my head that way.
However,
I've realized that I need a phone more, and more importantly, I only enter very small bits of text into the Palm. Furthermore, I spend much more time looking up things than entering things (as I use the Mac do enter data whever possible).
This led me to the conclusion -- the one thing we are missing from the organizer/phone landscape, as the poster asked, is some kind of speech-to-text.
If I could literally hit a button and say "lunch with Dave next Tuesday" and have it enter that as live text... blammo. No more Palm, no more stylus. The phone already listens to voice commands. If it took short notes/appointments, I could literally walk around, call people, make appointments and notes, and not take the thing out of my pocket. Nice dream.
Doh! I was hoping someone wouldn't call me on that. Remembered after I hit 'submit'. Heh.
I had GEOS. I even had a mouse for the C64, asked for it for my birthday. I think that's when I realized that I was a geek. Nobody even knew what a 'mouse' was, and my mom almost bought be an actual rodent.
So Apple supports the idea of DRM, just not the implementation?
Erm, hm. That's a strange interpretation.
I think what Schiller is saying is 'Apple supports the idea that artists should get paid for their works. Apple recognizes that no one has figured out an effective way to do this yet.'
This is basically the line in the sand where we see if Apple really has balls. If content (with demand, mind you - Movielink is a bad joke) starts to appear regularly with DRM embedded, we'll see if Apple sticks to their guns. It may save them in the end if they do.
I've often thought about how my own computer history affected my computer 'development', if you will. Personally speaking, my history is this:
- Osbourne (age 6-8)
- Commodore 64 (age 9-13)
- Commodore Amiga (age 13-17)
- and various Macs since.
I have a point here, stay with me. The earliest machines, the Osbourne and C64, had no GUI to speak of. If you really liked computers, and were technically inclined, you still had to dance circles to get the stupid C64 to do anything impressive. You had to learn the quirks, watching the behaviour of the disk drive LED (anyone remember that constant flashing red light? that meant BAD). In short, you had to really know what you were doing.
Amigas, too, just by virtue of the fact that it was the BeBox of the 80s. No support = gotta be resourceful.
If you could make those old computers do what you wanted to, consistently, then you basically had passed your trial-by-fire. You were a geek. More importantly, you were a geek that knew why computers act a certain way. The kicker is that you would really fly if given a computer that was half-capable.
So, in moving your kids to Linux, you have an interesting experiment before you. If your kids are technically inclined, it might be one of the bigger favours you could do for their education. If not, however, I suggest you move them back - at least to a GUI - after a certain period of time. Some kids are nerds, some aren't. It's stupid to force a non-nerdy kid to compile stuff. If that kid happens to enjoy tinkering... you've opened up a whole new world, and possibly career, down the line.
Sold. I -love- my TiVo, but the lack of HDTV functionality is going to kill them if they don't rectify the situation quick. Several people I've talked to about getting TiVo are reluctant not because they have HDTV now, but because they want to be "ready" for it in the future. They don't want to invest in a technology that's near a dead-end.
Okay, that's all fine and good, but don't you think it's a little over-the-top to think a lack of (current) HDTV support is going to kill TiVo? You know HDTV has been 'coming' for 7 years now right?
And while I'm on it, where did everyone get this notion that if they don't have a compatible television, they'll be left in this lifeless wasteland of analog non-viewing, down on their knees like Heston, screaming 'Whyyyyyyy???' (not directed at you, sdo1, just a general question). There will always be a converter box for whatever you're using. Sure it won't actually be HD but guess what, consumers are not screaming for it. They like it - maybe even love it - if they see it, but otherwise the unwashed masses are pretty happy with their TV.
Okay, actually, you're right: 'failed' was a pretty poor choice of words.
You don't need to tell me about the Newton, I still have my MP2100 and am very happy with it. I've basically been waiting for the Newton feature-set to reappear in something else. Hasn't happened.
I guess what I mean to say was that the Newton's positioning was unique insofar as it didn't occupy a niche that was established yet, and people could not recognize that. I do think it's a funny mutant mini-laptop, but only in the way that it fulfills some laptop-like functions (notetaking) and some PDA functions, but isn't strictly either.
