In theory, error messages should be painful at worst and boring at best. They tend to be cryptic; they rarely offer an apology even when one is due; they like to provide useless information like hexadecimal numbers and to withhold facts that would be useful, like plain-English explanations of how to right want went wrong. In multiple ways, most of them represent technology at its most irritating.
Curiouser and curiouser. An hour or two after news broke that Microsoft’s Windows ads would go Seinfeldless, the New York Times has lots of details on the new commercials in the campaign. They won’t be free of celebrities: Eva Longoria, Deepak Chopra, and Pharrell Williams will be on hand. (As will Bill Gates, but apparently only in a supporting role.)
But the most intriguing thing about the new ads is this: They will make explicit reference to Apple’s “Get a Mac” spots. The Times says that a Microsoft engineer who looks like John Hodgman (aka Apple’s PC) will even say thw words “I’m a PC”–before launching into what sounds like a possibly whiny, but accurate, complaint about being stereotyped by Apple’s ads.
I’m no ad critic, but I will take a tiny bit of credit for at least noticing that the phrase “PC” was used in the second Seinfeld/Gates ad, and wondering what was up with that:
At the end of the commercial, the phrase “Perpetually Connecting” turns into the abbreviation “PC.” I can’t think of another ad in recent Microsoft history that’s made reference to Windows-based computers as PCs–it feels like an almost direct response to Apple’s Get a Mac ads and their Mac and PC characters. I wonder if future ads will also call PCs PCs. (Actually, I hope not: I used to be a stickler for the notion that all personal computers, including Macs, are PCs; I’ve sort of given up, though.)
So yup, we now know that Microsoft will call PCs PCs, and it is a response to Apple’s ads.
Other tidbits from the Times story:
–The ads will use the theme “Life Without Walls”–I’m not sure if this is instead of the rumored “Windows, Not Walls.” or in addition to it. There will be a microsite called LifeWithoutWalls.com (which, right now, seems to simply redirect to the main Windows site).
–Microsoft will let real people upload video and photos explaining why they’re PCs, too, and will use some of this material in ads.
I’m done judging ads I haven’t seen yet, but we’ll all apparently get the chance to start critiquing these ones tomorrow. And I do have a few more questions:
–Can the campaign both be about PCs and not about PCs? Microsoft blogger Chris Flores said just a few days ago that the campaign “will talk about Windows in all its forms. Not just the OS for PCs we happen to be shipping today. In fact, not just an OS. And not just on PCs. Simply put, this campaign isn’t about Windows Vista. It’s about Windows.” Sounds logical enough, but possibly hard to reconcile with ads that take on Apple’s ads directly and talk about PCs.
–What does “Life Without Walls” mean, anyhow? And what does it have to do with PCs or operating systems? If Microsoft argues that Windows is better because it’s available in multiple forms on multiple devices, isn’t it contending that walls can be good?
–Will we ever learn whether Microsoft changed course with the Seinfeld spots? In a new post, Flores says that the company always planned to move beyond Seinfeld as the campaign progressed. I’m sure that’s true. But he doesn’t really address whether we ended up with less Jerry than was originally planned based on initial response to the campaign. (The Times article has a couple of research firms saying that buzz about the Bill/Jerry ads was highly favorable to Microsoft–news to me!)
Stand by for more bulletins as events warrant…
[Update: See this post for the latest news on Microsoft’s next wave of Windows ads.]
It’s unthinkable. And astounding. But the world will probably survive. Valleywag is reporting that Microsoft will announce phase two of its $300 million Windows ad campaign tomorrow–a phase that doesn’t include Jerry Seinfeld.
According to Valleywag, Microsoft is maintaining that the company planned to say goodbye to Jerry all along. But it’s hard to imagine that they paid him $10 million to do two spots, or that the two spots we saw were all the Seinfeld that Microsoft intended to give us. And Valleywag quotes Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw as saying “People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected.”
Way back in January of last year, Sling Media–the inventors of the nifty SlingBox box, which can broadcast TV from your home across the Net to your laptop or phone–announced its second major project. The SlingCatcher, it said, was a new device that would flip around the Slingbox’s functionality, sending video in a multitude of formats from a PC across a home network to a TV. It got lots of attention.
