Their 'mistake' of not including information on whether you should choose a Dell with an operating system they don't provide? That mistake?
Honestly dude, if you're going to go around cracking-wise about how all mac users are pretentiousdickfaggots, at least try to make it vaguely funny or original.
Like Windows!=newbie-friendly. The windows taskbar lacks discoverabilty, because practically everything is jammed into one menu (the start menu), or indecipherable little icons (system tray). Ubuntu's menus say what they are, by giving textual clues. For a newbie, it's actually better to have more on the screen with actual writing than a lot of icons.
Many aspects of the Windows interface are a kludge to differentiate it from the classic Mac OS, with many inconsistencies and non-intuitive behaviours. Linux distros should not copy it for the sake of usability.
I think you make a a valid point, in a way, but there are a couple of things to consider. I'm guessing (perhaps wrongly) that you were already pretty familiar with Windows when you started using W7. That makes it seem easier to use than it is. If you are used to something else entirely (Mac OS in my case), or nothing at all, Ubuntu is just as simple. In fact, I find Ubuntu slightly more straightforward than Windows 7, and I dabble in both very casually.
The application management in Ubuntu is superb, providing what I think is exactly the right balance of safety and discoverability for novice and casual users. A huge problem on Windows is people installing malware. How do you provide people with a rule sheet on what is okay to install? I've never been able to boil it down to rules, I just figure it out on a case-by-case basis. With Ubuntu you can just tell people to use the applications in the app menu, of which there are plenty. It's simple, safe, and allows the novice user to have computing independence, because there's no need to consult with anyone before installing an application.
I agree with you. I would try to find out what someone wanted to do with their computer before recommending anything. But I thing Ubuntu has got killer features for the novice wanting to do internet-centric stuff.
Novices probably don't need Photoshop, Krita seemed pretty good to me when I played around with it.
Uh, dude, it's what allows Ubuntu to have a (free!) app store sitting right there in the menu bar. You don't need to know what it is to use it. Adding apps is as simple as searching or navigating by category and clicking 'install'. It's seriously easy to use, and has big advantages for security. The apps in the default repository are screened, and cover most things you'd ever want to do. No more searching the internet, downloading random app that 'looks ligit', and istalling it manually.
I wish Macs had something similar. In fact, I bet it's going to be in the next release of OS X.
Now there's an original sentiment. Did you sit up all night coming up with that, or was it just spur-of-the-moment brilliance prompted by an unrelated story?
I'm a Mac user, but I certainly wouldn't hesitate to recommend Ubuntu to someone new to using computers. It really is as simple to use as Windows, and repositories are huge win for usability and security.
But more seriously, I didn't know Richard E. Grant actually ever played the doctor, except for doing the voice in some internet cartoon a while back. I've always thought he was made for the role.
Because having to fill in forms--any forms--just to look at something on a website is something people just will not do. I think what is really important is not how much they charge (although it does seem a little steep), but is the hassle factor, having to go an find your coupon or whatever is just a pain in the neck. Totally not worth the hassle for most people.
Until there is a micro-payment system that's as easy as no payment at all (like say, the iTunes Store compared to your choice of P2P), there isn't going to be any headway in getting people to pay for this stuff.
You can do this already with the iPad, but it uses an private API, so it's a no-go for now. However, I expect Apple will see the value in opening this up at some point (please?), so we will set third-party pressures sensitive drawing apps and pens.
We're talking real-world (not synthetic benchmarks, but actual page loads) improvements of 100% or more, probably due largely to the fact that Chrome can execute Javascript on something like a reasonable schedule.
Um, I'm talking real world too, I don't really look at the benchmarks. 100% faster at something I already feel is more than good enough is a whole lotta nothing for me. You may feel differently, of course, but the point of my original post was to point out that you shouldn't feel its somehow nerd-wrong not to switch from Firefox.
If every damned site out there wasn't overusing Javascript that might be a compelling argument.
I think it will become important, if/when Canvas gets traction. I've made some stuff involving multiple layers of transparent PNGs with transiotns between them using javascript. Firefox can render it all very smoothly, including animated transitions. Chrome and Safari, on the other hand, almost entirely choke up, and Opera is very slow. I decided to try the whole thing in Canvas to see if it would be faster, but the results were exactly the same. Firefox's canvas rendering ability is exceptionally good.
