big dark media » microsoft

IE8 – Credit where Credit’s Due

Scott — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:37:02 +0000

After a week of highly polarized reactions to the recent Opera complaint against Microsoft, you’ve got to give some long overdue props to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team for pushing forward and finally announcing that internal builds of IE 8 have finally passed the Acid2 test, even if just internally for now. You can read the news from Dean Hachamovitch here, and Molly Holzschlag’s report from the trenches here. Here’s hoping IE8 gets out into the wild quickly.

a switcher’s account

Scott — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:56:18 +0000

I’ve been using Macs for a LONG time, and have no real defense against criticism that I’m an ‘Apple fanboy’ aside from simply saying that I’m very happy with my platform of choice. With Parallels and/or VMWare, I can also run XP and Vista on my Apple hardware, so it was kind of a no-brainer decision, personally. Unfortunately no solution works in reverse to allow Windows users to dabble in OS X/Intel joy and get a taste themselves without investing in the hardware, so there’s a lot of staunch loyalists who simply refuse to even try. I can understand the ire of those loyalists, being faced with the rather irritating and condescending Apple ‘Mac vs PC’ television commercials and some equally annoying Apple loyalists (who aren’t exactly keeping open minds themselves), so try to keep a balanced point of view.

However, it’s always nice to see a first-hand account from a former Windows user who took the plunge and kept an open mind about the experience. Developer Derrick Grigg recently made the switch, and his reaction certainly put a smile on my face as someone who’s been using Windows since 3.1/WFW and fighting it all along myself (right up to Vista- which I found a much prettier, yet reasonably non-essential upgrade from XP).

Have you recently tried a Mac again after a long hiatus? If so, whaddaya think? Heck, even I don’t care for the Mac vs. PC commercials, but if Derrick can change his mind there may be more to ‘em than I’d have given Apple credit for. May have to watch them all again, in fact.

mtv bails on microsoft

Scott — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 22:39:59 +0000

Read the news at Ars Technica here.
(rolling on floor laughing)

It’s no secret, Microsoft’s loudly-touted ‘iPod killer’ (aka the Zune) has been anything but. But in this case, they actually lost MTV, their banner partner on the Urge music network, due to the shady developer and business deals behind their rapidly-sinking Zune strategy – primarily Microsoft mothballing their PlaysForSure DRM strategy in favor of a Zune-only model and leaving PFS development partners stranded on a dead platform. Could the Zune actually be the catalyst of it’s own demise? That’s certainly the way it’s shaking out. In fact, this move among others seems to seal the fate of Microsoft’s music business ambitions across the board. I can’t imagine a developer or business partner who would want to get in bed with them again after this whole fiasco plays out.

And the same day Adobe announces H.264 video support in the Flash Player, no less- effectively cutting Silverlight off at the knees. See reference here- particularly the last sentence, in which MTV reaffirms their support for Flash Video (no doubt partially fueled by the parallel Zune fiasco). Here’s a slightly more harsh assessment on the Network World site.

Ouch. That’s gotta hurt bad in Redmond right now.

silverlight sucks.

Scott — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 23:22:37 +0000

I get pinged by my Microsoft shill buddy the other day, who’s been reading my woes about being stuck with a PC, and had the audacity to think I’d actually convert back to the PC after being forced on it while my Mac was being replaced. Yeah, that and hell freezing over. But the main reason he wanted to harp on me like the good PC fanboi that he is was to crow over the fact that supposedly the Major League Baseball site switched from Flash Video (which of course is an Adobe product) to Silverlight video (Microsoft’s humorous and back-asswards attempt at riding Flash’s coattails).

He says I’ll be impressed if I visit the site. So I do. And get this where video should be playing:

Hm. Nice. So I figure it must be because I’m on my wife’s Mac laptop – although Silverlight reportedly runs on a Mac no one with half a brain expects it to be on parity with their Windows software. Try again on my hoopty laptop (the afore-mentioned ThinkPad), using my browser of choice- Firefox. Result?

(yep- exact same error message on Firefox/Vista)

And that pretty much sums it up.

Now sure, I could use Internet Explorer on Windows to get a seamless experience, but when over 98% of internet-enabled systems have Flash already installed (and that browser/platform combo is only one of many), why in God’s name should I have to download and install additional software just to see the site as it’s authors intended? You can argue that Flash is also a plug-in, but it’s a plug-in that’s PREINSTALLED on most all modern browsers, and can update itself as easily – without requiring a casual browser to configure their system to see a website.

If that’s what a banner Silverlight experience is supposed to look like, Microsoft’s got a lot of work to do. Utterly worthless.

Update, 4/2/08: Looks like the big bad Silverlight-powered MLB Mosaic launch is an absolute catastrophe. Many subscribers are already removing Silverlight to get better performance. To all the asshats who’d been shilling SL in the now-closed comments down below, note that the Flash viewers NEVER went down on MLB.com. Just goes to prove the title of this post definitively. Yep, that Silverlight’s a real treat – glad I didn’t pay for a Mosaic subscription….

References:
http://mosaic.mlblogs.com/archives/2008/04/mosaic_update_temporarily_unav.html

http://venturebeat.com/2008/04/02/mlbtv-strikes-out-with-premium-online-video/

ttp://www.pcworld.com/article/id,144061-pg,1/article.html

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/04/02/mlbtv-strikes-out-again-0

from ferrari to hoopty

Scott — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 21:05:30 +0000

My 17-inch MacBook Pro’s CPU died yesterday. I had a whole little funeral ritual, too- mostly involving throwing things and cursing loudly, but I swear the spirit of reverence was present. My backup plan has been airtight for months so I’m not worried about data loss, but as it was a work machine (and I really don’t want to buy one myself short-term) I’m now waiting for it’s replacement to arrive. Hardware purchase orders have a process at large companies, which really just means you wait a little while.

So although I could be back in brushed metal by end of this week/beginning of next, right now I’m stuck with a hooptilicious ThinkPad running Vista. Which has to be the most disappointing part of the whole process- there were no loaner Macs to spare, just a bunch ‘o frankenhooptiesque PC towers – and this hulking black brick of a laptop. Now I don’t mind using Windows here and again in a nice contained box on my Mac screen, but being stuck with a Windows machine for the better part of a day now- quite frankly I can’t remember why I ever put up with it to begin with. I’ve never missed my Mac more, mainly cause on that platform shit just works. And smoothly. With Windows, no matter how skilled I am (and I do know my shit here) it always seems I’m struggling between what I want to do, and the fucked-up process one has to follow to make it so.

I just don’t understand why so many people put up with such a substandard user experience. Seriously. I think I’ve only marginally accepted Windows this long because it wasn’t my primary platform- there was always a better option. But for now it’s like I’ve been downgraded from a Ferrari to some Yugo-based, cut-rate monstrosity. I’m just going to try and think positively, and take this PC-only experience as a learning experience or character-building exercise- cause it sure isn’t fun. Ugh.