Miscorosft fired an employee for painting the company in a bad light on a world-accessible medium?
I don't see an issue. Imagine yourself running a small firm - if one of your employees were to go and make a post that clearly makes fun of your company, how would you feel about it?
The move may be a bit harsh, but definitely not anything to raise privacy issues - as an employee, you are obligated to look out for the well-being of your company.
As far as the G5s go, why wouln't MS want them? They have a bunch of products that target Mac OS, I would imagine they want to test them on everything from the G3 iBooks to the G5 desktops.
Not sure about how true this other stuff is, but I do have a personal experience about how 'included' airport is into every laptop apple sells.
This spring I went to the Soho apple store to buy an iBook for a friend of mine. I wanted the 14" model with the 900Mhz G3 and an airport - one of the models listed on the site. The reps told me on the phone they had them in stock and all I had to do was come in to get one.
When I got there though, it turned out that the airport card was packaged separately. While the price for the laptop and the airport card came out to what the site quoted, it turned out that for the price I got two separate boxes.
Is it easy to install the card, I inquired? The reps told be a horror story of somebody coming in this morning with a fried laptop they bought the day before - caused by static while doing the very same thing. Deciding not to risk it, I asked if they could do it for me...
I had after all just dropped 1600 dollars on the purchase - the least they could do was present it to me in a way in which it was advertised. But they told me that they would have to charge me $30 and take one to two hours to do the job. Now call me crazy, but that doesn't sound like "standard on all machines" to me.
I ended up putting the card in myself - it was not as hard as they had led me to believe, but I did wonder how many people were taken for the 30 dollar ride - just for sticking what turned out to be a glorified PCMCIA card under the keyboard.
And while I'll give you guys firewire, I wish to remind you that Microsoft and Intel were two of the companies who came up with USB. Apple was not one of them.
Well, the RIAA will be really happy now that iTunes actually erases those potentially illegal sogns from your iPod.
Really though, what does that have to do with anything? So I shouldn't be able to sync with another computer - that doesn't mean my music ought to be erased... does it?
Intuitiveness is a subjective concept to begin with - it is determined by a person's other experiences. For example, someone who knows no Math will not find a "minus sign" button to make something smaller intuitive. Someone who's never seena floppy will be confused by 99% of the world's "Save" buttons.
Subjectively, the most intuitive interface for any given individual is the one they are already comfortable with. Unix commands for example are not named in the most intuitive fashion objectively. However, if you were re-implementing a unix-style commandline system, you would be stupid to replace these commands with other "more intuitive" ones, because you would be forcing thousands of unix users to re-learn how to ls, cd and cp.
The target audience for iTunes Windows is *WINDOWS USERS* who know the windows UI, and are comfortable with it (pile of shit though it might be). To them anything other than winwods UI will by definition be less intuitive.
It's not different, except when Winamp first came out, windows had no skinning capabilities to hook into - and now it does. Also, Apple is the company that always emphasizes consistet user experience - apparently this doesn't apply to someone else's users.
WIN: "Would you like to empty the trash?" => WIN:"Are you sure you want to empty the trash?" => WIN:"Emptying the trash may cause problems with your system... are you sure you want to continue?" Me: "Empty the friggin trash NOW or you will find a Penguin living in your home!".
There's actually only one confirmation, but even 3 would better than spontaneously erasing stuff as a result of merely plugging something in. The absolute mimimum they could do is ask you if you want it to sync the first time you plug it in.
Remember that there is a ton of functionality in this app and that this is a first release with less than 5 mos. development time.
So what you're saying is that this is beta quality software that will have its issues fixed? I thought there were no issues?.. Hmm...
Um... The windows UI is infinitely more intuitive than the Mac UI to a certain group of people. These are the people who already know how to use the Windows UI. (Last I checked over 90% of the computer users out there.)
Even if we assume that OS X UI is better because it's scrollbars are a translucent blue color, and it's cursors look like gloved hands instead of regular hands - and these are pretty dubious arguments - any improvements in the UI are completely overshadowed by the fact that most users are unfamiliar with it, and that it doesn't behave like the other 99% of the applications on your machine. So now you actually have to remember 2 different UI conventions and perform a context switch every time you Alt-Tab into and out of iTunes.
