Rants – Page 4 – CyberSurge

Apple Delays Release of Leopard until October

Apple announced yesterday its plans to delay the release of OS X Leopard until October. They said that they had to move some staff from working on Leopard to working on the software on the iPhone. They said that the iPhone will be released in late June as planned and that OS X will be fully featured by then but will not be ready for a final release until this Fall.

This upsets me, the worry actually started back when they announced the iPhone and also announced that they would be changing their name from Apple Computers Inc. to Apple Inc. I was really worried that they would lose sight of what made them such a great company, their computers. I think that the iPhone is really important but I do also think that it could have waited until October and Leopard could not. Microsoft will gain some headroom on the release of their new operating system and Apple seems to be a bit behind.

This is a very important time for operating systems. Users are finally getting to the point where they may be willing to move over to another operating system, now whether that will be Vista, Linux, or OS X had a lot to do with what those are offering. Vista obviously looks really good but no one can claim that it is better than what you get under Linux with XGL or AIGLX. OS X is just beginning to look boring. Expose is still really cool but you can get that on your current hardware by downloading a free operating system and maybe spending about a half an hour playing around with the software to get it doing everything you want it to.

I just think that Apple has made a big mistake and that this will hurt them in the OS market more than they think it will. I have begun to be reluctant about the iPhone, yes its a great phone but I’m worried about keeping it looking good while my fingers are poking at its screen constantly. I also am not sure whether I want to have a $599 device in my pocket at all times, I would almost rather have a small internet tablet like a Nokia N800, a iPod with Video and a really thin and tiny phone.

All I can say is the iPhone better be worth the wait we all have to endure for Leopard.

What can Happen if you “disconnect” for a day

Yesterday I decided to take the day off, no podcasts, no RSS feeds. The only thing I did was check my personal email account and watch Joost.

Well if any of you are an RSS junkie like I am you may know what happens when you do this, I return to over 1000 RSS posts since yesterday morning. Oh my, oh my. So now, I have to get through them right, of course but today I’m spending most of the day out of town shopping and that means it may take me a while to get through these.

I just wanted to let everyone know that I may miss a couple of stories that have a little bit of importance. Being disconnected really stinks, but thats OK, I don’t plan on missing them because I should be able to catch up on over the weekend. Just a warning though about the posts, they will be a little slow today and tomorrow, to focus on weeding out the boring stuff.

The Joost story will be up today but may not make it until 6:00pm or later (eastern time)

News Roundup 3/19/07

Last week there weren’t exactly as many posts as usually and I have to fess up, I had a family member in from out of town that I haven’t seen in a while. I was kind of slacking off. But, with that said this week CyberSurge will be back in full force bringing you all of the stories that you want to hear about.

TV Tuner Goes into Quad Mode

Sony Dropping Playstation 3 Chip

GDC: Reaction From Nintendo/Microsoft on PS3’s Home

Google Exec Confirms Phone in the Labs

Current Barcelona Wafer Pics Revealed

The Guest Zune Hack

On ZuneBoards someone has come up with a way to connect a guest Zune to a computer as if it was the home Zune. This is pretty handy for adding files to your Zune from another computer without erasing everything.

I have been talking to my friends lately about MP3 players. They all love iPods and I do too but I do believe that iPods are not for everyone. I don’t think the Zune is great however I do believe that in time with many hacks and so on the Zune will become a very interesting mp3 player especially for those who love to hack stuff.

Anyway check out a pic of the hack and check the link after the jump.

The Guest Zune Hack

Web Annoyances

No one like intrusive advertising, a few banner ads aren’t bad but when the advertisment gets thrown into the content as if it was part of the content that is just too much. One of these items is intelliTXT, that advertiser that looks at the words on your web site and double underlines some of them and if your mouse touches the word it pops up a window with an advertisment in it.

Why do websites decide to do it, obviously because they want to monitize but isn’t this the worst way to do so. I don’t want to be on a website that bombards me with advertising constantly, especially when I may not even realize that I will be until that darn windows pops up and I have to hit that little X in the corner and hope that it isn’t one of those crazy intelliTXT clones that may take me to the advertisers website because the X is part of the link, like one of those crazy banner ads that look like Winows dialog boxes.

I think that websites should rethink what advertisment programs they use on their website so that we all have a better time on the net.

Blu-Ray May Be Selling More Than HD-DVD

According to a story on InformationWeek, Blu-Ray seems to be selling more disks than HD-DVD is.

“Since the week ended Jan. 7, Blu-ray sales have ranged from a low of 63.3% to a high of 69.6%, VideoScan said Tuesday. On the week ended Feb. 18, the latest figures available, Blu-ray accounted for 65% of the market, compared with HD DVD’s 35%.”

This is big news for a lot of you out there who have been waiting to see which one will win. I think this is great but I do think of it a little bit differently than most other people. Most people tell others to wait it out and see which one wins, this is the way that I look at it. Figure out which one you like better and then try to convince everyone you know to think the same way, and have them do the same, so on and so on. Look, no format will win if no one buys either however if you convince everyone you know to buy one over the other than more people will be buying that format. If less people by the other than it may die leaving your favorite victorious, that is if you have a lot of friends otherwise your favorite could end up losing and you could have wasted money investing in a dead format. I guess this only works if you have a lot of friends.

Anyway you can check out the full article here.

Weekly Pick

This week my pick was going to be the Apple TV but since it got delayed. I went with something that I have been wanting for quite sometime, I recently saw that a local second hand shop had one and boy did I want it.

1.25GHz 20″ G4 iMac

Yea yea I know, how come you want one of those when you have a MacBook and why do you want such an old computer. Mostly because its beautiful and I would be willing to use it day to day. That would become my work computer, I don’t need to much power for that, I just need to be able to access my email and run Shrook alongside Firefox. I don’t know what the second hand store was selling it for but I’m sure it wasn’t exactly cheap, someone on Amazon.com is selling a 15″ one for about $600. But I think the price would be worth owning the best looking computer anyone has ever made. I do like the new iMacs but they just aren’t the same.

Don’t you just miss this iMac, it was the best looking computer ever built, and I just don’t understand why they went to the design we have today, Apple actually did what they said they didn’t want to do when making the G4 take the G3 iMac and cut off the back.

I guess I just don’t under stand why they did what they did.

La Fonera Problemos

I recieved my Fon wireless router a day or two ago and I’ve been having a few problems with it. I can’t get its connection to the internet stable. When I plug it into the Eathernet coming from my cable modem the lights on it flicker on and off but the only one that stays on is the Power indicator. It takes about 5 minutes before the public SSID becomes visible and then I log on so that I can register the router and for one thing it takes forever to connect to the wifi.fon.com site, but then I login and it never finishes loging in it just loads until my browser finally gives up. When I try to log in with the WPA key that they gave me to the private SSID it tells me the password is wrong.

I just don’t know what to do at this point, what I wanted to do is use this router as the open wireless access point for travelers looking to check their email who happen to drive by my house and my other router as my access to the internet but I just can’t get the Fon router working right. Maybe I’m just doing something weird and its not working because of that, I just don’t know at this point.

If I ever get it working I’ll let you readers know about it and let you know what I did to get it working.