David H Dennis's Profile

  • http://www.amazing.com/users/show/1
  • Feb 08, 2008
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Latest comments made by: David H Dennis

  • You might recall that the Real Steve Jobs offered free MacOS X to the OLPC project, and he was turned down since they preferred Linux for ideological reasons. This would tend to make him embittered towards the project and so I think there's a real possibility that Dan Lyons' attitude tracks Steve's. I think the OLPC is actually pretty cool for what it is, but I do think some of the features (like the whole thing being in Python, with features making it easy to explore and tweak the source) may be wasted on the target audience. I'd like to see whether I'm right or wrong about that, though. It's very possible I'm too cynical. Bear in mind, however, that MacOS X itself is an open source project at its lowest levels as well, so the Real Steve has to be at least somewhat supportive of open source. D
    David H Dennis had this to say on Feb 08, 2008 Posts: 7
    Enough is enough, Mr Lyons. Stop the pretense already.
  • The reason the Zune can be updated in this way is that the new generation Zune is the same as the old generation Zune, with a new wardrobe but no radical changes. Since the iPhone and iPod Touch are radically different from old iPods, of course you can't change one into the other with a software upgrade. The iPod's CPU isn't powerful enough to run the new software, and there is no touch screen. Apple has already updated iPhone twice and promises continuous updates throughout the device. iPhone owners have already gotten two updates, with more on the way. It looks to me like old iPhones will be updated to resemble new ones, with the exception of technology that is not on the old units (such as a 3G radio). Looks to me like Apple is doing just fine in this respect, and that pretty much invalidates your article. D
    David H Dennis had this to say on Oct 12, 2007 Posts: 7
    Why The Zune Will Outdo The iPod
  • Numbers is frustrating. It has a brilliant, beautiful design and the thoughts behind it are wonderful. So it will get my $79, if nothing else to encourage the developers to do more. But I can crash it by just importing a 7,800 line CSV file and trying to change the format of two columns to currency. I thought, well, maybe it's time to dump my historic 1.5 year old PowerBook for a shiny new MacBook Pro. But then I went to the Apple Store and tried the same thing in their beautiful 2.4ghz dual core Intel MacBook Pro and it did the same thing :-(. That MacBook Pro ran Motion seamlessly, opened Safari in a single bounce and looked like my dream machine on steroids ... and then I tried to use Numbers. I sure hope Apple improves this. It has so much promise! I'd dump Excel in a heartbeat when it can work on bigger files without choking. D
    David H Dennis had this to say on Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 7
    iWork '08—Numbers & Keynote
  • I would simply point out that at the time Aperture was introduced, Adobe did not own Macromedia and so was completely unrelated to flash. The whole iPhone design was pretty much set at the time of the takeover. So I don't think that's any reason to say that Apple's building image editing software. That being said, Photoshop needs some competition. It's not an easy program to learn or grasp. Apple is one of the few companies that could produce a strong alternative. And with Core Image it might not even be all that tough to do. Consider Motion. Motion has compositing and filters just like Photoshop. Modify it to deal with larger images and it might look strikingly like a Photoshop competitor. So it might be that you don't need many more programmers to create a Photoshop alternative because all the heavy lifting is done through Core Image. Motion may need to deal with larger images soon in any event because the RED camera [red.com] is coming. This camera shoots continuous 4K (digital SLR-sized) images. Motion will need to deal with this format and so you might as well add full still image capabilities, just as Photoshop now has moving image editing abilities in its professional version. So why not give Photoshop a little competition? It would force Adobe to redouble their efforts on the Mac platform, as they have with Lightroom. And it would make the Mac platform more relevant as many people would try and adopt the new program. D
    David H Dennis had this to say on Aug 02, 2007 Posts: 7
    Is Apple Building A Photoshop Replacement?
  • Didn't Microsoft show off their latest version of Windows CE, and didn't it look just like the older version, only with darker colors? Someone pointed out today that Windows Vista takes 15gb while MacOS X takes about 3-4gb, with about 0.5gb for the cellphone version. If you use a similar ratio, Windows Vista Mobile will take about 2gb and that's a huge hit for the current capacity of flash memory. It took about 2.5 years for Apple to develop the iPhone OS and I think it would take a similar period at minimum for MS to come up with a Vista lightweight enough to work on a phone. D
    David H Dennis had this to say on Mar 14, 2007 Posts: 7
    iPhone Realizes Steve's Dream to Exploit Mac OS
  • I have a Mac and a PC on my desk. The PC is borrowed from a friend who never got around to taking it out of its box when he bought it about six months ago. The PC completely flunks the requirements for Vista in every category. Vista Basic is "recommended" despite its fairly recent vintage and fast processor. D
    David H Dennis had this to say on Feb 08, 2007 Posts: 7
    Vista Helping OS X
  • Well, you still don't have it quite right, which is just an indication of how bad the situation is for consumers. (1) If you buy a new computer for under about $1,000 you won't be able to run Home Premium. You are stuck with Home Basic and won't be able to upgrade to Home Premium without spending lots of money. (2) If you have an old(*) computer that cost under $1,000 in 2006, you're stuck with Home Basic. Even if you have a more expensive one, you will still need a memory upgrade to 2GB of RAM to run Vista well. (3) Many will need Vista Ultimate. Those who want to hook up to their corporate domain from home, while still having home features will need Vista Ultimate. Those who want extra security features will need Vista Ultimate. Vista Ultimate is horribly overpriced at $399 for the hapless folks who need it because they pretty much have you where they want you. You can buy an OEM version of Vista Ultimate for $199. This means you are on your own for support and your license is forever locked to a single computer. In return, you're saving 50% on the purchase price. If you need Vista, I would highly recommend this option. So you need to be aware of and understand Home Basic, Home Premium, Vista Ultimate and the existance of OEM versions (that's five more products for you to choose from!) to make your decision correctly. (4) MacOS X is equivalent to Vista Ultimate in features, not Home Premium. Therefore the cost savings associated with MacOS X, even when compared to the OEM versions of Vista, are substantial. Compared to the precisely equivalent packaged versions, they are massive. (5) Both PC makers and Microsoft seem to be determined to confuse you as much as possible when buying a home PC. This is because they know nobody wants Vista Basic and yet people are used to pricing that would only allow hardware compatible with Basic. So we have the difference between a "capable" and "Premium Ready" computer. They want to snooker you into buying a "Basic" computer and think it's "Premium Ready" before you get it into your home and find none of the fancy effects and cool features you were promised. Or maybe they want you to try and buy Basic and rely on a salesperson to explain Premium to you and convince you to buy a $1,000 PC instead of a $500 PC. In other words, they want you to buy SOME PC so they can make money and they don't really want you to understand what you're buying. I don't know about you, but this looks like a recipe for disaster to me. I really doubt that more than a handful of computer buyers are going to understand things they really need to understand to make an informed purchase. Many people have their issues with Steve Jobs but compared to this particularly nasty bait and switch deal he looks awfully good. All MacOS computers currently being sold will run Leopard just fine. Even PowerPC systems that are a few years old will still run it. I think they finally cut off support for computers made in 2001 or before. D (*) An "old" computer in this context is any computer more than a month old. An "ancient" computer is pre-2006. Vista will NOT run on "ancient" computers adequately, ever. That's planned obsolescence!
    David H Dennis had this to say on Feb 07, 2007 Posts: 7
    Vista Helping OS X