The Tech Night Owl's Home Page
Home Weekly Newsletter Community Forums About Contact Radio Show The Paracast Attack of the Rockoids
Macintosh Internet solutions since 1995!


Namecheap.com - Cheap domain name registration, renewal and transfers - Free SSL Certificates - Web Hosting


» Currently browsing posts tagged with: Alternate Reality

Newsletter #417 Preview: Is This Really the End of the PC Era?

November 25th, 2007

I often think that some tech pundits have nothing better to do than create fake issues for headlines and hit counts. In recent weeks, I’ve mentioned a few of the more offensive theories, but I think one that is truly bizarre is the claim that we are at the tail end of the PC era, and that full-sized desktop and notebook computers will soon join the dinosaurs in the alternate reality of the obsolete.

Sure, this may strike some as a logical possibility, what with so-called smartphones gaining additional computing features, and the fast take-off of the iPhone. But does it really seem reasonable to you that it’ll be possible, some day, to retire “real” computers and survive strictly on a handheld device?

I suppose if you’re engaged solely in the business of building wireless phones, that’s a future to lust after. But is this a future that the rest of you would accept, or is it just a pipedream on the part of a few companies that are hoping to reach the end of the rainbow and find their pot of gold and wealth?

Continue Reading...

Related Articles:

The Leopard Report: Playing the Great Waiting Game

March 16th, 2007

I’ve noticed that, of late, that people who care about such things aren’t speculating all that much about the alleged “hidden” or “top secret” features of Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. Instead, they’re wondering when the darn thing will be released, as if that’s something that is more important than almost anything in their lives.

More to the point, you don’t hear so many predictions these days about those new features. I’ve weighed in on a few possibilities I’d like to see in Leopard, but beyond a new, more fluid Finder that can handle multitasking in a reasonably swift fashion, the speculation isn’t all that interesting, or imaginative.

In a sense, maybe some of you will be so glad to see the thing after all this time that any features extending beyond the ten or so that Steve Jobs debuted at the WWDC last June will just be icing on the cake. Just having Leopard available may be sufficient to expand the Mac platform into new, unexpected directions. Or maybe not. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Continue Reading...

Related Articles:

The Mac Night Owl’s Alternate Reality: Welcome to a DRM-Free World

February 16th, 2007

I can tell you that I have not really had any difficulty living in this world, where digital music players are incompatible, tethered to proprietary music download services. Apple’s FairPlay DRM is really not so odious as some might think. So long as you don’t feel that a Microsoft Zune must connect to iTunes, or an iPod connect to Napster, you’ll be quite comfortable with it.

You’ll be able to copy the songs you buy from iTunes to five computers, share it among different iPods, and burn them to DVDs. Well, I suppose there’s that ever-present question of whether AAC files, encoded at 128K, provide a sufficiently high degree of audio quality to warrant a “CD quality” designation. But that’s not the point. You see, the real issue is whether the music industry will take up and smell the roses, or whatever they need to smell to give them a healthy dose of reality.

Continue Reading...

Related Articles: