Real scientists lie all the time just like all humans do. That doesn't disagree with your points but rather reinforces that the public is presented with a grotesquely inaccurate picture of the issue. I completely agree.
"Many people think the safest thing to do is shrug and conclude "a pox on both their houses", and ignore the whole business."
I'm not sure that's true but I would hope it would be. I fear it's worse.
"I suppose it's not excludable that both sides are lying, but you'd have to wonder where the real scientists are in that case."
I think both sides are lying by grossly overstating their confidence in what is actually occuring. One side may ultimately be right but that doesn't mean they aren't lying about it.:(
"At exactly what point do we accept that change is happening?"
"We" accept that change is happening. Whether that is part of a natural cycle "we" don't know.
"There's been evidence since the 60s..."
I was born in the 60s. When I was a child the world was supposedly facing castastrophic global cooling according to "compelling evidence".
"Now even laymen are noticing."
Yes, noticing the hype.
"If the change had happened in a single year there'd be panic but climates change slowly."...and the mechanisms poorly understood.
"As contributions from China and developing countries to CO2 increase the problem will excellorate."
Assuming CO2 is causing a problem at all.
"I think when coastal property worldwide is devastated then people will wake up but not before."
I think you mean "if" coastal property... These are not facts, only theories.
"Right now the environment is compensating for the worst effects but everyone seems to agree there's a limit we just don't know what that is."
Everyone seems to agree to you. Way to keep an open mind. As I said before, I've lived long enough to experience two of these foolish theories now. I'm not biting yet.
"The temperature spike has been most dramatic in the last three to five years so we may have already passed that limit."
PANIC PANIC PANIC!!!
"The situation might be reversed by spending billions today, tomorrow it'll cost trillions. Not to reverse it because that won't be possible by then but trillions in lost property and droughts."
What situation? There are no facts, just theories, and there are no solutions regardless of price. Disease, famine, droughts, catastrophes...they're really got you scared don't they?
"Kind of surprised a Kiwii would be blowing off environmental issues."
If you think a Kiwi inherently cares more, perhaps you should consider his opinion to have more value, not less. Perhaps he does care more and has thought through it better than you have. Who says he's blowing off environmental issues?
"I was there during the Millenium rollover and skin cancer was near epidemic."
Bullshit. Skin cancer has always existed. Do you know what an epidemic is? http://www.answers.com/epidemic&r=67 How many people do you know with skin cancer?
"I found I didn't get tanned but fifteen minutes in the sun and I'd get a burn."
There's some real science for you. I don't recall anyone ever saying that the rules for tanning and sunburn have changed at all.
"If you're going to accuse an entire scientific community of outright fraud you'd better have some serious data to back that up."
He did not accuse anyone of anything.
"But it's the best guess we can make, based on the data we have."
The "best guess we can make" isn't always a good guess. In fact, sometimes it's not any better than 50-50. All the data in the world won't matter if we don't know what it's telling us.
"If 40 years from now the models get more sophisticated and do demonstrate that reducing CO2 output will help, they (we) will wish like crazy that we'd done something about it 40 years prior."
Absolutely, hindsight is 20/20. That means nothing, of course, since it lends no credibility to the topic at hand.
"We don't have to do anything drastic, yet."
What does that mean? There is no evidence that we will have to do anything drastic ever.
"But well-chosen measures based on the best available data can make gradual improvements and with luck will avert the need to do something drastic later, and the suffering that will engender."
Yep, you're assuming that the current, popular conclusions are inescapably correct. The best available data proves nothing and can't be used to support any claim that any action will result in "gradual improvements". All there are are theories right now.
"None of which proves absolutely that it's human-caused global warming. And it does not absolutely prove that reducing carbon output will actually help."
Did you just make this comment to give lip service to that actual facts? If you truly recognize that this is true, you'd understand the ridiculousness of your support for "gradual improvements" based on "best available data" to "avert the need to do something drastic later". There is no evidence that anything we can do will have any effect whatsoever.
"The whole point of theory and evidence is so you can be relatively more confident that this is not going to happen. If the criticism of science that it might be overturned one day is sufficient to reject its conclusions, then you should always reject every conclusion, ever."
You've just made a common mistake about science and the scientific method--that the best theory science can offer must necessarily be correct until proven otherwise. When no theory carries the weight of sufficient evidence, then we have no real understanding of what is going on at all. You don't have to "reject every conclusion, ever", just reject those that aren't well understood yet. Skepticism is valuable.
