Parenthetically, in the middle of CA, I had to take a bathroom break, and it so happened that Harry Potter had just gotten out. So ok, we may be geeks, but at least we didn't go IN COSTUME. Man, that's too geeky even for me.
Did anyone notice the short cameo of the original (1940s) human torch at the science fair? Nice touch, and nice in-joke since Chris played the second version of the Torch in the FF movies.
This film was by geeks, for geeks. My daughter (almost 17) got every reference, including the torch and the flying car (which we strongly suspect is a premonition of the helicarrier in Avengers). It helps that she's been studying WWII recently and knew about the draft and newsreels and such. I started to whisper explanations to wife (who is an established non-geek) starting with the background to the trailer for "John Carter of Mars" but found that daughter was already filling her in.
At one point daughter said "It's your fault I'm a geek. I'll never get a date. I hate you." I said "Are you kidding? Geeks will love you." She responds "And that's better?? I hate you!"
I'm really hoping that the conclusion is correct, but I can't help thinking, if there is a standard maximum volume, wouldn't every song have the living, livid hell compressed out of it so that absolutely every sound was precisely at the maximum volume? I mean, doesn't this solution fundamentally misunderstand the problem?
Interesting. I suspect the resemblance to Windows Mobile 7 is not coincidental. Microsoft's only chance in hell of being relevant this decade is to do something like this, and apparently someone realized it. Of course, it's not out yet, and it could be another Microsoft Surface. Looks great on video, but regular people can't get hold of it.
Perhaps, (although I am skeptical about improvements in handwriting recognition) but this breaks the tablet paradigm as most commonly practiced, which is finger-oriented. It's like saying you can alleviate the lack of reasonable alternative mouse gestures by including a mouse. Some people would argue that it's no longer a tablet at that point.
The thing is, Microsoft *has* a cutting edge touch interface in Microsoft Surface. But they insist on continuing to market the product as a studio prop instead of incorporating the technology into consumer products.
Hell, even Windows Mobile 7 would be a better choice, from a user interface standpoint, for Windows tablets.
Yet here we are, forced to either memorize un-ergonomic curlicues that emulate two button mouse gestures, or use specialized input devices (mouse analogs), when Microsoft's competitors have long ago (measured in consumer product lifetimes) created interfaces that can be easily and intuitively manipulated by the fingers on the end of your hands.
I would say "it just boggles the mind" but given Microsoft's history of "reuse existing products at all costs", even if it costs them a marketplace, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
My daughter has one. It's one of those Asus netbooks with a reversible touch screen where you can turn it around and push it flat and make it into a rather thick, heavy tablet. Comes with Windows 7 Dust Bowl Edition, (or whatever they call the lowest level) which does not have touch support, so the first thing you have to do is upgrade the OS. We upgraded to Windows 7 Pro being the lowest level that's actually useful on a network.
So, what she's found is that Windows 7 has almost no touch screen support, most of what they call "support" actually being existing Accessibility tools that have been rebranded as "tablet support". So you can call up a screen keyboard but it doesn't come up automatically when you need to enter text and it comes up in a random place on the screen, usually covering where you're trying to work. There is a 1990's era handwriting recognition toy, sorry, tool but it has the same problems as the virtual keyboard, with the added feature of accuracy worse than products available 20 years ago. (Graffiti, anyone?)
Mouse support is... interesting. Rather than change the paradigm to make Windows touch friendly, Microsoft has layered on a set of gestures that emulate the actions of a 2 button mouse. The advantage of this approach is that they don't have to change the GUI in any basic way, but it makes navigating rather cabalistic. For instance, to rename a file requires that you do the counter-clockwise circle gesture to emulate a right mouse click so you can choose "rename" from the popup menu. (And then you have to call up the on-screen keyboard and move it somewhere where it doesn't cover the text you're trying to enter.)
And on and on.
So in general, one could state in a court of law that "Windows 7 has touch support", but it's so aggravating and counter-intuitive to use that daughter finally gave up and uses the device as a standard netbook now. She will occasionally use the touch screen with drawing programs that support it (which was the original reason for purchase) but otherwise always uses keyboard and mouse.
The moral, to me, is: Don't buy a Windows tablet unless you can attach a keyboard and mouse, else you will find it becomes shelfware in a month or so. Unless (this is important) you're buying it for a very specific purpose, to run an application that has touch support, and you only intend to run that application.
