The Holy Trinity of OSes

The fact that Apple was working on a multitouch mouse has been known (and reported by me in this very blog) for months. Few details were known about it, but we knew one was coming. Even if you weren’t big on the rumor mill, it makes intuitive sense that multitouch would come to Apple’s mice at some point.

Finally, with the release of some new hardware last week, Apple unleashed to the world the Magic Mouse (possibly renamed due to the fact that another company got the Mighty Mouse trademark from CBS, and might have been hoping to cash in on it with Apple, but it appears that fell through).

Since it came out, I’ve been annoying local Apple Store employees on the phone every day, asking if they have the latest mouse in. Finally, they got it, and I now have one.

Unboxing
Apple’s latest critter comes in its most compact and sexy packaging yet. Batteries are included, and they’re cleverly already in the mouse itself. I like this direction that Apple’s packaging is taking. They’ve switched to this kind of packaging for their iPods (still not for iPhones, though).

Setup
It’s a Bluetooth mouse, so it’s really no different than any other. Awkwardly, you have to pair the mouse with the computer before you can use Software Update to actually download the 68 megabyte drivers (I presume most of this 68 megs is the video-based cues you see in System Preferences, as well as some of the scrolling logic).

Using the Mouse
When I first put my hands on it, it felt really low, since my other mouse is a Microsoft Bluetooth IntelliMouse Explorer 2.0. Microsoft’s mice have a very distinctive arched feel that fits right into your hands, in an attempt to feel more ergonomically correct.

However, that’s technically not ergonomically correct, unless you’ve also got a thick wrist rest. Without one, your hand has to be bent up at an angle that can’t be very healthy in the long term. Apple’s ergonomic approach is to prevent that altogether, and as such their peripherals are now very flat, and the keyboards no longer have that notch that you can flip up to raise the angle of the keyboard. It’s flat. And it’s better for you.

That being said, it’s going to take me some time to get used to the new feel of the Magic Mouse. I was used to the rounded feel of the Mighty Mice, but this feels a lot more square and flat (namely because it is). The horizontal flattening is probably the result of the fact that it’s now a multitouch mouse, and it would be kind of weird to make gestures on a more spherical shape. Or maybe Apple just wanted to change it up. I don’t know.

The mouse feels quite comfortable to use (albeit different from any mouse I’ve used before). Apple has long since removed the ability for people to adjust how their mouse clicks (once a cool feature of the Pro Mouse), instead leaving you with one level of… “clickiness.” It’s a good level, though. It’s not soft, but not particularly difficult to press.

THe top part of the mouse is made of acrylic plastic (glossy), and the bottom part is made of aluminum. My thumb and pinky grip comfortably on the aluminum, but I long for the squeezable buttons that used to be on the sides of the Mighty Mouse (and it’d be even greater if they were separate buttons!). I like the thought that was put into the texture, though. The aluminum has the tiniest bit more friction to it, and the top is perfectly smooth. Makes sense, since you’re gripping the aluminum but your fingers will glide on the top. But the difference is very subtle. You really wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking for it, but when you use it, it feels right. That’s Apple’s design for you!

But that’s all mundane stuff. You really want to hear about the multitouch, don’t you? Of course you do. What I have to say about the multitouch functionality of the Magic Mouse is that it does what it does very well, but sadly it doesn’t do a lot at the moment.

If you want to scroll, just glide a finger around on the top surface (above the Apple logo). Simple. It’s even got the momentum effect that you get when scrolling through a list of things in iPhone, which is a nice touch to add. Not something that needed to be done, but Apple loves refining the tiny details like that.

But Apple really could have added oodles of new functionality to this multitouch. I mean, look at all the different things the multitouch trackpads can do! I would have expected Apple to at least bring the Magic Mouse to par with that. But they didn’t.

You can do two-finger swipes horizontally to navigate through things. But the mouse doesn’t register vertical two-finger swipes as anything (which is a damn shame, because there are things that could have been done with that, like moving from one tab to another in OmniWeb or something). I’m hoping that the mouse is at least sending these gestures to the computer to interpret, which would no doubt open the door to all sorts of extra functionality. I don’t know much about low-level hardware stuff, but I certainly hope hackers see value in this mouse.

Also, no pinch to zoom? Seriously? That’s the flagship cool thing about iPhone’s multitouch! Trackpads can do it. It’s not a particularly difficult gesture to make with the mouse, either; I tried doing it, longingly staring at my screen wishing the image would zoom in. On the upside, you can hold the control key while scrolling up and down to do screen zooming as usual. But that’s no fun.