Will this thing be usable for more than one hour without an adapter one year after I've bought it, or is this yet another handheld that's supposed to remain at my desktop?
Since they don't quote any specifics about battery time on the site, I'd say the latter.
To those of you who are bemoaning Palm/Sony's 'abysmal lagging' in terms of specs, I suggest you put this particular factoid in perspective.
While the Palm hardware platform has not evolved much, the battery life (to my mind) is a gigantic make-or-break feature. Palm's problem is that the first version of what they made worked pretty well, and subsequant versions too well. 5 years worth of appointments, phone numbers, and to-do lists, and the battery goes for weeks and weeks. That's it. That's what it does. It does this really well.
PocketPCs are really just glorified minilaptops. Which is why the Newton failed. The Enterprise people might appreciate them but for most others they simply do not do the job. Sure, more than powerful enough, but what good is all that power if it dies 1 hour into a plane trip? All the l33t specs in the world will not help a dead PocketPC. And a wimpy Palm will keep doing what it says it does.
Colour displays and multimedia are all fine and good, but I'd never ever give up battery life. For what Palm professes to do, it works great. The PocketPC platforms are seriously overdesigned IMHO.
My personal view is that a PC for games is a totally shitty value for your money. I have a Mac, which has a half-dozen games (mostly gifts). I use the Mac for my work. I have a Playstation 2, which I use for games.
Now, considering that a PS2 will work 100% of the time (no patches/bugs/drivers/cruft), has a bigger screen, and pretty much the same number of games as the Windows platform (insofar as both platforms have way more excellent games than I'll ever buy).... and considering that the high-end video card you need to buy (for the PC you've already bought) costs nearly as much by itselfas a whole PS2/GC/XB.... why do you guys do it?
It's not a troll, I really want to know. Is it certain games? Keyboard-based games? The supa-bleeding-edge graphics and sound?
It's just a variant of the original poster's question, really, but I find my Mac/PS2 combination works really well. I don't want for many games.
Of the 10 million potential Xbox Live! customers, quite a few million of which will probably go for the easy-to-use service, vs. the 400,000 PS2 people.
Excellent point. The XBox definitely has the technical upper hand as far as online goes, right now. Although I might point out that not all of those 10 million Xbox owners have broadband, but I bet it's at least a third of them, considering the 'uber' mentality that comes with the XBox ('serious' gamers... yeeeahhhh...)
You know what, though, the Voice Chat doesn't really impress me. I was really looking forward to it as it seemed the logical replacement for the keyboard on the console, either through communicating with friends or directly voice-commanding the game. I must say I'm dissapointed. It's not Microsoft's fault, either. I just don't like being reminded of the fact that I usually end up playing on a team with a bunch of infantile 15-year-olds who think 'cock-knocker' is a scathing epithet.
One other thing, to put my paranoia hat on: the integrated voice/friends list/etc. in XBox live, while compelling to some, just creeps me right out. It's my own MS baggage. I like Sony's lassaiz-faire approach better.
We'll see what happens when they start charging full price/year. They haven't announced what that price is yet, and the XBox Live! service is very suspect in terms of value until they do.
You don't think MS could go to IBM, Intel, AMD or any other manufacturer and wave money in their faces, and get them to design a new processor from the ground up?? And while I'm responding to your post, how is Sony going to IBM an example of *sony* innovating? IBM is doing all the grunt-work...
Sure, MS could ask for a new chip, but they won't. As I mentioned in the original post, part of their leverage is the fact that DirectX and other specific x86-related development environments port over to the XBox so easily. Developers, developers, dev... [ducks]
Sony is cooperating with IBM on the chip design. IBM has the fab plants necessary to make Cell chips in the amounts Sony needs. IBM can leverage some of Sony's R&D. Seems like innovation to me.
