Well I guess it's evident now that it is not possible for me to maintain this web page during the school year. And by maintain I mean post new articles here and then. I have some ideas for new posts but I just haven't had the time (or motivation) to use these ideas and actually create the post. I am now going to spend a couple minutes to go through some quick thoughts that I've had on recent events in no particular order.
Windows 8 Consumer Preview
Nice name by the way, apparently "beta" is too mainstream. Disclaimer: I haven't personally tried windows 8 (though I would very much like to, and I'm not talking about virtualizing it here. I want the full experience.), but I can't help but say that it's kind of like mac os 10.7 lion. There are some features that I really like, such as the new windows task manager (I find the layout very informative and the colors convey the information efficiently), and I'm talking about the detailed view here.
Though I don't know whether this metro interface is the way to go, with the start menu "gone." The metro UI does not facilitate an efficient desktop experience. Say you just want to search up a program to start up, you would have to press the window key, then you have to find (I believe you press "control-f" to search all apps, and then select the app that you want to launch. But the thing is, the change is too drastic. The change from the desktop to the metro interface just seems so jarring, like I'm moving from one experience to another. I really hope that microsoft provides a way to disable the metro interface. That and a tweak to put back the old start menu and windows 8 would be good to go. In the end I actually have some faith in microsoft on this issue, where they will listen to customer demand and provide options (unlike apple and snow leopard/iCloud).
In the meantime I will consider downloading the consumer preview, though I will have to find some sort of external hard drive or USB drive to store the temporary windows 8 partition. I don't really have that much time at the moment, perhaps I will do that over the summer.
Google Calendar
I have been a longtime user of google calendar, but a recent change has really infuriated me, and continues to lead me to believe that Google is definitely evil. Google calendar recently eliminated the option to view the calendar in the "classic view temporarily." And they did this pretty suddenly. During the whole time I was using google calendar I received no message, no email about the change. Google said they gave some warnings in advance but for me personally I had no idea they were going to change. And I wouldn't be so vocal about the change if the new layout wasn't so bad. But it is atrocious, where the colors are horrible and the layout is not efficient with space at all.
These days when I have time I'm still trying to find a good replacement for google calendar, so that I can view it on the desktop. I thought iCal would be a prime candidate, but then the font is far too small on the calendar, and there is no way I can change it (I'm talking about snow leopard here). Outlook, turns out, doesn't even support the CalDav protocol. Busycal is very functional but is far too expensive (I'm not paying $50 for a calendar).
Oh yes, this also relates to google, though not specifically to google calendar. But one time I went to google groups to "discuss" the new calendar changes only to find that google had messed that up too. From the old, comfortable gmail-esque layout to the new repulsive layout. For whatever reason the site used up a lot of browser resources too as it was laggy and almost unusable. It behaved a bit better on chrome but seriously.
Last thoughts/Apple
I find that these days I'm losing faith in the big tech companies (I'm looking at you, microsoft, apple, google). Microsoft, well, they've been losing ground for a while now (though some faith was restored in windows 7), the metro interface is not useful in a desktop environment. For apple 10.7 was a disaster (when compared to previous releases, and in this case I'm talking about 10.4-10.6), where apple is slowly clamping down on the desktop OS, and they're not giving users a lot of choice at all. I'm still running snow leopard right now, and I'm not optimistic about mountain lion. I like how they're moving over to an iOS-like environment slowly, but some features are just not refined. I do hope that in the next iteration of OS X such features will be more refined, as in better multi-display support, and better application management when it comes to virtual desktops. I'm talking about issues such as versions and full screen mode multi-monitor support. However, typical Apple doesn't listen to customer feedback, and has said nothing about it. And Google has so far proved itself to be an evil company, with their tracking cookies bypassing browser restrictions (a la safari and internet explorer), and their new policy where they can use all your usage data (from gmail, youtube, etc.) to form an overall comprehensive picture.
I also realize that I am kind of schizophrenic at times, you might say, as I was so intrigued by BOINC when I first started using it. Now I no longer have it on my system. Though, over time I realized one thing. It is that my mac warranty expires in march 2012, and if I keep running BOINC I fear that since the computer runs at a hotter temperature that it'll break down easier. Though if I ever do build a desktop in the coming years I'll run BOINC on that for sure (since I can replace the parts far easier and cheaper than that on a laptop).
No comments:
Post a Comment