So the news is now coming out: Windows Vista was merely a compromise system. The real breakthrough OS is coming out in 2009. You can read the article here.
Basically, Microsoft has now said that Vista doesn't have everything it wanted to put in, but they needed to get it out the door. This finally explains why they are spending 500 million dollars (US) on marketing the new system. They know it's mediocre. I really shouldn't care about this. I have my own system, which runs fine. I'm not planning to switch to Windows (ever). Yet I'm completely compelled by this story. Microsoft would be a total joke if they didn't rule the world.
The truth is, I don't want Apple to grow its marketshare too much. Maybe 10 percent would be good. That way, it would still be a cool niche product, and I would feel good about using it. If it were ubiquitous, the "cool factor" would wear off. Then we'd start having more people try to write viruses (so far, none in the wild), and life would generally start to suck, much as it already does for Windows users.
5 comments:
Here's what we did. We bought an imac for our kid, the imac with the glamorous intel chip, and none of the software we have are compatible. The computer can only read software that have a 'universal' something rather. ( As you can see I'm not computer savvy.) The whole point of getting him a Mac was to be able to all use the same software. I feel gypped!
I'm a little confused. Do you mean Windows software doesn't work on it? Or earlier Mac software doesn't work? I can assure you that earlier Mac software works (we have both a PowerPC and an Intel Mac and run the same software).
You can run Windows software as well, but not in OS X. It requires Windows to work, so you must install Windows on your Mac, either on a separate partition (Boot Camp) or in a virtual environment (Parallels). If someone told you your new iMac would simply run Windows software out of the box, they were wrong. I'm sorry if that's the case. I would feel gipped, too.
By way of explanation, what they mean by "Universal binary" software is that it was designed from the beginning to work on both PowerPC and Intel Macs (has nothing to do with Windows). The universal applications run "natively" on Intel Macs, while the old PowerPC apps need to use a "translation" program (Rosetta, built into OS X) to run on the new chips.
In real life what this means is that older Mac software runs slower on the new Intel chips. But it runs, and you don't have to buy anything to get it to work.
Hmmmmm.
Hmmmmm.
I don't know much about any of this. But....and this is a very big but (one 't'), I do find the gentleman who plays the pc in those 'i'm a mac' commercials to have written quite possibly the single funniest book I may ever read.
He has a blog (it's not nearly as good as the book).
areasofmyexpertise.blogspot.com
I love those commercials! Mostly, I think Hodgman is hilarious (the "Mac" guy is annoying). If you haven't seen it yet, you need to check out his Daily Show segment on net neutrality (it's on YouTube). Right now I'm slowly making my way through the audiobook version of his book.
FYI, they've done the same commercials for the British and Japanese markets. You can see them here and here.
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