I’m really hoping that some clever people come through with this device and hack it. Just imagine the functionality it could have. You could add a bunch more “buttons” to the mouse if you wanted. A hacker might be able to enable pinch-to-zoom. More capabilities with gestures could be made. The sky’s the limit!

Or, maybe Apple will start to see the potential of its own device and stick more options in System Preferences for its power users.

Verdict
This is Apple’s best mouse yet, by a long shot. I loved Mighty Mouse, but its ball (often lovingly referred to as “the clit”) got jammed way too often and way too easily, making the mouse relatively useless. Switching to multitouch was a smart move, and even though some functionality did get taken away (side buttons, RIP), this is a truly unique rendition of a mouse (though not the first mouse to use pure touch for scrolling–Targus wins that one, even though that mouse is mediocre in every other aspect). This mouse brings Apple well into the 21st century, and even though it’s missing a lot of functionality it frankly could have, it’s a great start.

I’ll give it 4 stars, but if someone out there makes makes a program to add more functionality to the mouse, I’ll happily increase the rating to a full 5.

iPhone devs out there, I know you’re complaining a lot that it’s hard to make a living when there is such cutthroat competition, and as a result no developers are willing to put a significant investment into making a decent iPhone app.

But you reputable Mac developers (you know who you are, Omni, TheIconFactory, et al) need to sit tight and ride this bubble out; don’t worry.

The problem is one of sheer numbers. There are currently about 80,000 apps out there. That’s way too freaking many apps. Just way way too many. Everyone came running to the app store like the gold rush, and it’s bust for them all. The market got flooded with apps, and now people bitch when an app costs $1, because developers got too aggressive with their pricing and they just shot themselves in the foot. And now, developers don’t want to spend any significant amount of time developing for an app because they know they won’t get a return on it.

They try blaming Apple for this, because slight idiosyncracies in the App Store prevent apps from getting exposure, but when you’ve got 80,000 apps in there, exposure is hard to come by.

Plus, I’ve been saying this time and time again, there’s a lot of riffraff when it comes to apps in the App Store. A lot of apps are just of poor build quality. Some apps were made by people who have never heard of HIG and were apparently unaware that Apple has a set of UI widgets for iPhone that work just fine and they don’t need to be special and reinvent that wheel.

Ride it out, developers. The riffraff is going to realize at some point that 99 cent crapps (that’s what I’ll call them from now on) aren’t making anyone money and they’re just flooding the App store with sludge that keeps users away from the gold. The apps will die out. Then, the good developers can pop out of the woodwork and start making some damn good apps at reasonable prices. And when I say reasonable, I’m talking $10-20 apps. People aren’t afraid to pay $10-20 for a good app. I promise.

It’s sure been fun to watch this pissing match between Palm and Apple on how Palm makes the Pre “pre”-tend to be an Apple device when connected to iTunes, and then bitches that Apple blocks it (which is really a dick move on their part, because it’s obvious they went out of their way to do that), but iTunes has this layer of openness that you really shouldn’t forget about, iTunes Library.xml.

This is a human-readable, easily parseable XML model of your entire iTunes library, complete with metadata and whatnot. Just use that for syncing! Sure, it requires a separate program, but it doesn’t matter, because you’re dealing with a well-documented XML file and the reliability of that will more than make up for the lack of direct integration with iTunes. This is how doubleTwist interacts with your iTunes library. This (I believe) is how RIM’s upcoming Blackberry for Mac app gets your iTunes data. It just makes sense. Sure, it’s a big(ger) file to parse through, but not that big, and XML isn’t too hard to read programmatically.

So please, Palm, just make a standalone program, and have it use iTunes Library.xml. Seriously.

You know, you’d think that ATT would be able to handle the latest tech of the late 1990s without being scared of overloading their network, but apparently that is just asking too much of them.

I will give them creut where credit is due. They aren’t going to charge iPhone users for the cutting edge new MMS service. Of course, users would have thrown a fit at that since it costs nothing to email a picture to a friend.

When your exclusive provider is dragging its feet with an MMS rollout in 2009, it might be time to look at having iPhone on multiple carriers. Even if ATT wasn’t complaining about capacity issues, it doesn’t change the fact that I had my call drop 9 times when traveling between Dubuque and Madison. That is pathetic. And I can’t even use my iPhone when I visit my family becase that’s a dead zone.