"You're basically asking everyone to assume that you have some great piece of counter-evidence or theory that hasn't been thought of yet."
Where did he say that? When real scientists test their theories, they neither expect evidence nor counter-evidence. They only expect data that helps them gain a better understanding and improve their theories. Once again you take the assumption that an existing theory is corrent. A real scientist does not do that.
"If that were a good argument then you could "disprove" any piece of knowledge about anything, forever, and to be consistent, you'd have to."...and you've done it again. A theory is not a "piece of knowledge", it may or may not be correct.
"If later scientists disprove global warming theory some day, you should also reject that conclusion on the grounds that later scientists might disprove them in turn. And so on."
No you should not! Every theory should be approached with an open mind. We should not blindly assume they are all correct or all incorrect.
"Science is about evidence. Do you have any evidence of any of this happening? Is there any reason to believe you're not making it all up?"
He should answer this himself, but the answer is obvious. That IS how it's done and you should understand that from the name alone. I don't agree with his assertion that it's not science. You don't have to have good working theories to have science, you just have to work at improving through the scientific method.
"I have a hypothesis: you've just made all of this up off the top of your head but it sounds plausible to you personally. I invite you to disprove this hypothesis."
Since it's your hypothesis, the burden is on you to prove it. Contrary to your post, his was completely reasonable.
Google has proven that it is interested in the platform. The question is whether they are interested in entering the cellphone hardware market. That's an entirely different proposition and one unlike Google's existing business.
It's about time they caught on. The rest of the industry figured that out already.
RIM doesn't own the platform, they dominate the push-email communicator market. Symbian dominates smartphones with WM second.
"Interesting that Apple and Google are working tightly together on iPhone apps..."
Apple is working with Google because they want Google Maps Mobile running on their device. There's no reason to consider it any kind of partnership. GMM already runs on oher platforms and Apple doesn't offer a public SDK, remember?
"...and there's also been rumors that Apple will license their "mini OS X" to other hand-helds."
One unconfirmed rumor of such thing. Why would potential customers desire to license the most immature, unproven mobile OS platform, one that's never shipped, and one that has no SDK? Even if Apple wanted to do it, they're pretty far off from any such thing. Nothing more than a fanboy fantasy.
"My guess is Google will be the first licensee, and Steve Jobs wants "mini OS X" to be the "Windows" of the 21st century."
Must be your fantasy. Lets see Apple actually deliver a desirable cell phone first.
So you are saying that denying the carriers the ability to modify the products they resell and subsidize, something they clearly want to do, is somehow doing those carriers a favor? Is this another example of "Apple innovation"?
Apple denies SDKs to the iPhone for its own, selfish reasons but you can be sure that Cingular is not excluded from the process. Cingular isn't simply going to "let" Apple make the decisions you suggest. You think it's Apple that doesn't want a VoIP app on its device?
Your math is wrong. 2/3 is 67% so Symbian plus WM would be 81% according to their numbers. Furthermore, there are many Symbian platforms that make up that total, so while 81% run one of two operating systems, there are many unique platforms to develop for to get 4/5 coverage. It is disimilar to the desktop market.
Of course, no one is forcing these providers to support all phones nor is it the case that any of them do it.
Hate to break it to you, but Apple has the clamps on full tighten already. In the case of the iPhone, the device will only do what both Apple and Cingular approve. 3rd parties aren't allowed to develop for it. Apple isn't your savior here...given the chance it will be the greatest offender. By all means though, take your chances for now. When Jobs says he has your best interests at heart you believe him, right?
"However, in my mind only one OS could possibly fill the bill for all mobile devices, and that's Linux."
In order to arrive at the right answer you have to be considering the right question. It's clear, and the market proves it, that you aren't.
Linux may desire to scale optimally to the smallest devices but that doesn't mean it's optimal at doing so. Furthermore, many manufacturers won't consider the GPL. Linux is only a kernel as well and UI is critical to mobile devices.
There are plenty of platforms as good or better at configurability for small devices than Linux and they don't carry the burden of the GPL. Linux is free on the front end but manufacturers may not be willing to pay its back end costs.
It may be trivial as long as you don't care about the quality of the output. If that's the case, one would wonder why you shot RAW in the first place.
RAW is not an image format. It's a dump of all the sensor data that can be used to create an image. A very substantial amount of processing is required, some of it subjective, to arrive at an image.