My point is that this shows hypocricy on the part of Apple that nobody seems willing to call them on. If MS released MSN messenger on OS X that looked like an XP app, it would get flamed. Apple does the equivalent, and suddenly this is the best thing since sliced bread.
I am assuming the iPod was "synced" to an as yet unfilled library of music on the computer. Because no songs were yet imported, the library was empty, and iTunes promptly assumed that this is what should be on the iPod. As I said, this may be OK behavior if you EXPECT it, but there was no indication that this would happen from iTunes. A simple confirmation dialog would have been enough:
"You have 328 songs on your iPod. Syncing with your (empty) music library will erase them. Are you sure you want to sync?"
How hard would that have been. And this from a company priding itself on user friendlyness.
Steve Jobs referred to it as the greatest Windows app ever. This is somewhat of an overstatement, considering iTunes for Windows, while it certainly does run under Windows, is by no means a "Windows app". It is no more a Windows app than the early X-Windows based builds of OpenOffice were "Mac Apps". As it tries for some reason to mimic the appearance and behavior of iTunes on OS X, the look and feel of the UI is not only inconsistent with the windows standards, but it's also inconsistent with itself.
Case in point: go to the Music store, and you will see an Aqua-style dropdown control showing you're at the top level. Try to pull it down, and a Windows-style list of options appears. It Apple cannot standardize the UI across ONE FREAKING CONTROL, what can you expect?!
Some other interesting usability choices: the Maximize button actually SHRINKS the jukebox window to a Winamp-sized player. Double clicking on the title-bar, which should cause the same behavior as the Maximize button, works as Mac OS's (+) button - toggling the window size between "Optimal" and "Current".
Interestingly, Apple went through the trouble of porting their gloved hand cursors - something I am sure we all agree was needed on Windows for years.
I wish they took the time to put in some more confirmation dialogs instead. Like maybe it's obvious to an experienced Mac user that plugging in my iPod to a machine with iTunes will clear it of all the music... But it sure was a surprize to me. Would asking "Are you sure you wanna delete 10 Gigs worth of MP3s off your iPod?" been so hard?!
I expected better of Apple who provide a lot of documentation explaining to PC programmers that when porting their applications to MacOS they should follow the Mac UI guidelines in order to provide an application that will be consistent with the rest that are available. I guess it doesn't apply when going the other way.
Whatever bad sides Microsoft has, at least Office X and IE:Mac *LOOK* like MacOS apps. Sad to say I can't say the same for iTunes for Windows.
Wether the success of iTunes on Mac is due to the mac users' enthusiasm about anything Jobs cares to talk about at MacWorld is not something we'll ever know. However, the success of their venture into windows greatly depends on their ability to make good windows software.
Unfortunately, in the past they have allowed their hubris in UI design get the better of them, by programming applications using the "supperior" UI concepts of the Mac OS. While we can argue without end as to which system is actually better designed, it should be clear to apple that when programming for windows, the windows UI conventions ought to be followed instead of disregarded in favor of the Mac standard.
If you look at quicktime for windows, there are a bunch of places that make it counterintuitive simply because it follows Mac UI conventions. One such place is property sheets that do not have the usual set of "OK"/"Apply"/"Cancel" buttons. Sure they may not be the best idea in UI design, but windows users are used to them, and not having any obvious way to "set" your changes is confusing.
And I won't even go into the horrible software that apple shipped for us lucky windows iPoders.
However much microsoft is reviled on this site, you have to admit, they did a pretty good job of coding to mac standards in macing Mac IE and Office X. If only apple would pick up on their lead.
The problem is that apple tend to get cokcy about usability. They believe to have what is the be-all-end-all of UI systtems the hallowed OS X, and release applications as though they are wrighting Mac software.
Look at Quicktime for PC. It duplicates a lot of Mac's UI concepts instead of trying to blend in like a windows app. As a result it's confusing - there are no OK buttons on its property sheets for one, so the user has to close the props window to save, something that generally discards the changes in the windows world.
Whatever you wanna say about MS, they did a great job of following Mac conventions in designing MacIE and Office for OS X. I just wish Apple could do as good a job when making windows apps.
Did anyone see the horrible software that they shipped with iPod? I'm not too enthusiastic about the windows incarnation of iTunes.
I agree with you... I would like to see motherboards and ram become cheaper. Also I want processort to become cheaper, and monitors could stand being a little cheaper than they are.
