Geekology

Alice in Techno-land: the Challenge of Choice

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:55:05 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

It’s a hot month in the geek sphere these days: on Wednesday, Apple followed up its recent Snow Leopard upgrade of OS X with a release of new hardware, including an iMac with a massive 27″ screen. The Dark Star of Redmond arrives today with the general release of Windows 7, which they are marketing with — get this — tweets.

On the Apple front, Ars Tech has continual updates on the new hardware, right down to its guts. Prices range from $1200 to $2G for the iMac; a grand for the basic MacBook; and $600 – $1000 for the new Mac mini. As for the new peripherals, I’d only add a caveat emptor on the new “Magic Mouse”: if it behaves like the somewhat erratic trackpad on the MacBook Pro machines, it is likely to be an annoying learning curve and a source of unwanted distraction.

As for Win 7, as I’ve mentioned before, it is indeed a marked improvement over Vista. Again, there is the price: $120 for a basic upgrade of the Home edition; $200+ for full versions of every edition. The problem, as always with MS product, is in what it comes with rather than what it’s missing: the still-slow, still-dangerous, still-retro IE 8 and all the marketing tie-ins and proprietary drags that burden the user’s experience in the MS realm. Bing, Media Center, and the other components of the MS Wasteland are still there, and you’ll have to do a little work of your own to break free of them, particularly on a new PC that comes loaded with Win 7.

The last big item for this month will arrive on Halloween, and in this economy, it perhaps deserves the most notice: Ubuntu 9.10, the Karmic Koala. It’s free, reliable, stable, and a remarkably mature product, having been through over five years of development and growth, aided by the vast feedback loop that testing in an open source community environment provides.

This is a big deal, because Linux operating systems benefit in a way that Apple’s or Microsoft’s cannot. Apple tests its upgrades of OS X exclusively through developers — that is, geeks who write code are the people who test the OS, and that comes with inherent blind spots that inevitably appear in the end product. Microsoft’s testing is managed mainly by marketers who engage developers and selected end users in rump-group fashion. Usually, testing in the M$ realm is a matter of the self-fulfilling prophecy: if we want it to be great, we’ll find people who will say it’s great.

In the open source universe, these paradigms are completely absent. As you can see from their current website, even beta releases are simply sent out into the wild, and users like you and I can become testers, bug-trackers and even bug-fixers (if we know how). Feedback from tens of thousands of users around the world streams into the management and development hub in Montreal, where it is assessed, sifted, and interpreted to inform the bug fixing and software enhancement activities of developers. This goes not merely for the OS but also for its major software components: the desktop (GNOME in Ubuntu, KDE in Kubuntu); the OpenOffice.org productivity suite; the Firefox web browser; and other major pieces of software contained in the new release of the OS.

Ubuntu 9.10 will arrive with improvements to both GNOME and KDE; a new notification applet that delivers email, social networking, and system notifications through the desktop; and support for the ext4 file system, a faster and stable platform for file management in the OS (Windows still uses NTFS, Apple, HFS). There have been reports of 4-second boot times with Linux in ext4; I haven’t seen anything like that on my old hardware where I test Linux distro’s, but clearly, ext4 does bring greater speed and smoother performance to the table.

Linux runs successfully on virtually all PC hardware (and even on Intel Macs), and again, the maturity of the best distro’s (PC Linux OS remains my favorite, closely followed by Ubuntu and its wonderful customization in Linux Mint) is simply extraordinary. If you have been impacted by the adverse economy of recent times, and would like to avoid the cost that comes with entry into the Mac or Windows universe, then this may be your time for Linux.

If you cornered me for an opinion on all this, I’d start by saying that I’m among the weakest authorities you could possibly find. Then I’d say, if you can afford it, go with the Mac and get the best machine your budget can handle, and allow an extra $300 for the Mac extended warranty, which will give you 3 additional years of support and repair/replacement guarantees. Their hardware is consistently reliable and Snow Leopard, while it is an OS with some maturing to do, encompasses most of the virtues of OS X and adds 64-bit support to the mix.

However, if you’re a longtime Windows user and can’t get away from that environment, Windows 7 is worth the upgrade price ($120 for Home, $200 for Pro), especially from Vista. If I were in your place, though, I’d make sure that my default browser is Chrome or Firefox and my default search is Google or Yahoo, and would make sure that IE and Bing are sent to their proper places in the background.

