Small Children and Pregnant Women May Want To Avert Their Eyes
Hey. Want to see something really scary?
Well, Microsoft gave a first look at Windows 7 this week and if interface looks could kill…
Just like Vista, Windows 7 will apparently be filmed in GlaucomaVision!
To take the scary off, our good pal Rob Enderle provides a light-hearted introduction to this shop of horrors in which things don’t exactly work right.
Now that’s schadenfunny. And it’s a twofer. It makes both Microsoft and Enderle look bad. Rob stays a champ, though, and refuses to mention the A-word. Your evil masters will certainly reward you for that, Rob!
Apart from the failure of the thing to work right, though, the Macalope was also concerned about the ergonomics. Or, more to the point, the lack thereof. Hey, Rob, why don’t you try resizing and editing a hundred photos with your arms extended like that and then tell the Macalope how your shoulders feel?
But remember, Windows is, as Robert Scoble has been fond of saying, about “user scenarios”. For those of you just got off the boat and don’t know what “user scenarios” are, they go a little like this:
User’s elbows are tied together behind the back with duct tape with the hands stuck in a burlap sack full of chiggers. The user’s only means of operating the computer is via the butt cheeks. The user must run a variance analysis of quarterly fixed asset depreciation, including graphs.
See, it doesn’t matter if it’s not realistic. What matters is that you can do it on Windows. It doesn’t matter if you’ll need rotator cuff surgery about 15 minutes after doing it. What matters is that you can do it on Windows.
Ever see those people who’ve been in horrible sky-diving accidents and their arms are in casts sticking straight out from their body? Windows is so going to own that market.
Another year, another general manager for Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit. Last year, the MacBU replaced outgoing GM and lackluster keynote presenter Roz Ho with former AOL Wireless general manager Craig Eisler. But the revolving door continues to, er, revolve, and Eisler has moved on to greener pastures at MS’s Entertainment & Devices division…which, strangely enough, is where Ho ended up too. In other news: cattle mutilations are up.
Eisler’s replacement is Eric Wilfrid, a 14 year Microsoft vet who’s been with the MacBU since its humble beginnings back in 1997. Previously, Wilfrid was a Product Unit Manager overseeing MacBU engineers; he started at Microsoft working on PowerPoint in ‘94 and, after joining MacBU, worked on seven releases of Office for Mac, as well as MSN and Virtual PC. Certainly seems tough to doubt his street cred.
That seems like it might be an improvement. Eisler seemed pleasant enough, but even at his appointment we weren’t sure why he ended up there, given that his prior experience had been working at AOL and on DirectX. Given that Wilfrid’s been at MacBU since the beginning, that would seem to bode well for his experience and knowledge. We’re looking forward to it.
If you’re a Microsoft Office 2008 user (no, that’s not a condescending tone at all), you ought to know that the v12.1.3 update you downloaded might prevent you from sending meeting invitations and responses in Entourage if you have it configured with more than a single email account.
Sounds scary, right? Well, fear not, because help is at hand in the form of the v12.1.4 update for Microsoft Office, released yesterday. It applies to a bunch of Office editions, one of which you probably own, and Microsoft strongly recommends that you download and install it. You’ll know all there is to know when you click on that link. Go on, don’t be afraid, you’ll be back before you know it.
9 lords a leaping…
8 maids a milking…
7 swans a swimming…
6 gigs of RAMMMMMMM…
Yes, I know it’s only Halloween, and thus too early to begin singing Christmas carols, even melodically inaccurate ones. But the news that the Apple’s new MacBooks Pros can support up to 6GB of RAM just makes me feel like singing. Apple’s specs for the machines say that they top out at 4GB, but Ramjet discovered that if you slap in a 4GB stick instead of a 2GB stick for one of the pair, your MacBook Pro will both rock and roll. Of course, consider this at your own risk, since Apple only advertises support for up to 4GB.
6GB seems to be the sweet spot, though. Putting in two 4GB sticks apparently results in the MacBook Pro freaking the hell out like it’s on a bad trip. There’s some suggestion that the limitation is software-related and not hardware-related, so you MBP owners can keep holding out hope. Vanilla MacBook owners appear to be stuck with the 4GB ceiling, though. [I misunderstood, apparently. Seems this is true for MacBooks and MacBook Pros -DM].
[via Gizmodo]
All may be fair in love and war, but business is business. Former Apple ally IBM has sued the head of its blade server team in order to block his move to Apple. The executive’s contract contained a noncompete clause that prevents him from working elsewhere in the industry for a year after leaving IBM.
