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Archive for September, 2007

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Monday, September 24th, 2007

I don’t know whether you realize this or not, but whenever you buy a PC, you are also paying for a copy of Microsoft Windows. It doesn’t matter whether you use it or not, or whether you wipe the drive and install your favorite Linux distribution. It doesn’t matter what you want. You still have to pay the dreaded “Microsoft tax.”

How much? Well, that varies from PC maker to PC maker, depending on the quantities they buy and the particular configurations they choose. I’ve heard $40 for a basic OEM license, however. This may not seem like an awful lot of money, until you multiply that figure by tens of millions. Even forgetting the far-higher cost of buying a Windows upgrade kit at your local computer, it all ads up to billions of dollars.

In fact, Microsoft makes roughly 81% profit from Windows. What a racket!

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Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

If all goes as planned, Leopard will reach the DVD pressing plants in a week or two and arrive in the stores before the end of October. Sure, nobody knows for certain when until the official statement from Apple that the Golden Master version has been declared.

For now, I’ll assume that Apple will meet its promised goal. I have no inside information to present, and I will take the reports on the rumor sites that the GM is near with a grain of salt. On the other hand, if there are a few lingering bugs of any seriousness, Apple may simply get 10.5 out the door speedily, and then fix the rest with a fast follow-up involving a 10.5.1 and a 10.5.2.

Once the release hits the store shelves, you’ll read lots and lots of commentary over how well it does, and depending on the timing, we hope to have one of the first reviews that weekend. I’m guessing that it’ll probably ship with a special event on a Friday evening, and I would submit it’ll happen on October 19th or 26th. How’s that for an iron-clad prediction? I’m leaning towards the latter, by the way.

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Thursday, September 20th, 2007

Just the other day, while recording an interview with Mac author and commentator Kirk McElhearn, we both ruminated about the fate of the Mac OS X Finder in Leopard. I think most of you agree with us that the present Finder is severely broken, and has been from the first.

No, I’m not talking about the basic interface, because I think that’s pretty much in good shape. I’ve always found the column view a convenient way to check your stuff and drill down into deeply-nested menus. There are times, of course, when I prefer list view to reorder file display and such, but the basic layout gets the job done.

We could, of course, talk of ways that things might improve, particularly when it comes to the Open and Save dialog boxes, where features that were pioneered years ago in such products as Default Folder and Super Boomerang, such as automatic rebounding to the last opened file, are still missing in action.

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Wednesday, September 19th, 2007

It’s a sure thing that few software companies would survive were it not for repeat customers. If you bought version one, they need to find some way to rope you into buying version two, and so forth and so on. If you get enough loyal customers, you don’t have to work quite as hard to attract new ones.

Or at least that’s the theory.

Now I understand why you might want to get a new car. The old one is wearing out, and the repair bills are now exceeding the monthly cost of buying or leasing a new or “preowned” vehicle. So you take the plunge. Besides, the auto makers have no doubt added some spiffy new features to entice you to drive one of their vehicles home to your garage. Not just the added safety gear, but more room, more horsepower, better fuel economy (even if that seems an oxymoron with a more powerful engine) — that sort of thing.
Things are a little different with a personal computer, where, aside from the hard drive and its mechanical components, and perhaps the optical drive, there are few things that would wear out over time. Yes, logic boards and power supplies do fail, but the latter is fairly economical to replace.

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