Speaking of iPhone hacks, I may be completely out of it and missed them, but you would have thought there'd be massive hacking against WM5 or WM6 by now.
You would think so, yes. But Microsoft lacks mindshare. No-one cares about hacking Windows Mobile. And plus, whereas the iPhone runs UNIX and is thus, by definition, cool and useful (vim on iPhone 4 teh win!), Windows Mobile is just some kind of Windows Lite. There's not much you can usefully do with it...
"Firefox...without favourites, history lists and customisability"
Firefox without favourites? Without history? Let's just get this straight - you want people to switch to a browser which has less functionality than the one they are currently using? Again - a browser without favourites? How is this going to give people a positive experience of Firefox and make them want to do anything but work out how to uninstall it...?
Most braindead idea I have heard all week.
And, as someone else has already pointed out, originally, Firefox was supposed to be the lite version of the oh-so-slow-and-bloated Mozilla Suite. Would that they had stayed true to their original intentions...
I suffered the same (school switched from CS to ICT the year I took it) and it is exactly as you describe it. My preferred label was "computer science mixed with business studies" - it's namby-pamby, watered-down crap, and was a complete waste of my time. Caned the coursework, though, with an OpenBSD-based web app doing school grades analysis. Everyone else was twatting around in Access or, at a push, doing something very mediocre in ASP.
But whether the same distinction applies at university level I don't know.
This is nice. Very nice. There's a long way to go yet - some seriously rough edges - but I am already impressed: they have got it using Apple's font engine. Try switching your document font to Hoefler Text and you'll see. Automatic ligatures and everything.
Couldn't type properly in Japanese yet - the hovering IME window doesn't show up, but when "entered", the text shows up.
Plenty more to do then, but this bodes well. By using Apple's font engine for text rendering, they have already gone one better than Microsoft in Office 2004!
I don't think it actually has much to do with the complexity of the script - Japanese is, as you say, more complicated, and yet Japan has long had some of the highest literacy rates in the world, even before its modern era. I think - as someone else has suggested here - it has far more to do with the lack of access to education due to poverty, etc. rather than the inherent complexity of hanzi.
Besides, because of the vast number of homonyms in Chinese, an ideographic writing system makes discerning intended meanings so much easier. Whilst Korean - which, because of Chinese influence, is also awash with homonyms - has a writing system which is much easier to get to grips with, it relies much more on context to convey the intended meaning of a word. At least in the CJK case, a loss of clarity is the price you pay for a more accessible language.
Let's face it, the apple way is to buy new stuff and often.
Whilst the gaming example you cite is legitimate, traditionally Mac users upgrade their machines less. In my case, although I have a PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz with 1.25 GB RAM, I also still regularly use an old clamshell iBook (466 MHz, 320 MB) running 10.4. It's not quick by today's standards, but it does a perfectly good job with Word, etc. and the battery life is really rather good.
Anyone have any idea about what the memory requirements for Leopard will be?
At a guess, for a machine with its own video RAM, like your iMac, 512MB. But I'd say that for Tiger too - I can't believe you're running Tiger with 256MB - it's painfully slow.
iqu:|
It is ridiculous to suggest there isnt the talent there to build a new OS. Cutler could assemble a team and get it done in 3 years.
Then why Vista?
Once upon a time, I believed they could too - I genuinely believed Microsoft could create something great. But some time ago, I lost faith. The arrival of Vista has only served to further convince me that Microsoft's time has passed. They had five years...FIVE YEARS after Windows XP to show what they were really capable of and what have they delivered? It is naught but a crock of shit and it makes me sick...
They can always wake up, decide to toss out the old OS code, or run it in virtual mode, then build a brand new OS from scratch. Maybe this time, they can let Cutler run wild without without the need for backward-compatibility and make something worth looking at?
