FlyGesture is activated like Exposé or Dashboard, bringing up a transparent window of \”guides\” to move your mouse through. Moving your mouse through the guides lets FlyGesture know what action or actions you want to be performed, such as closing…

I don’t need to be an economics professor to point out the folly of doing that, do I?

-J

What Mk in #6 didn’t understand is that a Mac is not a PC, OS X is not Windows, so why should it behave like the same way? To me, that is a major misconception in the whole debate.

The right-click wasn’t considered intuitive in the Mac world, but took really off in the Windows world. So much, that Apple included it now with the Mighty Mouse, albeit not as default.

MS is where it is because of its management. It once competed with IBM and won because it was flexible enough. Market establishment rendered it today to be as cumbersome as Big Blue.

Talking of Jekyll and Hyde: Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer seem to me to portray this image. Maybe it’s all just a purposeful farce.

Ray Ozzie was a good pick-up. I wish they could get a good CEO to match.

Was this a school competition??? Although that’s a bit of an injustice to schools I guess. I’m sure a 12 year old could have done a better job!

I had a Zune 30GB, black, which was stolen on Christmas day (some time between midnight and 10AM). The thief also stole a wrapped gift for my girlfriend, but it’s the Zune I really miss…

I had a Zune 8GB, black, which was stolen just a week and a half ago.

I’d sure love to own a Zune, but I can’t afford to buy a 3rd. Mind sending me yours, Duncan, since you have no use for it?

I can’t get too specific, but trust me, I know what I’m talking about here. Sure, Apple designed the original iPod to work with their Macs. To do otherwise would have been illogical at the time. But you have to hand it to Steve Jobs in that he quickly realized that IF he moved the iPod over from a Mac-only platform to a more universal platform via incorporating a USB interface on the iPod, then the sky was the limit. It WAS difficult to do with those early iPod designs, as the 2.5 watt limit of USB would simply not charge the iPods batteries *of that time* while simultaneously spinning the hard drive. It was that simple. Apple then re-worked the architecture of the iPod to accommodate a USB charging scheme. Once that was in place, then the next brilliant piece of the puzzle was to write a PC app, moving iTunes over to the PC. Just like that, Apple snuck into the PC domain, and iPod sales took off. (Hunt for a graph of iPod unit sales versus time to see that “the knee of the curve” starts with the introduction of iTunes/PC.) To deny Apple, and Steve Jobs in particular, is missing the obvious. It took guts to walk away from the Apple-standard Firewire interface, but Jobs did it. Compare and contrast that attitude with Microsoft’s, which seems (to me) to have a hard time adopting to someone else’s standards. Jobs may be an arrogant so-and-so, but he’s also got a ton of business smarts (in his older age). He doesn’t seem to believe in trying to move the mountain to Mohammed, if you understand what I mean. Note that the latest iPods no longer support Firewire data transfer. The transition is complete!

(This is also just my opinion, but USB was a struggling standard until Jobs put it into the original iMac. He walked away from Apple’s long-time standards of their serial port and SCSI, and incorporated nothing but USB on that iMac. That took guts! When the iMac came out, the main complaint was that there was nothing to connect to it! The criticisms were right. But the popularity of that machine, I believe, drove the acceptance of USB. Remember all of those scanners, floppies, and mice that mimicked the iMac look? Microsoft and Intel defined the standard, but it was Apple that made it mainstream. PC manufacturers were extremely reluctant to incorporate it into their machines. Few PCs, to this day, have given up on the old serial and parallel ports.)

Neither Microsoft or Apple is going away. Each will continue to thrive because they appeal to different people. The iPhone will be the same way — the Blackberry platform isn’t going to die, or “get beat” by the iPhone. Different people prefer different features, and each platform will sell to those competing markets. For instance, some people hate “soft keyboards,” but Jobs hates buttons. (And fans.) As long as these sorts of preferences exist in each of us, there will be a market for each camp.

I can’t believe that I’m being this calm, as I get worked up over this OS thing all the time. But I’m willing to work with either operating system to get my jobs done. I have little use for MS products, but I can’t ignore their success. Neither does Jobs, I might add. Guys like Balmer strike me as a major impediment for Microsoft, only because he is unyielding to market demands. If MS ever replaced that guy and took more of an open standards attitude, as Apple has done, they’d probably wipe Apple out. Again.

