Once again, MS leads the industry!
 

For me, when I think of innovation, one name comes to mind: MICROSOFT.

And this only furthers my belief that Microsoft is a big tech innovator.

( Incase you can't tell, I am being sarcastic. )

Hmmmmmm....lets see: new advanced search technology, virtual folders, gagdets....Vista sure is shaping up to look like a certain other OS we all know and love more. ;)

Thoughts?

"Apple has widgets, Microsoft has gadgets"

Headline says it all.

But it's not like we didn't see it coming. A good idea is a good idea, microsoft not doing it would be just terrible business management. There are no disadvantages to this stuff.

Although I am a little confused, can't some of this stuff be copyrighted?

Here is an idea apple should steal from AOL. Tabbed instand messeging. So instead of having 9 windows all over the place, I could just have 1 with 9 tabs. That would make me happy.

Just use Adium.

Adium has it. Makes me completely insane, but it's there if you like it.

Yup, that peeves me. Microsoft has been doing this since the beginning. Apple invented actual "windows" (as in a GUI using well, windows), but then Apple lost a court case, and so Microsoft takes all the glory. (If I'm not mistaken. This is just how I remember hearing it someplace sometime long ago. Maybe someone can elaborate on the whole story. But anyways...) Dag, yo. But actually, I'm glad things turned out the way they are. If I had a choice, I'd like the community of Mac users to remain relatively small (compared to PC users) rather than gaining tons of popularity and Apple becoming what Microsoft is now -- Apple having a small percent of marketshare gives us benefits like no viruses -- there's too few people who use Macs for people to write viruses for them. Other than, of course, for the reason that Mac OS X is a rock solid stable and extremely secure system. :)

Recruiting at Microsoft seems to have slight orientation issues as well, they just offered Eric S. Raymond a job:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.208.html

The only thing innovative Microsoft has done is figure out how to extract the maximum licensing fees and hold hostage all who got suckered into signing an enterprise, select, MOLP or one of their other shifting sands licensing agreements.

:D

Speaking of brushed metal rip offs... I guess every one has seen the desktop themes for Windows Vista too... and IE 7... Realy starting to look like Mac OS. But one nice thing about this though. It means that Apple,will come up with an even nicer and/or innovative look and feel for their desktop in reaction to this. MS copying Apple has always helped them move forward. guess it motivates them to see that it took a few years before MS was up to the point where they could imitate the aqua and burshed metal looks. Who know. maybe they have bets in Cupertino on how long it takes before some one successfully copies their ideas ! :rolleyes:

I don't like Audium, I can never give up iChats interface. I just wish this simple tidbit be implemented.

My russian proffessor had a PC system customized to look like mac so much that I was convinced for a long time that it was a mac on a Dell monitor. Everhthin was brushed metal, he had a dock, WITH a finder on it, and all make icons like iChat, Safari, Sherlock O_O. Then I found out it is all just mods! He says he asked for a mac from the department but they haven't gotten around to getting it yet.

All of my friends machines have a Dock as well. I think it's called WinDock or something.

I believe it's called Dock envy ;)

MS created the first MP3 player phone. Who's making one now? Who's still doing it better? The MS phone also plays videos and has a full PIM, plus can run add-on software to do everything from GPS navigation to gaming.

Everyone is going to have firsts and seconds; thats the nature of technology.

Mac OS X Tiger: Re-done GUI, Spotlight, Dashboard, Widgets, Smartfolders, and some 200+ new features.

Windows Vista: New theme, Enhanced search, sidebar, gagets, virtual folders, and several promised features removed.

Lets see....looks like MS is copying Apple. ( Badly, I might ad. )

Apple didn't just copy M$ when making their iTunes phone. Lots of other companies do it. They are just the newest people to it.

Not saying that Apple re-invented the light bulb, but they do make great efforts at innovating so they don't look like any one else.
I find it sad that MS has lost most of that momentum... They did come up with great ideas like Excel in their early years.

Acutally, someone else already had a spreadsheet program, MS just made it easier to use and more open to the public.

That's obvious. If they had, it wouldn't be the bad joke that it is. The problem is that Apple didn't make an iTunes phone; they merely added extensions to iTunes to sync with a phone made by one of the worst cell phone makers in the world. Apple needs to either make a true effort or just concede the market.

But yes, Longhorn is a whole lot of nothing. The latest beta actually seems worse than the early ones. I'm the last to be an MS-basher, but really, their day is over. If they don't just scrap it all and start over like Apple did, they won't get anywhere. Dvorak said it best on one of the TWiT podcasts: "Bill should just stand up at a press conference and say, 'Thanks for the billions, it's been a good run, we're done,' then stop standing in the way of others."