Besides, they're not going to turn away from all the legwork they've done to get Intel and AMD 'Palladiumizing' their CPUs. Particularly if the next XBox is a 'convergence' device that downloads movies and other media. The temptation to crack into what is essentially a PC will be great for many users.
... coming from the point-of-view that losing money is always bad. Of course, it's an expense, as another poster pointed out. Nothing unexpected.
It's bad from a PR perspective. It's bad considering that Nintendo and Sony are now actually turning a profit on the consoles, a slim one but a profit nonetheless. Sony has managed to fit the entire Emotion Engine + CPU + sundry other parts onto a single chip, which reduces cost significantly. I'm not sure how Nintendo has pulled it off.
Xbox Live is doing better than expected, but the total numbers are pretty intimidating for MS. Last I checked (2 weeks ago), the score is:
- approximately 8 million GameCubes
- approximately 10 million XBoxen
- approximately 52 million PlayStation 2s
By those numbers, it's safe to say Sony has wrapped up this round, if you're looking for a 'winner'. 5X the market share is too compelling for game designers. The games go where the customers are.
[tangent]
I like the Xbox, even if it is a little limited in scope. There's a completely different philosophy at work at Sony's computer entertainment division that I don't think MS really understands. The Xbox is basically a kickass 3D sandbox. The PS2 is a super-flexible games machine; by this I mean that the PS2 is oriented for all kinds of games, not just 3D. The PMUs for example, can generate procedural textures on the fly. Take the oft-lamented VRAM issue. VRAM holds lots of shiny textures. But what if you are generating textures from (basically) pure math? No texture overhead. (Bryce 3D, to name a weird example, gets away almost entirely without using graphical textures.)
And now we see Sony moving fast to innovate in areas that Microsoft basically can't... namely, they've gone and asked IBM for a radically different kind of chip. MS is in no position to do this, as part of their whole pitch is the fact that it's a PC in a box, with MS's x86 programming tools.
Then the LA afternoon smog rolled in cause 98% packet loss. Reports of low flying sea gulls being singed as they passed through the deadly rays have also been reported.
.. this used to happen to me.
Not smog, specifically. A place I used to work at had a microwave connection on the roof, feeding from one of the taller skyscrapers downtown. On days when it snowed, or rained really hard, the net connection would flake out like crazy.
'Snow Days' took on a whole new meaning.
Tangent: a bigger problem was the various punks and squeegee kids 'playing' in the microwave field. They would jump back and forth in front of the dish for the little zap it gave you. We tried to warn them....
ZAP 'Owww! My sperm!' ZAP 'Funny, it didn't hurt the second time... '
Yeah, actually that's a really good point. After reading some of the other thoughts, I've decided the single-file-with-history is the best way to go. Like the History palette in Photoshop, only global, and persistant. (In fact you can actually paint back in time with Photoshop, which is altogether very strange.)
Of course, imagine the bloat of Word files with a large attached history. Ugh.
I'm not at my OS X box right now, so I can't check and see if they kept it in.. but in Mac OS Classic but it used to be even easier.
Option-click any open bit of 'desktop' and the currently active app hides. That way you didn't even have to take your hand off the mouse in a hurry when the boss walked by.
The hubris of that email response is pretty incredible.
Anyone want to take bets on the one straw that will break the consumer's backs?
Personally, I think it will come when people regularly cannot play discs in their cars. Or PlayStations/Xboxen. There's a lot of 'convergence' devices out there. Furthermore, in the car example, many manufacturers are actually using CD-ROM mechanisms in dashboard players simply because they are cheaper and more error-tolerant (except of course, in the case of purposeful errors introduced by the record companies).
Ph33r my mighty analog plug, you slack-jawed marketroid fuckwits.
I've had this idea kicking around in my head for awhile now that I (internally) refer to as the 'boomerang'. It would be an LCD screen with an 802.11 connection and a GPU, pen-input, a long-life battery, and that's pretty much it. What people really want is their desktop, somewhere else. Just cast it over the ether, making the 'tablet' a giant full colour touch-screen remote control for your existing computer. With the 802.11 connection, you could access your home computer from anywhere you can get access like usual. It doesn't need a hard drive, just some nonvolatile RAM.