And then…nothing happened. For a long time. But I met with Sling co-founder/CEO Blake Krikorian today, and am happy to report that the release of Slingcatcher, which Krikorian said turned out to be a more challenging engineering project than anyone expected, is imminent. It’s not exactly the box that Sling unveiled in 2007: It offers a wired Ethernet connection but not the Wi-Fi it was originally going to include, and costs $300 rather than the sub-$200 pricetag that Sling targeted. But it’s still an intrguing product, and one which–like the Slingbox–is unique.
For more than two years now, my primary computing platform has been Apple’s OS X with a virtualized copy of Windows XP and/or Vista running inside it. I started running the first program that could virtualize Windows on a Mac, Parallels Desktop, the moment it became available as a beta. And mostly, I’ve stuck with Parallels.
But Parallels’ archrival, VMware Fusion, is now shipping in version 2.0, after a few months of public beta. I’ve been using it for a few days and enjoying it. A few major features of the new version:
–The ability to do multiple snapshots of the state of a virtual machine, and to have Fusion create them automatically at set intervals, so you can jump backwards if something goes wrong;
–Keyboard mapping so you can simulate Windows keypresses that don’t exist on a Mac;
–Better handling of file associations so Windows apps can open Mac documents and vice versa;
–mirroring of folders so that Windows’ My Pictures shows stuff stored in OS X’s equivalent, for instance;
–Support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 3D graphics, making Fusion a more plausible platform for gaming and other heavy-duty 3D apps (the previous version and Parallels only go up to DirectX 8.1; Parallels also supports OpenGL);
–A year of free McAfee Viruscan Plus security (Parallels comes with six months of Kaspersky’s suite);
–Support for multiple monitors;
–General polish and fit and finish improvements to make the app as Mac-like as possible.
I wanna live with Fusion for a while before I make any attempt to declare a winner in the Mac virtualization race; both it and Parallels are pretty darn good, and the competition between them has unquestionably resulted in two strong products. There’s no doubt, however, that VMware tried to catch up with Parallels or surpass it in a number of places where the latter product was in the lead until now.
Virtualization still can’t replace running a native operating system in every case. Both Fusion and Parallels exact a stiff tax in the form of reduced battery life on my MacBook Pro, I find. And there are still apps that run poorly, or not at all. (As an experiment, I just tried to run Real’s RealDVD, thinking that the DVD-ripping functionality would be a good stress test–but it wouldn’t even install in Fusion.) So I also use Leopard’s Boot Camp feature to turn my MacBook Pro into a true, non-virtual PC…and I have a Vista desktop, too.
Oh yeah–what do I run within virtualized Windows? Office 2007, for one thing–I like it much more than the Mac’s Office 2008. And Internet Explorer 8. And Chrome. And other applications as I need ’em–it’s a blessing to be able to run nearly any Windows application without leaving OS X, as any virtualization fan can attest.
VMware Fusion is $80, but it’s a free upgrade for current users. You need a copy of Windows XP or Vista to use it (or another of the 90 operating systems it supports, including Linux and OS X Leopard Server). More thoughts once I’ve spent more time with it…
As you may have noticed, we rarely broach the topic of politics here on Technologizer. We endorse no party, nor any candidate for any office. But some stories are too entertaining not to tackle.
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Hard-drive kingpin Seagate announced a refreshed lineup of FreeAgent external hard drives yesterday. The new models offer all the stuff you’d probably guess they would: more capacity at lower prices with a redone industrial design. The company also introduced what is, as far as I know, the first USB dock ever offered for hard drives–an optional holder for the FreeAgent Go portable drive line that sits on your desk and lets you plug in the drive without futzing with the cable. (It’s $29 and comes with a case for the drive.)
One of the most intriguing things about Seagate’s announcement is this: It’s expanded its FreeAgent offerings with drives designed specifically for Mac users. Smaller companies such as LaCie have catered to Macheads for years, but this is the first time that Seagate has done so. And the fact that a manufacturer as large as Seagate sees a business opportunity in the Mac market is yet another sign of the Mac’s resurgent good health. (It wasn’t all that long ago that big companies were fleeing the Mac, not catering to it.)