"Doesn't matter, the point is that anyone who's dissatisifed with JPG has allready found an alternative."
That's not what you said. You said "Not going to end jpg - everyone dissatisfied with JPG is already using RAW." RAW is a camera format, not an output format. No one uses RAW as a replacement for jpeg except during image acquisition.
As for everyone already using alternatives, that may be so but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. This may not be the answer but it's naive to think that the image formats we have now are all there will ever be.
"If the Mac reached a 20% market share, that could be the critical mass. It would make more developers make apps for it, which would make even more people get Macs, which would make more developers make apps for it, which... well, you get the idea."...but none of that will help Apple penetrate a huge portion of the overall market--the corporate desktop. Large businesses and government frequently will not accept sole source suppliers, so until Apple opens up the platform to others it will be locked out. Apple accepts this, at least publicly.
Don't know what all this talk is about anyway. There's an assumption that Aple's grand strategy is to undermine the Windows monopoly and I don't see that as being the case. The author says "Apple doesn't have to take a majority share of the desktop market to win, it only needs to take the most valuable segments of the market." but the question is "win what?" Apple, by his own arguments, is already winning. It is maintaining its brand image, it has a number of successful products, it is very profitable, and its stock is highly valued.
The article is written with the characteristic Apple slant. The history told is incomplete and overinflates Apple's relevance in the PC world while ignoring the fact that Microsoft had significant competitors. It denigrates PCs, calling them "e-waste" and claiming there's no innovation in them while ignoring that all the R&D that produces them is what makes Mac hardware today. It claims that Macs, though lower volume, represent the cream of the crop even though the true "cream of the crop" is the business PC that Apple doesn't produce. It consistently confuses Apple's competitors and uses improper metrics to argue that Apple is "large enough". All in all, it's an Apple-centric view of the world and history---not especially accurate, not offering any new or interesting insight, and not built on a sound premise in the first place. A worthless waste of time.
The red juice from a steak is not blood. Burger King does not have waitresses. If you are trying to cast Dell as analogous to Burger King then you're gonna have a hard time convincing anyone. You may not like the taste of Dell's "food" but they made of living off of "made to order" configurability. Dell pioneered that.
Amusing though, and a point that should be made as long as you don't look too closely;-) I like Burger King and Dell made me a lot of money.
One of my favorite "comparisons" was the speed to launch 3 apps. The Mac was much faster primarily due to the apps being available on the dock whereas in Windows you had to go through the start menu. In other words, they preinstalled the apps in the dock, and possibly even prelaunched them, while they didn't do the equivalent for Windows by installing the apps in QuickLaunch or on the desktop. Let's hear it for "cold, hard research"!
"If a menu takes 1/10th of a second to appear, then you could be wasting hours of time over the course of a week or month sitting there waiting for a window to load."
No you wouldn't because you can't add a boatload of instances in time to recover even an instant of save time to do other tasks.
"Having them appear almost instantly would save that time."
No it wouldn't.
"On the Mac, the menu bar is essentially infinite in size."
No, it's not. It's infinite on overshoot but no bigger on undershoot. With large monitors, undershoot is common.
"On Windows, the menu bar is only about 50 pixels high, meaning that every time you overshoot it, it's another 1/10th of a second in lost productivity."
Perhaps, but the time wasted on the mac having to travel a far greater distance back to the application and having to be accurate is a time waster (as is the extra time wasted when you have to pick up your mouse to get it to travel all the way to the top of the screen). Fitt's law may have been right on the 9" screen macs of the day but it's bullshit today. Furthermore, think of how much time is wasted when you misclick the menubar and lose application focus...something that infuriates me on the mac. If "Fitt's law" is still applicable, why did Jobs drop it at NeXT?
That's absolutely true, and anyone who uses these systems knows that there can be considerable variability in responsiveness on both platforms. Furthermore, they've made no attempt to quantify how fast is fast enough and how slow is too slow. There has been plenty of research on that in the past.
What is even more preposterous is the claim that mouse precision is inherently better on OS X. Is there something about being plugged into an OS X USB port that makes mice happy?
Spoken like someone who didn't read any of the material. Look and feel, menu styles, modal vs non-modal, etc. were not considered and Fitt's law, as absurd as it is, played no part in their claims of greater mouse precision.
"More precise mouse movements take more time, and that cuts into your productivity."
Funny thing is that they claim that OS X mouse movements are inherently more precise though they produced no definitive data to back that claim up. Anyone who thinks for a moment will realize how stupid a claim that is.