I was using my Kindle in my office today, and I noticed what a good wireless signal it got. Of course, I thought. Kindle is using Sprint’s über reliable CDMA network.

Then it hit me. Maybe, just maybe, Apple could be in talks with Sprint to bring iPhone to its network!

Now, before we go too far here, let’s just say I’m basing this on nothing more than wild speculation and wishful thinking. but I have some decent reasons to think that a SpriPhone could very well be in the cards. Here are my reasons

AT&T

The iPhone’s Achilles heel in the US is its exclusive carrier, AT&T. If you look around tech blogs, you’ll very very consistently hear reports that AT&T’s got the spottiest coverage of all the major three networks. Users are always reporting dropped calls, and rural areas are usually left out in the cold when it comes to getting coverage. And AT&T is dragging their feet about getting improved coverage. Only large cities are getting 3G, whereas carriers like US Cellular are offering 3G (a.k.a. EVDO) in towns with 7000 peoplle. The only AT&T customers in towns that small getting 3G are towns like fair Verona (where I live), where we really only get it because we’re so close to Madison that we just kind of accidentally also get it.

And whenever there is talk of people actually using their iPhones on a cell network to do something beyond e-mail, AT&T pretty much has a coronary, talking about how their network just can’t handle the congestion, and how it’d be unfair for a small minority to use the majority of the bandwidth, etc. etc.

And let’s not forget that AT&T’s plans are extremely pricey. Texting plans are through the roof for individuals. And iPhone’s data plan is $30 a month. Texting (something we all know costs carriers almost nothing) costs $15 a month with AT&T for up to 1500 messages. And Apple’s no doubt still pissed at AT&T for not having tethering and MMS available for iPhone users yet. I think Apple’s ready to pull a real dick move on AT&T and show them that they don’t need them anymore. They really only needed AT&T to say to the world: “Our phone makes your phone look like two tin cans and a string, except that two tin cans and a string is a lot more intuitive and easy to use than your POS phones.” Now that the world has seen that Apple makes the must-have phone of the century, carriers are salivating to get the JesusPhone.

Sure, if Apple makes a Sprint (or even Verizon) iPhone, it’s not just going to stop making phones for AT&T. Consumers will just have a choice. And AT&T’s about to find out what “choice” means when that day comes. I don’t condone insider trading or anything, but let me tell you this: Sell you AT&T stock before Apple unveils their next iPhone.

Sticking it to Palm

Jon Rubinstein thought he’d pull a fast one and leave Apple and make this supposed iPhone “killer.” This is very Palm-like, since they seem to have a reputation for trying to out-do Apple after they come out with something innovative, not yet realizing that this really only worked that one time when Apple made the Newton.

Palm isn’t exactly doing well, and the Pre is to Palm what the Chevy Volt is supposed to be to GM: it’s supposed to be that big game-changing device that saves the company. But it’s just a cheap ripoff of iPhone. They tacked a physical keyboard onto it because apparently a touch screen keyboard was Apple’s big iPhone blunder. Having felt Pre’s keyboard, I am confident I could type on iPhone’s keyboard blindfolded better than I could type on Palm’s keyboard with full eyesight. It’s awful. The hardware generally feels cheap, and the inductive charger isn’t even that inspired and doesn’t really perform well. Oh, and when iPhone 3GS came out, it pretty much blew the Pre completely out of the water. And I’m pretty sure all the original iPhone owners with expiring contracts were not tripping over each other in a dead sprint (no pun intended) to the nearest store that had a Pre. Instead, they waited a few weeks and bought an iPhone 3GS (like my team lead).

I’m guessing Apple is totally entertaining the idea of putting iPhone on Sprint’s network just to spite Palm for thinking they could make a better product than Apple. Because I totally would if I was Steve Jobs.

Sprint’s kind of hurting

Apple loves an underdog. It’s easier to take advantage of them. AT&T was no doubt the underdog of the big carriers when Apple took them under their wings and made everything better and gave them their biggest cash cow ever. But AT&T’s starting to get a little cocky with things, and their network is giving iPhone a bad name in the US, so it’s time to consider a new carrier. But going to Verizon’s just so predictable. Why not choose a pretty big carrier that isn’t on top?

Every quarter, Sprint considers it a good one if the number of subscribers they lose is lower than last quarter. And we’re not talking a few subscribers here and there. We’re talking hundreds of thousands. Sprint dearly needs the shot in the arm that only Apple can give them (Palm sure as hell didn’t give it to them).

