Word and the web: incompatible
It’s hard to believe that people at major weblogs and web content companies don’t know this yet, but Microsoft Word and the web don’t really see eye to eye:
(At least for people on non-Microsoft browsers and platforms.)
Savages with machine guns
OK, so I called my father a savage today. Trust me, it’s not as bad as it sounds.
He called with a computer problem: he’s trying to install some application on his PC. Problem: he’s completely clueless about computers. So I’m doing the familiar dance … what happened, what does it look like, what do you seen on your screen.
Seems to me that the application might actually be installed - he just doesn’t know it.
So I ask him to search in his Programs folder. Doesn’t ring a bell. Open up his computer’s hard drive. No response. Doubleclick the icon where all his files are. Nope.
That’s when I called him a savage. Actually it was more of an analogy. I compared him to a savage with a machine gun … as likely to be looking down the barrel when pulling the trigger as aiming anywhere else.
Not knowing anything about how computers work - even the slightest bit - is becoming more and more of a handicap.
Tags: computers, user friendly, clueless, savage, machine gun, john koetsier
My very first Mac virus: fake Flip4Mac?
I just received this in my mailbox:
That really, really looks like a virus infiltration attempt. Which is amazing, because although I’ve seen many of those, they always end in a .exe or some such Windows extension. This is the first I’ve seen targeted for Mac.
A quick google reveals that Flip4Mac, which is an actual legit Mac application for viewing Windows Media files, has a vulnerability … but nothing that suggests that there is a virus out there masquerading as Flip4Mac, or Flip4Mac components.
Sounds new. Anyone else seen it yet?
Tags: virus, mac, flip4mac, security, apple, windows, john koetsier
Sony camcorder & Mac OS X: not happy together?
Yesterday I bought a new camcorder - the Sony DCR-SR82 with a 60 GB hard drive. Today I shot some video, and tonight I tried to hook it up to my Mac and play in iMovie HD.
No such luck.
- Sony wants you to use their proprietary software … which is Windows only
- Sony provides a sort of a dock for this camera, which you are then supposed to connect to your computer - there’s no real USB output on this camera
- iMovie HD doesn’t recognize that a camcorder is attached, and won’t import any video from it
- The Mac finder can see the camera via disk mode, and I can see my movie clips in QuickTime format … but I can’t open them. They’re “muxed,” meaning that the audio and video are mixed together and QuickTime can’t open them
- Well, actually QuickTime can open them … if I spring for a $20 plug-in to QuickTime. Hrm … do I look stupid? Shouldn’t QuickTime just come with this needed component in the first time? Isn’t this the zen of Mac we’re talking about here … stuff just works?
- But even if QuickTime can open them after I pay extortion, iMovie HD will still not like me very much … iMovie HD won’t import, play, or edit muxed files
This is just wrong. OK, there’s only one course of action:
- Return crappy camcorder
- Buy new camcorder with better outputs and Mac compatibility
- Write nasty blog post about this hassle (check!)
To be completely frank, being on a Mac should mean that I never have to think of or even hear something so esoteric as “muxed video.” That’s what Apple engineers are paid for.
To be completely george, Sony is smoking something powerful if they think I’m going to change my computer to work with their camera. Not bloody likely.
They just lost a customer.
Tags: apple, mac os x, mac, sony, DCR-SR82, incompatible, muxed, iMovie, john koetsier
Sorry, Bill: you’re dull
The big BG is lashing out at Apple’s ad campaign, which portays PC users as old, stodgy, and slightly stupid:
Denying he had seen that particular commercial, Mr. Gates said, “I don’t think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are.”
I hate to say - and don’t get all self-referential on me - but anyone who uses the word “dullard” is probably a dullard.
Tags: bg, bill gates, microsoft, apple, ads, advertising, john koetsier
MAC is not Mac
For all those who languish in the valley of the shadow of Windows, MAC is not Mac.
MAC is something geeky and technical and abstruse. Mac is something simple, elegant, and powerful.
OK?
