Editorial Archive

Just some days ago Apple requested input from PC users or from Mac users coming from the PC world. They asked for some input regarding what a PC user would like to see on Apple's products. While I am already a Mac user, I would like to see the following. If it doesn't happen (as it hasn't), I intend to do it myself with some smart friends.

"To speech recognition is the way of the future. To imagine a world where you can simply capture devices, write him the males and messages to friends, and receive your fingers from the syndrome site carpal tunnel syndrome. Unfortunately, it's not perfect. Obviously, the paragraph above was "written" using speech recognition, and clearly either I, or the software, has a ways to go. It's not even clear what I was trying to say, which was: "Speech recognition is the wave of the future. Imagine a world where you can simply talk to devices, write emails or messages to friends, and relieve your fingers from carpal tunnel syndrome". Read the article at ExtremeTech.

It is not just me. Other analysts and journalists claim that what Sun is trying to achieve with their lawsuit against Microsoft is too much, and in places does not make sense at all. In this editorial, I discuss Sun's lawsuit point by point, and evaluate how sensible (or not) it is.

A while ago I was reading a comment on Slashdot that indicated that evolution in the human population no longer happens. This isn't actually true as humans have continued to evolve albeit in subtle ways - BBC2 had a very good program about this a while back.

"Given the speed at which technology changes, the world is much different than it was even five years ago. Consider this, for example: By the end of the year, two platforms--J2EE and .Net--will essentially control the programming languages market. J2EE already commands large market share, while Microsoft has moved all of its languages over to .Net." Read the rest of the editorial at ZDNews.

"This will end up being one of the world's worst investments, I'm afraid," - David House, former Intel chief of corporate strategy said in the early 1990s. I've been fasinated by microprocessors for years and have been following the Merced debacle since back in 1994 when HP and Intel announced they were getting together to make some amazing new technology.

"You've heard of killer apps? How about an app killer? This is what voice recognition has become over the years, because for the most part, it doesn't work. I see no evidence that it ever will, at least not in the sense that we can achieve true voice dictation capability. What annoys everyone most about voice recognition is that it almost works. This is the problem. When something almost works, developers continue with the same thinking that got them to "almost," rather than starting over with new ideas. We are now stuck in a blind alley." Who else? Dvorak is hitting the nail in the head again.

"AMD competes with Intel, and the public wins. The right Microsoft antitrust settlement can bring the same energy back to the software market. The personal computer industry may be in its worst slump in history, but you wouldn't know it by following the news from the processor wars. Over the past two years, Intel and AMD have unleashed an incredible competitive cycle in Silicon Valley." Read the interesting editorial at Salon.com.

I'm writing this opinion piece on the eve of perhaps Apple's most hyped MacWorld Expo ever. TIME Canada has already pre-released an article about the next-generation flat-panel iMac machines, complete with pictures of the it, its industrial designer and Apple CEO Steve Jobs. While the complete picture has yet to be painted (and will be in the morning when Jobs reveals the specifications during his keynote speech), I'm starting to believe that Apple feels that "innovation" and "revolution" are a matter of hardware and user interface aesthetics. Where Apple used to pave the way for new technologies, programming methodologies and user interfaces, they remain stuck in a rut of their own creation, bound to re-create a lot of the same mistakes that caused them to lose the majority of their market share and relevance to Microsoft in the 1990's. E-I-C's note: The article was written before the actual MacWorld Keynote took place.

We hail those who attempt to create new operating systems from scratch. They are the leaders, the visionaries, the influencers of this great tech-age. There will always be only 2 areas of how an OS can be great - great marketing (which provides great third party support), and great design. Microsoft has always invested more in the former, and Apple in the latter. This article discusses some design aspects. Update: The article has been updated at several places.

There were an amazing number of people (around 300,000) who visited OSNews recently to read Scot Hacker's article on MacOSX. As part of the camp of BeOS refugees, I have been searching for some time for a suitable replacement. Many come close - FreeBSD is fantastic, but still complicated, the new school of Linuxes are very close to ready for me, even Windows XP has come a long way. My x86 machine is pretty fun - it gets a new OS every two weeks or so. But what does that say - that I like variety or that I can't find what I want? I'd suggest most of us still feel that we're missing something - otherwise, why read osnews.com?

"Cocktail parties and relating to the opposite sex are two very human activities that preoccupy many during the holiday season. Computers are notoriously poor at both: artificial intelligence researchers have long envied the human abilities to assign gender to faces and pick voices out of a noisy babble. Now San Diego company HNC Software has taught personal computers equivalent feats of recognition, and claims that the technique is a significant advance for AI, both theoretically and for building practical applications." Get the rest of the story at ZDNews. Our Take: Last February I wrote an editorial on Artificial Intelligence and how this can change the way we are using computers or the way operating system's... actually operate.

From the latest Open BeOS Newsletter: "Imagine this. GUIs designed completely outside of the realm of the application. Something like, say, SoundPlayer, coming with a default interface. You can do more than "make a skin", you can redesign the whole UI, so long as you send the right messages. Applications basically become servers. The GUI becomes a client. It shouldn't be too hard to make an add-on to a web browser that could display this hypothetical solution. And, if BMessages could be sent across a network, one could run their apps from anywhere in the world. Imagine that." What are your throughts on the subject? Discuss.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that we are heading for a world in which there are only two operating systems Windows and Linux. Within 10 years virtually all computers, from the smallest wristwatch (don't laugh) to the largest mainframe (they will never die), will run one of these two operating systems. All others are headed for extinction." Maybe true, maybe not. Get the rest of the story at It.MyCareer.