John Topley’s Weblog

I just don’t understand Paul Thurrott. Although I now prefer Apple’s products, I occasionally visit his site because I’m still vaguely interested in the latest news from Microsoft. Much of what Paul writes is balanced and fair, but sometimes he comes out with some complete tosh! The latest being this gem from his preview of Apple’s new MobileMe service:

“I’m not interested in covering every single product that comes out of Redmond, and I am not a Microsoft fan-boy. What I’m interested is products and technologies that affect you, the Windows user. You’ve made a decision to use the world’s best operating system as the center of your computing experience, and I endorse and support that decision.”

—Does anybody seriously think that Windows is the world’s best operating system? It’s the world’s most commercially successful OS, certainly. It has the most number of applications available for it, granted. But the best? Get real, Paul! Mac OS X Leopard wipes the floor with Windows Vista or Windows XP, as more and more people are discovering. Sure, it doesn’t have the shear glut of software that Windows has, but the software is does have covers all the bases and is of a uniformly high quality.

I can only think of one version of Windows that might have been a contender for the title of the world’s best operating system and that was Windows 2000. It was mature and stable and its Windows NT architecture was far in advance of the tired old classic MacOS that was Apple’s offering at the time. I really liked it, even though it had a tendency of switching the focus away from the active window which sometimes drove me nuts.

Sadly Windows 2000 was so late that it barely had time to take off before its successor was announced. Windows XP was too rough around the edges for my liking. Although there was much to like, it did feel unfinished to me; it felt like it was rushed out of the door. Now here we are seven years later and Windows Vista is much the same. That’s quite an achievement considering that over five years elapsed between the two versions.

Going back to Windows after using Leopard is like a Windows 2000 user stepping back in time to Windows 95 or even Windows 3.1. It just doesn’t work as well and feels less polished. Perhaps Windows 7 will be a contender for the title of the world’s best operating system, but I doubt it somehow given Microsoft’s recent track record. Windows is crippled by the burden of its own past, whereas Apple are free to keep moving forward. Sorry Paul.

My partner recently wanted to download a track from HMV Digital. The following is a true account of the process we had to go through before we could play the purchased music. By the way, the HMV Digital website only works with IE 6 or greater, so Firefox, Safari or Opera wasn’t an option. I know, party like it’s 1999!

1. Click to download the purchased track.
2. Tell IE to enable popups for the site.
3. The HMV Download Manager opens.
4. Tell IE to enable ActiveX controls for this window.
5. The download starts but craps out after a few seconds with an obscure “DispInfo” error. I know that this sounds like COM-speak, but what’s a non-programmer to think?
6. Switch to my clean installation of Windows XP running under Parallels on the Mac.
7. Close the Desktop Cleanup Wizard balloon.
8. Log in to the HMV Digital site. Click to download the purchased track.
9. Close the Desktop Cleanup Wizard balloon again.
10. Tell IE to enable popups for the site.
11. The HMV Download Manager opens.
12. Tell IE to enable ActiveX controls for this window.
13. The download starts but craps out after a few seconds. It’s a different error this time: “The client does not have the DRM security update”.
14. Do a Google search on the error text. End up at a Virgin Digital Music Help page. Follow the link to Microsoft to upgrade the security component.
15. Click to download the purchased track. It works this time but is really slow because in the meantime Windows has decided to download this week’s updates.
16. Click to install the updates.
17. Click the balloon to see what updates Windows is installing.
18. Windows Update prompts for a reboot. Ignore it because you haven’t transferred the downloaded track out of the virtual machine yet.
19. Reboot Windows to finish installing the updates.
20. Copy the track to the PC. Double-click it to play it.
21. Windows Media Player 10 warns that some security components are missing. Click to install them.
22. The installation fails.
23. Double-click the file again. Nothing happens. Windows Media Player doesn’t start.
24. Check for updates from within Windows Media Player. Update to the latest version.
25. Windows Media Player can’t play the track because the licence is missing.
26. Re-download the licence file from HMV.

