Posts about “Software”
Not all of Apple’s offerings are shiny and perfect. And when it comes to iTunes, most sane people will agree that this music player is just plain ugly. I applaud Scott Gilberson for calling it like it is in his blog post, “The Top Ten Reasons iTunes Sucks”. Here are his main beefs:
It’s a store stupid
The library manager is prehistoric
No web browser/Wikipedia/anything
No plug-in architecture
With the recent release of Firefox 3 Beta 5, the end is in sight for an official release of this popular browser (in the meantime, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 has just come out). Here are some of the improvements Firefox 3 has over it’s predecessor:
Faster (better memory management). Two to four times faster than Firefox 2.
Safer. Scans for malware and checks for phishing.
More intuitive address bar (with autofill feature).
It doesn’t matter how many firewalls, P2P filters, script blockers, or spyware removers you use, the one giveaway to your identity on the Internet is your IP address. Those numbers will trumpet your location to whoever’s interested, which is why you’ll often see annoying ads like “Find friends in (insert your city here) now!” This lack of privacy is a huge problem for political dissidents in China, or for anyone in that country who wants to surf an uncensored version of the net.
PC World has boldly declared that Vista is not all that Microsoft promised it would be. Alex and Kevin from Diggnation were talking about this on their show and how they just want the latest OS despite the sacrifices in frame rates for some games. I’ve seen Vista in action and it looks slick, but it seems to be all flash at this point. I’m extremely satisfied with the robustness of Windows Server 2003, which is so rock solid because it was designed to administer networks.
I’m mostly writing this entry to make sure my website doesn’t die a horrible gurgling death as it flushes away down the internet drain of obscurity. I’ve been busy writing and editing full-time at alive, and loving it! I especially enjoy interacting with readers of the magazine and answering their questions and concerns in that nice, friendly manner that sometimes straddles the line between professionalism and condescension. I’d love to write about it in more detail here, but there are confidentiality issues involved, suffice to say, I do get a lot of ‘interesting’ letters from those that perhaps do not have full reign over their mental faculties.