As off-base as I think the author is, it's good to think this way. Even if it's not practical or better.
Save is an advantage, not an obstacle. The article's author limits the use of Save to things like Word-processing (immediately betraying his experience with more esoteric formats). As others will surely point out, Save can save you when something you're working on goes on a tangent. Besides, Word (and others) can AutoSave.
Launching/Quitting programs, while arguably cruft, has been accepted insofar as people do like the tool metaphor. You use a jigsaw to cut complicated shapes in wood. A screwdriver for attaching things. Photoshop for graphics, etc. Although I will admit Quit is getting a bit weird... esp. on modern systems like OS X, where there isn't that much of a reason to Quit things. I still do it out of habit.
Filenames are... well, filenames, and they don't seem to ever change. I don't really see a disadvantage with a 256-character filename. The dot-3 suffix is a bit of an anachronism, but it's a comfy one, one that gives the user a bit of metadata as well as the computer. Windows' behaviour of only recognizing files with certain suffixes in file dialogs by default has reinforced this.
I don't know what he means by the File Picker. I launch/pick stuff from the Finder all the time.
What I'd really like to see is a better representation of relationships between files. Something akin to The Brain, or another derivative of Xerox's Hyperbolic Tree structures. Radial menus, with branches running in various directions to the related objects/files, have been proven to be more effective than lists of data (there's something humans like about remembering angles as opposed to just the names). People themselves need a better representation, too. iChat has taken baby steps towards this, but really, ponder for a moment; why can you not see the heads of all your friends popping up on your desktop? Why is it that we have to 'browse' for other people, either through an AIM window (another list) or some such mechanism? If I get an email from Mike I want to see a mail icon next to Mike's head. I want to send files to Mike by dropping them onto his head. I want to see *everything* that is related to Mike at a click.
Also, to mention another pet peeve: themes. People love themes. People abuse themes. There is a need here that has never been addressed fully, IMHO - the problem is that people are dressing up the cosmetics of the interface while doing nothing to change the behaviour. It's sort of ridiculous to think that we can come up with a Swiss Army Knife interface that will be maximally productive for all conceivable computer tasks. I've actually taken to creating several different accounts on OS X, each with their own specialized settings. If I'm doing graphics work, I want everything to look like a light table; big shiny icon previews, sorted by meta data (time photo was taken, type of graphic, etc.) If I'm doing coding, I want list views or column views everywhere, and lots of reporting tools running on the desktop (bandwidth, terminal). There really should be interface schemas that can switch on-the-fly to whatever sort of task you are engaged in.
Disclaimer: I have a G4/466 (OS X) at home, and I regularly use a 1.6Ghz Athlon at work (Win2000).
I think the question is really one of perceived speed. I noticed that on the AMD box, and Win2000, the common behaviour for screen draws is to wait until the operation is finished, then draw all-at-once. For example, IE, when loading a page, will remain exactly as it is (the current page you're on), until such time that it loads Slashdot, then draws it in one fast swoop.
Now, OS X does this as well, but it tends to give more feedback. The browser window will turn white, then the banner appears, then graphics and text. I've timed both boxes - they render within a half-second of each other (again, subjectively). The OS X box could easily give the impression of slowness. But it isn't really.
There are some things in OS X that need improvement - notably window-sizing - but then again, the Win2000 box still does outline-drawing for resizing so it's not fair.
In the end I think Quartz Extreme is Apple's answer to this. Quartz does a hell of a lot more work than the current Windows drawing scheme, and it looks a hell of a lot better. When OS X first appeared, many lamented the excessive eye-candy. Now we have a scheme where your normally-dormant hotshot GPU is helping out with drawing the OS. It makes a gigantic difference, and takes a major load off the CPU. But it is version 1. It will get better.
I expect Microsoft to go through similar growing pains when they go for the photorealistic desktop in Longhorn.
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Network Executives. You know the stereotype? It's a stereotype because it's true.