After having read through all of it, it's clear that there's absolutely NO "cold, hard research". There's a lot of assumption and flawed methodology along with some telltale signs of premeditated bias, but no cold, hard research. They are for hire, though.
The bias of Pfeiffer is laughably absurd. They're nothing more than a shill consulting firm in business to do your lying for you. In this case, they are paid Mac liars. There are others happy to do your pro-PC lying for you. Employees like to employ outside consultants because their lies seem more convincing to management.
In 46 pages there was not one quantifiable, objective benchmark for anything they're attempting to convey nor one objective description of what they are measuring. Of the measured data, all is irrelevent because of their failure to compare hardware explicitly and their failure to define what is acceptable response and what is unacceptable. Finally, it's revealing to note that all of their positive examples were Apple ones while all their negative examples were Microsoft ones. Is there any doubt when they say that they are trying to quantify why Mac users consistently say that Macs are easier to use? Ridiculous.
One of the greatest jokes on the entire test is where two users, one Mac and one PC, are tasked to draw in Photoshop (yes, Photoshop!). The PC user is slower and more error-prone. Proof!
I refuse to believe that OS X inherently has more accurate mouse placement than Windows...not that they provided evidence to the contrary. It's simply one of their absurd claims.
There are halogens that offer 40 l/w and have existed for a long time. Burn life is limited though.
"There are dimmable CFLs out there."
Ever bought one? They look like shit, the price is outrageous, they are too bulky to fit in many fixtures, and their lifetime isn't so great. Dimmable CFLs suck.
"The reason you do not see more dimmable CFLs is due to the small increased cost."
Small? You've obviously not bought them.
"Also, the old color, flicker and lifespan issure are a tthing of the past with modern electronic fluorescent ballasts."
Depends on your definition of color. Seems very few people understand the concept of "full spectrum".
Slashdot Mirror
Real scientists lie all the time just like all humans do. That doesn't disagree with your points but rather reinforces that the public is presented with a grotesquely inaccurate picture of the issue. I completely agree.
:(
"Many people think the safest thing to do is shrug and conclude "a pox on both their houses", and ignore the whole business."
I'm not sure that's true but I would hope it would be. I fear it's worse.
"I suppose it's not excludable that both sides are lying, but you'd have to wonder where the real scientists are in that case."
I think both sides are lying by grossly overstating their confidence in what is actually occuring. One side may ultimately be right but that doesn't mean they aren't lying about it.
"At exactly what point do we accept that change is happening?"
...and the mechanisms poorly understood.
"We" accept that change is happening. Whether that is part of a natural cycle "we" don't know.
"There's been evidence since the 60s..."
I was born in the 60s. When I was a child the world was supposedly facing castastrophic global cooling according to "compelling evidence".
"Now even laymen are noticing."
Yes, noticing the hype.
"If the change had happened in a single year there'd be panic but climates change slowly."
"As contributions from China and developing countries to CO2 increase the problem will excellorate."
Assuming CO2 is causing a problem at all.
"I think when coastal property worldwide is devastated then people will wake up but not before."
I think you mean "if" coastal property... These are not facts, only theories.
"Right now the environment is compensating for the worst effects but everyone seems to agree there's a limit we just don't know what that is."
Everyone seems to agree to you. Way to keep an open mind. As I said before, I've lived long enough to experience two of these foolish theories now. I'm not biting yet.
"The temperature spike has been most dramatic in the last three to five years so we may have already passed that limit."
PANIC PANIC PANIC!!!
"The situation might be reversed by spending billions today, tomorrow it'll cost trillions. Not to reverse it because that won't be possible by then but trillions in lost property and droughts."
What situation? There are no facts, just theories, and there are no solutions regardless of price. Disease, famine, droughts, catastrophes...they're really got you scared don't they?
"Kind of surprised a Kiwii would be blowing off environmental issues."
If you think a Kiwi inherently cares more, perhaps you should consider his opinion to have more value, not less. Perhaps he does care more and has thought through it better than you have. Who says he's blowing off environmental issues?
"I was there during the Millenium rollover and skin cancer was near epidemic."
Bullshit. Skin cancer has always existed. Do you know what an epidemic is? http://www.answers.com/epidemic&r=67 How many people do you know with skin cancer?
"I found I didn't get tanned but fifteen minutes in the sun and I'd get a burn."