So we’re all happy with Ballmer continuing to slowly kill off the company, because it just increases the local talent pool. And thankfully, it’s typically the talented developers who leave to seek better opportunities (or to ship a product more often than every 5 years if they are in Windows Division) leaving behind the, err, ‘not so good’.

So all i have to say to Ballmer ‘ Developers, Developers, Developers! - keep putting your own ones down so we can build a new ecosystem with them!’

I’m sorry for acting childish. I agree people should be allowed to write their own personal opinions about products. This is what makes the Internet so wonderful.

I’m not so sure about your Firewire argument, I think it was more of a coincidence at the time. Apple has constantly shown that they are the most closed platform available. Apple at first was trying to lure customers into using Mac OSX by making the iPod Mac exclusive, they soon realized that this would eventually have a dead end due to their lower market share.

Anyways, I’m not sure who is right or who is wrong. Sorry for offending!

I think you’re absolutely right on about a company needing to have a visionary at the top; even if you have great people in the middle if the CEO doesn’t get it, then it’s pulling the whole company backward.

A lot of times when the top of a company is run by marketing people without technical background that’s what happens. Almost all the successful start-ups are founded by engineers with great ideas, rather than marketing people.

For those who love/hate XP/Vista/OSX Zune/iPod, it’s a simple matter of preferences. Propeller-heads like full control of all the knobs. Some of the entries above testify to this. For them, they should stick with MS products. For those who dread ANY control of the knobs, such as most of my family members, OSX is a better choice. Not everyone is as inclined to do whatever it is you do. Some like complexity, some like simplicity. Period.

I’ve never understood why anyone, reviewer or customer, can’t write a review stating his personal preferences, and not be jumped upon as being a “fanboy” (what a juvenile term…). Normal humans like some things and dislike others. What’s so wrong with that? Not everyone shares your preferences. If a reviewer makes a false statement, that’s another matter.

But “why can’t I right-click inside a ‘open’ or ’save’ dialog window and do operations, or rename other files on the fly” (as one commenter said in #6) is merely a personal preference. I, for one, have zero desire for such a feature. Who’s right? Answer: no one. Just one guy’s preferences versus another.

Hopefully, I kept a civil tone, despite my instincts to do otherwise.

http://yooflix.com/ShowVideo.a.....9713522403

I just picked up the 8GB Zune, and it’s a good piece of equipment. It has a solid feel, nice interface, and a few great features.

1. Radio - I watch TV at the gym and pick up the FM broadcast.
2. Software - looks cool, works great, and doesn’t feel like a spreadsheet
3. Subscription - I thought I would hate this, but I LOVE it - for $15/mo, you can download as much as you want. It lasts as long as you keep the service, but heck - it’s the price of 1 CD per month! And you don’t have to worry about what to buy or what to trash - you can have everything!

I’ve had 5 iPods, but I don’t have any iTunes lock-in - I preferred buying CDs for my household and having unlimited rights. I CHOOSE the Zune lock in (though you can stop the subscription at any time) because of convenience - I won’t stop using it until something even better comes along. I guess I’ve just moved on from owning disks and content - my kids probably won’t appreciate them when I’m gone anyway!

The only problem I have with the service is that my wife and daughter just got a taste of it and they want my Zune, so Duncan - why don’t you raffle off your “brick” to those of us who can find a better use for it?

I was thoroughly impressed with 2 things about that keynote. First, the level of knowledge Steve displayed about every single aspect of Microsoft was astounding. It’s a huge company but he spoke intelligently and frankly about nearly every question asked (even questions from the audience, which could have caught him by surprise). There were only 2 questions he deflected and for obvious reasons (EU Antitrust and a sports-related question from the Seattle times that was inappropriate for the audience). Second was that he let loose up there with a lot of the questions and even his actions. My opinion of Microsoft went up significantly from that keynote alone. Keep in mind that I’m writing this post and watched that keynote with a Macbook Pro open in front of me.