I agree with Letterman's opinion on the matter:
"Weasels. Weasels. All of 'em."
Really? Maybe. The Xserve has gotten some attention, sure, but I think WinXP has solved Microsoft's biggest problem with Mac OS X: both XP and OS X look Shiny now.
I know, I know, Aqua is technically and aesthetically better, but most people don't know the difference. (Emphasis on most people, there.)
When companies start to realize that they can deploy both Macs and Linux with basically minimal fuss between them, that's when things get interesting.
I don't understand. What does the phone technology have to do with stupid, annoying people?
Beh. The phone in America has more of a "toy" feel to me than it does a "utility" feel.
You want phones made out of metal or something? are the ones in Japan/Europe more advanced in terms of construction?
The poster's question brings to mind a thought I've had lately, though, on PDAs and smart mobile phones. I've recently 'switched' from a Visor to just using my Sony Ericsson T68 as an organizer. Works great with iSync, etc.
The Palm-with-phone always made more sense to me than the phone-with-organizer. It seemed that the phone part could change shape - I could stick it in my ear in the form of a headset, with a connector to the Palm. A phone I need to hold up to my head. I can't surf with something held against my head that way.
However,
I've realized that I need a phone more, and more importantly, I only enter very small bits of text into the Palm. Furthermore, I spend much more time looking up things than entering things (as I use the Mac do enter data whever possible).
This led me to the conclusion -- the one thing we are missing from the organizer/phone landscape, as the poster asked, is some kind of speech-to-text.
If I could literally hit a button and say "lunch with Dave next Tuesday" and have it enter that as live text... blammo. No more Palm, no more stylus. The phone already listens to voice commands. If it took short notes/appointments, I could literally walk around, call people, make appointments and notes, and not take the thing out of my pocket. Nice dream.
*sigh*
Of course, I could be high.
Doh! I was hoping someone wouldn't call me on that. Remembered after I hit 'submit'. Heh.
I had GEOS. I even had a mouse for the C64, asked for it for my birthday. I think that's when I realized that I was a geek. Nobody even knew what a 'mouse' was, and my mom almost bought be an actual rodent.
Anyhow, good catch :)
Erm, hm. That's a strange interpretation.
I think what Schiller is saying is 'Apple supports the idea that artists should get paid for their works. Apple recognizes that no one has figured out an effective way to do this yet.'
This is basically the line in the sand where we see if Apple really has balls. If content (with demand, mind you - Movielink is a bad joke) starts to appear regularly with DRM embedded, we'll see if Apple sticks to their guns. It may save them in the end if they do.
I've often thought about how my own computer history affected my computer 'development', if you will. Personally speaking, my history is this:
- Osbourne (age 6-8)
- Commodore 64 (age 9-13)
- Commodore Amiga (age 13-17)
- and various Macs since.
I have a point here, stay with me. The earliest machines, the Osbourne and C64, had no GUI to speak of. If you really liked computers, and were technically inclined, you still had to dance circles to get the stupid C64 to do anything impressive. You had to learn the quirks, watching the behaviour of the disk drive LED (anyone remember that constant flashing red light? that meant BAD). In short, you had to really know what you were doing.
Amigas, too, just by virtue of the fact that it was the BeBox of the 80s. No support = gotta be resourceful.
If you could make those old computers do what you wanted to, consistently, then you basically had passed your trial-by-fire. You were a geek. More importantly, you were a geek that knew why computers act a certain way. The kicker is that you would really fly if given a computer that was half-capable. So, in moving your kids to Linux, you have an interesting experiment before you. If your kids are technically inclined, it might be one of the bigger favours you could do for their education. If not, however, I suggest you move them back - at least to a GUI - after a certain period of time. Some kids are nerds, some aren't. It's stupid to force a non-nerdy kid to compile stuff. If that kid happens to enjoy tinkering... you've opened up a whole new world, and possibly career, down the line.
Sold. I -love- my TiVo, but the lack of HDTV functionality is going to kill them if they don't rectify the situation quick. Several people I've talked to about getting TiVo are reluctant not because they have HDTV now, but because they want to be "ready" for it in the future. They don't want to invest in a technology that's near a dead-end.