Other things that should be cheaper are electricity and internet access. Laptops should definitely be A LOT cheaper, as should air travel.
P2P is not a very good model for IM - if the network is large enough locating a person you know may be difficult and unreliable (they may be quite a few hops away). Also, an IM system is only as good as the people you can reach with it. ICQ was the first on the scene, but AIM, Yahoo and MSN brought the crouds, and now the firstborn is fading to obscurity - even though it's feature rich to the point of being bloated.
I am hoping this change won't trigger a new serioes of IM wars. I'm sure that if incompatibility is introduced, Trillian and Co. will be quick to conform - as long as they're not made to attempt to hit a moving target things should be ok.
But here's wishing that the warning message is just a bunch of smoke to get people to fall in line with the official client.
I always somehow thought that QNX was the OS of choice, since it was smaller and more stable.
I mean sure devices like Tivo which can download patches from the server once a week may not really care, but what about something that's stuck with whatever OS it leaves the factory with...
Is there some good reason why IBM doesn't just give away fre ThinkPads? I mean programmers use thinkpads... Managers use thinkpads. Thinkpads are pretty decent laptops...
Now all we need is someone to write a legal playstation emulator for the X-Box, and we can run linux on it with no additional money going to microsoft for buying/renting a particular x-box game!
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see an issue. Imagine yourself running a small firm - if one of your employees were to go and make a post that clearly makes fun of your company, how would you feel about it?
The move may be a bit harsh, but definitely not anything to raise privacy issues - as an employee, you are obligated to look out for the well-being of your company.
As far as the G5s go, why wouln't MS want them? They have a bunch of products that target Mac OS, I would imagine they want to test them on everything from the G3 iBooks to the G5 desktops.
And especially since it will auto-sync by default.
This spring I went to the Soho apple store to buy an iBook for a friend of mine. I wanted the 14" model with the 900Mhz G3 and an airport - one of the models listed on the site. The reps told me on the phone they had them in stock and all I had to do was come in to get one.
When I got there though, it turned out that the airport card was packaged separately. While the price for the laptop and the airport card came out to what the site quoted, it turned out that for the price I got two separate boxes.
Is it easy to install the card, I inquired? The reps told be a horror story of somebody coming in this morning with a fried laptop they bought the day before - caused by static while doing the very same thing. Deciding not to risk it, I asked if they could do it for me...
I had after all just dropped 1600 dollars on the purchase - the least they could do was present it to me in a way in which it was advertised. But they told me that they would have to charge me $30 and take one to two hours to do the job. Now call me crazy, but that doesn't sound like "standard on all machines" to me.
I ended up putting the card in myself - it was not as hard as they had led me to believe, but I did wonder how many people were taken for the 30 dollar ride - just for sticking what turned out to be a glorified PCMCIA card under the keyboard.
And while I'll give you guys firewire, I wish to remind you that Microsoft and Intel were two of the companies who came up with USB. Apple was not one of them.
So what you're saying is that their own rules don't apply to them since they have nicer looking widgets?
Really though, what does that have to do with anything? So I shouldn't be able to sync with another computer - that doesn't mean my music ought to be erased... does it?
Subjectively, the most intuitive interface for any given individual is the one they are already comfortable with. Unix commands for example are not named in the most intuitive fashion objectively. However, if you were re-implementing a unix-style commandline system, you would be stupid to replace these commands with other "more intuitive" ones, because you would be forcing thousands of unix users to re-learn how to ls, cd and cp.
The target audience for iTunes Windows is *WINDOWS USERS* who know the windows UI, and are comfortable with it (pile of shit though it might be). To them anything other than winwods UI will by definition be less intuitive.
It's not different, except when Winamp first came out, windows had no skinning capabilities to hook into - and now it does. Also, Apple is the company that always emphasizes consistet user experience - apparently this doesn't apply to someone else's users.
Even if we assume that OS X UI is better because it's scrollbars are a translucent blue color, and it's cursors look like gloved hands instead of regular hands - and these are pretty dubious arguments - any improvements in the UI are completely overshadowed by the fact that most users are unfamiliar with it, and that it doesn't behave like the other 99% of the applications on your machine. So now you actually have to remember 2 different UI conventions and perform a context switch every time you Alt-Tab into and out of iTunes.
Like Baldur's Gate... and... um... Photoshop.