Of course, all of Seagate’s drives are Mac-compatible; I’ve used ’em with both PCs and Macs for years. So how did it make Mac-specific models?
For all you Macintosh freaks itching to try Google’s Chrome browser, the good news is that Google is working on a Mac version (as well as one for Linux). The bad news is that it’s not saying when it’ll arrive, even though cofounder Sergey Brin is supposedly just itching to get his hands one one. And the surprising news is that CodeWeavers beat Google to it.
Well, not exactly, but it’s still pretty entertaining. Chrome may be a Google product, but it’s Google’s version of an open-source project that the company initiated. The open-source version is called Chromium. And CodeWeavers, which produces software based on Wine, the open-source system for running Windows apps without Windows, decided to try its hand at using WINE to create Mac and Linux versions of Chromium. Both are now available for download. I snagged the Mac version, which takes a few minutes to initiate itself once you’ve downloaded and installed the program. And here it is, looking like the Chrome I’ve been using in Windows. (Actually, looking a bit too much like the Windows version: Those are Windows minimize/maximize/close buttons, not Mac ones.)
In answer to the question “Should I run CrossOver Chromium as my main browser?”, CodeWeavers’ FAQ provides a succinct and honest answer: “Absolutely not! This is just a proof of concept, for fun, and to showcase what Wine can do.” You only need to spend a few minutes with CrossOver Chromium to see that CodeWeavers isn’t being inappropriately modest–fonts and formatting are kind of messed up, and if there’s a way to get Flash working, I haven’t figured it out. As the CodeWeavers blog points out, CrossOver Chromium can’t auto-update itself with security fixes, as Chrome can. And another sign of its Windows origins is the fact that it offers to import bookmarks and other settings from Internet Explorer–even though IE for the Mac is defunct, and Safari is the browser that a new Mac browser would appropriately ask about importing from.
It’s also unclear from CodeWeavers’ blog and FAQ whether it intends to refine CrossOver Chromium or leave it as is. Presumably that’s hard to say: If Google releases Chrome for Mac soon, CrossOver Chromium becomes redundant. But if it’s months and months before Chrome for Mac shows up, CodeWeavers’ browser might have an audience. If the company polishes it up…a lot.
For now, CrossOver Chromium is really a software toy that you’ll likely use for just a few minutes, then put away. But it is fun. And it does whet my appetite for a Mac version of Chrome–one, I hope, that’s even more fully evolved than the Windows one is at this early point in its existence.
On Saturday, I wrote about Podcaster, the iPhone podcast-listening app which Apple refused to add to the iPhone App Store on the grounds that it duplicated functionality in iTunes. I said it sounded cool. And I now know I was right–because I’ve been enjoying using it tonight.
As reported by Sarah Perez over on ReadWriteWeb, Podcaster developer Alex Sokirynsky has used the iPhone’s “ad-hoc” distribution feature, designed to help enterprises install custom apps, to make Podcaster available outside the walled garden that is the App Store. I’m not clear how he’s doing this–I thought that ad-hoc distribution permitted installation of an app on no more than a hundred iPhones. But I followed Sokirynsky’s instructions and ended up with a working copy of Podcaster on my phone.
And then there’s Slacker, a service which, like Pandora and Last.fm, lets you conjure up custom radio stations which riff on what you tell it about your favorite artists by creating playlists with both faves and other performers you’ll probably like. Slacker is available in free and fee-based Web versions, but it was built from the ground up to work with portable players. Earlier this year, the company released a Slacker handheld that had plenty of promise but was also kind of bulky and clunky. And then it moved quickly to replace that first version with an improved model: the Slacker G2, which is available from Slacker’s site and Best Buy. I’ve been playing with it and really enjoying having personalized radio I can stick in my pocket. But while the Slacker service is a kick and this second-generation hardware is more polished than its predecessor, the device still feels like it’s a good fit for dedicated radio fans more than for music aficionados of all types.