Why do you need to? Chrome renders pages faster, sure, but I don't really give a shit about a couple of milliseconds rendering time. Chrome has isolated tabs, but crashes more than Firefox anyway (at least for me).
Finally, when you have a really nice open source browser that isn't entirely controlled by a giant behemoth that knows everything about you, why not use it? Seriously, do we need to be throwing more power Google's way?
P.S. Gecko is still much faster at some things, i.e. image rendering and animation.
The result is very good -- to the point that Chrome looks and feels like a native browser./p>
Surely you are joking, Mr Surfer.
Chrome is very far from having a native Mac look. There are lots of little things, and some not so little. Firstly, the close button on each tab is on the right, unlike all real Mac applications which have them on the left (including Firefox). When you hover over them, they turn into a very plasticy, Windows XPish red, which is most un-mac-like. The tabs themselves are a colour which is not found in active OS X windows, and a shape which doesn't look like other Mac tabs.
In general, the interface is full of blue text links which should be buttons, this is also quite Windows-like.
In the preference panes, 'Basics" and "Personal Stuff" have a light grey background like other Mac apps, but the "Under the Bonnet" pane is back to a white background with nasty blue links again.
On the home page (your bookmarks or recently visited pages), again, the close buttons on the right instead of left, and drop down menus are clearly google roll-your-own.
No, I would say that Chrome is the least Mac-looking of the four major Mac browsers.
Luckily for the future of computing, the whole desktop ecosystem is probably going to be a small part of the story. I think dockable phones will be the future of computing, especially in emerging markets where everyone has a phone but no one has a computer.
There is a bright future here for open software. Especially if Nokia gets its act together.
Good points about the Zune always being a step behind, but I disagree with this:
The 2nd gen Zune were much better than the iPod Classic. Unfortunately they were not better than the iPod Touch which released a month before them.
I owned a click-wheel iPod back in 2005, and my wife has a click-wheel Nano. I now own an iPod Touch, and as much as I love it as a little computer for browsing the internet and games, it is vastly inferior to the click-wheeled iPods as a music player. I get it out of my pocket and it always starts in coverflow mode, which means I have to I hold it vertically for a little while, sometimes give it a little shake if it's not responding (but no too much of it jumps to a different track), just to get it into the usable portrait mode. I usually do this because I want to skip a track. Apparently you can double click the home key to bring up basic controls, but this rarely seems to work for me.
The iPod touch is a fine pocket computer, but a second-rate iPod.
If that were the case, why not just provide tax breaks to couples with children? I tell you why, because in the yes of an awful lot of people, homosexuality is 'icky', and should be discouraged (yeah, that's gonna work!).
On a Mac, at least, CPU usage is about double for the same H.264 file played through Flash as through a tag. This is especially noticeable on machine like mine, where 720p videos play just fine in a browser, but 720p Flash videos stutter.
Looking at it the other way, Flash SWFs import the very same h.264 file that you can serve raw. Adding h.264 support is as easy as serving up the file you already had without the Flash wrapper. It's a no-brainer.
Can's say how it would perform as a phone, but my experience of the battery life on an iPod Touch is very good. I get hours (~6) of more or less continuous browsing on mine, and that's with the screen on and actively rendering pages every few minutes as well as WiFi (obviously).
Yeah, if you're stuck in a childish mentality of politician=bad.
Here's the problem politicians face:
1) All the issues are mind-bogglingly complex, only a few people understand even a fraction of them, and they don't have the voting power to keep you in office for making the right decisions.
2) You don't have much power because you are bound by the party, and competing interests within it, opposition from your bureaucracy, and possibly foreign relations.
3) No decision pleases everybody, and making the right decision will not correlate with making a popular decision.
4) You will be blamed for things that you don't have much (or any) control over.
5) People like you will constantly jeer you just for being a politician, no matter what you do.
I think being a politician is a really hard job, and the more we heap scorn with no praise, the more we're going to frighten away anyone that isn't a power-hungry sociopath.
Nearly all the apps on my iPod touch are games. And no, you cannot currently do what they do this with HTML5 and Javascript (or, at least, they would be very slow to write and have terrible performance).
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Their 'mistake' of not including information on whether you should choose a Dell with an operating system they don't provide? That mistake?
Honestly dude, if you're going to go around cracking-wise about how all mac users are pretentiousdickfaggots, at least try to make it vaguely funny or original.
