Category: General Tech

More on Eric Schmidt

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From an open letter written by CNET’s Tom Krazit:

When Google announced plans to develop Android, a smartphone operating system that competes with Apple’s iPhone OS for consumer and developer attention, you said you would recuse yourself from any discussions about the iPhone during meetings of Apple’s board. You reiterated that stance in May after reports emerged that the Federal Trade Commission had raised an eyebrow at your presence on both boards, and when asked if you recuse yourself from any other topics at Apple meetings, you answered, “Not that I recall.”

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Chrome OS

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Google dropped a bombshell late last night:

It’s been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

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‘Nothing Appeals to Everyone’

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Gruber:

Are software touchscreen keyboards good for everyone? Certainly not. But this is another aspect of the Apple Way. Apple tries to make things that many people love, not things that all people like. The key is that they’re not afraid of the staunch criticism, and often outright derision, that comes with breaking conventions.

[…]

That the iPhone — or specifically its software touchscreen keyboard — does not appeal to everyone is not a problem. Nothing appeals to everyone. Even if you try to make something that appeals to everyone by adding every single clamored-for feature, you wind up with something like Windows that does not appeal to people with a taste for the elegant and refined.

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On the Hackintosh

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Macworld’s Dan Frakes:

It’s important to keep in mind the system’s limitations: a relatively slow processor and an underclocked graphics chip, a tiny 1024- by 600-pixel screen, a cramped keyboard, no optical drive, and a horrible, horrible trackpad. It’s a discouraging list of drawbacks, but apart from the trackpad, you know about these limitations going in: you buy a netbook like this, regardless of the OS, because you’re willing to trade performance to get an inexpensive, 2.4-pound laptop with a tiny footprint.

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On the Unknown

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From the aforementioned NY Times story:

Health is the most private of all matters for very good reason, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has never disciplined a company for a failure to disclose health problems. In part, we all buy, sell and trade on someone’s health without knowing their fates. Sergey Brin or Larry Page, Google’s founders, may be fit as fiddles, but they could get run over tomorrow by a Prius in Palo Alto (a Prius would still hurt, right?).

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Eee PC Gets Mighty Mouse Trackball

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Speaking of Eee PCs, plastibots.com has a story covering a Eee PC hardware hack that adds the trackball from Apple’s Mighty Mouse into the case for fast-action scrolling:

I found the 2-finger scrolling using the touchpad a P.I.N.T.A. . So, since it’s never my intent to leave well enough alone, and I was itching for something to take apart and hack, I decided to integrate a trackball into my EEE 901. The Apple Mighty Mouse was the best candidate becase the trackball acts like a wheel on the mouse - I can use it solely for scrolling rapidly through pages of content. Of course, there are other options out there, but its ball acts as a mouse controller (not for scrolling) and I didn’t want to pay the price. I figured the Mighty Mouse would be more of a challenge anyhow.

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They Did Their Town Map in Excel

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Daniel Huffman:

I want to point out that this map is actually provided by the town as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. I am not kidding.

Look, the town population is only about 1700. That’s smaller than a lot of high schools. I can understand that they don’t have a trained cartographer on staff, and when someone decided to make a map, they were not going to be using the latest and most advanced tools that professional cartographers use. But if you want to make a map with giant pixels, try MS Paint (or your preferred equivalent). It is, in fact, significantly harder to make a blocky pixel map in Excel. It’s a spreadsheet program. It’s designed to crunch numbers and show you if the town can afford this year’s hayride. It takes some doing to get pictures out of it.

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