09/03/08: Google Chrome and multi-platform releases
For those of you living under a rock, Google just released a web browser known as Chrome. Google touts this as a browser written for web apps, which is fast, light, and modular so that it won't implode if one site has a problem.
I checked it out, and it's not bad, but I won't be using it.
Ignoring all of the smaller reasons, features that don't exist (but do, or can be added in FF), and other various technical niggles, the biggest reason is that I've lost interest; there's no mac version yet.
Now the astute might have noticed that there will be a mac version. Cool. But really, Chrome isn't interesting to me anymore. I find this fairly common with delayed releases. It's easy to get excited about an app, but once everyone has it but you; things change. The hype rapidly dies out as people start using it, and you return to the regular browser zealotry that existed before (Except now with a new party) and Chrome doesn't have a single good feature that would pry me away from FF. I would have tried it due to the hype, but I won't switch out of the blue for it. Sorry Google, I'm not loading up a VMWare session just for your web browser.
It's not just Chrome. Almost every delayed launch is the same way for me. Partially because I've build the mindset "well, I'm getting along without it now, why do I need it later when the Mac version comes out?". The other reason is because the company is basically saying that I don't matter as much because I'm a mac user. Personally, if the company doesn't care about me, I'm sure I can find ways not to care about their product.
On the flip side, companies that do dual releases get a lot of respect from me. Even if the mac version is buggy; the fact that they sat down, looked at the PC:Mac user ratio, and said "You know what? Mac users might be a small market share, but they're still users." says a lot about their practices and values. I'm willing to ride out a few shady versions for a product that works on my mac just as well as it does on a PC. I'm also more likely to use it, since I can get a consistent experience between my PCs and Mac.
fireslash.net v3 (aka Knightmare) is getting close to completion. If you want to post a comment, do it there since v2 doesn't have capchas and spam bots suck.
I love PCs. The modular nature of the PC market has and will keep me building them for a long time. I primarily use a Mac these days, but when it comes to building an HTPC, or perhaps a carputer; I can be found browsing Newegg like it's porn.
However, I've had growing concerns that nobody else seems to care about.
For starters, when are we going to put the BIOS to rest? Seriously guys, the BIOS should have died a long time ago. The limitations here are just far too staggering to properly support modern hardware. However, I've yet to see a single mainstream PC shipping with EFI (Intel's Itanium line doesn't count since it failed miserably). With hard drives stretching past 1TB and virtualization's popularity rising, MBRs are starting to become a real limitation. Yes, there are workarounds such as boot loaders and other tricks, but how long are we going to be able to idly work around such an old technology before it starts holding hardware back? It's going to be all too late by that time and I'm not looking forward to the 'just past alpha' quality machines being shipped to keep the stock rotation moving.
Microsoft's transition to 64 bit has been an absolute failure. For starters, who thought it was a good idea to use LLP64? When both Linux and Mac OS have switched over to LP64, Microsoft's awkward move to LLP64 has left software engineers pulling their hair out. Porting 64 bit code has gone from nuisance to nightmare. Even better, 32 bit drivers will not work at all with 64 bit released of Windows. You might this this is common sense, but Apple seems to know something Microsoft doesn't, as all 32 bit drivers work just fine in OS X. To be fair, there is a small overhead included with running 32 bit drivers on a 64 bit kernel, but a slight overhead is a small price to pay for being able to use your hardware.
Finally, software vendors need to wake the hell up. 64 bit computing isn't going to magically disappear overnight, ship some software. I can't believe that major companies such as Palm still have yet to release even beta quality software for many of their products. What are these companies waiting for? I know it's cool to pass the blame to MS or hardware vendors, but the only people losing here are the consumers. Wake the hell up already.
08/17/08: Don't like the Macbook Air? I don't care.
I'm tired of hearing about how awful the Air is.
Yes, the Air doesn't have an optical drive. Yes the Air only has one USB port. Yes, the Air's battery is internal and can't be easily replaced. We know. Stop flaunting your totally awesome #insert brand here# notebook you got cheaper.
What people don't seem to understand is that Air isn't competing against anything else on the market. The Air does not compare with your Dell "slimline". The Air is not trying to steal the show away from the Sony T series. Stop comparing them. What the Air is doing is targeting a niche. Specifically, the people who want something they can slide into a messenger bag, take with them to the coffee shop and browse the internet for a while or type something up.
The reason the Air doesn't have an ODD internally is because people using it for portable internet access and writing documents on the go don't need one. In the rare circumstance they do, the external ODD will work fine, assuming they don't have another mac they can slave over to it. The single USB port is a bit of a concern, but what are you going to need a second one for anyway? One will cover your USB flash drive if you need it... that's about all you'd want on the go. Everything else is built-in already. If you really need more ports, there are several very good portable hubs that can accommodate this quite nicely.
Apple market's the Air's thickness so much because these on the go people hate carrying around thick heavy notebooks everywhere. The Air is gold to them, and they're willing to pay extra to be able to slide an Air into their bag instead of that $800 compaq brick.
And before you say it; No, I don't own or want a Macbook Air.
If anyone ever reads my source code, they might find this gem
//free(buffer8); // OMG. STOP. NO. DON'T DO THIS. WTF.
I spend the last two days debugging a stack corruption issue. Turns out if you new something, then free() it for some retarded reason just before deleteing it... well... lets just say your code gets a little squirrely.
Like, vector::_m_range_check exceptions on code that doesn't even use vectors squirrely.
Since purchase, it'd been screwy with S1 and S3 sleep modes. A few days ago it stopped POSTing.
Ok, no problem, right?
Well, I've got it down to this... It won't post if:
All ram slots are in use
Two slots in the same bank are in use with matched pairs
Anything can possibly try to run in dual channel
It feels like it
The ram isn't seated just right
Anything but Corsair ram is used (Except sometimes this same rule exists with Patriot ram)
It hasn't been recently unplugged
You haven't removed it from the case in a while
It's that time of the month
I can ship it to foxconn, but if they don't find anything wrong, I pay a lab fee of $45 (plus the $10 I'd pay to ship it). I'm guessing It's going to post when it gets there...
So yeah. Anyone want to buy a motherboard? Or better yet, anyone selling a Socket 939 MicroATX board?