And since Sprint is so desperate, they’ll probably sign a pretty lucrative deal with Apple (in Apple’s favor) to get iPhone, because a must-have device like that is really the only way they can survive.

Sprint’s network isn’t half bad

Sure, Verizon’s probably got the nation’s largest network. But Sprint is CDMA, too, and they (AFAIK) have access to all of those towers as well. And there’s plenty of 3G for all. Plus, you know how Verizon is promising 4G trials next year? Sprint’s already on that shit! They are clearly on the ball when it comes to network innovation, and they’re the kind of rock-solid network that Apple would enjoy having.

Verizon’s not really that great…
I’m sure if you look on the internet for people having abysmal experiences with cell carriers, you’ll get some dirt on everyone (Sprint’s no doubt got a few, since they are hemorrhaging customers by the quarter), but Verizon’s got some pretty gaping issues. Let’s see what we have:

Verizon guy punching resident in the face, check.
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/d291TFmKxdc/verizons-tech-support-repertoire-includes-punching-you-in-the-face

Verizon refusing to give location info for lost man because of an unpaid bill:
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/GSBofkb5qUw/article.pl

and, my personal favorite, Verizon’s complete inability to understand the difference between $0.002 and 0.002 cents.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Gp0HyxQv97Q

Now, you might have had your occasional squabble with Sprint or AT&T, but I really don’t think you can top the kind of incompetence of the Verizon customer service reps in that last one.

Plus, Verizon’s got this obsession with having their own App Store, which isn’t going to fly with Apple. Verizon also insists on making their own custom OS for all phones, which also definitely won’t fly with Apple.

For these reasons, I think sprint could prove to be the unexpected victor on this one. Let’s see how it plays out.

So, I might get a little bit of flack for this, but you shouldn’t give me much, because the technology world changes over time. I know, I know, I was talking about how Apple was never going to make netbooks (and I’m right, Apple isn’t, unless you count the MacBook Air, which by all means really is a netbook, but a lot of fucktards insist that in order to be a netbook, it has to cost less than $500 or something like that). But I did also say that Apple doesn’t make in-between products, and this iPad (just my wild guess for name) would fit neatly in between the iPhone/iPod Touch and Apple’s laptops.

That’s bad.

I mean, it’d be a good product, no doubt, but it wouldn’t be that successful. It would cost almost as much as a computer, but wouldn’t be (quite) as functional.

That said, there are some possibilities for it. Apple could potentially be trying to move away from people having full-blown computers in their backpacks. Because, let’s face it, the laptop form factor is a little bit constraining. It’s pretty well stuck with the general shape it’s got, with the keyboard and trackpad and whatnot. Sure, you could add a touch screen and make it swivel so you could get the keyboard out of the way, but that’s just not elegant. And people still think of these tablet laptops as a computer with a touch screen tacked on. That’s no good, because people treat it like it’s a computer and then there is no innovation in the fundamental ways you interact with it. That’s what made iPhone so special. It made ingeniously good use of the touch screen. If you made a tablet Mac laptop with swiveling screen, people would want full blown OS X on it, which wouldn’t work that well because desktop OS X is not made for touch screens. And people would really bitch if you put mobile OS X on it, because there’s all this desktop hardware on it that you aren’t making good use of.

So you have to define a whole new product class. Which I suspect Apple is doing, and I’ve seen a convincing YouTube video of the OS. It’s here:

It’s not much, but it’s a little teaser. And I think that’s the kind of thing Apple’s going for. It’s beyond the iPhone OS, and it’s got some desktoppy features, but you still are making mobile apps for it. The resulting OS would really compete with Google’s Chrome OS, I think, because the target market is much the same.

Apple might need to put some more sophisticated hardware in this device, though. A tablet device would certainly be a boon to artists, so a pressure sensitive screen would be advantageous. Rumor has it that it will have a WAN chip in it and Apple is rumored to be partnering with Verizon, which I think would be odd to do while still partnered with AT&T, since that would create complexity for users, but who knows? GPS would probably be in there just to be in there, as well as a motion sensor and magnetometer. An iSight camera is probably also going to be part of it. I see it running a flash-based hard drive, 32 or 64 gigs. Maybe an 8-10 hour battery? With a bigger device comes some more space for a battery. They’ll probably use an OLED backlight to save battery life and appear more green. It’ll probably be no thicker than an iPhone. Maybe somewhere between iPod Touch’s thickness and iPhone’s.