My point is that this shows hypocricy on the part of Apple that nobody seems willing to call them on. If MS released MSN messenger on OS X that looked like an XP app, it would get flamed. Apple does the equivalent, and suddenly this is the best thing since sliced bread.
But super easy to guess (wrong) by the fact that it appears between the minimize [_], and the close [X] buttons of a window that is not maximized.
"You have 328 songs on your iPod. Syncing with your (empty) music library will erase them. Are you sure you want to sync?"
How hard would that have been. And this from a company priding itself on user friendlyness.
Case in point: go to the Music store, and you will see an Aqua-style dropdown control showing you're at the top level. Try to pull it down, and a Windows-style list of options appears. It Apple cannot standardize the UI across ONE FREAKING CONTROL, what can you expect?!
Some other interesting usability choices: the Maximize button actually SHRINKS the jukebox window to a Winamp-sized player. Double clicking on the title-bar, which should cause the same behavior as the Maximize button, works as Mac OS's (+) button - toggling the window size between "Optimal" and "Current".
Interestingly, Apple went through the trouble of porting their gloved hand cursors - something I am sure we all agree was needed on Windows for years.
I wish they took the time to put in some more confirmation dialogs instead. Like maybe it's obvious to an experienced Mac user that plugging in my iPod to a machine with iTunes will clear it of all the music... But it sure was a surprize to me. Would asking "Are you sure you wanna delete 10 Gigs worth of MP3s off your iPod?" been so hard?!
I expected better of Apple who provide a lot of documentation explaining to PC programmers that when porting their applications to MacOS they should follow the Mac UI guidelines in order to provide an application that will be consistent with the rest that are available. I guess it doesn't apply when going the other way.
Whatever bad sides Microsoft has, at least Office X and IE:Mac *LOOK* like MacOS apps. Sad to say I can't say the same for iTunes for Windows.
Unfortunately, in the past they have allowed their hubris in UI design get the better of them, by programming applications using the "supperior" UI concepts of the Mac OS. While we can argue without end as to which system is actually better designed, it should be clear to apple that when programming for windows, the windows UI conventions ought to be followed instead of disregarded in favor of the Mac standard.
If you look at quicktime for windows, there are a bunch of places that make it counterintuitive simply because it follows Mac UI conventions. One such place is property sheets that do not have the usual set of "OK"/"Apply"/"Cancel" buttons. Sure they may not be the best idea in UI design, but windows users are used to them, and not having any obvious way to "set" your changes is confusing.
And I won't even go into the horrible software that apple shipped for us lucky windows iPoders.
However much microsoft is reviled on this site, you have to admit, they did a pretty good job of coding to mac standards in macing Mac IE and Office X. If only apple would pick up on their lead.
Look at Quicktime for PC. It duplicates a lot of Mac's UI concepts instead of trying to blend in like a windows app. As a result it's confusing - there are no OK buttons on its property sheets for one, so the user has to close the props window to save, something that generally discards the changes in the windows world.
Whatever you wanna say about MS, they did a great job of following Mac conventions in designing MacIE and Office for OS X. I just wish Apple could do as good a job when making windows apps.
Did anyone see the horrible software that they shipped with iPod? I'm not too enthusiastic about the windows incarnation of iTunes.
Other things that should be cheaper are electricity and internet access. Laptops should definitely be A LOT cheaper, as should air travel.
P2P is not a very good model for IM - if the network is large enough locating a person you know may be difficult and unreliable (they may be quite a few hops away). Also, an IM system is only as good as the people you can reach with it. ICQ was the first on the scene, but AIM, Yahoo and MSN brought the crouds, and now the firstborn is fading to obscurity - even though it's feature rich to the point of being bloated.
But here's wishing that the warning message is just a bunch of smoke to get people to fall in line with the official client.
I mean sure devices like Tivo which can download patches from the server once a week may not really care, but what about something that's stuck with whatever OS it leaves the factory with...
Is linux really "there" yet?
Why can't they just give them away for free?
Now all we need is someone to write a legal playstation emulator for the X-Box, and we can run linux on it with no additional money going to microsoft for buying/renting a particular x-box game!
Where were they three days ago, I wonder?
A nice, hackable, homebrew-friendly system with a game library slightly bigger than the Mac.
S .... C ... O
Now who can beat that?