I think you are mistaken. I don't think they can just build a brand new OS from scratch. There are two reasons:
It would piss off their installed base and drive them elsewhere - the huge army of PCs running Windows and the applications developed for it is Microsoft's single greatest asset, and what helps them maintain their monopoly. If they "toss out the old OS code", as you put it, they will have a product for which no-one has any need. What good is an operating system that cannot run any of my applications? Apple knew this when they first developed Mac OS X, and hence incorporated a rather excellent compatibility layer. They did it again when they moved to Intel chips. Microsoft provide it in the form of things like continuing support for VBA in Office 2007. People want this stuff - you can't just throw it out.
They don't have the ability to develop such a system - there are those who claim that Microsoft, with all its money, has access to the most talented designers, architects, programmers imaginable. If this is the case, why does Windows continue to suck so bad? Partly probably because they don't need to really innovate, but I can't help but wonder if they don't know how to any more. In fact, they probably never did.
Microsoft certainly isn't dead yet, but one can say with equal certainty that it isn't going anywhere anymore. At some point in the last few years, it lost its direction, and without some bold vision of where it should be in 5 years time, its position can only start to slip.
* seriously, how would Mac users feel if Office for Mac literally ran in a simulated Windows XP environment, complete with Windows-style widgets and the XP GUI skin layed over the top of it?
It was called Office 98 for Mac. This screenshot illustrates it rather nicely.
And to be honest, although they have managed an icon redesign, Office 2004 is still a pile of un-Mac-like Windozey shit. Part of me hopes that with the need to make a Universal (i.e. PowerPC and x86 compatible) version, Office 2008 for Mac will be less shit, but then I see every other piece of software that Microsoft has produced and my heart sinks...
I do agree with your assessment that iTunes and QuickTime are dreadful and bloated though. Alongside Office, they are the two worst pieces of software on the Mac (lots of pre-OS X-era Carbon cruft; QuickTime's must go back 15 years). But at the same time, iTunes is still probably the best damn jukebox software out there.
If only we could have something which combined the development speed and hackability of Linux, the reliability and security of *BSD, the beauty of OSX and the consistency of behaviour and range of desktop programs of Windows. All running on commodity hardware.
I know this is kind of a troll, but what do you mean by "the consistency of behaviour...of Windows"? That's nothing but unfettered Darl McBridean bullshit. Mac OS X does give you rapid development (Cocoa), the reliability and security of *BSD (being *BSD-based) and consistent behaviour. It also has a pretty decent software library (granted, not as big as Windows').
So what the fuck are you whining about? Methinks you are just a bit of a twat.
What is wrong with using iTunes and having it organise your music folders for you, i.e. by Artist then Album? Smart playlists allow you to group by genre, although in your case, you might find it more useful to put your additional genres in the comment field, which smart playlists can also use in criteria specification. That way, you can always find what you are looking for within iTunes and, because of the logical folder sorting, you can do so too from the filesystem.
I've known various people who have these cumbersome filing systems for stuff - music is a common one, although one friend even harboured a strong dislike for Windows's Program Files folder, and had some very odd mess elsewhere on the filesystem, categorising installed software in some complicated way. I never understood the point of that either, because, like iTunes in the example above, the Start Menu should have been the level at which he organised his software, not the filesystem.
Make life easy for yourself - there is nothing simpler than Artist/Album.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of iPhone hacks, I may be completely out of it and missed them, but you would have thought there'd be massive hacking against WM5 or WM6 by now.
:|
You would think so, yes. But Microsoft lacks mindshare. No-one cares about hacking Windows Mobile. And plus, whereas the iPhone runs UNIX and is thus, by definition, cool and useful (vim on iPhone 4 teh win!), Windows Mobile is just some kind of Windows Lite. There's not much you can usefully do with it...
iqu
They could fix that if they took out the uninstall feature.
:P
I think you might be on to something with that. It sounds almost...Microsoftian!