The reason I switched to Mac OS is the lack of of new innovation from MS. XP is stagnant now (it was a great OS five years ago), and once I saw Longhorn, I knew that they had a non-innovating roadmap until at least 2008.

I switched from Windows to Mac OS X because I got tired of all the error messages, the constant crashes, and the dull, worn out theme. Before I new about Macs, I did get excited about Windows XP. But then, as our computer slowed down over the next 4 years, so did XP. Now, it takes at least 3-6 minutes to open AIM.

MS has a bad stradegy. They said that Vista will be the Windows platform for the next 10 years. Bad idea. People will get very tired with it. Plus it will get outdated. I think this is one time they should copy Apple. They do it enough already. ;)

You guys act like Apple was the first one to do "Widgets" when Konfabulator was out on the PC ages before Tiger was released.

Have you checked out my
brushed metal build of Adium?

(Although i wish i could use the new iTunes 5 interface for it!)

Adium is retarded. When you use tabbed messaging it doesn't keep up with the conversations. Example: When something new is added to the conversation, you must scroll down to see what they said.

I have never once seen the behavior you describe.

It's probably a poorly coded message style that you are using. Try a different one.

According to thinksecret.com, Mac OS X 10.4.3 will be some 98 mbs in size and is going to fix 500 flaws and is supposed to add tabbed chatting in iChat.

Yup. Even though that's the combo updater size, it's still going to have a lot of fixes.

MICRO$OFT IS A MANIFESTATION OF YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND.

Shhhhh...don't let facts interfere with perfectly good MS-bashing...

You think I don't know that, CAlvarez? I had Konfabulator when I used Panther.

And yes, we may be doing a bit of Microsoft, bashing, but I think that it is justified. Now I'm not saying they are pure evil, but they do rip people off. They sit around and watch other peoples ideas flourish and then Bill comes in and says " I want something that looks and does the same thing, but think of a new name so we don't get in trouble. And MS is getting lazy. There is a two letter difference between widgets and gadgets. Come on people! At least think of a new name for it.

Guys... Becaurefull... You can bash companies and their decisions or products, but bashing one another is not much fun. That should remai in private messages between people just for politeness.

I edited out all my people bashing!

While I don't agree that Microsoft is doing things the right way, our copyright laws are very strict...and Microsoft knows how to dance around them.

This is similar to how domestic car companies all started to put out Honda look alikes. In turn, all the Japanese trucks are now bulking up to look like American trucks. MS copying the Apple UI is not much different. I don't care for it, but we're powerless to do anything about it.

Most everyone here has already drank the Apple Kool-Aid, so you're kind of preaching to the choir...and BTW, Apple screwed over the Arlo Rose (Konfabulator) in the same very-legal way MS screws Apple.

Your right.. lest not forget that widgets are not a new Apple invention ! The've been around for a while !

Yeah, since system 8, when they were called Desktop Ornaments.

Konfabulator was just a more graphical version of them.

That takes all the fun out of it.

http://www.cbr1100xx.org/temp/funny/fish_tiny_line.jpg

To launch again the MS bashing spree... :D
Microsoft has announced that the next version of Outlook Express due with Windows Vista is chaging name to.... Windows Mail ! Yes we have it now... MS is not even innovative when it comes to naming their products ! :D
This is realy a shamefull thing !

OMG! Windows Mail...who wants to bet that this product will also receive the merry-go-round of MS monikers?

My crystal ball says in 6-months it will be renamed to Microsoft Mail, because Windows is too narrow a scope for the enterprise level consumer. Next it will be changed to MSN Mail because "Microsoft" has a negative conotation according to the sample group's responses on the scantron. After that...aww forget it. Mail.app was confusing anyway. I hate having to say "dot app" for Apple's program which is officially called Mail, not Apple Mail, or iMail.

I'm gonna become a gardener and start accepting only hand written letters.

what ever next?

"wtunes" !

"myphoto"?!

Seriously though........ do you think Steve and Bill have a bit of a secret deal????

Do you think Steve lets Bill get away with ripping off EVERYTHING that Apple innovates in return for them:
not bothering to release music players... ?
or not releasing the next version of windoze until 2007!!.....?
or just agreeing to produce inferior products in general!!?