There's some real science for you. I don't recall anyone ever saying that the rules for tanning and sunburn have changed at all.
"If you're going to accuse an entire scientific community of outright fraud you'd better have some serious data to back that up."
He did not accuse anyone of anything.
"But it's the best guess we can make, based on the data we have."
The "best guess we can make" isn't always a good guess. In fact, sometimes it's not any better than 50-50. All the data in the world won't matter if we don't know what it's telling us.
"If 40 years from now the models get more sophisticated and do demonstrate that reducing CO2 output will help, they (we) will wish like crazy that we'd done something about it 40 years prior."
Absolutely, hindsight is 20/20. That means nothing, of course, since it lends no credibility to the topic at hand.
"We don't have to do anything drastic, yet."
What does that mean? There is no evidence that we will have to do anything drastic ever.
"But well-chosen measures based on the best available data can make gradual improvements and with luck will avert the need to do something drastic later, and the suffering that will engender."
Yep, you're assuming that the current, popular conclusions are inescapably correct. The best available data proves nothing and can't be used to support any claim that any action will result in "gradual improvements". All there are are theories right now.
"None of which proves absolutely that it's human-caused global warming. And it does not absolutely prove that reducing carbon output will actually help."
Did you just make this comment to give lip service to that actual facts? If you truly recognize that this is true, you'd understand the ridiculousness of your support for "gradual improvements" based on "best available data" to "avert the need to do something drastic later". There is no evidence that anything we can do will have any effect whatsoever.
"The whole point of theory and evidence is so you can be relatively more confident that this is not going to happen. If the criticism of science that it might be overturned one day is sufficient to reject its conclusions, then you should always reject every conclusion, ever."
...and you've done it again. A theory is not a "piece of knowledge", it may or may not be correct.
You've just made a common mistake about science and the scientific method--that the best theory science can offer must necessarily be correct until proven otherwise. When no theory carries the weight of sufficient evidence, then we have no real understanding of what is going on at all. You don't have to "reject every conclusion, ever", just reject those that aren't well understood yet. Skepticism is valuable.
"You're basically asking everyone to assume that you have some great piece of counter-evidence or theory that hasn't been thought of yet."
Where did he say that? When real scientists test their theories, they neither expect evidence nor counter-evidence. They only expect data that helps them gain a better understanding and improve their theories. Once again you take the assumption that an existing theory is corrent. A real scientist does not do that.
"If that were a good argument then you could "disprove" any piece of knowledge about anything, forever, and to be consistent, you'd have to."
"If later scientists disprove global warming theory some day, you should also reject that conclusion on the grounds that later scientists might disprove them in turn. And so on."
No you should not! Every theory should be approached with an open mind. We should not blindly assume they are all correct or all incorrect.
"Science is about evidence. Do you have any evidence of any of this happening? Is there any reason to believe you're not making it all up?"
He should answer this himself, but the answer is obvious. That IS how it's done and you should understand that from the name alone. I don't agree with his assertion that it's not science. You don't have to have good working theories to have science, you just have to work at improving through the scientific method.
"I have a hypothesis: you've just made all of this up off the top of your head but it sounds plausible to you personally. I invite you to disprove this hypothesis."
Since it's your hypothesis, the burden is on you to prove it. Contrary to your post, his was completely reasonable.
Google has proven that it is interested in the platform. The question is whether they are interested in entering the cellphone hardware market. That's an entirely different proposition and one unlike Google's existing business.
It's about time they caught on. The rest of the industry figured that out already.
RIM doesn't own the platform, they dominate the push-email communicator market. Symbian dominates smartphones with WM second.
"Interesting that Apple and Google are working tightly together on iPhone apps..."
Apple is working with Google because they want Google Maps Mobile running on their device. There's no reason to consider it any kind of partnership. GMM already runs on oher platforms and Apple doesn't offer a public SDK, remember?
"...and there's also been rumors that Apple will license their "mini OS X" to other hand-helds."
One unconfirmed rumor of such thing. Why would potential customers desire to license the most immature, unproven mobile OS platform, one that's never shipped, and one that has no SDK? Even if Apple wanted to do it, they're pretty far off from any such thing. Nothing more than a fanboy fantasy.
"My guess is Google will be the first licensee, and Steve Jobs wants "mini OS X" to be the "Windows" of the 21st century."
Must be your fantasy. Lets see Apple actually deliver a desirable cell phone first.
I know and it's great. Runs on other platforms too.
