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Tuesday, February 20, 2007
I came across this interesting post the other day. Seems the author recently switched to OS X and while for the most part he seems to like it he has come across a few things that he misses from Windows. What I enjoy about his post is that it feels more like he is comparing tools vs. religions, with calm observations vs. frothing at the mouth. Some of the more interesting tidbits: - He dislikes iPhoto and considers it featureless. I usually hear OS X users touting iPhoto as one of the key features of OS X so to hear
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Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Lot's of action on Microsoft's Live brand lately. All of this activity reminded me of my own rather strong feelings about Microsoft's handling of Live and how every time I hear “Live” I cringe a little. You see, I’ve always thought that attaching the Live brand to so many properties was a greedy attempt to capitalize on the only hip branding Microsoft has, XBox’s Live. As far as I remember and know Live first started with the XBox and became synonymous with social gaming with a set of friends and it was strictly limited to the XBox. With the
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Tuesday, February 20, 2007
I often hear how OS X "just works" and how it's so easy to do pretty much everything. Often the differences between the Windows and OS X way are just that, different, not really better or worse. That's why I was so surprised to find out how relatively hard it is to assign a drive letter to a network share on OS X. Chalk one up on the Windows side of things. On XP and Vista it's as simple as right-clicking on the share and selecting "Map Network Drive..."
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Monday, February 19, 2007
I'm sure this is old hat for people hip on their YouTube classics but oddly enough I've never come across this before. Nothing is perfect, not Windows, not OS X, not PC's, not your childhood puppy and this guy does a great job of pointing out some of his Mac frustrations. Why Macs Suck
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Monday, February 19, 2007
I recently subscribed to a podcast that is basically a list of free MP3's that various bands offer up for download. It's a great way to get exposed to new music but one thing I've noticed is that most of them don't include album art. While album art is probably the last thing on the band's mind I have to say that when a song is hanging in the balance the lack of album art is enough for me to delete the song. What is the purpose of having a lovely, vivid, large screen on my Zune if I don't
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Saturday, February 17, 2007
As much as I like Microsoft products I have to say I really hate some of their business decisions when it comes to Vista. My biggest beef is the fact that Home Premium doesn't include Remote Desktop. A common setup of Media Center is to run a headless (without monitor, keyboard or mouse) Media Center machine that records while an extender, in my case an XBox 360, is used to watch the recorded content. The only thing that makes this possible is the fact that Media Center Edition (the pre-Vista version) includes Remote Desktop. Whenever I need to check disk
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Tuesday, February 13, 2007
OK, not really. I've reached a milestone, I've been labeled a Microsoft fanboy, a shill, been asked if I work for Microsoft and if I'm on the payroll. Somehow I was also labeled a Bush-supporting, Iraq war-loving Republican. Someone named "Will" even crowned me Shawn "Microsoft" Oster. Hey Will, anything you want me to pass along to Bill during our weekly world domination take-over meeting? All joking aside I'll clarify my position on Microsoft, not in defense of myself but to at least spurn more original arguments against me. I'm not defending Microsoft, I'm not even a fanboy. I'm trying to
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Monday, February 12, 2007
There is a fair bit of ignorance out there about Vista's implementation of HDCP DRM and usually I just let it go by without affecting me too much but this recent article on Wired really takes the cake. I have to give it a gold star for being the most inaccurate article about "Vista's DRM" I've read to date. Personally I hate the concept of DRM, as searching my blog will attest to but I hate when people spread FUD and restate their opinions as facts even more. The waters of DRM and Vista are already murky enough and posts
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Sunday, February 11, 2007
Mary Jo Foley has a recent post that highlights one of the hypocrisies you often encounter in the OS X camp. This line highlights it best: Parallels executives have been quoted by various outlets as being angered by Microsoft's policy to allow only the pricier versions of Vista to be used with Parallels without an additional license. But the Parallels brass don't seem overly upset by similar licensing restrictions allegedly imposed by Apple regarding the legalities of running Mac OS X in a virtualized environment on non-Apple hardware. UPDATE: Changed the title, fixed some tensing and reworded the first sentence, it