Is Microsoft doomed? I’ll let you know when Windows 10 comes out.
A lot of folks believe that the Microsoft empire is doomed, and that the rise of touchscreen computing and mobile devices will lead it its inevitable downfall. This may very well be true; it certainly is true that to date, Microsoft’s attempts to enter the touch and mobile markets have been poorly received. Yet much [...]
802.11ac is Almost Here
802.11ac will start appearing in force in products this year. It is the latest and greatest Wi-Fi standard that will replace 802.11a, b, and g. It will receive final approval this year. Now, considering how long it has taken the working group, and how many man hours they have put into it that it would solve [...]
Growing Internationally
One of the greatest opportunities any established business faces is growth internationally. Take a company like Apple. Recently, much has been made about how they have saturated the domestic marketplace wi their iPhones and iPads. The thinking is a concern over how earth’s largest company can grow much more. This type of thinking lead to [...]
Massive Java Update available you should apply it
And you should do this update; Oracle has finally gotten around to pushing a massive 50 vulnerability fixing update to Java. The bad part is that most of us have decoupled Java from our browsers, and I am wondering if this is too little too late. With Mozilla (Firefox) dropping Java support from its browser [...]
Irked by IRQs
PCs use interrupt requests known as IRQs to manage various devices such as sound cards and modems. When the device has a need for processing power, it sends an interrupt request to the processor. It’s a silly design as the mere request is an interrupt itself. This is my day. It’s like when someone says [...]
Siri, You Don’t Say
Google slated Siri. Apple’s Siri and I have never gotten along. I don’t need a personal assistant with a sense of humor. I need a computer assistant that gives me answers. Siri gives enough backlash that it just isn’t fun to use…or usually does it answer my questions. It’s easy to poke at a new [...]
Making Sense of Color after Meraki, and Going Big
I had a draft post I’d written weeks ago entitled something like “Color: Just an Enormously Large Seed Round Gone Horribly Wrong”, or something like that. Which I guess it was — $41,000,000 to build an iOS app with no revenue that no one ever used. But it wasn’t that interesting, that post/story, so I [...]
Dropbox, Google Drive, Apple iCloud, Microsoft SkyDrive; maybe they’re not apples after all?
Cloud storage product Dropbox is one of those tools that users tend to rave about. It’s deceptively simple. It’s pretty reliable. The value proposition is immediately apparent. It has paid tiers of usage that bring additional storage but (like other freemium beacons such as Evernote) the free offering is rich enough to be compelling, engaging, [...]
Read before you share – otherwise it’s gossip
A rubbish post by Business Insider titled “This Survey Is Devastating For Microsoft: 42% Of Windows Users Plan To Switch To Apple” and a very dubious post by the New York Times titled “The Tablet Market Grows Cluttered” drew my attention today – the latter claimed that About 98 percent of Web traffic from tablets comes [...]
Surface & iPad Collision Course
Ok, I’d been looking around for a Surface I could try out. Even though I have my doubts about Windows 8 and especially RT I also am excited about a lot of the features that these operating system(s) have. But amid the parts that I hate and parts I hate, there is the simple fact [...]
Is Apple Vindictive and Evil?
Apple has not won all of its lawsuits. In fact, other than one big jury award it has for the most part been losing cases. Certainly, outside of the “home court advantage” here in America it has done rather poorly. In an especially humiliating loss outside of the US, Apple was instructed to modify its [...]
The Best Government Money Can Buy
I work in Asia where government influence (“bribes”) is exceedingly common. Granted, it is officially illegal, but as a practical matter it is essential. I remember traveling into Cambodia via rail. At the border crossing there is an immigration office where you apply for and get a visa to enter. The room was packed with [...]
Actually, Cars that Fly and Float May Not Be So Bad
Apple CEO Tim Cook left behind his old metaphor of “fridge and toaster” and is now calling Windows 8 a car that flies and floats, while not exactly doing either function very well. I am not exactly a Win8 fanboy, but there are a few (emphasis on few) things Win8 is doing well: informative tiles [...]
Apple iOS / OS-X vs. Windows 8 / RT == OS Goulash & Predictions
All These Thoughts Derived at Seattle Coffee Works in Downtown Seattle, a good place to enjoy the use of an iPad or Windows RT Tablet. Ok, I’ll admit it, I have a soft spot in my heart for Windows 8. At least in the tablet form. I honestly prefer it over the iPad model of [...]
Patently Messed Up
What is innovation? It’s a simple enough question, except that it is not. Most innovation is synthesis of other ideas. Rare is there something entirely new that is invented. (And even then the argument can be made it is just synthesis.) And, is something really innovation if five other people come up with it concurrently? [...]
