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Adobe & Microsoft – A Marriage Made In Heaven?

admin — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 02:31:07 +0000

Wouldn’t it be great if Microsoft, a company notorious for terminally insecure, crash prone, memory hogging software with mind-numbingly illogical menus, and constant new overpriced versions that are backwards-incompatible, were to partner with Adobe, a company known for terminally insecure, crash prone, memory hogging… oh wait. So why is it that so many tech industry and finance blogs are excited about the rumour of a possible merger or acquisition involving the two? It’s ironic that Apple – once the prideful domain of snobbish, intellectual arty types – is now part of the Evil Empire (along with Google) that everyone thinks needs to be taken down. In my opinion, anyone who sees anything positive in a possible Adobe/Microsoft merger is beholden to a business model that we can only hope is in its death throes. Apple and Google have gotten where they are right now with a really crazy idea: give the user what they want or need, and do it exceptionally well. Adobe and Microsoft, on the other hand, have for nearly a decade stuck to a strategy of buying their competitors , rolling exceptional products into their existing lines of outdated and over-developed re-releases of lumbering software suites, usually to the detriment if not total destruction of really great products. In any case, the rumour is already being called “nonsense” by credible sources, so the whole idea may be as vaporous as Microsoft’s “slate”, an attempt to compete with the iPad, which is supposed to be available in time for Christmas. What a great stocking stuffer for the people on your list who’ve been naughty, not nice! Maybe slate is the new coal.

Please Notify Kin’s Next Of Kin

admin — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:56:06 +0000

Because even though it was born just today, we’re not sure how long it has to live. It’s rare that I’m utterly dumbfounded by the release of a tech product. But if you’re as perplexed as I am regarding what to think about Microsoft’s Kin, perhaps we can learn something together as I try to dispel my ignorance. There has been a quiet buzz about the product’s release for some time now (as codename “pink”), but today was the official rollout. Such as it was. According to available press materials, the Kin is targeted at “social networking-savvy teens and twenty-somethings”, but if you were aiming at this market, wouldn’t you want to roll your product out by having somebody like Miley Cyrus or the Jonas Brothers pitch it, as opposed to a guy with a pot belly in a form-fitting shirt who – if you are a twentysomething – probably looks like your dad? The video below from Microsoft’s own press site blows it six ways to Sunday. It’s embeddable, but uses Silverlight; it’s presented by two fortyish guys who keep talking about their proposed market as “they”, sounding most of the time like their proposed market is a demographic they made up based on their ignorance and then created by looking for certain results; and it’s…well, BORING. I don’t think the device and related concepts are so far off the mark; I’d LOVE a phone that eases my transitions from social networking to web and e-mail to phone. And I mean one that isn’t the iPhone. But the promise of this sort of thing is inevitably so interwoven with the service that makes it work that I can’t imagine the Kin’s partnership with Verizon delivering all of this at a useful price. If you find the actual Kin site as annoyingly “hip two years ago” and cryptic as I did, Engadget has an expansive and thorough roundup of the product that puts all the pieces together. Which I think bodes poorly for the Kin, you really should be able to explain a product in a sentence or two if you’re marketing it to attention-impaired millenials.

I’ll bet you a nickel this embedded video won’t play in your browser, so here’s a link …

Please upgrade your browser

…and a screen grab of what you’re missing:

And a video from Engadget that introduces the interface. And will probably actually play for you.

Here’s the hilarious result of trying to use Firefox to access Microsoft’s idea of “sharing”:

The Adobe Apocalypse

admin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:08:50 +0000

I’ve been deriving secret glee from Steve Jobs’ repeated slams against Adobe Flash. Although I have a lot of friends who are hard-core Adobephiles, I have to admit I’ve always quietly loathed the company’s products. I always found the interface of two of their flagship products – Photoshop and Illustrator – immensely counter-intuitive, and the software itself ridiculously expensive. As a web developer, I’ll also never forget the sneering contempt of a lot of Adobe-centric print shops when bringing them files that weren’t in their beloved .ai, .eps, or .pdf formats. Their most pervasive products – Acrobat and Flash – have also brought me agony in a variety of other ways. Who hasn’t struggled at some point extracting content from or converting a PDF file? Or had one crash while loading in their browser? One of many stories I could share about Acrobat would include the time I had a friend working for the Peace Corps in the Ukraine (Hi Ben!) who needed some simple training materials for classes he was teaching. He could find the material from free legitimate sources in PDF’s, but guess what? The security settings that some nitwit had added made it impossible to print them from the print menu. Enter the questionable legality of the Advanced eBook Processor, which made a joke of Acrobat’s security and encryption and allowed me to free up the restriction for him. Don’t sue me; I did it in the name of international cooperation and education! And Flash? Although it was an amazing product when in the hands of Macromedia (the company that developed it), Adobe acquired Macromedia and rolled their two coolest products (Flash and Dreamweaver) into their Evil Empire of Creative Suite (pick up a copy today, it’s only $2300!). Dreamweaver became much more buggy and cumbersome, and Flash? It’s a browser-crashing system hog riddled with security holes. When you consider the fact that Flash security issues effect THE ENTIRE INTERNET (Adobe claims 99% market saturation of Flash amongst web users) and the recent report that malicious PDF files comprised 80 percent of all exploits for 2009, you can probably stop worrying about the Internet Explorer facilitated China/Google hacking; Adobe’s buggy and vulnerability-riddled products could bring down western civilization as we know it.

You Won’t Find The G-Spot With Your iPad

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:25:09 +0000

If you’re the sort of person who thinks of Microsoft as The Evil One, you haven’t really followed what Google and Apple have been up to lately. And if you think that tablet devices don’t have a big future you’re probably also fortunate that you don’t have investment dollars either, because you’d be kicking yourself down the road for the opportunities you missed. Yes, the tablet wars are on. Steve Ballmer rushed the announcement of the HP/Windows Slate to beat Steve Jobs recent unveiling of the iPad. And hot on the tails of Jobs’ announcement, Google released a rather feeble concept video of their Chrome Operating System in use on an imaginary tablet device (images here). And then of course there’s the lawsuit against the Indian company that allegedly stole the CrunchPad and renamed it the JooJoo. But what’s really going to be interesting about how this all plays out is that it’s not about the devices per se, it’s about who controls how you do what you do, and all the big players know this. Yes, Apple kicked Adobe in the face over flash, but in a way, who cares? Flash has been a crashmonster since its inception. What’s really at stake here is how you get on the web, where you buy things, and how you do your business. And Apple’s closed system on the iPad is geared toward this end. Google already has search pretty well locked down, and they additionally want you phoning and creating all your office documents through tools like the Google Phone, Google Voice, Google Docs, and G-Mail. Imagine a future in which the coolest new device doesn’t play nice with the coolest new tools you want to use on it. And if you can’t even install your own software, because it’s all located on a remote server that you have no contorl over. And to take “Evil” to a new level in this realm, now that Apple makes their own chips for their exclusionary device, they’re essentially like Intel and Microsoft rolled into one. Adding a little irony to all of this is the fact that Apple is talking to Microsoft about replacing Google on the iPhone with Bing. Who is your evil nemesis now?

Chrome OS Tablet Concept Vid

Forget That Mac Tablet – The Microsoft Courier Is Coming

admin — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:44:10 +0000

My interest in the ultimate iThingy, innovative laptop concepts, and the much-rumoured Mac Tablet borders on an unhealthy obsession. If somebody would just go ahead and MAKE one of the darn things, I’d be the first sucka in line to buy one. And now, I’m in real danger, because the Microsoft Courier may just beat the Mac tablet to market. I mean, when you’re talking about imaginary magic fairy gizmos, anything can happen, right? The impending Microsoft answer to the Mac hoopla is actually pretty intriguing. Watch the video below to see exactly how cool an imaginary Microsoft product can be. I’m just left wondering how a device that small can possibly run a Windows operating system. It must have a pretend fairy-powered CPU too. And since it’s a startlingly clever concept considering its Redmond origins, rabid PC-hating MacFreaks of course had to immediately dig up this video from 1988 showing that Apple was “already there”. Well, thank God Apple didn’t go there; if I had to look at and listen to that little bowtie-wearing dork in the video every day I’d stop using computers altogether. He’s more annoying than “Microsoft Bob” or “Clippy”. Well, maybe not Clippy. And just one last thought (swiped from Microsoft’s grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse? ) to all you Mac-fixated zombies out there who are going to claim in advance that the Courier couldn’t possibly compare to a Mac Tablet: “Go back to your house. I know, you’ve got an iHouse. The walls are brushed aluminum. There’s a glowing Apple logo on the roof. And you love it there. You absolute MONSTER.”

