I'm sure Apple loves to see Microsoft distracted and chasing after Google in the web market, making it more easy for them to swoop in with their tech appliances. It's not going to matter much if there's some online JavaScript version of Excel if users are running Macs that have a nice Cocoa-built spreadsheet app pre-installed on their Docks.
PC sales are expected to decline through 2007. On the other hand, Mac sales are predicted to increase.
As for Zune, well, absolutely nobody wants one. Even the name sucks. "Zune?" It sounds like a yuppie protein drink. iPod is at least evocative of computers and the internet, with the "i" prefix.
How am I a "fan boy" because I point out goofiness like "Zune is really cool" as being a reason that Apple is "scared" of the iPod, or outright statistical falsehoods? Zune will have as much impact on the market as the Origami did--zilch.
Even if Apple is able to retain its lead, it could still be hurt -- badly -- by the Zune, which will capture mind share, grab market share and squeeze Apple on pricing.
Disregarding the premade conclusion here that Zune will mysteriously capture mind share and marketshare, if anybody's doing the price squeezing, it's Apple, whose lowered iPod prices caught Microsoft off guard. Apple has the established relationships with manufacturers and the cheaper contracts as a result, and they're not selling each iPod at a loss. Every step of the way is an uphill battle for the Zune.
Apple fans are overconfident in the iPod because Apple once commanded 92% of music player market share, a number that has since fallen to around 70%.
This is completely false. The author is confusing the iPod market share statistic for hard-drive based players--which is still 90% --and the statistic for all total portable music players, which is 70%. The precise history of the iPod's total market share is 31% in 2004, 65% in 2005, and 74% in 2006. The market was once dominated by flash players, but that was eradicated by the iPod mini. Contrary to the article's claim, the iPod has not lost any market share.
About 30 million people own iPods. But Microsoft owns more than 90% of the worldwide operating systems market (compared with Apple's roughly 5%), representing some 300 million people.
These have absolutely nothing to do with each other. It doesn't matter that Microsoft owns more than 90% of the worldwide operating systems market. That hasn't stopped the iPod in the last five years, despite a long series of "PlaysForSure" devices.
The Zune has the same resolution as the iPod (the Zune's screen is a stretched 320x240), it's bulkier than the iPod, and its clickwheel isn't a clickwheel, so you have to use simple directional push-and-hold buttons to go through your 1,000+ music list.
This is the latest "iPod killer" article that will be forgotten in a month. How many of these "killers" are we going to hear about before people wise up? Come on, one of the reasons listed in the article is "Zune is actually pretty cool." It's a fluff piece mixed with subjective op-ed from the author.
Spoken like a person who has never used Flip 3D. Don't worry most people haven't. Yes some windows that haven't been used in a while are in the back of the "flip." But those that are closer you can see enough detail to know if you want that window. And guess what... You don't actually have to keep flipping to get to that window! Just click on it using the mouse will bring up the window. Done. At the very least you didn't have to waste too much space on seeing an window that you haven't used recently.
What's the use of being able to click on an obscured window if you can barely even see it and you had to cycle through the list one window at a time to get there? Flip3D slows you down compared to Expose.
Either way it's no big deal that you can do it in OS X or Windows. It's not a big deal who got it first. It's just that OS X makes it more visible by telling everybody, "hey look what I can do."
How is OS X doing that? If anything, Microsoft is the one saying "Look, we can do it too, see!" But, as usual, their implementation is lame. I do think it's a big deal to point out that a superior feature was in a competitor's product three years ago.
The advantage of Expose is that it's non-linear, while Flip3D is linear. It's still easier to parse 20 windows in Expose because you can mousever any window at a glance. Flip3D requires manual cycling through each one. I've had 30+ windows running in Expose, and though windows can become small on my MacBook, it's less of a disadvantage than having 20+ windows in an obscured, linear 3D stack. Also, Flip3D doesn't support per-application windows, which can be quite helpful.
And if you haven't seen the video on Youtube of Expose and Spaces running in tandem, do a search. Very cool window management features.
I'm more enamored of Vista's Flip 3D feature, which basically takes all of the open windows on your desktop, stands them up on end and stacks them in a way that you can cycle through to the one you want to use. It's similar to what Apple's Expose does... Vista's method wins on aesthetics.
Ken, are you freaking kidding? Expose simply looks and behaves so much more efficiently and aesthetically. Try Flip3D when you have 20 windows open, and you'll get an obscured stack of windows that you have to travel through one by one, including the desktop (weirdly, Flip3D puts the desktop in there as a window too). In addition, there's no need to "cycle" through the windows in Expose, because it displays all windows at once. Flip3D is essentially a completely useless tech demo that's not that impressive. Flip3D doesn't win on anything.
Microsoft wants to convince its music partners that its DRM is unbeatable. Now that it's been cracked, they're trying to argue that the only way their "unbeatable" DRM could have been cracked would be due to access to the source code.In other words, along with being a fishing expedition, this lawsuit is a PR play to Microsoft's music partners to try to save face over their no-longer-unsinkable DRM scheme.
