Microsoft says 74 percent of work PCs still use Windows XP, extends downgrade rights until 2020

See Foot. Shoot it. Good job, Microsoft. As annoying as it is, Apple's force-you-to-upgrade-eventually-somehow model is better. I'd say something about Linux, but I'm not sure the comparison makes as much sense.

From the article:

The latest Microsoft operating system may be selling seven copies a second, but it's no match for the behemoth Windows XP, still the most popular OS in the world despite recent nefarious attempts (we kid) to invoke spontaneous shutdowns, slow hard drives and trigger blue screens. In fact, a Microsoft exec admitted today that practically three-quarters of business computers still run the nine-year-old OS on hardware averaging 4.4 years old, and Computerworld's now reporting Microsoft will extend XP's lifespan through 2020 (you read that right) as a result. "Going forward, businesses can continue to purchase new PCs and utilize end user downgrade rights to Windows XP or Windows Vista until they are ready to use Windows 7," an official Windows blog post reads. We've heard the reluctance to upgrade is due to a reliance on older software and the cost of additional IT, but it probably doesn't hurt that Microsoft doggedly keeps distributing the OS despite the other choices on offer. Perhaps the futuristic Windows 8 will finally win the workplace over, but it seems Redmond's hedging its bets on this one. Look on the bright side: this way, when intelligent robots battle for control of the moon, at least the wrathful victors will still be vulnerable to the blue screen of doom.

Microsoft says 74 percent of work PCs still use Windows XP, extends downgrade rights until 2020 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google's Larry Page: Steve Jobs is 'rewriting history' by saying Android came after the iPhone

It's funny to see how far Android has come.

From the article:

Steve Jobs might have thought he was lightly playing down reports that the Apple / Google rivalry had dramatically changed when he said "they decided to compete with us -- we didn't go into the search business" at D8, but it appears that his phrasing didn't sit so well with Larry Page, who told Reuters yesterday that Jobs was doing a "little bit of rewriting history," and that the "characterization of us entering [the phone market] after is not really reasonable." Page, who was being interviewed alongside Eric Schmidt, also said that Google had been working on Android for "a very long time" and that the goal was always to develop phones with solid browsers to fill a market void.

That's true, of course -- Google purchased Andy Rubin's Android, Inc. in 2005 -- but it's also an equally slight distortion: when Android was officially announced in November of 2007, it looked nothing like the OS we know and love today, and the SDK emulator used an image of an HTC-built prototype that had much more in common with the traditional BlackBerry than the iPhone. (Fun fact: that device eventually became the Palm Treo Pro running Windows Mobile.) It wasn't until the G1 shipped almost a year later that Android started to look more like what it is today, and we'd even argue that it wasn't until Android 2.0 hit on the OG Motorola Droid along with Verizon's Droid Does marketing campaign that the platform grew into its own unique and successful identity -- an identity that is now powerfully differentiated against the iPhone and driving accelerating device sales every quarter.

So, does any of this really matter? To the tech historians, perhaps -- and Apple and Google clearly see what they're doing as historically significant. Apart from that, it's a pretty meaningless distinction; Eric Schmidt followed up Page's comment by saying that the market was big enough for the iPhone and Android to coexist, and we seriously doubt anyone's phone purchasing decision will ever turn on what platform was released first. But it's also clear that the competition between these two companies is at fever pitch, which is great news for the rest of us -- let's just hope everyone involved remembers that Jobs closed his D8 remarks by saying "just because we're competing with somebody doesn't mean we have to be rude."

Google's Larry Page: Steve Jobs is 'rewriting history' by saying Android came after the iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Headlines for The Ages

Maybe some headline writers at Reuters have a little too much time on their hands?

An InDesign for HTML and CSS?

In “CSS is the new Photoshop” (?), Adobe’s John Nack correctly observes, as have many of us, that “Cascading Style Sheets can create a great deal of artwork now, without reliance on bitmap graphics.” Nack quotes Shawn Blanc, one of several concurrent authors of the phrase “CSS is the new Photoshop,” who cites as evidence Louis Harboe’s iOS icons and Jeff Batterton’s iPhone, both designed entirely in CSS and both only viewable in the latest Webkit browsers, Safari 5 and Google Chrome 5.

He’s not alone: Håkon Wium Lie from Opera predicts that CSS3 could eliminate half the images used on the Web. You can use various graphical tools to generate things like CSS gradients and rounded corners. As people can do more and more in code, it makes sense to ask whether even to use Photoshop in designing Web content.