What would be the killer app for a device like this? I think it’d be great to target at students or people who need to take notes. Apple would need to design a kick ass interface for quickly taking notes with text and drawing/diagrams. This would also, of course, be a great device for textbooks and I would expect to see some big partnerships going on there. Imagine having just one device with your textbooks and notes on it. Almost makes me wish I was back in college again (ALMOST).

Gaming would also be a lot of fun on one of these things, but I don’t think it’d be that great without at least some buttons. Motion and touch screen only aren’t quite enough.

Well, that’s enough speculating for one day. Peace out. Namaste.

If ever there was a chance for Android and WebOS to shine, it is now. Recently Apple has been getting quite a bit of bad press for their practices with the App Store. Let’s review some of the moronic things they’re doing as of late:

•Pulling Google Voice apps from the App Store after they had long been approved and in the App Store, for the reason that they “duplicate functionality of built-in apps.” The thing is, they really don’t. None of the built-in apps directly work with your Google Voice number.

•Rejecting Google’s Latitude social maps app (allegedly after having given it the green light and after Google sunk the development dollars into it) since it’s got the same map tiles that the Maps program has, potentially confusing users. HELLO?????????????? Apple just released the Maps tiles AS A FREAKING IPHONE API! That was a real dick move. I kind of hope Google pulls their map tiles and YouTube support from under Apple.

•Making developers pay refunds for pulled apps out of their own pocket, plus making them pay Apple’s 30% cut.

•Requiring some apps that contain a built-in browser or access to things from the internet to have a 17+ rating because it’s possible to see objectionable content.

•Starting to reject eBook apps because of the possibility that the books are infringing copyrights. At that rate, they better remove the iPod app, because there is a (much greater) possibility that the iPod app contains infringing content.

•Inconsistent enforcement of the rules

This is a hostile environment for developers. The only people that are really safe from these ridiculous regulations is game makers. And Apple’s contract leaves developers with absolutely no recourse, and little explanation into why they get rejected or what they can do to correct the issue.

And at the same time, there are tons of crap apps. Serial app developers aside, most of the apps for iPhone are of generally low quality (especially in terms of UI not fitting in with the iPhone’s UI guidelines). It’s common for apps to crash a lot. Apps aren’t that full featured. Due to API restrictions, they often have stupid workarounds (OmniFocus comes to mind) that severely diminish the usefulness of the app.

But Apple’s got kind of a “screw you” attitude. They know that they’re the only decent mobile OS on the market. WebOS and Android are potential contenders, but Android lacks polish, and WebOS has a crippled SDK that doesn’t offer direct access to the phone’s hardware. And both lack a healthy “there’s an app for that” kind of ecosystem.

However, I’m getting to the point where I’m willing to accept that limitation. After all, a platform needs users before it will become bigger, so I feel like maybe I should be proactive in this. Better Android hardware is coming out soon, too, and hopefully there will be some CDMA handsets. If anyone knows of a current CDMA Android handset that I can get my hands on, let me know, I’d like to see it.

Here are iPhones major disadvantages right now:
•AT&T’s sucky network and the company in general (which is largely behind some rejections and limitations)
•Closed APIs preventing developers from making cool apps that run in the background or otherwise have access to give notifications and do things for the user at times other than when the app’s directly running.
•iPhone is your only hardware choice (not a huge disadvantage, but the lack of a CDMA iPhone is annoying)
•Bad Google Voice integration that Apple is holding back

Whatever happened to Apple being the company of “Think Different?” This was a company that showed people who were about dissonance. This is the company that introduced us the product that was to free us from totalitarianism. At the very least, we should expect some consistency in the hard-handedness, but Apple’s not consistent.

I might be the Apple Fanboy, but I’m damn ashamed of what Apple is doing here. And I am saddened that it might be necessary to switch to another phone, but it might just be necessary.

Peace out.

So there are all these reviewers out there talking about how the iPhone 3GS really doesn’t have any compelling new features (that didn’t stop these reviewers from buying one) yet they’re mystified at how so many people are buying the little suckers.

Gee, I don’t know, maybe it’s the S? Y’know, that whole SPEED bit? Honestly, tech pundits, how stupid are you? The phone has seen its first ever actual hardware speed bump (and it’s one hell of a bump, with 50% more clock speed, 2x the memory and new graphics capabilities) and some of you morons are talking about how it’s Apple’s least significant iPhone upgrade yet (mind you, this is only the second one).

And the flagship new feature is the one you get to benefit from 100% of the time you are using the iPhone. And if you switch between apps a lot you’re going to notice this even more.

