Tag microsoft

Regression 11

Months before Windows 95 came out in late August 1995, a number of screenshots from β versions of the much touted and eagerly awaited operating environment had circulated both on the, then nascent World Wide Web, and the computing press. Among the most profound changes from earlier incarnations of Windows was the introduction of the […]

Unwarranted Takedown

A few days ago Microsoft, in what is probably the silliest action they’ve taken in a while now, took down 22 domains belonging to dynamic DNS company noip.com. We know ’cause we use their services at Cosmical. Their move, against a service provider of this sort, is unprecedented and somewhat dangerous from a legal perspective; […]

The (new) Microsoft Surface

Seeing the Microsoft Surface [really Microsoft? You guys couldn’t find a new, unique name?] Keynote reinforces my belief that the company has long lost the capacity of creating and projecting a genuine, unique and interesting image, products and services. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, it quickly did away with most of the product lines […]

On Device Identifiers.

Mere hours after pressing ‘Publish’ on the previous mini-article concerning walled gardens, an article on TechCrunch, this morning, clarified the situation we have more or less been suspecting for a while now: that Apple, after deprecating UDIDs (one of the things they truly did well in iOS from the beginning), they will start rejecting apps […]

Bing and OpenStreetMap

Bing, Microsoft’s portal/search/mapping service has announced that they will start providing OpenStreetMap (OSM) data, as an optional layer, in Bing Maps. OSM data will be downloaded from Microsoft’s fast Azure CDN, as opposed to OSM’s ‘slow’ servers. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Microsoft using OpenStreetMap data. That’s why it’s Open. But then again, I am […]

Microsoft Courier.

If its anything like the demo video Microsoft’s Courier is the closest device I’ve seen to Apple’s — now classic — demonstration entitled the Knowledge Navigator. See the resemblance? From the few images and videos around, the device seems beautiful, but that’s not the point; as the Mac and then the iPhone have demonstrated, it’s […]

Æsthetics, Usability and Determining Who's Boss.

Æsthetics and usability go hand in hand. Because many people are visual beings, they function better when they work in a beautiful environment. And that extends to computing. So those two go together. In typography this is pretty obvious whenever you’ve got to use (even for a short while) a Windows machine: Cleartype, now the […]

No Upgrades Here.

I'm not sure if this is a political stunt by Microsoft, or if they are really going to go forward with it. If they are it is insane: By not giving Europeans the capability to upgrade their operating system, like it has done for more than twenty years and at the same time trying to put the blame on the European Commission for doing so (while not providing any specific reasons for doing so), Microsoft is really shooting itself in the foot; from a PR point of view it's a pretty bad strategy that's almost certainly going to backfire. At any rate, I feel so sorry for all those people that are going to want to upgrade from a poor OS like Vista to a mediocre one like Windows 7 and having to do a full reinstall [let alone pay the premium of getting the full version].

Straight from Microsoft's Rulebook.

Apple's rumoured upcoming software crippling 'segmentation' for the iPhone stinks of Microsoft's 'Windows Vista SKU' nastiness. But then again Apple is no stranger to controversy or bad decisions.

Just The Same, If Not Worse

The OLPC project started with the best intentions of bright people. It got hyped beyond reason, first by some of its leaders (viz. Negroponte), then by gullible politicians and — at another level — by gullible idealists that failed to see what was in front of them. Throughout its history the OLPC was flawed; flawed […]