The reason for this is that at a very basic level, Microsoft's strategy for touch support is not to create a new "touch friendly" paradigm as did Apple and Google, but to (a) layer on gestures that allow fingers to emulate mouse operations, and (b) leverage old crufty accessibility tools that, at least on paper, perform similar functions to the entry and edit functions of iOS and Android devices. This allows them to claim touch support in marketing pamphlets without the expense and lead time of actually writing a touch-friendly GUI.
Our homeowner's association has a park across the street from my house. Some time back they pulled out the swing set and monkey bars and put in an attractive looking rubberized steel play structure with several platforms but kind of low to the ground and really nothing to climb on or hang from. The kids ignore it and climb the trees instead.
The percentage of consumers that are research students are hardly a blip on the radar.
Won't argue with you on Dell. For desktop systems I still build my own, from quality parts, and they tend to run forever. For laptops, if I have to buy one, I usually buy used/refurbished and treat them like consumables.
This is a variation on what I was trying to say, that we're not seeing more Mac sales, we're seeing fewer PC sales. Although the stagnation of the Netbook market is a good point that I had not thought of. But I wonder if the netbook market has stagnated, or saturated?
Not clear to me that tablets are specifically digging into traditional PC revenue, but if so, this should be reflected in the numbers somehow. Like, any tablet that is purchased instead of a PC but is not an iPad still counts as not a Mac sale.
Understood, there's a lot of trash out there. One of the most difficult things I have to do is tell someone they bought a cut rate PC that can't be upgraded and the best thing they can do is dump it and start over. (Often I can't even salvage the case, because it's some strange configuration into which a generic motherboard will not fit.) Happens depressingly often.
But considering a modern Mac is just a PC running a different OS, you can still buy a pretty good PC for less than what you would pay for a Mac.
Now, someone who *wants* a Mac won't hesitate to pay the premium, but what we were talking about here (I think) is previous PC customers who have decided to make the switch.
Slashdot Mirror
> Of course. You are free to crawl off to some untravelled corner of the internet to die any day you choose.
Fanboi...
Good point.
Parenthetically, in the middle of CA, I had to take a bathroom break, and it so happened that Harry Potter had just gotten out. So ok, we may be geeks, but at least we didn't go IN COSTUME. Man, that's too geeky even for me.
Ok fine, but we were in the geek section of the theater, and we were being quiet. Yeesh.
Yeesh -- what part of "almost 17" did you not understand?
Did anyone notice the short cameo of the original (1940s) human torch at the science fair? Nice touch, and nice in-joke since Chris played the second version of the Torch in the FF movies.
This film was by geeks, for geeks. My daughter (almost 17) got every reference, including the torch and the flying car (which we strongly suspect is a premonition of the helicarrier in Avengers). It helps that she's been studying WWII recently and knew about the draft and newsreels and such. I started to whisper explanations to wife (who is an established non-geek) starting with the background to the trailer for "John Carter of Mars" but found that daughter was already filling her in.
At one point daughter said "It's your fault I'm a geek. I'll never get a date. I hate you." I said "Are you kidding? Geeks will love you." She responds "And that's better?? I hate you!"
I'm really hoping that the conclusion is correct, but I can't help thinking, if there is a standard maximum volume, wouldn't every song have the living, livid hell compressed out of it so that absolutely every sound was precisely at the maximum volume? I mean, doesn't this solution fundamentally misunderstand the problem?
Interesting. I suspect the resemblance to Windows Mobile 7 is not coincidental. Microsoft's only chance in hell of being relevant this decade is to do something like this, and apparently someone realized it. Of course, it's not out yet, and it could be another Microsoft Surface. Looks great on video, but regular people can't get hold of it.
Perhaps, (although I am skeptical about improvements in handwriting recognition) but this breaks the tablet paradigm as most commonly practiced, which is finger-oriented. It's like saying you can alleviate the lack of reasonable alternative mouse gestures by including a mouse. Some people would argue that it's no longer a tablet at that point.
The thing is, Microsoft *has* a cutting edge touch interface in Microsoft Surface. But they insist on continuing to market the product as a studio prop instead of incorporating the technology into consumer products.
Hell, even Windows Mobile 7 would be a better choice, from a user interface standpoint, for Windows tablets.
Yet here we are, forced to either memorize un-ergonomic curlicues that emulate two button mouse gestures, or use specialized input devices (mouse analogs), when Microsoft's competitors have long ago (measured in consumer product lifetimes) created interfaces that can be easily and intuitively manipulated by the fingers on the end of your hands.