Just keep in mind: the cost with Apple and MS does not end with the first purchase or the upgrade price. In a proprietary world, you are expected to keep paying for future releases, future upgrades, and future hardware requirements. With Linux, there is none of that: I have run Ubuntu 9.10 on the same machine that ran version 5.4. What has changed is the maturity and functionality of the product: the Linux kernel itself has grown while maintaining its UNIX stability and safety; the desktops have improved exponentially in only the past two years; and bundled software such as OpenOffice.org, Firefox, and entertainment apps such as Amarok (music player), M-Player and VLC (video players), and Google’s Picasa (photo management) have also been developed, refined and enhanced. If you have an old P4 or better machine that groans even under XP, you will find it restored with the help of the Linux Penguin. And again, everything you get in Linux/Ubuntu is free, and in these times, that is a really big deal for most of us.

Steve Ballmer Gives Win 7 the Teen Test

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:55:10 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

About 14 years ago, an editor at Bloomsbury took home a manuscript for a children’s novel that had come in that day. She gave the thing to her daughter to read. Next day, when Mom the editor went to take the ms. back to work, her daughter asked if she could keep it because she wanted to know how it turned out. Bottom line is the kid really liked it, and the rest is history. That novel was from an unknown and unpublished welfare mom named J.K. Rowling, and it was called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Today, we learn that Steve Ballmer is personally supervising user previews of Windows 7. He’s including his teenage son in his test group, and it’s probably the smartest thing he’s done in all his years at MS, maybe the only smart thing he’s done. This is not to say that Win 7 will be anything approaching Harry Potter for impact and success, but you have to give the man credit for going to the right sources for some honest feedback. Kids, unlike tech bloggers and columnists, don’t care about shilling for a new piece of software because it might come with a brand new PC or some other gift or perk. If your product ain’t fun and easy to use, they’ll get bored and complain. And if Dad thinks it’s really cool, the suspicion factor is magnified. If Win 7 passes the teen test, Ballmer might be safe in hoping for a better outcome than he had with Vista.

Brittanica vs. Wikipedia: A Lesson for Corporate America

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:56:00 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The image below comes from an astonishing moment I had last night on the web. I was doing some research on a well-known Canadian physician of yore, and it so happened that the Brittanica entry (left) came up at the top of the search results. What I saw was remarkably disappointing: ads everywhere, a banner image urging me to become a “premium member,” and finally the window dimmer that told me I wasn’t allowed to view the content until I became such a member.

Then I started examining the page design of both of these cyber-encyclopedias and was again amazed. Wikipedia has been around for a number of years: its design and layout have been copied all over the web — and justly so, given the elegance, balance, natural order, and intuitive appeal of the Wiki design. What is Brittanica doing with such a lame, stiff, and dysfunctional layout when a model like Wikipedia is there to be used?

The Wiki-hatred in the mainstream media and publishing industry still persists, in spite of independent research that shows Wiki’s relative equivalence for accuracy and superiority for design against its competitors. If corporate media and publishers are going to hope to survive in the online age, they are simply going to have to learn to study what works. And that includes adopting open source development, testing, and even fundraising models that have proven so successful for sites like Wikipedia.

During my time as a business analyst, tester, and content writer for corporate America, on both Internet and Intranet sites, I repeatedly urged the adoption of open-source models, and was ignored or simply told to shut up. But if the corporate IT and web development managers don’t change their tune quickly, the piper’s going to come calling, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Brittanica’s obvious and manifest online failure should be a wake-up call.

Apple Built a Better Kitty (Thanks to Linux)

Last modified on 2010-04-24 17:56:01 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

I have the Snow-Cat running now on my 3-year old MB and my daughter’s one-year old MBP (yes, and Apple is to be praised for still lacking the paranoid proprietary madness of MS in this respect), and both are purring. I haven’t seen a Safari crash yet, which had become a near daily occurrence under Leopard. The speed improvements are astonishing on the MBP, impressive on the MB. Safari now runs every bit as fast as Chrome on a fast Windows PC, and with considerably more grace and elegance. And it’s always nice to get an extra 6GB back on your hard drive. Not bad for $29.

Overall, my early experience agrees with those reported by the commenters in this C-Net post and Pogue’s NYT review. Of particular note, however, is this from Pogue’s piece about how both Apple and MS have learned to trim, scale down, and refocus on function over eye candy:

This year, though, Apple and Microsoft both realized that the pile-on-features model is unsustainable. Both are releasing new versions of their operating systems that are unapologetically billed as cleaned-up, slimmed-down versions of what came before.