Like Windows!=newbie-friendly. The windows taskbar lacks discoverabilty, because practically everything is jammed into one menu (the start menu), or indecipherable little icons (system tray). Ubuntu's menus say what they are, by giving textual clues. For a newbie, it's actually better to have more on the screen with actual writing than a lot of icons.
Many aspects of the Windows interface are a kludge to differentiate it from the classic Mac OS, with many inconsistencies and non-intuitive behaviours. Linux distros should not copy it for the sake of usability.
I think you make a a valid point, in a way, but there are a couple of things to consider. I'm guessing (perhaps wrongly) that you were already pretty familiar with Windows when you started using W7. That makes it seem easier to use than it is. If you are used to something else entirely (Mac OS in my case), or nothing at all, Ubuntu is just as simple. In fact, I find Ubuntu slightly more straightforward than Windows 7, and I dabble in both very casually.
The application management in Ubuntu is superb, providing what I think is exactly the right balance of safety and discoverability for novice and casual users. A huge problem on Windows is people installing malware. How do you provide people with a rule sheet on what is okay to install? I've never been able to boil it down to rules, I just figure it out on a case-by-case basis. With Ubuntu you can just tell people to use the applications in the app menu, of which there are plenty. It's simple, safe, and allows the novice user to have computing independence, because there's no need to consult with anyone before installing an application.
I agree with you. I would try to find out what someone wanted to do with their computer before recommending anything. But I thing Ubuntu has got killer features for the novice wanting to do internet-centric stuff.
Novices probably don't need Photoshop, Krita seemed pretty good to me when I played around with it.
Uh, dude, it's what allows Ubuntu to have a (free!) app store sitting right there in the menu bar. You don't need to know what it is to use it. Adding apps is as simple as searching or navigating by category and clicking 'install'. It's seriously easy to use, and has big advantages for security. The apps in the default repository are screened, and cover most things you'd ever want to do. No more searching the internet, downloading random app that 'looks ligit', and istalling it manually.
I wish Macs had something similar. In fact, I bet it's going to be in the next release of OS X.
Now there's an original sentiment. Did you sit up all night coming up with that, or was it just spur-of-the-moment brilliance prompted by an unrelated story?
I'm a Mac user, but I certainly wouldn't hesitate to recommend Ubuntu to someone new to using computers. It really is as simple to use as Windows, and repositories are huge win for usability and security.
Joanna Lumly and even better one!
But more seriously, I didn't know Richard E. Grant actually ever played the doctor, except for doing the voice in some internet cartoon a while back. I've always thought he was made for the role.
Poor guy, only £200,000 a year! Why, he might only be able to afford hookers and blow on the weekends! Oh the humanity!
Ha, they've named it NauticCom--say that out loud. Most appropriate, considering the "loneliness" of sailors, and the content of the internet.
Because having to fill in forms--any forms--just to look at something on a website is something people just will not do. I think what is really important is not how much they charge (although it does seem a little steep), but is the hassle factor, having to go an find your coupon or whatever is just a pain in the neck. Totally not worth the hassle for most people.
Until there is a micro-payment system that's as easy as no payment at all (like say, the iTunes Store compared to your choice of P2P), there isn't going to be any headway in getting people to pay for this stuff.
Where's you god now, Googlebots? WHERE'S YOUR GOD NOW?
Come over to the iSide, it's shiny!
You can do this already with the iPad, but it uses an private API, so it's a no-go for now. However, I expect Apple will see the value in opening this up at some point (please?), so we will set third-party pressures sensitive drawing apps and pens.
We're talking real-world (not synthetic benchmarks, but actual page loads) improvements of 100% or more, probably due largely to the fact that Chrome can execute Javascript on something like a reasonable schedule.
Um, I'm talking real world too, I don't really look at the benchmarks. 100% faster at something I already feel is more than good enough is a whole lotta nothing for me. You may feel differently, of course, but the point of my original post was to point out that you shouldn't feel its somehow nerd-wrong not to switch from Firefox.
If every damned site out there wasn't overusing Javascript that might be a compelling argument.
I think it will become important, if/when Canvas gets traction. I've made some stuff involving multiple layers of transparent PNGs with transiotns between them using javascript. Firefox can render it all very smoothly, including animated transitions. Chrome and Safari, on the other hand, almost entirely choke up, and Opera is very slow. I decided to try the whole thing in Canvas to see if it would be faster, but the results were exactly the same. Firefox's canvas rendering ability is exceptionally good.
