In a desperate bid for survival, long-time office software maker Corel has agreed to a takeover by its majority investor, Vector Capital, a move that could help keep classic software packages such as WordPerfect and CorelDraw around as Microsoft Office alternatives, at least for a while.
It continues to surprise me how many people still use WordPerfect.
Wired’s Brian Chen nails it. I totally agree — I enjoy using my Magic Mouse, which is something I never thought I would say about a pointing device.
Apple’s new Core i7-based iMac might be a performance monster, but it looks like the whole family’s having some problems getting out of the gate: in addition to the previously-noted performance issues with the Core 2 Duo models, a quick glance across Apple’s support forums and on other Mac boards around the web reveals that some machines are showing up DOA and / or with cracked screens. We’re a little more familiar with the DOA issue, since the new i7 we just bought doesn’t boot at all, but the cracked screen issue seems to be equally common and mostly affecting the bottom left corner, from what we can tell. Now, our review Core 2 Duo 27-inch iMac is perfectly fine, and Chris Ziegler’s new Core i7 machine doesn’t have any problems either, so these obviously aren’t universal issues, but if you’re about to stick one of these under the tree for someone it might be wise to do some surreptitious testing first.
The argument that you can make iPhone web apps that are “good enough” misses the entire point of iPhone apps — the entire point of the iPhone itself, even — all of the things that drive Twitter users to pay $3, $4, or $5 for apps that do the same things that can be done for free by loading Twitter’s web site in MobileSafari. “Good enough” is not good enough on the iPhone.
Engadget has posted the third installment of the Engadget Show. In this episode, Joshua Topolsky interviewed HTC’s director of user experience Drew Bamford who discussed HTC Sense and the design problems his team ran into when designing their product. It’s a great look at how sketches turn into something millions of people use everyday.
Apple has launched two new iPhone ads, touting AT&T’s 3G network and it’s ability to handle data and a voice call at the same time.
Verizon’s 3G network operates like AT&T’s EDGE network in this regard — to access data, you have to disconnect from a voice call.
While the ads’ message is well-received and a good point to make, it is interesting to see Apple defend AT&T’s network. I think Apple realizes that the public’s feeling towards AT&T — which is increasingly negative — has the potential to hurt iPhone sales. At least as long as the iPhone is exclusive to AT&T.
And other than a few specific tasks in which the most expensive Mac Pro’s 8 cores proved beneficial (Handbrake, Cinebench, etc), the iMac outperformed the competition or kept things close enough not to be relevant, plus it straight-up won in the eyes of Speedmark 6.
Performance-wise, the base Mac Pro makes no sense at all. The 8-core Mac Pro offers a touch more power, sometimes, and other times (in many day to day tasks) even it is outgunned.
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Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.
The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.
CNN Money is teasing us all.
Kevin Lipe, describing a problem he ran into during NaNoWriMo:
Here’s the deal: I’ve been using this as my main word processor for a year and a half now, for everything from school papers to poems to a novel. It hasn’t let me down yet in terms of doing what I ask of it—that is, up until now. I’ve started using a MacBook (Mid-2007) as my main writing machine instead of my MacBook Pro (better keyboard) and I also have a Thinkpad X60 tablet with the gargantuan 8-cell, six-hour battery that I love to write on. As a result, I’m moving files around from machine to machine and also from operating system to operating system, and RTF is hideously inconsistent between programs, and especially between operating systems. Something’s always missing, whether it’s page numbers, the footer, whatever.