Okay, that's all fine and good, but don't you think it's a little over-the-top to think a lack of (current) HDTV support is going to kill TiVo? You know HDTV has been 'coming' for 7 years now right?
And while I'm on it, where did everyone get this notion that if they don't have a compatible television, they'll be left in this lifeless wasteland of analog non-viewing, down on their knees like Heston, screaming 'Whyyyyyyy???' (not directed at you, sdo1, just a general question). There will always be a converter box for whatever you're using. Sure it won't actually be HD but guess what, consumers are not screaming for it. They like it - maybe even love it - if they see it, but otherwise the unwashed masses are pretty happy with their TV.
You don't need to tell me about the Newton, I still have my MP2100 and am very happy with it. I've basically been waiting for the Newton feature-set to reappear in something else. Hasn't happened.
I guess what I mean to say was that the Newton's positioning was unique insofar as it didn't occupy a niche that was established yet, and people could not recognize that. I do think it's a funny mutant mini-laptop, but only in the way that it fulfills some laptop-like functions (notetaking) and some PDA functions, but isn't strictly either.
Since they don't quote any specifics about battery time on the site, I'd say the latter.
To those of you who are bemoaning Palm/Sony's 'abysmal lagging' in terms of specs, I suggest you put this particular factoid in perspective.
While the Palm hardware platform has not evolved much, the battery life (to my mind) is a gigantic make-or-break feature. Palm's problem is that the first version of what they made worked pretty well, and subsequant versions too well. 5 years worth of appointments, phone numbers, and to-do lists, and the battery goes for weeks and weeks. That's it. That's what it does. It does this really well.
PocketPCs are really just glorified minilaptops. Which is why the Newton failed. The Enterprise people might appreciate them but for most others they simply do not do the job. Sure, more than powerful enough, but what good is all that power if it dies 1 hour into a plane trip? All the l33t specs in the world will not help a dead PocketPC. And a wimpy Palm will keep doing what it says it does.
Colour displays and multimedia are all fine and good, but I'd never ever give up battery life. For what Palm professes to do, it works great. The PocketPC platforms are seriously overdesigned IMHO.
My personal view is that a PC for games is a totally shitty value for your money. I have a Mac, which has a half-dozen games (mostly gifts). I use the Mac for my work. I have a Playstation 2, which I use for games.
Now, considering that a PS2 will work 100% of the time (no patches/bugs/drivers/cruft), has a bigger screen, and pretty much the same number of games as the Windows platform (insofar as both platforms have way more excellent games than I'll ever buy).... and considering that the high-end video card you need to buy (for the PC you've already bought) costs nearly as much by itselfas a whole PS2/GC/XB.... why do you guys do it?
It's not a troll, I really want to know. Is it certain games? Keyboard-based games? The supa-bleeding-edge graphics and sound?
It's just a variant of the original poster's question, really, but I find my Mac/PS2 combination works really well. I don't want for many games.
Excellent point. The XBox definitely has the technical upper hand as far as online goes, right now. Although I might point out that not all of those 10 million Xbox owners have broadband, but I bet it's at least a third of them, considering the 'uber' mentality that comes with the XBox ('serious' gamers... yeeeahhhh...)
You know what, though, the Voice Chat doesn't really impress me. I was really looking forward to it as it seemed the logical replacement for the keyboard on the console, either through communicating with friends or directly voice-commanding the game. I must say I'm dissapointed. It's not Microsoft's fault, either. I just don't like being reminded of the fact that I usually end up playing on a team with a bunch of infantile 15-year-olds who think 'cock-knocker' is a scathing epithet.
One other thing, to put my paranoia hat on: the integrated voice/friends list/etc. in XBox live, while compelling to some, just creeps me right out. It's my own MS baggage. I like Sony's lassaiz-faire approach better.
We'll see what happens when they start charging full price/year. They haven't announced what that price is yet, and the XBox Live! service is very suspect in terms of value until they do.
