ryansutter.net

Amen Brother. :D

Media player sucks. I agree.

I think the next few years will be very interesting because suddenly the masses are looking at Linux and Apple and they're saying to themselves 'hey, I like this'. I think that's great. Change is good.

I really like my creative mp3 player. The funny thing about when I bought it: I got the 40GB player for the same price as the 20GB iPod. I read reviews for days on both. When it came right down to it, Creative does have a little better sound quality but hey, they make sound cards so I expect that, but the size difference is what ultimately made my decision for me. I've had it 2 1/2 years now, and it's still going strong. Yeah, it's a bit bigger than an iPod, a little heavier, and ugly to boot. But, that describes me perfectly. :D As far as interface, Creative's sucks. BUT, in this damn age of patents, it's really dumb that a scroll wheel on an mp3 player can be patented. VCRs and DVD players have the exact same interface, but put it on an mp3 player and it's a new idea. Go figure.

I think the new Creative players are much nicer than the iPods. The interfaces are coming along ok, but the screens and the quality seem to be a lot better. Again, if any company could have a PR and Marketing department that's as good as Apple's... Creative's suck.

As far as Vista is concerned... I dunno what to expect, truthfully. The whole shakeup that happened a few years ago changed a lot of things over at MS land. IE's new look and feel is great, but I still use Firefox. I may force myself to try out IE again, simply because I still find Firefox slow and buggy sometimes. Vista is something new, and I like playing with new things. I'm not sure what MS is going to do with Vista, but I don't think it'll run the same path as XP simply because today's OS competition is much fiercer than when XP came out. Linux and OS X are beautiful and great OSes. I think Vista will be the same but ultimately, what makes any OS successful is the tools that it has running. It's up to the hardware and software companies to decide which OS shall reign supreme.

As far as hackers are concerned, the one that really annoys me is how Windows gets all the media attention when hacked, but Apple and Linux don't. At my previous job, I ran several servers as an admin, and I had weekly security emails that detailed updates/patches for all the different OSes that were present within the company. Linux had by far more security updates than Windows. Apple was second, oddly enough. The biggest hack that happened that was mentioned in an email was against a Linux system, not Windows. So we'll have to wait and see how long it'll be before some hackers get bored with Windows and make a Linux or Apple hack the biggest story of the year.

It's good to see some posts again. Keep it up. :D

Dan

Well, knowing you, I know you like your Creative player and I guess it must be alright. I don't have one, so I don't know. I do know that I hate Windows Media Player with a passion and it's presence alone is enough to keep me away from non-iPod music players. What a piece. I love iTunes. But, hey, different strokes...

Yeah, Vista is actually an impressive feat of engineering. But, until MS shows me otherwise, I predict that the next few years will follow the usual pattern. Big release, lots of updates and patches for security problems, no real new features, maybe a marginally upgraded "new" version in 3 years (something like Windows ME) that is really just a marketing gimmick, and another massive upgrade cycle in 5 or so years just when it seems all the bugs are finally sorted out. I mean, this is basically, give or take a few details, the MS way of delivering Windows since the 80's. It's 2007. You might get a marketing upgrade in 2010. Maybe. I mean, they sat on IE 6 for 5 years.

I won't be convinced that they've changed unless they change.

Even at their fastest and most efficient, MS is a lumbering beast. In the time it takes to get one Windows upgrade, you get 3-5 OS X upgrades, probably 5-10 major Linux upgrades (to whatever distro you use). Windows as a platform supports a lot of innovation from other companies, but Windows as an OS simply does not function (and historically never has functioned) as a place for innovation in and of itself. So, Vista? Yawn. Nothing new to see here.

Personally, I think it's a good thing that there are three major strains of OS out there. You have the open-source Unix systems (Linux, BSD, etc) that move fast and loose with an almost annoying amount of often unnecessary but sometimes wicked cool innovation, the commercial Unix systems (OS X, Solaris, etc) that have such a rock solid foundation that they can innovate in applications very easily and produce wicked cool stuff on a compressed time line (admittedly benefiting from the innovations in the OSS community), and Windows which pretty much gives all the hackers something to do, gives grandmothers a good reason to have to buy new computers that don't provide them with any particular new features and provides lots of employment for tech support people the world over. Sounds great to me.