It gets better, though, mainly because the dude’s name—and I could not make this up—is Mark Papermaster. That. Is. Awesome. I have to admit, I’ve seen a lot of weird surnames in my time—heck, I’ve got a kind of weird surname—but, there’s just something beautiful about a guy whose family probably did at one point master paper ending up in charge of computer servers.
Until last week, Papermaster was the vice president of the Blade Development unit at IBM, which sells blade servers to corporations, but he’s also worked in IBM’s research and development, including the Power microprocessor. IBM contends that means he knows much of the company’s trade secrets and IP. It’s not known precisely what position Papermaster had taken at Apple—please, please, please let it have something to do with paper. E-paper? Printing? Newspapers? Anything. Please.
We love 1Password. Hell, it seems everyone loves 1Password.
We all just have so many damn passwords.
Passwords for your computers, IM accounts, bank accounts, email accounts, credit card accounts, FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, iTunes, forums, misc. financial stuff, porn sites, Flickr, blogs, school, work, clubs, Yahoo, Google, subscription services, etc., etc.
So many damn passwords.
And so today we yelp with glee at MacZOT's offering of the 1Password password management app for $20, a half-off its usual price of ($20 x 2 =) $40.
It's got a lot of great features that complement its purpose: automatic entering of passwords into websites and such; password generator; anti-phishing and keylogger protection; mobile versions for the iPhone and iPod touch; and bunches more.
As of this writing, there's about 8 hours left in the deal. Check it out, drop the dough, and never forget the password of that ancient email account you check once every few weeks, which just happens to get all the billing statements from your credit card because you were too lazy to switch the address when you got a new one.
See? So helpful.
[via Infinite Loop]
It’s not just that i want to be a spy—though I do, badly—but I just love encryption. I wrote a paper on it in college. I took an online course about it when I was working in IT. I read Neal Stephenson’s epic Cryptonomicon. I kind of even want to name a band “Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange.”
So you can see why the promise of TaoEffect’s new folder-encryption program Espionage might appeal to me on many levels. The $15 application is designed as a lightweight replacement for those who don’t need the extensive powers of FileVault. Espionage integrates with the Finder and allows you to encrypt folders with AES 128-bit or 256-bit encryption (you can also choose to password protect some folders rather than encrypt them). There’s even full support for Spotlight and Growl integration. And because you’re not encrypting your full home directory, as with FileVault, you won’t fall prey to the constant performance hit upon logging in or shutting down.
Of course, the basic tenets of encryption apply: for example, be careful not to lose your password, or else you’re screwed—but don’t put it on a sticky note next to your computer. Unless you want to get laughed at by all the other spies. Those guys can be merciless.
Microsoft employees are well known for their calm and rational expression of thoug—DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS.
Ahem.
Well, as charming as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been over the years, he’s not the only guy at the company, right? There are bound to be some that have some nice things to say about Apple. And what better place than this week’s Professional Developers Conference, where MS rolled out Windows 7. Here’s Rick Rashid, head of Microsoft Research:
“If you use a Macintosh or an iPhone, which honestly I would not recommend, you would be using code that I wrote more than 25 years ago…” […] “It just shows you things really do survive and get used in interesting ways.” [emphasis added]
Zing.
Well, I guess we can’t hold too much against Rashid for expressing his opinion; I mean, he works for Microsoft, so it’s not like he’s going to come out and recommend a Mac any more than Steve Jobs is going to walk out and pimp the latest Dell.
Rashid’s reference is to the Mach microkernel that lies at the heart of OS X, which he worked on at CMU while he was a professor there. I can’t tell if he’s dissing Mach, or OS X, or what, but doesn’t it say something positive about Mach that it’s still being used a quarter of a century later? Like maybe it’s time-tested?
Then again, when you keep fundamentally changing your OS every couple years, maybe time-tested isn’t a concept you’re familiar with.
In a costume I'm sure no one outside of the Bay Area will actually try to pull off, iPhoneSavior.com reminds us that the two-year-old Steve's Outfit has put together what might be the the techiest, most-expensive and simplest costume ever: dressing up like El Jobserino himself.
For only $175, you too can have a pair of Levi's 501 jeans, New Balance shoes and a black mock turtleneck. Of course, we're assuming that you already have an iPhone and the assorted catchphrases like: "Boom!" and "One more thing..." at the ready.
If you actually do dress up like Jobs (bonus points if you can pull off a Woz!), or any other Apple-themed costume, send us a pic, yeah?