Besides, what other features did you want? iPhone 3GS added video support, improved camera (which could have lived to be improved more, but I digress), a freaking compass, and (currently shitty) voice control (that we hope and pray will get better later with a software update). Oh, and you got a few hundred new features in iPhone OS 3, including that copy and paste you have bitched about since before iPhone came out, and search, which I have been the only one bitching about but I bet you use search a hell of a lot more than your precious copy and paste, which now bothers me every time I move my text cursor. But seriously, what else could Apple have added to the hardware? More battery life? You’d need more bulk. A physical keyboard? Use a laptop, you pussy! (full disclosure: I am using an iPhone screen keyboard in portrait mode to type this. And I like it.). CDMA support? Okay, you got me there; I wouldn’t have minded seeing that either. But seriously, the appeal of iPhone is that most of the features are software-bound. We’re no longer slaves to yearly hardware upgrades.

So if you have been listening to some morons telling you not to upgrade, go for it. Even if you have an iPhone 3G, you will still find plenty to love about 3GS, even if you end up taking the speed for granted.

So, Dr. Schmidt “resigned” from Apple’s board of directors today. Really, it was bound to happen at some point, as the overlap between Apple’s and Google’s products and services increased. But I seriously doubt it was the bloody fight that the blogosphere (read: Fake Steve Jobs) made it out to be.

This was hardly a case of Dr. Schmidt listening in on Apple’s strategies and plans and just going out and copying them. Sure, maybe Android looks a LITTLE bit like it might have been ripping Apple off, but not that much. Google’s got their own spin on these products. They’re always a little less polished, but a little more functional, and a little more nerdy. And you don’t have to be on Apple’s board of directors to understand that they are in the market of making an OS, nor do you need to be on their board to understand their philosophies behind the OS. Google’s Chrome OS philosophies are way different from Apple’s. They include such things as being very lightweight (Apple is more for making a full-featured OS), highly web-oriented (OS X and the internet aren’t exactly strangers, but the appeal of OS X lies in its beautiful desktop apps), Chrome OS is targeted at netbooks (and I promise you that’s not a market Apple’s going to enter unless they can really bring something new to the table), whereas OS X is targeted at real computers. Chrome is fully open-source, OS X is running just an open-source kernel.

Now, there’s no doubt that Chrome is going to grow into a bigger OS that does more and more things, but it appears to me that it’s always going to be moving in the direction of the web. Chrome is more of a threat to Microsoft than Apple, but since Apple’s growth comes from stealing away Microsoft customers, it’s an indirect threat to Apple too.

But there’s a big, big point of divergence with Apple and Google, and that’s multimedia. Sure, Google’s got good ol’ YouTube, but Apple’s got iPod, iTunes, iMovie, and other great iProducts that are really big into the whole music, pictures and movies thing. This really isn’t Google’s forte, even though they do have a couple of related things. They’re more about organizing your stuff.

So….. what does this mean for the future?

I think the future is going to look a little more like the past. Back in the 80s, there were serveral different major computer platforms. You had IBM machines, you had Commodores, you had Apples, you had Macs, you had Amigas, it was just a jungle! Sadly, though, Microsoft kind of started dominating the scene, and then it was lousy, but then Win95 came and that was awesome, but then it got worse as time went on, yet Microsoft remained very dominant. The days of Microsoft dominance are numbered, and I see a future (maybe in 10 years or so) where Windows really just lives in the niche of office and enterprise computers. Simpletons who don’t really need much computing power will choose Google’s lightweight OS or something similar. Power users will probably be choosing either Macs or a select (though probably increasing) few will choose Linux distros, of which there would be a few dominant players, plus a number of less known ones. But now that we have more industry standards to work from, people won’t have all the compatibility woes they used to have. It won’t matter as much in the future which OS you’re using.

What do you guys think? Ok, I know, nobody actually reads this. Ever since I put up the captcha I don’t even get the occasional friendly spammer anymore. Sad! But if you are reading, please comment!

It was cheeky of you Palm Pre users to be using iTunes for sync anyway (especially the way it was implemented), but Apple has patched that up (which I admit was a dick move). However, you should use DoubleTwist to sync to your Palm Pre. I’m told it’s a better experience anyway. And it was developed by Jon Johansen, that Norwegian who cracked DVD’s CSS DRM (lol wut omg) at the age of 16, so you know that this is child’s play for him.

http://www.doubletwist.com/