You're totally missing the point and splitting hairs. The movie was trying to say that we can't behave like robots and react like a computer program when it comes to war. "The only winning move is not to play" was a political message about stopping the arms race of the time and approaching your worldly neighbors as humans and not targets on a computer screen in a video game.
Well, that was behind the premise, that WOPR was a flawed system. You can't replace human operators and have a machine determine war; as in, we can't become machines ourselves and lose our intuition and common sense. In the aftermath of the film, they probably disconnected WOPR immediately after and went back to using humans who don't rely solely on numbers and probabilities when deciding whether or not to respond to a missile indicator.
Um, XP wasn't built from the ground up. It's derived from the NT line that began in the early 1990s. Additionally, XP's API layers (Win32, registry, etc.) are the same APIs dating back to the Win 9x line, which themselves date back to the original Windows 1.0.
There is much more that needs fixing than Internet Explorer, so much so that Windows developer Phillip Su called the codebase "overly complicated" and full of dependencies, many of them circular. There are hundreds of layers, and you may only ever understand two or three of them. It's so bad, that after a minor Vista refresh codenamed "Fuji," Microsoft wants to start with a rewrite codenamed "Vienna" and use virtualization technology to run pre-Vienna apps.
Of course, it remains to be seen if any of that actually comes to fruition or how long it will take. In the meantime, Vista is a mess both bug-wise and interface-wise. I count at least five different styles of menus and various conflicting dialog styles...some of them are the same dialogs from XP and even Windows 3.1, like the Install Font dialog. Don't even get me started on how many contradictory light source directions there are on the default Vista desktop's icons and interface. They quickly slapped Glass together to look like Aqua, and it's so obvious, even down to ripping off the OS X save dialog in IE7 all the way down to the disclosure triangle in the lower-left that reveals the filesystem browser. And UAC is absolutely horrible and intrusive, rather than the occasional password prompt you recieve in OS X.
I seriously fear for anyone planning to trust Vista on their machines with all its 1.0 APIs and untested technologies and further bloat on top of the aging Windows codebase. It's five years later, and we're still getting patches for XP and IE6, at an increasing rate, in fact. I have to admit to a bit of schadenfreude in anticipating how many pieces Vista is blown up into by black hat hackers on release, like stopping to watch a roadside accident..
So we should only enforce the law when it is to the benefit of large corporations (Microsoft, IBM, Sony), politicians, media cartels (RIAA, MPAA, BPI) but not when the rights of individuals are infringed?
In other words, you're going to completely ignore the double standard of pirating music and then turn around and cry foul when students WILLINGLY hand over their assignments in an implicit property transfer? Nobody's forcing these kids to turn in their work. They can keep it to themselves and get a failing grade if they want. If they don't like that, their parents can pull them out of school and homeschool them.
Kuos on the attempt to turn it into a "large corporations" and "media cartels" rant to distract from the actual topic of discussion.
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I'm sure Apple loves to see Microsoft distracted and chasing after Google in the web market, making it more easy for them to swoop in with their tech appliances. It's not going to matter much if there's some online JavaScript version of Excel if users are running Macs that have a nice Cocoa-built spreadsheet app pre-installed on their Docks.
Wow, so using BSD is akin to selling your own son into slavery? I love GPL zealots.
And their ducklings.
The GPL isn't "truly free" either. The only truly free license out there is BSD.
PC sales are expected to decline through 2007. On the other hand, Mac sales are predicted to increase.
As for Zune, well, absolutely nobody wants one. Even the name sucks. "Zune?" It sounds like a yuppie protein drink. iPod is at least evocative of computers and the internet, with the "i" prefix.
I'm not getting "worked up" about anything.
Next.
How am I a "fan boy" because I point out goofiness like "Zune is really cool" as being a reason that Apple is "scared" of the iPod, or outright statistical falsehoods? Zune will have as much impact on the market as the Origami did--zilch.
Disregarding the premade conclusion here that Zune will mysteriously capture mind share and marketshare, if anybody's doing the price squeezing, it's Apple, whose lowered iPod prices caught Microsoft off guard. Apple has the established relationships with manufacturers and the cheaper contracts as a result, and they're not selling each iPod at a loss. Every step of the way is an uphill battle for the Zune.
This is completely false. The author is confusing the iPod market share statistic for hard-drive based players--which is still 90% --and the statistic for all total portable music players, which is 70%. The precise history of the iPod's total market share is 31% in 2004, 65% in 2005, and 74% in 2006. The market was once dominated by flash players, but that was eradicated by the iPod mini. Contrary to the article's claim, the iPod has not lost any market share.
These have absolutely nothing to do with each other. It doesn't matter that Microsoft owns more than 90% of the worldwide operating systems market. That hasn't stopped the iPod in the last five years, despite a long series of "PlaysForSure" devices.
The Zune has the same resolution as the iPod (the Zune's screen is a stretched 320x240), it's bulkier than the iPod, and its clickwheel isn't a clickwheel, so you have to use simple directional push-and-hold buttons to go through your 1,000+ music list.