I think Adobe should be freaking out a bit, but in a constructive way.

So far, so good. But Nack’s “constructive” suggestion for Adobe, quoting Michael Slade, is to create “the modern day equivalent of Illustrator and PageMaker for CSS, HTML5 and JavaScript.”

Nack acknowledges that this will be difficult. I propose that it will be impossible. Says Nack:

As I noted the other day, “Almost no one would look inside, say, an EPS file and harrumph, ‘Well, that’s not how I’d write PostScript’–but they absolutely do that with HTML.”

Well, there is a reason they absolutely do that with HTML. PostScript is a programming language designed to describe page layouts and text shapes in a world of known, fixed dimensions (the world of print), with no underlying semantics. PostScript doesn’t care whether an element is a paragraph, a headline, or a list item. It doesn’t care if a bit of content on one page cites another bit of content on a different page. PostScript is a visual plotting language. And HTML is anything but.

HTML is a language with roots in library science. It doesn’t know or care what content looks like. (Even HTML5 doesn’t care what content looks like.) Neither a tool like Photoshop, which is all about pixels, nor a tool like Illustrator, which is all about vectors, can generate semantic HTML, because the visual and the semantic are two different things.

Moreover, authoring good HTML and CSS is an art, just as authoring good poetry or designing beautiful comps in Photoshop is an art. Expecting Photoshop to write the kind of markup and CSS you and I write at our best is like challenging TextMate to convert semantic HTML into a visually appropriate and aesthetically pleasing layout. Certain kinds of human creativity and expertise cannot be reproduced by machines. Yes, there are machines that create music, and a composer like Brian Eno can program such systems to create somewhat interesting aural landscapes, but such music can never be the Eroica or “This Land is Your Land,” because there is no algorithm with the creative and life experience of Beethoven or Woody Guthrie.

Adobe already has a fine product in the code arena. Some hand coders knock Dreamweaver, but it does about as good a job as is possible of converting groupings of meaningless pixels into chunks of valid code. It is unreasonable to expect more than that from a tool that begins by importing a multi-layered Photoshop comp. Of course you can do much more with Dreamweaver if you use its code merely as a starting point, or if you use it simply as a hand-coding environment. But that’s the point. Some things, to be done right, must be done by the human mind.

There’s something to what Nack says. Photoshop could be made friendlier to serious web designers. Adobe could also stop ignoring Fireworks, as Fireworks is a better starting place for web design. They might even interview serious, standards-oriented web designers and start from scratch, as a new tool will suffer from fewer political constraints and user expectations than a beloved existing product with deep features and multiple audiences.

But while our current tools can certainly stand improvement, no company will ever create “the modern day equivalent of Illustrator and PageMaker for CSS, HTML5 and JavaScript.” The very assumption that a such thing is possible suggests a lack of understanding of the professionalism, wisdom, and experience required to create good HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Fortunately, a better understanding is easy to come by.

Al Qaeda launches English language magazine - CNN.com

No, YOUR mom.

From the article:

A table of contents of the magazine listed an article called "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom."

Hulu CEO: we're 'complementary' to cable

I already have something that is complementary to cable. It's called a DVR. Hulu Plus is asking me to pay $10 every month for mostly OTA reruns that I could have DVR'd if I wanted (or just got them on Netflix streaming for the most part). If Hulu isn't gunning to replace cable, they're already dead to me. Hulu was cool when it came out (I guess) but the lack of vision and willingness to sprint toward obsolescence is astounding (in a bad way).

From the article:

Hoping to trade in your expensive cable or satellite plan for a nice, juicy melon ball of cottage cheese-like... we mean, a portable Hulu Plus subscription at $10 a month? Not so fast, my fine fingered friend, because Hulu CEO Jason Kilar has revealed that killing cable is not a part of the company's evil plan, and he's not entertaining any ideas to the contrary. Kilar told AllThingsD that the service is "broadcast-focused" and "complementary to your cable and satellite service" by design, which is a nice way of saying the incestuous relationships between cable companies, content providers and Hulu itself keep it from offering premium programming -- at least, not at this sort of price.

Speaking of getting what you pay for, you may be surprised to hear Hulu Plus displays advertising even if you slap down currency every month, but the CEO said lengthy consumer research found that users were more willing to pay if the service were partially subsidized by ads. Think of them as tiny little brain tenderizers, and we're sure you'll be just fine.

Continue reading Hulu CEO: we're 'complementary' to cable

Hulu CEO: we're 'complementary' to cable originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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