2005 April 28

Mac Os X Steps Ahead of Windows, written by MATTHEW FORDAHL, begins with:

Tired of waiting while your PC slowly scours its hard drive for a document you stashed somewhere six months ago? Sick of having to change how you work to conform with the computer's rigid way of organizing files? Bored with the flat look of the desktop's graphics?

Uh, I can work around all three of these shortcomings… Copernic Desktop Search takes care of the first two issues, and the third is easily fixed with either Konfabulator (which sucks CPU cycles and memory like they're going out of style) or DesktopX (which suffers from an utter lack of worthwhile, well-designed widgets).

No argument: Tiger made it out the door a lot sooner than Longhorn - and with a lot more polish than Windows XP. Should Tiger be free? No more than XP should have been free for everybody who suffered through Windows Millenium Edition! The article continues:

It's less prone to malicious attacks.

That's because it's not the tallest nail. That's like saying FireFox is more secure than IE, when (in fact) it's just not getting attacked as much because the installed user base is nowhere near that of IE. Trust me, if the market share tables were turned, folks would be saying “IE is more secure than FireFox.” Ah, but we finally get to the reason why the article has an extreme bias in the Mac direction:

I've been trying out Tiger on a borrowed an iMac G5 and my own dual-processor Power Mac G4.

No wonder. MATTHEW FORDAHL is writing like a biased zealot because MATTHEW FORDAHL is a biased zealot.

Topping the list of 200 or so improvements in Tiger is a built-in search tool that goes a long way toward relieving one of the biggest headaches that's plagued computers.

1. 200 improvements - our 14 real improvements and 186 bug fixes?

2. There are plenty of Desktop Search Tools that Windows users have been enjoying for many months now… Google has one, MSN has one, Yahoo! is using X1's code, and I've already mentioned my favorite (Copernic).

Spotlight's speed, even on my older Power Mac, is impressive. Results were on target, too.

Copernic's speed, even on my fiancee's slightly older system, is impressive. Results are on target, too.

Indexing with Windows add-ons is a more computer-intensive process. Most are smart enough to do their work only when you're not working on something, but that means new information isn't always available. I have also found their range of files to be limited.

WTF?!

Well, at least he's giving props to the Windows platform. But what does it mean when he writes “computer-intensive process.” Aren't all computations on a computer “computer-intensive?” You probably don't use a Desktop Search app to look for something you just did - it's when you're trying to find something you did days, weeks, months ago! He may have also found their range of files to be limited because he didn't look far enough into the Options panel (at least, with Copernic - which wasn't even mentioned in this friggin' POS AP release).

Spotlight only searches for files on the local computer, not networked hard drives or remote shared folders.

Awwwwww… MSN does. Oddly enough, when I searched MSN for “desktop search,” the #1 hit was Google's. At least you know MSN is not skewing results o'er there.

But Tiger is about a lot more than look and feel. It's also about looking at more people than ever on your video screen live.

Nobody's saying that OS X isn't slicker looking than Windows - I'll be the first to admit that. But… there's been plenty of software on the Windows platform that will let you do the same thing. PalTalk (with PalPlus6), for one.
Of course, it's impossible to judge how Tiger will compare with the next-generation of Windows since Longhorn isn't available.

Well, Microsoft gets in trouble with the law if they bundle too much with their OS. I'm not against it, mind you, but… you can't have it both ways.

As more details come out, additional complaints of Microsoft copying Mac OS X will surely be heard.

ROTFLMAO! Sounds to me like a classic case of “vice versa.” Methinks Apple's been copying stuff that's already available for (not necessarily with) Windows.

The onus is now on Bill Gates & Co. to see if it can one-up Steve Jobs' shop.

If anybody one-upped anyone here, it was Jobs. And ya know what? He made it look 100x better. I cry foul - Matthew may have been paid to write this article.

Brandon Paddock is a geek in the best sense of the term. He likes to experiment with new technology and figure out what makes it tick. Brandon is willing to put up with a few shortcomings on the bleeding edge but seems to view advancements with the critical eye necessary to thrive in a world where everything is constantly changing. At the recent Search Champs event, Brandon brought his critical eye to MSN Search finding things they do both right and wrong. You can read Brandon’s take on technology at GeeksWithBlogs.net and meet him virtually through the recent conversation he had with Chris while they were traveling to MSN Search Champs via shuttle.

By day, Marc Orchant is the Storyteller for Van Dyke Software, which is a creative way of saying he knows more about marketing secure shell products than virtually anyone else in the computer software biz. In his spare time, Marc blogs prolifically on topics like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office and Tablet PC. When he’s not blogging, chances are Marc will make a good case for why a Tablet PC might just change your life; that is unless you are Chris Pirillo. Marc has given up trying to convince Chris that Tablet computing offers fundamental advantages over traditional keyboard and mouse interfacing. Chris talked to Marc at a mall food court in Bellevue, following the recent Search Champs, where they discussed Tablet PC, secure shell applications and Microsoft Office.

You can’t meet Buzz Bruggeman and not learn about ActiveWords. Buzz is perfect product evangelist, mixing a healthy dose of enthusiasm for the product with an ability to identify specific features helpful to whatever your computing experience may be. Buzz blogs regularly in a variety of places, including Buzznovation and Buzzmodo. During the recent Search Champs gather, Chris caught up with Buzz to talk about search innovations.

NewsGator Technologies Inc. Completes Third Round of Funding.
Congratulations, Greg… now fix your sh*t. :) I had an IM exchange with you the other week, and you've assured me that development is marching forward - yet I still see none. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough when I told you I wanted to beta test the new version, as I have for every incremental build in the past.
I stand by my opinion that NewsGator is acting irresponsible. Instead of your desktop clients hitting a single NewsGator server for feed updates, each client hits each feed during each update. That's a colossal waste of bandwidth! Not only do you have to fix outstanding bugs that haven't been addressed for well over a YEAR, you have to play catch up with the rest of the aggregator world…

The next version of NewsGator Outlook edition will go into beta testing sometime next week, and we're soliciting folks who would like to help with the beta program. I can't yet post the complete feature list, but it's mostly about synchronization. If you think back to all of the comments that have been made over the last year about NewsGator's sync system (doesn't sync read/unread status to Outlook, stuff deleted online after I download, etc.), they've all been addressed.

Could be too little, too late. There's already intraVnews (free for personal use) and You Subscribe (free beta). I'll bet that the Outlook team is gonna shut you out of their market soon, so… get crackin', d00d. The aggregator is a commodity on the desktop - you'd be smart to chase after licenses with organizations, not individuals.

Okay, I've got an entire (almost new) Nikon Coolpix 8800 package to sell - complete with official carrying case, portable lens cleaner, extra battery, etc. Seems I could sell everything Nikon'ish for ~$700, so… before I go that route, I thought I'd pitch it to my readers here (and on Lockergnome). Nothing wrong with the camera at all, but I think I'm ready to go back to the Canon Family. Per a recent press release for the Canon PowerShot S2 IS:

“This is perhaps our most versatile digital still compact ever,” commented Mogens Jensen, Head of Canon Consumer Imaging Europe. “With both digital camera and digital video camera functionality rivalling many dedicated single function devices, the PowerShot S2 IS represents a convergence of Canon's core imaging technologies in the areas of lens, image processing, digital still camera and digital video camera development.”

Fits the bill for me! I can't get it until after the Nikon Coolpix 8800 set is gone.