Chris123NT's Blog

http://www.lifewithwindows.com/ 

http://www.livingwithoutwalls.net/

http://www.livingwithwindows.com/

Keep in mind these are currently configured as simple URL redirectors… because a certain Canadian was too damn lazy to do it properly. Blame Canada.

Todays URL spree brought to you by the letter “I”, an Interconnected Series of Tubes at your service(tm).

NOTE: This is an opinion piece. Read at your own discretion.

So, over the past 2 years, Apple’s user base has grown quite a bit (I’m really too lazy to look up the numbers right now, but I think it’s somewhere in the ballpark of 10% or something like that). With great power comes great responsibilty, unfortunately Apple seems to be lacking in that department at this point.

“Get a Mac ads” - These were cute a few years ago, when they actually made a point of what Macs can do compared to PCs, but it seems since Microsoft shipped Windows Vista, Apple decided to throw out any sense of logic that were in these commercials and go right for the jugular – straight up, unadulterated, product bashing. I’m sorry Apple, but John Hodgeman singing a blues song while Justin Long stands there doing nothing doesn’t make me want to run out and purchase a Mac. Neither does “Crashy-time Vista Chamomile” tea. The idea is dead, now stop beating the horse and move on to more relevant things.

The iPhone SDK NDA - The first rule about the iPhone SDK is not to talk about the iPhone SDK. Give me a break, Apple. In both the Windows and Linux developer ecosystems, everything is fairly open. Go download Visual Studio Express, load up msdn.microsoft.com or the MSDN Express Library, and you’ve got all the information you need to start programming. Need help? Go post some source code on a message board, talk to a programming-savvy friend, or go dig through tons of sample code to get started and modify it to your hearts content. In the Apple world, and more specifically the iPhone, not so much. How can you learn if you can’t get any help from others in the community?

The App Store is a joke – Apple, you have the iTunes Music Store. You’ve added Movies and iPod Games to it. With the iPhone 3G and iPhone Software 2.0 you decided to open the App Store. Which is great, except you’re alienating developers with the iPhone SDK NDA and the restrictions. Developers have to register and sign a one year, $99 subscription with ADC in order to be able to submit things to the App Store. And those efforts are being shot down – applications are being rejected because “they are too close to the functionality in iTunes” or “not useful enough”… and yet there are tons of useless, poorly coded (again, let’s look at Example 2) applications in the App Store as we speak. If you wanted full control over what goes on every iPhone and iPod touch, then you shouldn’t have opened the App Store in the first place. Keep it up, and your developers are going to start writing for Google’s Android platform.

Hardware revisions - Apple didn’t seem to think this one out too clearly: switching to Intel means keeping up with Intel. When Intel releases a new chipset or processor, you’ve only got so much time to bring a new product revision to the market before your competitors (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc) start pumping out machines that are more powerful than yours at a lower price. Unfortunately, this also means your Apple hardware is worth less over time compared to the PowerPC models. Listen, Steve… we know you’re addicted to the iPhone, but come on, show some love to the Mac for a while, would you?

Well, that’s pretty much all I have to say right now. Thanks for reading.

Just wanted to post a quick note that I have added a new Tips & Tricks section to the site.  This can be reached by clicking the link in the top navigation bar.  This is a one stop shop that will contain links to all of my guides and other guides that I feel are useful for people to have a look at.

 With that said, I should also mention that I posted a new guide in that section yesterday that outlines how to get the search link back in the start menu in Vista SP1.

Vista SP1 Re-Add Search Guide

Here’s a funny video about the last Windows Server 2003 box powering microsoft.com.  Well known that pre-release versions of Server 08 have been powering microsoft.com without a hitch since last June.

Just wanted to inform everyone reading this blog with IE8 in the default standards mode that there seems to be a weird scroll jumping issue occuring if the mouse hovers over any links while scrolling.  I have pinned this down to a block of CSS on the skin and am working to resolve the specific issue as we speak.  So just hang tight, I’ll have it fixed soon .

 Edit: the issue seems fixed now.  For anyone interested in the cause, it seemed to be my custom a:hover settings for links etc…  As soon as I did away with the a:hover events the issue cleared up.