Tags: MAC, mac, apple, ethernet, language, pet peeves, john koetsier
I want people this passionate about the tools I’m building
Thomas Hawk just bought a Mac after 18 years of wandering about in the valley of the shadow of Windows.
Here’s what he has to say:
I never in a million years would have thought that the design of a laptop would ever matter to me at all. It’s not about the aesthetics of a machine. It’s what it does for you right? Well, maybe. But this machine is damn sexy. I love the way that the keyboard is lit at night so that I can work in the dark. I love that glassy screen. There is something about the feel of the polished aluminum as I hold, no caress, the thing in my hands. It types perfectly. I love how I can use two fingers on the touch pad to move my screen down. I love how it has a hidden built in microphone and a small little video camera in the screen so that I can do video phone stuff through Skype super easily. I love how the little power supply has a magnet built into it and just kind of plugs itself in. And yes, I even love that glowing little Apple logo on the back of the case that I’ve scoffed at in the past at the various conferences and tech meetups that I’ve gone to.
(Every time I see some crappy Dell laptop or an IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad I look at all the sharp angles, notches, odd bulges, and unsimple lids and just shake my head.)
That aside, however, here’s the point: how extravagantly wonderful is it when people rave like this about a product, service, or tool that you’ve create? I passionately want people who use the stuff I build or contribute to to passionately love them.
(And yes, I am building something. Still pre-alpha, though.)
As I saw recently on a design site: design like you give a damn.
Tags: design, mac, thomas hawk, john koetsier
Podcasting dead, long live Zunecasting!
I swear, Apple Legal does its level best every single day to do whatever it can in every way to do the maximum possible damage to Apple Computers Inc.
How can ostensibly smart people - I mean, they passed the bar, right - be so absolutely, abysmally, galactically stupid?
Now they want to take over “podcasting.” Find the details at Calacanis’ blog, the Wired blog, Scobleizer, ZDnet, and MacNewsWorld .
“Podcasting” as a term for personal audio publishing online is a term that does nothing but good for Apple, the iPod, and the whole iPod economy. Conversely, coming down with the legal fireworks ticks off potential clients, alienates Apple Computer Inc., and provides fodder for rivers of bad press.
Imagine the alternative: Zunecasting.
Perhaps Apple would prefer that?
Tags: podcasting, apple, legal, lawyers, IP, trademarks, zunecasting, john koetsier
Blogged with Flock
Microsoft-Yahoo merger: great for Google
The Wall Street Journal posted an article about the possibility of Microsoft acquiring or merging with Yahoo! as part of Microsoft’s ongoing fixation on beating Google.
I think it’s highly unlikely. But if it were to happen, I think the big winner would be Google.
Why?
Yahoo would be instantly less cool, first of all. So some of the geek cred that it’s built up with the APIs and developer AJAX tools that it’s released would be gone at one fell swoop.
More importantly, however, just imagine the integration challenges, the our-tech-is-better battles that would be fought at a million different levels. Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail? MSN Search or Yahoo! search? Both Microsoft and Yahoo! have hundreds of web tools and properties with tens of millions of users … and in an ideal merger situation, those would come together, user management on all the systems would be unified … the list goes on.
Working on integration on that scale would take years, likely. Google is winning because it is focused. Mergers and the resulting integration headaches are classic focus disrupters.
MicroChina: Quid pro quo
It never changes, does it?
I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine.
Today, Microsoft basically purchased the privilege that it received a week or so ago: getting pre-installed on all of Lenovo computers made and sold in China. It’s a realpolitik manoevre that Microsoft basically had to make: buying $700 million of hardware in order to sell $1.2 billion of software.
Since software has few incremental costs to Microsoft, it’s a good deal as far as it goes. I’m sure that Microsoft views this as an investment in an ongoing campaign to fight piracy in China. At least it’s better than the alternative: continuing rampant piracy, and no revenue at all.
Of course, one wonders how an Apple or a Sun or a RedHat could compete against this. You need deep pockets to place these kinds of bribes.
Good thing China’s not in the EU.
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Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
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