Aurora77's Profile

Oh. My. Geez. I was laughing so hard tears came to my eyes! Brilliant!

Consider for a moment the following individuals: 1) Musicians. The delay in accessing a web-based virtual synth or recording app would produce delays in the recording that would wreck the music. 2) Gamers. Again, a second delay or two results in you (or your friends) getting fragged. No go. 3) Graphics designers. The Photoshop Phreaks of the world won't stand for momentary blips of service interruption, especially when that ruins their images. No. The apps will have to be local, and no-one has the time to send their massive pics back and forth just for editing. 4) Movie designers. The same as #3 times about ten. 5) Desire for local control of data and applications. See: libertarians, privacy advocates, and Americans in general. So you see, there are a whole host of reasons why the OS won't be going away anytime soon. Simply put, having large apps remaining local is both more efficient and less bother. There is no need to be sending around massive files just to get your work done. Every six months or so an article like this one pops up and I just shake my head each time.

I honestly could not care less about games for any platform. I seriously doubt that Apple has "making games" in mind when they hired the folks with the Open GL experience. Why would they? What real reason is there for Apple to create games? No-one's been able to justify that. This rumor has been one of the stupidest I've ever seen going around.

I suppose if you ignore everything that's been written about Vista, you could say that it's going to be "good". 1) Microsoft security is swiss cheese, and I don't see any improvement in Vista. Not unless you call Microsoft getting into the AV game and charging users for subscriptions an improvement. 2) You have heard about all the anti-piracy measures in Vista, and how erm, they have malfunctioned? Would you like to lose your computer for a few days because Vista's piracy prevention malfunctioned? Welcome to Windows. 3) Usability and reliability are important, nay critical to computer users. Is Windows any more useable than XP? How about reliable? Don't make me laugh. And compared to OS X? You haven't done your homework and you want me to give a free pass on it? Usability is far more than appearance! 4) As for what "most people think" or "what most people notice", who really cares? Using a computer is not a game of "follow the leader". Buried in those phrases are the supposition that "well if it's good enough for Harry, then I guess it's good enough for me." Right. Like I'm going to give up my right to think to be part of a crowd. Stuff that. Apple Matters is ocassionally humorous, but I found this article to be humorous indeed. In fact, I think you could say I found it to be a joke.

I think Microsoft has to be one of the dumbest companies since ever. Look guys, when your arch-foe goads you, you don't take his bait! Especially when it's in a completely different market that you suck at and is far away from your core strengths! That kind of resource-draining, diversion is how smaller armies defeat larger ones and how two superheroes can defeat a larger, ponderous villian. It's an obvious truth, which is why Microsoft is trying to disprove it. I'm looking for the day they decide to declare war on gravity.

No, Microsoft did not build a war chest by being dumb. They built it through harassment, lies, and other sundry illegal activities. Microsoft doesn't hesitate to enter markets that it knows nothing about. Can you say X-Box? I knew you could. As for browsers, Mosiac was free, and Netscape was free. IE being free was no revolution. In fact by not selling it, Microsoft made sure that no-one paid them for their work.

Don't you remember what happened the last time Apple licensed their OS? (Power Computing, StarMax, anyone else remember out there?) They nearly bought the farm. Now just to satisfy your desire you'd rather Apple went into Chapter 11. Monumental selfishness is what that is, complete with tantrums, and profane tirades at being unable to control everything you want to. Do you even understand how Apple is able to sell "the Apple experience"? Here's a hint -- it rests upon a limited number of hardware configurations, which keeps the complexity of design, maintenance, coding, and support down to manageable and cost-effective levels. Anything but what they're doing now would take the sheen off the Apple experience and reduce the quality of upcoming products, as they'd be busy putting out the fires of strange configurations everywhere. You see, Apple would have to offer some sort of support to all those configurations. The tech press would crucify them if they didn't. The whine would go up from sea to shining sea about how Apple had "betrayed their idealism" and so on. As someone who was a PC user and spent a good part of my spare time fiddlign with PCs, I'm glad that Macs have a limited number of configurations. It's simpler to keep them running. The hardware that Apple is able to create (and even third-party Apple hardware companies) kicks the living snot out of the PC folks, who sell you cheap trash. Given a choice between forever fixing my machine, as all PC tweakers do, and actually using it, I'll go with the latter every time. Grow a brain!

I agree that the article is thought-provoking, which makes it stand out. However, it's not entirely correct. First, Google's services are voluntary. It's hard to be an overlord of anything when your subjects have to volunteer to be subjects and can quit the kingdom at any time. There's tons of folks who won't use G-Mail. Second, Google doesn't know anything about individuals as a result of its analysis. All it knows is what G-mail account does and serves up ads in reaction to that. I don't know of any uniquely identifying information that is stored upon individuals that Google uses. Third, Google's star is dimming. Look at the China search fiasco. Remember the news fiasco, where Google chooses some news sources as being more reputable than others? One of those news sources is the state-run news organ of the Chinese communist government, interestingly enough. And don't forget the whole ad topic banning thing. Also, Google doesn't have a monopoly on internet search. If they did, there wouldn't be any other search engines out there.