You're damn right I did. If by 'seti@home-like' you mean distributed computing. It was widely reported by many.
Sure, MS could ask for a new chip, but they won't. As I mentioned in the original post, part of their leverage is the fact that DirectX and other specific x86-related development environments port over to the XBox so easily. Developers, developers, dev... [ducks]
Sony is cooperating with IBM on the chip design. IBM has the fab plants necessary to make Cell chips in the amounts Sony needs. IBM can leverage some of Sony's R&D. Seems like innovation to me.
Besides, they're not going to turn away from all the legwork they've done to get Intel and AMD 'Palladiumizing' their CPUs. Particularly if the next XBox is a 'convergence' device that downloads movies and other media. The temptation to crack into what is essentially a PC will be great for many users.
It's bad from a PR perspective. It's bad considering that Nintendo and Sony are now actually turning a profit on the consoles, a slim one but a profit nonetheless. Sony has managed to fit the entire Emotion Engine + CPU + sundry other parts onto a single chip, which reduces cost significantly. I'm not sure how Nintendo has pulled it off.
Xbox Live is doing better than expected, but the total numbers are pretty intimidating for MS. Last I checked (2 weeks ago), the score is:
- approximately 8 million GameCubes
- approximately 10 million XBoxen
- approximately 52 million PlayStation 2s
By those numbers, it's safe to say Sony has wrapped up this round, if you're looking for a 'winner'. 5X the market share is too compelling for game designers. The games go where the customers are.
[tangent]
I like the Xbox, even if it is a little limited in scope. There's a completely different philosophy at work at Sony's computer entertainment division that I don't think MS really understands. The Xbox is basically a kickass 3D sandbox. The PS2 is a super-flexible games machine; by this I mean that the PS2 is oriented for all kinds of games, not just 3D. The PMUs for example, can generate procedural textures on the fly. Take the oft-lamented VRAM issue. VRAM holds lots of shiny textures. But what if you are generating textures from (basically) pure math? No texture overhead. (Bryce 3D, to name a weird example, gets away almost entirely without using graphical textures.)
And now we see Sony moving fast to innovate in areas that Microsoft basically can't... namely, they've gone and asked IBM for a radically different kind of chip. MS is in no position to do this, as part of their whole pitch is the fact that it's a PC in a box, with MS's x86 programming tools.
[/tangent]
"Windows isn't designed for security."
"We'll provide security when customers start paying for it."
"All your apps are belong to us."
Of course, there's always the braying antics of the Em-Ballmer. Who told you to sit down?!?
Note to Apple: we have electricity now, and everything. Really.
Not smog, specifically. A place I used to work at had a microwave connection on the roof, feeding from one of the taller skyscrapers downtown. On days when it snowed, or rained really hard, the net connection would flake out like crazy.
'Snow Days' took on a whole new meaning.
Tangent: a bigger problem was the various punks and squeegee kids 'playing' in the microwave field. They would jump back and forth in front of the dish for the little zap it gave you. We tried to warn them....
ZAP 'Owww! My sperm!' ZAP 'Funny, it didn't hurt the second time... '
Of course, imagine the bloat of Word files with a large attached history. Ugh.
Option-click any open bit of 'desktop' and the currently active app hides. That way you didn't even have to take your hand off the mouse in a hurry when the boss walked by.
Anyone want to take bets on the one straw that will break the consumer's backs?
Personally, I think it will come when people regularly cannot play discs in their cars. Or PlayStations/Xboxen. There's a lot of 'convergence' devices out there. Furthermore, in the car example, many manufacturers are actually using CD-ROM mechanisms in dashboard players simply because they are cheaper and more error-tolerant (except of course, in the case of purposeful errors introduced by the record companies).
Ph33r my mighty analog plug, you slack-jawed marketroid fuckwits.
