Scott's Profile

Beeb wrote: "Like when he lied about video on the iPod." Obviously, Job's statement wasn't directed at consumers. It was a comment on the industry in general. You won't find these kinds of statements on the Apple website or store. If consumers try to "play" Apple based on quotes, like inexperienced investors try to play the market, they're bound to get burned.

Beaver, The iPhone is running OS X and has ties to Leopard. My guess is that many of these issues will be resolved when Leopard ships later this year. As for support for cut and paste, I'm not sure if this is really in the works. Apples current strategy is to anticipate when you'd want to cut and paste and provide a simpler alternative that wouldn't require attempting to select text using your finger or without cluttering the current UI with additional menus. Examples include Phone numbers that are automatically converted to links in Safari and MobielMail and emailing URLs by simply clicking "Share" in the URL bar. In my own experience, I'm surprised by how much I don't miss cut and paste since I don't use the iPhone as a replacement for a computer. Guess we'll have to wait until the first big update is released.

Windows XP has lousy font support and doesn't support grouping font's by family at the OS level. Nor do most Windows apps with the exception of Adobe. Hopefully this was fixed in Vista, but I'm not holding my breath because I simply think Microsoft just "doesn't get it" and doesn't see it as a problem.

Ben Hall wrote: "But why would you buy Microsoft’s $10,000 ‘solution’ when you can achieve all the functionality you’ve described with a hugely cheaper custom solution using a proper touchscreen? A moderately capable homebrewer could provide the same functionality in a non-ridiculous form factor working singlehandedly in a month." The most interesting part of this concept is the ability to detect various objects placed on it. Syncing my phone by simply placing on the “surface” seems quite natural. However, I’m really not surprised that Microsoft is releasing to commercial markets only. Microsoft clearly doesn't have a strategy to bring this technology into the general purpose computing environment. Until someone figures out how to do this, it's limited to custom applications in commercial vertical markets in specific industries. Take at the Tablet PC, for example. The concept has a huge potential, but the reality is that consumer demand has been almost non-existent. Why? Microsoft’s implementation just isn’t compelling enough to make people “want” to use them. However, industries with special needs, such as medical and other vertical markets, are purchasing for Tablet PCs for their employees due to limited competitive advantages the provide. By initially releasing only to commercial markets… 01. Microsoft doesn’t have to worry about poor consumer sales numbers because there are no consumer sales numbers to worry about. 02. Microsoft can generate commercial sales by creating perceived competitive advantages in vertical markets. I’d note that Apple has taken a completely opposite approach in developing tablet / touch devices. Instead of releasing a tablet Mac (which I’m pretty sure it has the capacity to build), it’s releasing a mass market consumer device, the iPhone, which is very practical and will likely have a huge consumer demand. Should be interesting to see how these different approaches pan out in the long run. Also, the concept of object positioning and orientation is not unique to Microsoft. You can already build a multi-tough, object positioning and orientation sensing "surface" using off the shelf parts and open source software. These guys did it in less than two years. http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/?media

Beeblebrox wrote: "The FCC mandate had ONLY to do with digital broadcasting, not HD. These are two distinctly different things. It has NOTHING to do with quality of the picture but rather the significant increase in bandwidth and available licensed channels in the digital spectrum." The term SD only defines the resolution of the content being displayed, not transmission quality. Digital SD content does not suffer from ghosting and other artifacts of analog TV. The result is a visible increase in picture quality for all over the air broadcasts, including SD. Since an ATSC tuner is capable of receiving HD content and displaying it a SD resolution broadcasters can provide HD content in prime-time without leaving SD capable only consumers out in the cold. Moving to DTV will require stations to make significant equipment upgrades. Broadcasters would be foolish to not include HDTV capabilities at the time of transition. The end result of this mandate will result in higher quality content - even for those who can only display SD content. It will also drive broadcasters and networks to created HD content for consumers. The FCC is currently investigating similar mandates for cable companies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_tuner

While it's true that both Mac and Windows systems run on the same Intel motherboards, much of the standards and technology included on that motherboard were in part popularized by Apple hardware. The same influence can be seen thought the entire gamut of computer hardware today. Apple has consistently been a driving force the market in regards adopting new technology and even PC form factor design. This includes USB, Firewire and, most recently, WiFi. Mac laptops were the first to have built in Wi-Fi and drove the adoption of wireless networking into the mainstream. Before that, Apple had significant influence in popularizing the entire concept of laptops in general. And the only company even remotely close to Apple's ascetics and usability is Sony. While they have been successful with their laptop products, they completely missed the boat when it comes to portable music players. The rest of the market simply doesn't have the vision required to push the envelope. While it may appear that we've reached a point where hardware innovation doesn't matter, you can be sure someone made the same observation in the last few decades. Instead, I'm predicting the is plenty of room for future hardware innovation for Apple. And the line between computers and devices is staring to blur. This trend gives Apple a huge advantage over companies like Microsoft and even Sony. Shutting down Apple's computer hardware division would cause the computer hardware industry to slow down significantly. We'd be at the mercy of a complacent market who really doesn't have a clue to create technology that people actually want to use.

Bad Beaver wrote: "For some reason, MS has a preference for their own formats/containers." That's an understatement, if I've ever heard one. Microsoft has been trying to kill Quicktime for years.

- A third-party application exposed a system folder that was normally invisible. - The user was running as admin - The user was prompted for admin privileges before deleting the folder. Even though he was running as admin. There is only so much you can do to prevent the user from shooting themselves in the foot. Beeb wrote: "For those of us who think that OS X is not any better or worse than Windows, I can see clearly how the user could so something like this without realizing how catastrophic his mistake. " Better or worse is highly subjective. However, Windows has several architectural traits that make it less secure and easier to break - some of which have been only addressed in the last few months with the release of Vista. In XP, all users have administrative privileges to delete system files. You didn't have to authenticate, regardless if you were logged in as Administrator or not. Microsoft has "solved" this issue in Vista with the addition of UAC (User Account control). However, since this functionality was simply "bolted" on top of the existing Windows architecture, Microsoft allows you to turn off UAC completely for compatibility issues, etc. Authentication can not be disabled in Mac OS X because it's built into the architecture. Is this better? Microsoft simply put a band-aid on the problem instead of fixing it at an architectural level. Apple bit the bullet and moved to a whole new architecture with OS X. Sooner or later, Microsoft is going to have to break compatibility to modernize their OS. Apple already crossed that bridge 6 years ago. I'd say that gives Apple a significant advantage.