Why do you need to? Chrome renders pages faster, sure, but I don't really give a shit about a couple of milliseconds rendering time. Chrome has isolated tabs, but crashes more than Firefox anyway (at least for me).
Finally, when you have a really nice open source browser that isn't entirely controlled by a giant behemoth that knows everything about you, why not use it? Seriously, do we need to be throwing more power Google's way?
P.S. Gecko is still much faster at some things, i.e. image rendering and animation.
The result is very good -- to the point that Chrome looks and feels like a native browser./p>
Surely you are joking, Mr Surfer.
Chrome is very far from having a native Mac look. There are lots of little things, and some not so little. Firstly, the close button on each tab is on the right, unlike all real Mac applications which have them on the left (including Firefox). When you hover over them, they turn into a very plasticy, Windows XPish red, which is most un-mac-like. The tabs themselves are a colour which is not found in active OS X windows, and a shape which doesn't look like other Mac tabs.
In general, the interface is full of blue text links which should be buttons, this is also quite Windows-like.
In the preference panes, 'Basics" and "Personal Stuff" have a light grey background like other Mac apps, but the "Under the Bonnet" pane is back to a white background with nasty blue links again.
On the home page (your bookmarks or recently visited pages), again, the close buttons on the right instead of left, and drop down menus are clearly google roll-your-own.
No, I would say that Chrome is the least Mac-looking of the four major Mac browsers.
Luckily for the future of computing, the whole desktop ecosystem is probably going to be a small part of the story. I think dockable phones will be the future of computing, especially in emerging markets where everyone has a phone but no one has a computer.
There is a bright future here for open software. Especially if Nokia gets its act together.
Good points about the Zune always being a step behind, but I disagree with this:
The 2nd gen Zune were much better than the iPod Classic. Unfortunately they were not better than the iPod Touch which released a month before them.
I owned a click-wheel iPod back in 2005, and my wife has a click-wheel Nano. I now own an iPod Touch, and as much as I love it as a little computer for browsing the internet and games, it is vastly inferior to the click-wheeled iPods as a music player. I get it out of my pocket and it always starts in coverflow mode, which means I have to I hold it vertically for a little while, sometimes give it a little shake if it's not responding (but no too much of it jumps to a different track), just to get it into the usable portrait mode. I usually do this because I want to skip a track. Apparently you can double click the home key to bring up basic controls, but this rarely seems to work for me.
The iPod touch is a fine pocket computer, but a second-rate iPod.
If that were the case, why not just provide tax breaks to couples with children? I tell you why, because in the yes of an awful lot of people, homosexuality is 'icky', and should be discouraged (yeah, that's gonna work!).
On a Mac, at least, CPU usage is about double for the same H.264 file played through Flash as through a tag. This is especially noticeable on machine like mine, where 720p videos play just fine in a browser, but 720p Flash videos stutter.
Looking at it the other way, Flash SWFs import the very same h.264 file that you can serve raw. Adding h.264 support is as easy as serving up the file you already had without the Flash wrapper. It's a no-brainer.
Can's say how it would perform as a phone, but my experience of the battery life on an iPod Touch is very good. I get hours (~6) of more or less continuous browsing on mine, and that's with the screen on and actively rendering pages every few minutes as well as WiFi (obviously).
Yeah, if you're stuck in a childish mentality of politician=bad.
Here's the problem politicians face:
1) All the issues are mind-bogglingly complex, only a few people understand even a fraction of them, and they don't have the voting power to keep you in office for making the right decisions.
2) You don't have much power because you are bound by the party, and competing interests within it, opposition from your bureaucracy, and possibly foreign relations.
3) No decision pleases everybody, and making the right decision will not correlate with making a popular decision.
4) You will be blamed for things that you don't have much (or any) control over.
5) People like you will constantly jeer you just for being a politician, no matter what you do.
I think being a politician is a really hard job, and the more we heap scorn with no praise, the more we're going to frighten away anyone that isn't a power-hungry sociopath.
Nearly all the apps on my iPod touch are games. And no, you cannot currently do what they do this with HTML5 and Javascript (or, at least, they would be very slow to write and have terrible performance).
Well that's what you'd think, unless the shit hits the constitutional fan, as it did in Australia in 1975. I think you want someone with serious backbone in the position.