That would mean a conspiracy that makes Stev look bad... Since when does Steve do anything to look bad ? He always wants to be the hotshot with the newest coolest thing in hand ! (this is getting close to the thread about the iPod Nano scam is it not ? :D )
Unless the conspiracy states "Steve gets all the cool gadgets out" "Bill can get all the moeny from re-marketing those" lol

yeh its probiably that..... the deal is Steve's team does the brainwork and looks cool and Bill gets to copy it 2 years later!


Seriously though....... if Steve goes MAD when an apple rumor site second guesses that they are gonna speed bump the mac mini by 200mhz, he must turn into the incredible hulk everytime he sees Micro$hit have stolen Apples work for the ten squilliant time!

Hear Bloody Hear...

It doesn't matter if MS copies Apple. Sure, they made billions off of Apple's ideas, but Apple has style. Apple is cooler than M$. All M$ cares about is making as much money as possible, so it they don't care if they turn out crappy products. Apple on the other hand is in the game to make the tech world a better place. They care about their customers.

Apple is just there to make money in the end as well don't forget. Look at iTools (as was) and .Mac for a prime example.

They had a (moderatly) brilliant free service and then started charging for it. Yes they gave away free software as part of the deal, (and we're supposed to have gotten free widgets...), but they could have left it free and not given the software away.

They wanted to make money out of a service that has been mostly ruined by charging for it.

.Mac is worth the $100 dollars you pay for it per year.

For some, it might be. I won't be renewing at that price. Maybe at $25/year I'd consider it.

It is to me now as nowhere else can I get a webdav server with 1GB space for £63 a year. (free to me anyway as dad pays for it :cool: )

Only problem is lack of .htaccess editing and no mysql. :mad:

Backup 3 is awesome though, best backup util I've used so imo.

mod_dav in your own apache server... that's as much as your hard drive can give and the only cost is electricity for having your system up.

As for .Mac, most of those services (except probably the .mac e-mail account) can be done at home at no cost except the fun of duplicating the server side.

R.

I was recently checking a large e-mailing list for currency and 10% of a broadcast message to the list bounced. Almost every bounce was from an xxxx@mac.com mailing address. A lot of folks seem to have voted with their credit cards.

The drain on my bandwidth when I'm accessing it from college costs me, means I can't transfer stuff as fast as I can with it on my iDisk (college download > home upload)

So for me .Mac makes sense. Plus with one click publishing, etc, and the ease of which backup 3 allows me to back data up to the iDisk, I am once again a .Mac subscriber.

To the mailing list comment, they could have been temporary .Mac accounts created, you can't say for definite that they are all people who haven't renewed (plus .mac hasn't renewed yet afaik)

Given the dates of last contact on many of them, I suspect they were accounts opened when (after a system upgrade, for example) they were free and then not continued when the $99 bucks came due.

I've never figured the appeal of .mac.

The backup space isn't big enough for me, and a second hard drive that is big enough costs less than $99 and is easy to install.

gMail suits me fine (aside from my ISP accounts) and is free. I don't use it for anything I don't want searched, but they permit huge attachments which is handy.

Running a little family site is a piece of cake with the built-in Apache server, and all it takes is a little tweaking of your router to get connected. True, ISPs don't like servers on their net, but mine doesn't care as long as the traffic isn't high and for my purposes, it isn't.

I don't need the eye candy, and have never had a problem with a virus.

What am I missing?

The backup only has value for being off-site. The advantages being protection from a total wipeout of your system by some disaster or theft, and access to your data remotely. I carry a laptop so I'm almost never without my data, but some people don't.

Mail account...yawn. Certainly no real value in that.

I haven't spent time figuring out easy photo publishing using .Mac. I still use my own hosted server space, because I can drag/drop a photo onto the Transit widget, and have it put there automatically, then I use a macro to paste the URL. I haven't seen a way to quickly and easily publish a photo from the Finder to .Mac. Didn't research it heavily though.

Now, what's this about 1GB? Did they raise the limit and I don't know?

How can you not have heard?

Its like one of the biggest pieces of news to come out of expo paris (which isn't very big ;))

Just goto http://www.mac.com/ and read...

I stand corrected, this is a point for .Mac, but I don't have such a fast connection and I have never had problems uploading something to my own server.

This I don't understand, all these services you can have on your own server without that much work.

Another thing that I don't understand from .Mac is that the authentication is made over SSL but the actual data when uploading to iDisk is made over webdav on the clear!. Can anyone confirm this or is it just me experiencing this?

R.

People have been asking for this for a long time, I guess Apple chose Paris as a good place to surrender to them... :D :D