= en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-google&utm_medium=ha&utm _term=google%20maps%20mobile
http://www.google.com/gmm/index.html?utm_campaign
Don't tell the Apple fanboys, though. They think it's an iPhone invention.
The iPhone offers neither Java nor VoIP and Apple doesn't develop in C++.
Nice try but 0 for 3.
You own a toddler? They still allow slavery in your country?
Human beings aren't property. That holds true for parents and their children as well.
So you are saying that denying the carriers the ability to modify the products they resell and subsidize, something they clearly want to do, is somehow doing those carriers a favor? Is this another example of "Apple innovation"?
Apple denies SDKs to the iPhone for its own, selfish reasons but you can be sure that Cingular is not excluded from the process. Cingular isn't simply going to "let" Apple make the decisions you suggest. You think it's Apple that doesn't want a VoIP app on its device?
Your math is wrong. 2/3 is 67% so Symbian plus WM would be 81% according to their numbers. Furthermore, there are many Symbian platforms that make up that total, so while 81% run one of two operating systems, there are many unique platforms to develop for to get 4/5 coverage. It is disimilar to the desktop market.
Of course, no one is forcing these providers to support all phones nor is it the case that any of them do it.
Hate to break it to you, but Apple has the clamps on full tighten already. In the case of the iPhone, the device will only do what both Apple and Cingular approve. 3rd parties aren't allowed to develop for it. Apple isn't your savior here...given the chance it will be the greatest offender. By all means though, take your chances for now. When Jobs says he has your best interests at heart you believe him, right?
"However, in my mind only one OS could possibly fill the bill for all mobile devices, and that's Linux."
In order to arrive at the right answer you have to be considering the right question. It's clear, and the market proves it, that you aren't.
Linux may desire to scale optimally to the smallest devices but that doesn't mean it's optimal at doing so. Furthermore, many manufacturers won't consider the GPL. Linux is only a kernel as well and UI is critical to mobile devices.
There are plenty of platforms as good or better at configurability for small devices than Linux and they don't carry the burden of the GPL. Linux is free on the front end but manufacturers may not be willing to pay its back end costs.
It may be trivial as long as you don't care about the quality of the output. If that's the case, one would wonder why you shot RAW in the first place.
RAW is not an image format. It's a dump of all the sensor data that can be used to create an image. A very substantial amount of processing is required, some of it subjective, to arrive at an image.
"Doesn't matter, the point is that anyone who's dissatisifed with JPG has allready found an alternative."
That's not what you said. You said "Not going to end jpg - everyone dissatisfied with JPG is already using RAW." RAW is a camera format, not an output format. No one uses RAW as a replacement for jpeg except during image acquisition.
As for everyone already using alternatives, that may be so but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. This may not be the answer but it's naive to think that the image formats we have now are all there will ever be.
"If the Mac reached a 20% market share, that could be the critical mass. It would make more developers make apps for it, which would make even more people get Macs, which would make more developers make apps for it, which... well, you get the idea." ...but none of that will help Apple penetrate a huge portion of the overall market--the corporate desktop. Large businesses and government frequently will not accept sole source suppliers, so until Apple opens up the platform to others it will be locked out. Apple accepts this, at least publicly.
Don't know what all this talk is about anyway. There's an assumption that Aple's grand strategy is to undermine the Windows monopoly and I don't see that as being the case. The author says "Apple doesn't have to take a majority share of the desktop market to win, it only needs to take the most valuable segments of the market." but the question is "win what?" Apple, by his own arguments, is already winning. It is maintaining its brand image, it has a number of successful products, it is very profitable, and its stock is highly valued.
The article is written with the characteristic Apple slant. The history told is incomplete and overinflates Apple's relevance in the PC world while ignoring the fact that Microsoft had significant competitors. It denigrates PCs, calling them "e-waste" and claiming there's no innovation in them while ignoring that all the R&D that produces them is what makes Mac hardware today. It claims that Macs, though lower volume, represent the cream of the crop even though the true "cream of the crop" is the business PC that Apple doesn't produce. It consistently confuses Apple's competitors and uses improper metrics to argue that Apple is "large enough". All in all, it's an Apple-centric view of the world and history---not especially accurate, not offering any new or interesting insight, and not built on a sound premise in the first place. A worthless waste of time.