Microsoft’s, called Windows 7, comes out in October. Apple’s, called Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, arrives on Friday…

Now, where do you think Apple and MS might have learned this salubrious lesson, my fellow geek-watchers? Could it have been largely from watching Linux take off in Netbooks and cheap PCs? Might it possibly have something to do with the remarkable success of the Ubuntu Linux product and its increasingly sophisticated, feature-rich, but eminently small and functional OS? Linux desktops, led by GNOME and KDE, along with distros such as Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint, and MEPIS, have been quietly carving the path that the corporate monsters of the software industry have at last chosen to follow: make thy kernel light, stable, and versatile, and let thy desktop be smart and slim, with only enough features to support and enhance the user’s experience, and no more.

And incidentally, would it be too much to ask of Mr. Ballmer or Mr. Jobs to simply say so, to give credit where it’s due? No, that wouldn’t be the corporate thing, the profitable thing, the we’re-number-one thing, the competitive thing to do. It would only be the fair thing.
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Update: Looking at the comments to this post, I was reminded of why I had taken down all my techno-instructional videos from Youtube last year: the loud and arrogant presence of infantile minds, most of whom shriek that something or other “rules.” For them, debate consists in an insult-laden rant. Perhaps many such comments are written by fellows with weapons strapped to their bodies, just like at the health care town halls…

It’s really funny, you know: I remember back when email came out I said, “this will restore the lost art of letter writing.” And as the Internet grew and I discovered discussion forums and blogs, I thought, “maybe this will bring new life and mutual respect into our various national debates.” I was, of course, wrong on both counts.

It may seem a lot to expect, that adults on a forum or a blog show some evidence of maturity. We spent 8 years in the grip of a government whose very hallmark was immaturity, deceit, and scorn for the English language. What the Open Source model shows us, however, is another way: that it is possible to have diversity and dissent within your development community and still come out with quality at the other end (Firefox, Ubuntu, PCLOS, and numerous other products come to mind). This is something I discussed in detail at Open Source Values. I continue to think that the open source model is not merely a valuable development model, but a developmental human model for communication, debate, and indeed, the very evolution of our species.

Chrome OS: Meh or Yay?

Last modified on 2009-07-09 23:30:46 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

First, as to substance, it means nothing, or next to nothing. Chrome OS is to be a Linux-based operating system with a focus on the web browser and browser-based applications such as Google Docs, Calendar, Mail, etc. Most folks today spend the majority of their time on web-based tasks than local machine tasks, so the web-orientation generates a “why did it take you so long to realize this?” type of response. It would be far better for us as a nation to focus on enhancing our web infrastructure and the availability of free and/or inexpensive broadband Internet access throughout our culture.

And there are plenty of Linux distros out there that are complete, stable, and web-ready: we have reviewed a number of them and identified PCLInuxOS, Linux Mint, and of course the various flavors of Ubuntu as our current favorites. Ubuntu features a Netbook-optimized version of its OS, which has received glowing reviews across the techsphere.

So now we come to the source of the hype and media mayhem over this announcement: image. Behind image, of course, there is always money; and that’s where the reality of this story lies.

Our culture remains fueled, in spite of the lessons that the current recession is attempting to teach us, by image, hype, spin, and appearance. That’s where the money lands; that’s the magnet that attracts the green iron filings known as dollars. Even amid the worst recession since 1929, marketers continue to thrive: your facade still means more in our society than whatever lies beneath it.

Thus, as long as this remains so, a corporation like Google announcing plans to release an operating system for netbooks sometime a year into the future (although, as this C-Net reviewer points out, netbooks are in reality not the techno-phenom they’ve been made out to be) will twist the panties of the MSM and others who know little or nothing of what they’re talking about into knots.

But if, as I hope, the pit of job losses and news of corporate corruption deepens, further opening the eyes of an already sickened public, then Chrome OS will be received next year with a vast and refreshing “Meh” — just, in fact, as Windows 7 should be received later this summer. And incidentally, Michael Moore’s new film, due out in 3 months or so, should help.

Yet there is one small glow amid this glare, one point of light in this shrill darkness. If Chrome OS brings a little more cred, raises a little more public awareness of open source and its vast potential for our culture and our technological future, then Google’s experiment will have been worth some fraction of the hype it’s receiving today.