Microsoft Courier
One of the coolest things ever from Microsoft. Too bad it doesn’t exist.

Apple’s 1988 Knowledge Navigator
With a bowtie-wearing helper that’s more annoying than clippy.

So far, the only source for images is Gizmodo. Are these genuine exlusives, or do they just make these products up, forcing the vendors to actually make them?

Microsoft & Music – A Remix We Don’t Need

admin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:55:15 +0000

You’re sitting at your computer listening to your favorite song, and suddenly your system freezes, an error box pops up saying that the “Bing Streaming Music Player” is not responding, and the music gets stuck in annoying loop. Which of course, you might not even notice, if you were playing Vanilla Ice’s ripoff of Under Pressure (we would’ve embedded those clips but ASSCAP is suing people for doing that lately). In any case, this is what I imagine happening regularly if Microsoft does in fact launch their streaming music service later this month. Remember how Microsoft’s first big media partner RealPlayer (which has actually won awards for how bad it is) used to not only try to spy on you obsessively, but would always crash while doing so? Remember the Zune launch and all its software problems? Personally, I don’t even use iTunes; I refuse to download a 72MB piece of software just so I can buy some music. I typically buy from Amazon, or if it’s an indy release, sites like CDBaby , DigStation, or Amie Street. And for streaming music, Pandora (in spite of their recent legal problems) is working just fine. Microsoft and music just don’t mix, in my opinion. Fortunately, there are plenty of other resources; here are eighteen to keep you busy. Where do you get most of your music?

Masturbatory Muzak & Pole Dancer Video Tutorials

admin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:16:51 +0000

The video at left, an actual promotional video for Microsoft’s new product Songsmith, brilliantly and comically embodies a theory of mine. A long time ago I suggested that if plotted on a graph, the quality of available literature would follow a curve exactly inverse to the proliferation of literacy and the accessibility of desktop publishing tools. I think a random sampling of the shelves of any chain bookstore bears out my theory (as does the mere existence of books like Bright Shiny Morning). However, I never exactly envisioned the same thing occurring with audio and video. The Songsmith promo kills two birds with one stone. Not only was the video obviously produced with high-quality equipment by people who have no sense of the tone of what they’re producing, it’s promoting a product that allows people who have virtually no musical talent to create music with virtually zero substance or soul. It’s like a home movie about making your own elevator music, except there’s no home, and no elevator! I ran across this video while browsing VideoGum.com today and it suddenly hit me how much video there is on the web that’s relatively well-shot, has some kind of serious intention, fails with almost epic humor, and is totally devoid of an awareness of its own irony. That’s why I’m left with no choice. I’m going to start a review site devoted exclusively to pole dancer tutorial videos.

Bill Gates’ Screen Goes Blue Today

admin — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:11:00 +0000

The rich man we used to love to hate, Bill Gates, is leaving Microsoft today. Although I’ve often cursed Bill for the daily headache otherwise known as Microsoft Windows, I got a little reminder that the the Indians are sometimes more responsible for things than the Chiefs. Check out this e-mail, wherein Bill chews his staff a new one over the frustrations he experienced trying to download Windows MovieMaker. My favorite bit is probably where he says: “So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist? So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated”. So long Bill, I’ll always remember you as the nerdy guy who got busted for speeding (see mugshot, left). Keep up the (presumably) good foundation work, and if you ever need someone to watch the house, just let me know.

Yahoo Google Partnership: Another Nail In the Search Coffin

admin — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:44:17 +0000

Wow. The possibility of Microsoft and Yahoo teaming up was scary enough, but the new Yahoo/Google deal that’s hitting the business press today doesn’t seem like much of an improvement on the surface, except it’s not a full-blown acquisition. We’ve come a long way since those college boys created Google on those taxpayer-supported servers at Stanford, promising never to go public before their initial IPO a year later…

Somehow the mixing of Google’s ad results seems more nefarious than simply mixing their index as Yahoo’s secondary results, as Yahoo decided to do in 2002. The great thing about having multiple search engines as in the past was that they had to compete, keeping results fresh and diverse. To me the prospect of one monolithic search provider is not only frustrating in terms of research and results, but almost frightening in its potential to control information. Yes, I’m paranoid, but in the words of William Burroughs: “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on. “