Thursday, October 5, 2000
Top Stories
Boxed In By The Cube
The take-it-or-leave it design philosophy that scored big with the $999 iMac won't work with a system costing thrice as much, no matter how pretty it is.
Opinion
The Sad Joke Of Reviews
Why should I trust your reviews, past and future, anymore, when you are telling me that you probably do not have the necessary technical knowledge and you do not bother to acquire the necessary technical knowledge to do justice to the product you review?
How To Rescue The Cube
Pretty much everyone agrees on two things: the Cube is cool and the Cube is overpriced. Cool is good. Overpriced is bad.
Sidetrack
The Sad Joke Of Reviews
Is it okay to criticize public beta software? Sure. Is it fair to point out problems and defects in beta software? You are supposed to. Is it even okay to say that the speed is not up to par in the software, even though you know that this is still in beta and it is probably not optimized for speed yet? Yes.
But is it okay for a reviewer, who has just written a public review saying that the speed is not up to par, to blame Apple for not telling him explicitly that the software is probably not optimized for speed? No, thank you very much. You hurt your own reputation if you do that.
Why should I trust your reviews, past and future, anymore, when you are telling me that you probably do not have the necessary technical knowledge and you do not bother to acquire the necessary technical knowledge to do justice to the product you review?
Itís not about butt-kissing. Itís not about beta software. Itís about honesty.
Jakob Nielsen: Quality needs to be become an explicit attribute of Web objects.
Mac OS X For Intel: My Say
The cheapest Macintosh sells for $799. How much pure profit is that for Apple? Say, $300? Well, then: sell Mac OS X For Intel for $300, and insists on a dongle.
Of course, this assumes that Mac OS X for Intel already exists. Thinking outside the cube, eh?
Latest Netscape Browser
If you are writing a Windows application, make it behave like a Windows application. If you are writing a Macintosh application, make it behave like a Macintosh application. What is this thing you guys built for Windows that doesnít behave like a Windows application, and this thing you guys built for Macintosh that doesnít behave like a Macintosh application?
Enough rants. The latest beta is out. And I donít believe the user-interface will get any better.
Jeffrey Veen: Will browsers ever not suck?
You Are My Sunshine
Steven Johnson: Is [the arrival of Mac OS X] also this generationís Sgt Pepper!?
Anyone wanna check with Dave Winer, or those guys at Radio Userland?
Wintel
Now For That Other MS Trial
With Microsoft asking for a five-month period to prepare papers for its appeal in the federal case, antitrust watchers now turn their attention to the lesser-known class-action battle in California.
Pentium 4 Yields 'Not Impressive'
30 per cent failure rate reported.
Will Whistler Be A Hardware Hog?
The new skinnable UI is obviously still under development, so in theory it could get faster during the beta process, but in practice Microsoft's new features have a tendency to get zipped up by having more hardware thrown at them, rather than via code optimisation.