I've had this idea kicking around in my head for awhile now that I (internally) refer to as the 'boomerang'. It would be an LCD screen with an 802.11 connection and a GPU, pen-input, a long-life battery, and that's pretty much it. What people really want is their desktop, somewhere else. Just cast it over the ether, making the 'tablet' a giant full colour touch-screen remote control for your existing computer. With the 802.11 connection, you could access your home computer from anywhere you can get access like usual. It doesn't need a hard drive, just some nonvolatile RAM.
Sell it for $400 and you're laughing.
As off-base as I think the author is, it's good to think this way. Even if it's not practical or better.
Save is an advantage, not an obstacle. The article's author limits the use of Save to things like Word-processing (immediately betraying his experience with more esoteric formats). As others will surely point out, Save can save you when something you're working on goes on a tangent. Besides, Word (and others) can AutoSave.
Launching/Quitting programs, while arguably cruft, has been accepted insofar as people do like the tool metaphor. You use a jigsaw to cut complicated shapes in wood. A screwdriver for attaching things. Photoshop for graphics, etc. Although I will admit Quit is getting a bit weird... esp. on modern systems like OS X, where there isn't that much of a reason to Quit things. I still do it out of habit.
Filenames are... well, filenames, and they don't seem to ever change. I don't really see a disadvantage with a 256-character filename. The dot-3 suffix is a bit of an anachronism, but it's a comfy one, one that gives the user a bit of metadata as well as the computer. Windows' behaviour of only recognizing files with certain suffixes in file dialogs by default has reinforced this.
I don't know what he means by the File Picker. I launch/pick stuff from the Finder all the time.
What I'd really like to see is a better representation of relationships between files. Something akin to The Brain, or another derivative of Xerox's Hyperbolic Tree structures. Radial menus, with branches running in various directions to the related objects/files, have been proven to be more effective than lists of data (there's something humans like about remembering angles as opposed to just the names). People themselves need a better representation, too. iChat has taken baby steps towards this, but really, ponder for a moment; why can you not see the heads of all your friends popping up on your desktop? Why is it that we have to 'browse' for other people, either through an AIM window (another list) or some such mechanism? If I get an email from Mike I want to see a mail icon next to Mike's head. I want to send files to Mike by dropping them onto his head. I want to see *everything* that is related to Mike at a click.
Also, to mention another pet peeve: themes. People love themes. People abuse themes. There is a need here that has never been addressed fully, IMHO - the problem is that people are dressing up the cosmetics of the interface while doing nothing to change the behaviour. It's sort of ridiculous to think that we can come up with a Swiss Army Knife interface that will be maximally productive for all conceivable computer tasks. I've actually taken to creating several different accounts on OS X, each with their own specialized settings. If I'm doing graphics work, I want everything to look like a light table; big shiny icon previews, sorted by meta data (time photo was taken, type of graphic, etc.) If I'm doing coding, I want list views or column views everywhere, and lots of reporting tools running on the desktop (bandwidth, terminal). There really should be interface schemas that can switch on-the-fly to whatever sort of task you are engaged in.
I think the question is really one of perceived speed. I noticed that on the AMD box, and Win2000, the common behaviour for screen draws is to wait until the operation is finished, then draw all-at-once. For example, IE, when loading a page, will remain exactly as it is (the current page you're on), until such time that it loads Slashdot, then draws it in one fast swoop.
Now, OS X does this as well, but it tends to give more feedback. The browser window will turn white, then the banner appears, then graphics and text. I've timed both boxes - they render within a half-second of each other (again, subjectively). The OS X box could easily give the impression of slowness. But it isn't really.
There are some things in OS X that need improvement - notably window-sizing - but then again, the Win2000 box still does outline-drawing for resizing so it's not fair.
In the end I think Quartz Extreme is Apple's answer to this. Quartz does a hell of a lot more work than the current Windows drawing scheme, and it looks a hell of a lot better. When OS X first appeared, many lamented the excessive eye-candy. Now we have a scheme where your normally-dormant hotshot GPU is helping out with drawing the OS. It makes a gigantic difference, and takes a major load off the CPU. But it is version 1. It will get better.
I expect Microsoft to go through similar growing pains when they go for the photorealistic desktop in Longhorn.