:-)

Well, Mac, I'll tell you this...

Um... I suddenly feel like I'm in that stupid commercial.

2015? Are you serious? Man... I may need to convert over to a Mac.

On the serious side, you ever check out the road that was traveled for Vista? Talk about a management screwup. 3 years of dev work tossed when it was based on XP. So the Vista we see today is actually 2 years of dev work based off of 2003 Server. I think it's pretty impressive, myself.

I think eventually Windows and the other two will be very similar in a lot of ways. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see MS Linux sometime in the future (I know it already exists, but they haven't figured out how to market it yet).

As for Apple, well... never liked the iPod (looks cool, but that's it). Not gushing over their new iPhone either. Hate iTunes. Quicktime annoys me as well. I hate how they bitch about MS integrating everything but then do the exact same thing. I hate how their hardware is so damn expensive, and not really that much better than anything else. I hate that the only thing great about Apple is their OS and some of the tools, and yet everything else is just so-so.
If Creative had a marketing team and a PR team worth a damn, iPods would've gone out of style long ago. If MS had pushed for a bigger OS ui change 5 years ago when the dev team wanted to, X would've looked like a rip off as well. If Linux would settle on a standard... er, wait... yeah, nevermind. THAT will never happen and that's why Linux will NEVER dominate: too many damn versions.

As for Apple, well... I love how they took people's dislikes and changed it into a culture. They made computers beautiful, and that's a great and wonderful thing. I love how they always expand out in areas that you would never expect. I love how it's not so much a 'we want to dominate the world' as much as it's a 'we want you to enjoy the world with our products'. I think that's really cool.

They have cool displays. They have cool laptops. They have cool tools.

Yeah, MS shoulda bought them years ago when they had the chance, but I believe the same management team that screwed up Windows had a say in that as well. :D

Can't wait to see the new anything from anyone.

Well, Dan, I'll tell you this...

I'm really happy for you Windows users. Honestly. You're very long-suffering and patient people. You deserve to finally have some of the niceties that Mac (and Linux) users have had for years. The new features that Mac users will get when OS X "Leopard" comes out this spring will no doubt be greatly appreciated by Windows users when they appear in Windows "Gates" in 2015.

Kudos on your amazing ability to deal with mediocrity and delays. It's a strength I lack. I just can't handle it...a 3D-accelerated UI is just so, so, so 2002 after all...

Heh.... nice try dude.

I KNEW you'd have something to say about the launch. I knew it!

As far as hype goes... you're right, sorta. I think most people that reviewed Vista are the same ones that reviewed the beta and other releases, so their opinions are still somewhat frustrated from the buggy experiences. I think overall, Vista will be kick ass. I think the biggest problem for Microsoft is that XP SP2 is still a very good, stable, secure operating system, and it's also the biggest competitor for Vista. What those reviewers forget is that if you didn't know anything about Vista, and used it for the first time, it's a huge upgrade from XP. If you look at all the new features, without remembering what was removed from that list because of time constraints and major management screwups, then you'd also still be pretty impressed. I think Vista is getting a rough welcome from a lot of people that really should know better, but do it anyways because it's popular to rip MS a new hole. I've done the same thing.

A couple things that I don't like about Vista... the name, the billion different versions, the name, and the price.

What I really like about Vista... the fact that they looked at Apple's OS and realized that there is something to be said about fancy interfaces that work. I like all the new stuff they added, mostly, and even the new games like chess sound fun. I like that it's based off Windows 2003 Server instead of XP. I like that they finally said 'there needs to be some security in everything we do'.

Now, I know everyone is flaming on this OS and making light of it's release and reviews. Of course there'll be problems. Of course there'll be patches and updates. Of course the drivers are late. If memory serves me correctly, I believe Apple went through the same long nightmare when OS X came out as well, and it took a long time to iron out the bugs and such.

Vista will be successful. Eventually, most everyone will upgrade. It's not the same like it used to be where you could skip OS upgrades for every other version. Win2000 needs to die, same as XP eventually. I think it's just a matter of time before we all upgrade to it, except all you Apple users. :-P