Oh...wait...
iqu
"Firefox...without favourites, history lists and customisability"
:|
Firefox without favourites? Without history? Let's just get this straight - you want people to switch to a browser which has less functionality than the one they are currently using? Again - a browser without favourites? How is this going to give people a positive experience of Firefox and make them want to do anything but work out how to uninstall it...?
Most braindead idea I have heard all week.
And, as someone else has already pointed out, originally, Firefox was supposed to be the lite version of the oh-so-slow-and-bloated Mozilla Suite. Would that they had stayed true to their original intentions...
iqu
Hear hear!
:)
I suffered the same (school switched from CS to ICT the year I took it) and it is exactly as you describe it. My preferred label was "computer science mixed with business studies" - it's namby-pamby, watered-down crap, and was a complete waste of my time. Caned the coursework, though, with an OpenBSD-based web app doing school grades analysis. Everyone else was twatting around in Access or, at a push, doing something very mediocre in ASP.
But whether the same distinction applies at university level I don't know.
iqu
This is nice. Very nice. There's a long way to go yet - some seriously rough edges - but I am already impressed: they have got it using Apple's font engine. Try switching your document font to Hoefler Text and you'll see. Automatic ligatures and everything.
:)
Couldn't type properly in Japanese yet - the hovering IME window doesn't show up, but when "entered", the text shows up.
Plenty more to do then, but this bodes well. By using Apple's font engine for text rendering, they have already gone one better than Microsoft in Office 2004!
iqu
I don't think it actually has much to do with the complexity of the script - Japanese is, as you say, more complicated, and yet Japan has long had some of the highest literacy rates in the world, even before its modern era. I think - as someone else has suggested here - it has far more to do with the lack of access to education due to poverty, etc. rather than the inherent complexity of hanzi.
:|
Besides, because of the vast number of homonyms in Chinese, an ideographic writing system makes discerning intended meanings so much easier. Whilst Korean - which, because of Chinese influence, is also awash with homonyms - has a writing system which is much easier to get to grips with, it relies much more on context to convey the intended meaning of a word. At least in the CJK case, a loss of clarity is the price you pay for a more accessible language.
And I'm way offtopic...
iqu
Dude, are you like...British?
:P
iqu
Would it not be a good idea to keep doing this to see if we can break Slashdot? How many levels deep can we go?
:P
iqu
Let's face it, the apple way is to buy new stuff and often.
:)
Whilst the gaming example you cite is legitimate, traditionally Mac users upgrade their machines less. In my case, although I have a PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz with 1.25 GB RAM, I also still regularly use an old clamshell iBook (466 MHz, 320 MB) running 10.4. It's not quick by today's standards, but it does a perfectly good job with Word, etc. and the battery life is really rather good.
iqu
Anyone have any idea about what the memory requirements for Leopard will be?
:|
At a guess, for a machine with its own video RAM, like your iMac, 512MB. But I'd say that for Tiger too - I can't believe you're running Tiger with 256MB - it's painfully slow.
iqu
I sense within you much jealous spirit. Calm you must your feelings. Then only talk we can.
:P
dayo
Get a better dictionary.
It is ridiculous to suggest there isnt the talent there to build a new OS. Cutler could assemble a team and get it done in 3 years.
:|
Then why Vista?
Once upon a time, I believed they could too - I genuinely believed Microsoft could create something great. But some time ago, I lost faith. The arrival of Vista has only served to further convince me that Microsoft's time has passed. They had five years...FIVE YEARS after Windows XP to show what they were really capable of and what have they delivered? It is naught but a crock of shit and it makes me sick...
iqu
I think you are mistaken. I don't think they can just build a brand new OS from scratch. There are two reasons:
- It would piss off their installed base and drive them elsewhere - the huge army of PCs running Windows and the applications developed for it is Microsoft's single greatest asset, and what helps them maintain their monopoly. If they "toss out the old OS code", as you put it, they will have a product for which no-one has any need. What good is an operating system that cannot run any of my applications? Apple knew this when they first developed Mac OS X, and hence incorporated a rather excellent compatibility layer. They did it again when they moved to Intel chips. Microsoft provide it in the form of things like continuing support for VBA in Office 2007. People want this stuff - you can't just throw it out.