The red juice from a steak is not blood. Burger King does not have waitresses. If you are trying to cast Dell as analogous to Burger King then you're gonna have a hard time convincing anyone. You may not like the taste of Dell's "food" but they made of living off of "made to order" configurability. Dell pioneered that.
;-) I like Burger King and Dell made me a lot of money.
Amusing though, and a point that should be made as long as you don't look too closely
One of my favorite "comparisons" was the speed to launch 3 apps. The Mac was much faster primarily due to the apps being available on the dock whereas in Windows you had to go through the start menu. In other words, they preinstalled the apps in the dock, and possibly even prelaunched them, while they didn't do the equivalent for Windows by installing the apps in QuickLaunch or on the desktop. Let's hear it for "cold, hard research"!
Sounds like extra "friction" to me.
"If a menu takes 1/10th of a second to appear, then you could be wasting hours of time over the course of a week or month sitting there waiting for a window to load."
No you wouldn't because you can't add a boatload of instances in time to recover even an instant of save time to do other tasks.
"Having them appear almost instantly would save that time."
No it wouldn't.
"On the Mac, the menu bar is essentially infinite in size."
No, it's not. It's infinite on overshoot but no bigger on undershoot. With large monitors, undershoot is common.
"On Windows, the menu bar is only about 50 pixels high, meaning that every time you overshoot it, it's another 1/10th of a second in lost productivity."
Perhaps, but the time wasted on the mac having to travel a far greater distance back to the application and having to be accurate is a time waster (as is the extra time wasted when you have to pick up your mouse to get it to travel all the way to the top of the screen). Fitt's law may have been right on the 9" screen macs of the day but it's bullshit today. Furthermore, think of how much time is wasted when you misclick the menubar and lose application focus...something that infuriates me on the mac. If "Fitt's law" is still applicable, why did Jobs drop it at NeXT?
That's absolutely true, and anyone who uses these systems knows that there can be considerable variability in responsiveness on both platforms. Furthermore, they've made no attempt to quantify how fast is fast enough and how slow is too slow. There has been plenty of research on that in the past.
What is even more preposterous is the claim that mouse precision is inherently better on OS X. Is there something about being plugged into an OS X USB port that makes mice happy?
Spoken like someone who didn't read any of the material. Look and feel, menu styles, modal vs non-modal, etc. were not considered and Fitt's law, as absurd as it is, played no part in their claims of greater mouse precision.
"More precise mouse movements take more time, and that cuts into your productivity."
Funny thing is that they claim that OS X mouse movements are inherently more precise though they produced no definitive data to back that claim up. Anyone who thinks for a moment will realize how stupid a claim that is.
After having read through all of it, it's clear that there's absolutely NO "cold, hard research". There's a lot of assumption and flawed methodology along with some telltale signs of premeditated bias, but no cold, hard research. They are for hire, though.
Actually, it's here: http://www.pfeifferreport.com/trends/UIF_Report.pd f
The bias of Pfeiffer is laughably absurd. They're nothing more than a shill consulting firm in business to do your lying for you. In this case, they are paid Mac liars. There are others happy to do your pro-PC lying for you. Employees like to employ outside consultants because their lies seem more convincing to management.
In 46 pages there was not one quantifiable, objective benchmark for anything they're attempting to convey nor one objective description of what they are measuring. Of the measured data, all is irrelevent because of their failure to compare hardware explicitly and their failure to define what is acceptable response and what is unacceptable. Finally, it's revealing to note that all of their positive examples were Apple ones while all their negative examples were Microsoft ones. Is there any doubt when they say that they are trying to quantify why Mac users consistently say that Macs are easier to use? Ridiculous.
One of the greatest jokes on the entire test is where two users, one Mac and one PC, are tasked to draw in Photoshop (yes, Photoshop!). The PC user is slower and more error-prone. Proof!
I refuse to believe that OS X inherently has more accurate mouse placement than Windows...not that they provided evidence to the contrary. It's simply one of their absurd claims.
There are halogens that offer 40 l/w and have existed for a long time. Burn life is limited though.
"There are dimmable CFLs out there."
Ever bought one? They look like shit, the price is outrageous, they are too bulky to fit in many fixtures, and their lifetime isn't so great. Dimmable CFLs suck.
"The reason you do not see more dimmable CFLs is due to the small increased cost."
Small? You've obviously not bought them.
"Also, the old color, flicker and lifespan issure are a tthing of the past with modern electronic fluorescent ballasts."
Depends on your definition of color. Seems very few people understand the concept of "full spectrum".