Purchasing Music Online, Apple Style

1. Open iTunes.
2. Click the iTunes Store.
3. Browse or search for what you want.
4. Click Buy Song.

I’ve just been reading a hilarious review over at Engadget of the installation process for the software that comes with Microsoft’s new Zune device. Apart from the fact that the software clearly isn’t finished and has a high stinkage factor, what caught my eye was some of the language used in the screens. In particular:

What the heck does Welcome to the social mean? It’s not even English! Actually that’s not quite true. Around here it’s slang for the dole office. I’m sure that’s not quite the sleek and sexy iPod-bashing image that Redmond’s marketing supremos had in mind for the Zune!

You may have read recently that Dell have had to recall four million laptop batteries made by Sony because a few of them exploded. Well it turns out that Apple have been affected too and have initiated their own recall programme. As soon as a heard this news I knew straight away that my PowerBook would have the problem. After all, it’s only been six months since I sent its original battery back as part of the last recall. Lo and behold, a visit to the website confirmed that my suspicions were right:

I like the way they show you nice friendly green ticks, as if it’s somehow a good thing that your computer contains a battery that could blow up at any minute! Also—in true Apple style—they don’t apologise for the inconvenience or the worry. Sorry is often the hardest word to say, especially if you’re in Cupertino it seems.

I know that lots of PowerBook owners are quite thrilled at the prospect of getting a brand new battery free from Apple, but I’m not. It means that I have take a day’s leave from work so that I can be at home when the courier arrives with the replacement battery (I can’t have parcels delivered to my work). Apple use DHL in the U.K. and DHL don’t deliver on Saturdays (you know, when most people aren’t at work), nor are they able to give you even a morning/afternoon hint as to when your parcel will be delivered. The whole experience seems to be weighted against the customer. I’m convinced that someone could make a killing if they launched a delivery service that was actually geared around when most people are at home i.e. weekday evenings.

I also want to know why laptop batteries are so crap. I can accept that they don’t last that long, because I’m waiting for superconductors that work across a temperature range to completely change the world. What I find hard to swallow is having to send my battery back every six months because a tiny percentage of units have manufacturing defects, which means that all the batteries have to be replaced because the manufacturers haven’t got a clue which ones are affected. Talk about belt and braces!

I was reading about the winners of the Apple Design Awards on Daring Fireball today. Impressed by the sound of iClip Lite from Inventive, I clicked on the link to investigate. This is what greeted me:

—Talk about rude and unhelpful!

Yes, I was using IE 6.0 to try to view the site and yes, I know that it’s not as good as the latest browsers from Mozilla, Opera, Apple and Microsoft themselves—i.e. [sic] IE7. However, I happened to be viewing the site from work where I’m prohibited from using any of those great browsers because the corporate standard is IE 6.0 and frankly, you have to pick your battles. Also, there’s no getting away from the fact that IE 6.0 still has the majority share of the Web browser market.

I don’t mind an unobtrusive banner gently suggesting that I need a newer browser to get the best site experience—I think Subtraction used to do this—but to not let me into the site at all because I’m using IE is not only annoying, it’s also pretty stupid in a business sense. You just ensured that I’ll almost certainly never use one of your products, which is a shame because I definitely dress on the Apple side nowadays rather than on the Microsoft side. Insult IE users if you must, but why couldn’t you bring yourself to provide a link so that they can view the site anyway? Don’t trot out the excuse that supporting IE is too much bother, because it’s not that difficult to construct a standards-compliant site that looks good in all the major browsers.

I’m not done yet as there are two more things that I’d like to get off my chest. Firstly, Windows hardly ever blue screens nowadays, but I guess you’ve not used it since that photo of Bill was taken in, ooh, about 1985? Secondly, it’s spelt browser not brower. Now who feels silly?