This is the latest "iPod killer" article that will be forgotten in a month. How many of these "killers" are we going to hear about before people wise up? Come on, one of the reasons listed in the article is "Zune is actually pretty cool." It's a fluff piece mixed with subjective op-ed from the author.
Why do I keep seeing this phrase online? I don't get the joke. Is it from some lame movie or something?
How is OS X doing that? If anything, Microsoft is the one saying "Look, we can do it too, see!" But, as usual, their implementation is lame. I do think it's a big deal to point out that a superior feature was in a competitor's product three years ago.
The advantage of Expose is that it's non-linear, while Flip3D is linear. It's still easier to parse 20 windows in Expose because you can mousever any window at a glance. Flip3D requires manual cycling through each one. I've had 30+ windows running in Expose, and though windows can become small on my MacBook, it's less of a disadvantage than having 20+ windows in an obscured, linear 3D stack. Also, Flip3D doesn't support per-application windows, which can be quite helpful.
And if you haven't seen the video on Youtube of Expose and Spaces running in tandem, do a search. Very cool window management features.
Congratulations, KDE! Though you have yet to catch up to Mac, which appears in every friggin' movie and TV show, we'll throw you a bone now and then.
Ken, are you freaking kidding? Expose simply looks and behaves so much more efficiently and aesthetically. Try Flip3D when you have 20 windows open, and you'll get an obscured stack of windows that you have to travel through one by one, including the desktop (weirdly, Flip3D puts the desktop in there as a window too). In addition, there's no need to "cycle" through the windows in Expose, because it displays all windows at once. Flip3D is essentially a completely useless tech demo that's not that impressive. Flip3D doesn't win on anything.
Why did kdawson add that to the submission? Since when has Slashdot done that for AMD press releases?
For those who might think the parent is a troll, MS developers really do have trouble understanding Windows.
Microsoft wants to convince its music partners that its DRM is unbeatable. Now that it's been cracked, they're trying to argue that the only way their "unbeatable" DRM could have been cracked would be due to access to the source code.In other words, along with being a fishing expedition, this lawsuit is a PR play to Microsoft's music partners to try to save face over their no-longer-unsinkable DRM scheme.
You're totally missing the point and splitting hairs. The movie was trying to say that we can't behave like robots and react like a computer program when it comes to war. "The only winning move is not to play" was a political message about stopping the arms race of the time and approaching your worldly neighbors as humans and not targets on a computer screen in a video game.
Well, that was behind the premise, that WOPR was a flawed system. You can't replace human operators and have a machine determine war; as in, we can't become machines ourselves and lose our intuition and common sense. In the aftermath of the film, they probably disconnected WOPR immediately after and went back to using humans who don't rely solely on numbers and probabilities when deciding whether or not to respond to a missile indicator.
Ah, Windows on 80 cores, just in time for the advanced, multi-threaded spyware of 2011.
Um, XP wasn't built from the ground up. It's derived from the NT line that began in the early 1990s. Additionally, XP's API layers (Win32, registry, etc.) are the same APIs dating back to the Win 9x line, which themselves date back to the original Windows 1.0.
There is much more that needs fixing than Internet Explorer, so much so that Windows developer Phillip Su called the codebase "overly complicated" and full of dependencies, many of them circular. There are hundreds of layers, and you may only ever understand two or three of them. It's so bad, that after a minor Vista refresh codenamed "Fuji," Microsoft wants to start with a rewrite codenamed "Vienna" and use virtualization technology to run pre-Vienna apps.
Of course, it remains to be seen if any of that actually comes to fruition or how long it will take. In the meantime, Vista is a mess both bug-wise and interface-wise. I count at least five different styles of menus and various conflicting dialog styles...some of them are the same dialogs from XP and even Windows 3.1, like the Install Font dialog. Don't even get me started on how many contradictory light source directions there are on the default Vista desktop's icons and interface. They quickly slapped Glass together to look like Aqua, and it's so obvious, even down to ripping off the OS X save dialog in IE7 all the way down to the disclosure triangle in the lower-left that reveals the filesystem browser. And UAC is absolutely horrible and intrusive, rather than the occasional password prompt you recieve in OS X.
I seriously fear for anyone planning to trust Vista on their machines with all its 1.0 APIs and untested technologies and further bloat on top of the aging Windows codebase. It's five years later, and we're still getting patches for XP and IE6, at an increasing rate, in fact. I have to admit to a bit of schadenfreude in anticipating how many pieces Vista is blown up into by black hat hackers on release, like stopping to watch a roadside accident..
In other words, you're going to completely ignore the double standard of pirating music and then turn around and cry foul when students WILLINGLY hand over their assignments in an implicit property transfer? Nobody's forcing these kids to turn in their work. They can keep it to themselves and get a failing grade if they want. If they don't like that, their parents can pull them out of school and homeschool them.
Kuos on the attempt to turn it into a "large corporations" and "media cartels" rant to distract from the actual topic of discussion.
I don't understand the connection being implied here between getting paid for work and greed.
Increased motivation and, subsequently, productivity?