The brother just got himself a MacBook and was going through the usual switcher phases and it reminded me of this ad from almost two decades ago. To this day it takes great self control to keep from blurting out the last line from this ad whenever a PC user is bitching about computer problems.
This awesome clip from the animated show, ‘The Family Guy’ is doing the rounds of the internet. They’re taking the piss outta Microsoft’s Zune MP3 Player.
I consider myself a pretty nerdy, techy guy. I’ve been around computers for twenty years now. I’ve built computers for friends, worked in tech support, I can edit video and audio with ease. Yesterday, to test the performance of a new hard drive I disassembled this laptop. Twice.
So why the fuck is it that in all my days I have NEVER found a single text editor that doesn’t make me want to throw the computer I’m using out the window? Am I specially-abled or something? Am I fucking retard?
I’ve tried them all. Microsoft Word is the most vile of the lot, every now and then when I’m stuck on a Windows machine and confronted with doing any writing on it, my scalp tingles. So many years of Word crashing on me after I have slaved over some writing for hours has left me with an instinctual, feral, aversion to it. Oh and by the way, the fine folks at Microsoft that designed the ‘Autosave’ feature in Word? Please mail me for my home address so you can come over here and kiss my arse.
Even simple stuff like dragging a margin or creating a hanging indent in Word damn near drives me to tears. Word on the Mac is better by an infinitesimally small amount. Geez.
Open Office sucks too but I’ve always lived by the adage that you get what you pay for and Open Office is free. My point proven.
Apple’s Pages is bearable, until you start getting adventurous with the formatting at which point all bets are off. Also you usually have to export your work into the de-facto Word Format (so the 99% of the world not using a Macintosh can read your opus) which is another crap-shoot.
And now there’s a new joy in my life. Wordpress! For the most part I still use the online interface. It’s actually that good, even for an old school ‘apps for everything‘ dude like myself. Except for the text editor.
Now and then when I’m making a post Wordpress will decide to totally fuck with me by adding a line-feed where I don’t want it or right justifying something I want left justified. The previous post was an example. After half an hour of trying, I gave up on getting Wordpress to format the post the way I wanted. I rewrote the entire post from scratch and this isn’t the first time this has happened. Brought to my goddamn knees by some HTML and some javascript. Pathetic.
So. Can anyone please tell me, why is a self-confessed ubergeek like myself flummoxed by what are essentially fucking text editors on steroids? Anyone?
This is the new Microsoft OS for Smart-phones (for those masochists who don’t get enough of the awesome ‘Windows Experience™’ on their computers. Thwaack! Thank you sir! May I have another?)
Notice how even in the demo the phone isn’t actually doing anything.
Oh and BTW! My favourite part of all this? This might be Microsoft’s answer to the Apple iPhone. It’s iPhone killer as it were.
And what have they called it? The MyPhone! LOL. This shit just writes itself! I don’t even have to try with stories about these monkeys.
Thank you for coming ladies and gentlemen. Don’t forget to tip your waitresses. I’m here all week.
So, thanks to the drivel you read here, I got offered a sort of gig to write a few pieces for the Hindustan Times’ Mumbai Supplement called ‘HT Café’ and I took them up on the offer. The first piece came out today and I’d have linked to it but HT’s online version (or epaper) requires a (free) user account to view. I know most people can’t be bothered to go through the hassle of setting this up (I wouldn’t) so I’m posting the article right here, after the jump. To the powers at HT please get with the program and remove the login requirements for your epaper. Even The Times of India dropped their login for the epaper sometime last year. Imagine that! Welcome to the year Two Thousand and Nine.
The piece I wrote was about Gmail Offline, a new Google labs feature available in your Gmail account. The article is refreshingly free of cuss words and snarky euphemisms (mostly) for those who’s fragile sensibilities are offended by such stuff. If HT’s readers like the piece (and more importantly, if HT ‘shows me the money!’ I’ll probably do this occasionally) Read on..
If you have been reading the papers you may have read about the huge fuck up (there is no other way to put it) over at Google this week. A tiny error ended up flagging every site on the internet as malicious, including Google’s own sites.
You may have come across these warning flags, quite often if you search for warez or hacked software or serial numbers or porn. (I’m just sayin’) Google’s search result page will have a link with a warning saying “This site may harm your computer” more than once and it refuses to link you to the site directly. If you are sure you’re safe (on a Mac) or if you really want to see ‘Teh nekkid ladies’ you have to manually copy and paste the web address or URL into a fresh browser window and go there at your own risk.
Many people do this. I have done this very often too. You make a stupid mistake. Idiot at keyboard.
This is Microsoft’s official infomercial for SongBirdSmith, their <cringing> GarageBand Killer. While you watch it please remember that Microsoft is one of the biggest software companies in the world and this is the best it can come up with.
For those not in the know GarageBand is Apple’s entry level music production software that comes preloaded on every Mac. It makes it very simple for anyone but the most tone-deaf moron to quickly throw together a jingle or soundtrack like this one here. Try sitting through the entire film. I couldn’t.
P.S. Those shiny silver laptops in the Microsoft ad? ALL Apple MacBook Pros. MICROSOFT FAIL!
P.P.S. Thanks to Aditya for the tip. Its SongSmith not SongBird. In my defence MS’s naming isn’t the most intuitive in the world. Look at Windows’ names: 98,ME,2000,XP,Vista,7 i.e. A year,two letters, a year, a word and a random number. Geez.
