So all the people who actually think about what they are writing (Gruber, Ihnatko, Heilemann, Croft, Fry) had similar things to say about the iPad:
FAST.
and
It’s just the best piece of glass you can buy, with an awesome framework/UI/store behind it.
To me, there are obvious verticals (medical) that this will shine in, but the best is education. I seem to have an obsession with Neal Stephenson’s ideas, but this seems to get quite close (perhaps minus some obvious nano-tech related features) to the Primer from his book, The Diamond Age or, A Young Ladies Illustrated Primer. The level of engagement educational material designed with this in mind could achieve is transformative.
Beyond the verticals, this is the computer that most people should own. It takes the iPhone UI, the first successful break from WIMP (Windows, Icon, Mouse, Pointer), and scales it up to something more general purpose.
It’s not perfect. I agree with two of the issues Jeff Croft mentioned – front facing camera and multi-user. But both of these are hard solutions to tackle. How do you deal with varying angles when trying to use a webcam in your lap, holding it up to your face, or propping it up on a table? How do you deal with multiple identities: syncing, switching, data storage?
Norton used to do a good job but slow your system down a bunch. They worked on performance lately, however, it is kind of like a protection racket – you always have to be up to date and paying the policeman.
Two free ones that do a very good job that a lot of people recommend:
AVG Free
http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage
ClamWin
http://www.clamwin.com/
Some people run them together, some just run one.
That said, I don’t run security/anti-virus on any of the Windows machines at our house:
a) Erin’s work laptop (and mine, if I bring it home) has something corporate on it, so that doesn’t count
b) Nothing “mission critical” is on a Windows PC for us, so there’s less risk
c) just having the computers behind the FIOS router, assuming you didn’t go in and open it up wide (it comes fairly protected by default) gives you a lot of protection against external attacks
d) I don’t use Internet Explorer unless I absolutely have to (for example, State Farm’s website used to only work on IE) – Google Chrome or Firefox, kept up to date, provides a ton of security re: Internet attacks
e) I’m smart about the things I open (files sent from others via Email, weird websites, etc.)
A friend asked if I had any input on Windows Antivirus Software, or Internet Security in general. I fired off this email in response.
Norton used to do a good job but would slow your system down a bunch. They have worked on performance lately – however, the whole antivirus industry is kind of like a protection racket – you always have to be up to date and paying the policeman.
Two free ones that do a very good job that a lot of people recommend:
That said, I don’t run security/anti-virus on any of the Windows machines at our house (and I’m probably tempting the fates just by revealing this, but…):
Erin’s work laptop (and mine, if I bring it home) has something corporate on it, so that doesn’t count.
Nothing “mission critical” is on a Windows PC for us, so there’s less risk – I also don’t ever “browse” on a Windows machine at our house.
Just having the computers behind the FIOS router, assuming you didn’t go in and open it up wide (it comes fairly protected by default) gives you a lot of protection against external attacks.
I don’t use Internet Explorer unless I absolutely have to (for example, State Farm’s website used to only work on IE) – Google Chrome or Firefox, kept up to date, provides a ton of security re: Internet attacks.
I’m smart about the things I open (files sent from others via Email, weird websites, etc.)
Please allow me to merge my accounts. I seem to have 3, and together they make one giant clusterf***. I have my original gmail account. Then I got Google Apps For Your Domain, which has everything all laid out nicely connected to emmott.com. But then, since that doesn’t seem to fly for many of your web apps, I have to have a new 3rd account, kevan.emmott, that is valid for those web apps but somehow disparate from my GAFYD account. Yet I use my GAFYD email address as the email for this third account – can you say big ‘ole mess?
A link to a website gets more search juice than the website itself. The website owner files a DMCA takedown, and the linking site gets removed from google results. Um, *wow* that’s BS.
Spaces should work like it did in Leopard regarding trigger button operation.
Spaces in 10.5 worked like this: Press one key or mouse button to trigger spaces to come up, see multiple screen view.
Move mouse to space you want selected.
Press the *same* trigger key/button, *or* press the left mouse button. Selected Space becomes the active one, zooms in to regular view.
Spaces in 10.6 works the same, except pressing the trigger button no longer works as a selection method – instead, it acts like a cancel and you go back to the space you were in before.The only way to move into the space your mouse is over is to press the select button (left mouse button). This means a button press is added to the process, and in addition, it is different than Expose (where “trigger-move-trigger again” still works).
TIBCO iProcess Engine makes an assumption when it installs. It assumes that the database owner name and the schema name for that user will match. With a standard mixed-mode SQL Server 2005 install this would be fine – throw Windows Integrated Authentication (WIA) in the mix and it gets complicated. SQL2k5 creates a dbo user, linked to a domain account, and a dbo schema. TIBCO assumes the schema name will match what it resolves the dbowner to (domain/user). It doesn’t allow you to override this. It doesn’t take what SQL2k5 says is the default schema for the user. It makes an assumption. Which then results in a error during installation or the creation of a schema that can break enterprise standards. And it’s just ugly.
