Are People Too Hard on Apple?

Apple

As many of you already know if you are a regular reader of my blog. There have been lots of buzz about the ability to run Windows XP on the new Macintel computers.

I have 2 articles here in my weblog on the subject:

Some even went as far as suggesting this is the prequel of Apple Computer abandoning the Mac OS in favor of Microsoft’s Windows OS.

And there are some who suggest this is a preview of a Microsoft take over of Apple Computer Inc., then incorporating it into one of its divisions, based on the tatics, if Microsoft cannot beat them might as well buy them. I respect that all these are individuals’ opinions and some are from well known and outspoken journalist (ie, John Dvorak) of the tech industry. Even so, I do not agree or share these authors’ sentiments.

Having used the Macintosh computer for the past 22 years and a couple more with Apple computers, I must say that it has become the computing tool of choice for me. I have always used a Macintosh, no matter which company I worked for. This was especially so when I was working in North America as a Macintosh Software Developer.

I do agree that the Macintosh had been distance dreams for many corporates who did not choose the platform from the start. These were mainly due to the cost of switching from the Windows environment. Yet there are many corporates, who made the initial decision to use the Macintosh, will tell you, the long term maintenance and support cost is much lower with the Macintosh platform compared to that of Windows platforms. This had been the case since 1984 when the first Macintosh was first introduced.

Since this article is getting long, I will continue part 2 tomorrow.

Say “NO” to UN’s abolishment of Traditional Chinese in 2008

Chinese

Today I was drawn attention to the proposed action of the United Nations to abolish the recognition of Traditional Chinese and make Simplified Chinese the only official written language for Chinese.

I strongly disagree with this decision of the UN, and beg you to read the short article attached to the online petition.

Everyone who feels that this is not the right thing to do should complete the online petition and help spread the word.

Movie Review: The Pink Panther

Poster

My Rating: 3Stars

This evening I went to see the movie “The Pink Panther” at UA Cinema, Time Square.

I had always like the Pink Panther movie series with Peter Sellers back in the 1970’s and 1963:

  1. The Pink Panther
  2. The Return of the Pink Panther
  3. The Pink Panther Strikes Again
  4. Revenge of the Pink Panther

This new movie had the same spirit and I cannot think of any one better to play the role of “Inspector Jacques Clouseau” than Steve Martin.

For the Pink Panther fanboys this is definitely another must have for your DVD collection. Unfortunately, if I talk about the plot of this movie too much I will ruin it for you. That’s one of the reason why I have I only gave this movie 3 penguins.

Rating Legend:
5Stars Not to be missed
4Stars Wait for the DVD
3Stars Buy from iTunes Store
2Stars Rent it on iTunes
1Stars Waste your time elsewhere

Apple Boot Camp Public Beta Available

Finally the official method of allowing a Macintel to run Microsoft’s Windows XP has been made public by Apple Computer. The software is called “Boot Camp” for the time being.

On March 13 I wrote in my My Weblog about “Running Windows XP on an Intel Macintosh (aka. “Macintel”)“. Where that method by two individuals from an open contest was a hack, today’s announcement, from Apple, demonstrates Apple’s elegance method of doing the same thing. It also explains why Apple never commented on the hack solution when it was made public back in March.

Please be aware that this is a “beta” class software from Apple, introducing functionalities that will be part of Apple’s Mac OS 10.5 software update to be available later this year.

With any beta class software, users must keep in mind the standard warning of backing up all data before trying, and because of its “beta” class it is not recommended for use on mission critical systems.

Made Up Words

There are so many words we use in the English language that we take for granted.

Over the years we have come to be accustom to various terms and phrases that are either made-up-words, made-up-phrases or brand names.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s we often use the words:

  • NutraSweet” to refer to sugar substitute;
  • “Coke” to refer to cola drinks; and
  • Coffeemate” to refer to coffee whitener.

Now with recent technological advances and its integration into our daily lives, more terms have come about.

In 2004, they came up with the term “Podcasting” (aka. “Podcast”), which is an amalgamate of the terms “iPod®” and “broadcasting”, to refer to recorded audio programs/shows for time-shift listening. While the word “iPod” itself is a made-up-word by Apple Computer, when they released their version of the MP3 player in October 2001. Similarly there is the word “Vodcast” to refer to recorded videos for time-shift viewing.

Speaking of time-shift viewing, there is also the term”TiVo“, which is a brand, company and service from the US company of the same name started in 1997. They developed the device and service for time-shift viewing of TV programs, by allowing users to record TV programs onto the built-in hard drive of the TiVo console. This made-up-word is often used in the context “I will just TiVo it” – meaning they will record the TV program and watch it at a later date, in another words, time shift the TV program in question.

There are quite many more made-up-phrases that were coined during this past decade:

  • “Let’s Google it” – meaning to search the web/Internet for the subject.
  • “I will Flickr it” – meaning to post a photo on the Internet of the subject.
  • “I will ICQ you” or “I will MSN you” – to tell someone that one will send a message via one of the many instant messaging (IM) services (ie. ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, iChat, GTalk, Jabber, etc.). A variation of this made-up-phrase is “I will IM you”
  • “Why don’t you beam it” – asking someone to send some data via IR (infrared) or Bluetooth from one mobile device to another (ie. telephone number, address, photo, ringtone, etc.).
  • “Let’s Wikipedia it” – meaning to look it up on Wikipedia (a multi-lingual open source encyclopedia

Some of these made-up-phrases and made-up-words are location or geo specific.

For example, in Hong Kong you may hear people use the following phrases:

  • “I want to doot it”
  • Can I doot it

These phrases mean “I want to use Octopus to pay for it” and “Can I pay by Octopus”.

The Octopus&trade card is a very successful and widely used contactless smartcard developed in Hong Kong with over 11 million cards in circulation. It is used in Hong Kong for both payment (public transport, store purchases, parking fees, newspaper stand, etc.) and non-payment (residential complex entry, business tower entry, primary school entry, etc.) transaction.

With all these made-up-words, it is also taking a lot less time for these words or phrases to be officially entered into dictionaries. In August 2005, Oxford Dictionaries officially included the word “Podcast” into their “Oxford Dictionary of English, Revised Second Edition” published on August 11, 2005, which is only 10 months after the word was first used. That is much faster than many of the other new words introduced in this edition of the dictionary; like: “eighty-six”, “fanboy” and “wiki”.

So next time you hear a word or phrase you may want to think about its origin, you never know, you may be participating in a new evolution.