- They don't have the ability to develop such a system - there are those who claim that Microsoft, with all its money, has access to the most talented designers, architects, programmers imaginable. If this is the case, why does Windows continue to suck so bad? Partly probably because they don't need to really innovate, but I can't help but wonder if they don't know how to any more. In fact, they probably never did.
Microsoft certainly isn't dead yet, but one can say with equal certainty that it isn't going anywhere anymore. At some point in the last few years, it lost its direction, and without some bold vision of where it should be in 5 years time, its position can only start to slip.iqu
* seriously, how would Mac users feel if Office for Mac literally ran in a simulated Windows XP environment, complete with Windows-style widgets and the XP GUI skin layed over the top of it?
:~
It was called Office 98 for Mac. This screenshot illustrates it rather nicely.
And to be honest, although they have managed an icon redesign, Office 2004 is still a pile of un-Mac-like Windozey shit. Part of me hopes that with the need to make a Universal (i.e. PowerPC and x86 compatible) version, Office 2008 for Mac will be less shit, but then I see every other piece of software that Microsoft has produced and my heart sinks...
I do agree with your assessment that iTunes and QuickTime are dreadful and bloated though. Alongside Office, they are the two worst pieces of software on the Mac (lots of pre-OS X-era Carbon cruft; QuickTime's must go back 15 years). But at the same time, iTunes is still probably the best damn jukebox software out there.
iqu
*deep, deep sigh*
:|
iqu
The only thing I use the micro phone for is VOIP, Ventrillo, or temspeak, and it is a USB headset.
:|
Then you aren't using the on-board sound chip then, are you?
*sigh*
iqu
Rollback-to-XP options are definitely available - it may depend on how many systems you buy.
I think it was patently clear that the...er...great-grandparent knows absolutely nothing about computers, Photoshop, etc.
The resemblance of your story with Apple's latest advert is uncanny:
:)
Security
iqu
Can anyone find any non-PDF versions of these? I don't allow PDF's in my biz...
You sad, strange little man.
Illiterate little man, I should say. The plural of PDF is not PDF's.
Idiot.
Took me a while.
:D
Very good.
iqu
Grandparent did not advocate switching to Linux. Now shut up and fuck off.
:|
iqu
If only we could have something which combined the development speed and hackability of Linux, the reliability and security of *BSD, the beauty of OSX and the consistency of behaviour and range of desktop programs of Windows. All running on commodity hardware.
:|
I know this is kind of a troll, but what do you mean by "the consistency of behaviour...of Windows"? That's nothing but unfettered Darl McBridean bullshit. Mac OS X does give you rapid development (Cocoa), the reliability and security of *BSD (being *BSD-based) and consistent behaviour. It also has a pretty decent software library (granted, not as big as Windows').
So what the fuck are you whining about? Methinks you are just a bit of a twat.
iqu
What is wrong with using iTunes and having it organise your music folders for you, i.e. by Artist then Album? Smart playlists allow you to group by genre, although in your case, you might find it more useful to put your additional genres in the comment field, which smart playlists can also use in criteria specification. That way, you can always find what you are looking for within iTunes and, because of the logical folder sorting, you can do so too from the filesystem.
:)
I've known various people who have these cumbersome filing systems for stuff - music is a common one, although one friend even harboured a strong dislike for Windows's Program Files folder, and had some very odd mess elsewhere on the filesystem, categorising installed software in some complicated way. I never understood the point of that either, because, like iTunes in the example above, the Start Menu should have been the level at which he organised his software, not the filesystem.
Make life easy for yourself - there is nothing simpler than Artist/Album.
iqu