I would say "it just boggles the mind" but given Microsoft's history of "reuse existing products at all costs", even if it costs them a marketplace, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
My daughter has one. It's one of those Asus netbooks with a reversible touch screen where you can turn it around and push it flat and make it into a rather thick, heavy tablet. Comes with Windows 7 Dust Bowl Edition, (or whatever they call the lowest level) which does not have touch support, so the first thing you have to do is upgrade the OS. We upgraded to Windows 7 Pro being the lowest level that's actually useful on a network.
So, what she's found is that Windows 7 has almost no touch screen support, most of what they call "support" actually being existing Accessibility tools that have been rebranded as "tablet support". So you can call up a screen keyboard but it doesn't come up automatically when you need to enter text and it comes up in a random place on the screen, usually covering where you're trying to work. There is a 1990's era handwriting recognition toy, sorry, tool but it has the same problems as the virtual keyboard, with the added feature of accuracy worse than products available 20 years ago. (Graffiti, anyone?)
Mouse support is... interesting. Rather than change the paradigm to make Windows touch friendly, Microsoft has layered on a set of gestures that emulate the actions of a 2 button mouse. The advantage of this approach is that they don't have to change the GUI in any basic way, but it makes navigating rather cabalistic. For instance, to rename a file requires that you do the counter-clockwise circle gesture to emulate a right mouse click so you can choose "rename" from the popup menu. (And then you have to call up the on-screen keyboard and move it somewhere where it doesn't cover the text you're trying to enter.)
And on and on.
So in general, one could state in a court of law that "Windows 7 has touch support", but it's so aggravating and counter-intuitive to use that daughter finally gave up and uses the device as a standard netbook now. She will occasionally use the touch screen with drawing programs that support it (which was the original reason for purchase) but otherwise always uses keyboard and mouse.
The moral, to me, is: Don't buy a Windows tablet unless you can attach a keyboard and mouse, else you will find it becomes shelfware in a month or so. Unless (this is important) you're buying it for a very specific purpose, to run an application that has touch support, and you only intend to run that application.
The reason for this is that at a very basic level, Microsoft's strategy for touch support is not to create a new "touch friendly" paradigm as did Apple and Google, but to (a) layer on gestures that allow fingers to emulate mouse operations, and (b) leverage old crufty accessibility tools that, at least on paper, perform similar functions to the entry and edit functions of iOS and Android devices. This allows them to claim touch support in marketing pamphlets without the expense and lead time of actually writing a touch-friendly GUI.
Our homeowner's association has a park across the street from my house. Some time back they pulled out the swing set and monkey bars and put in an attractive looking rubberized steel play structure with several platforms but kind of low to the ground and really nothing to climb on or hang from. The kids ignore it and climb the trees instead.
Life finds a way.
What, NOBODY remembers the Apple soldering fiasco??
> Why aren't you happy?
Hmm? I'm happy. Why do you ask?
Agreed. Now, if they had announced that Microsoft Surface would be the common code base for all platforms, they'd really have something.
Am I the only one having trouble parsing this?
The percentage of consumers that are research students are hardly a blip on the radar.
Won't argue with you on Dell. For desktop systems I still build my own, from quality parts, and they tend to run forever. For laptops, if I have to buy one, I usually buy used/refurbished and treat them like consumables.
This is a variation on what I was trying to say, that we're not seeing more Mac sales, we're seeing fewer PC sales. Although the stagnation of the Netbook market is a good point that I had not thought of. But I wonder if the netbook market has stagnated, or saturated?
Not clear to me that tablets are specifically digging into traditional PC revenue, but if so, this should be reflected in the numbers somehow. Like, any tablet that is purchased instead of a PC but is not an iPad still counts as not a Mac sale.
I guess it depends on the school district, or how aggressive the local salescreatures are who handle school accounts.
Understood, there's a lot of trash out there. One of the most difficult things I have to do is tell someone they bought a cut rate PC that can't be upgraded and the best thing they can do is dump it and start over. (Often I can't even salvage the case, because it's some strange configuration into which a generic motherboard will not fit.) Happens depressingly often.
But considering a modern Mac is just a PC running a different OS, you can still buy a pretty good PC for less than what you would pay for a Mac.
Now, someone who *wants* a Mac won't hesitate to pay the premium, but what we were talking about here (I think) is previous PC customers who have decided to make the switch.