If it weren't for the Internet, Murong Xuecun might still be working as a sales manager at a car company in the southern Chinese city of Chengdu. That is what he was doing when he started writing his first novel on his office's online bulletin board system back in 2001.
Adobe Set to Bring Full Flash Player to Smartphones in 2010
OK, make that most smartphones. Adobe announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday that a full version of their Flash Player will be available on smartphones running Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian, and Palm Web OS, starting in early 2010.
Lack of Standards Delay Electronic Medical Records
The $19 billion prescribed in Congress's economic stimulus package to bring America's health-care records into the electronic age is a welcome opportunity for information technology firms seeking to build market share in a still-young industry.
MacChat: Why Windows still hasn’t caught up to Mac
IT’S the clash of the titans, part two. In one corner we have Apple, riding the success of the iPhone and iPod and the subsequent “halo effect” on its Mac computers. In the other is Microsoft, bloodied by its Vista debacle but enjoying rave reviews of its follow-up Windows 7. Apple might have won the Leopard-Vista match-up despite complaints on both sides, but this time out the tussle could be tighter.
With Windows 7 Microsoft’s aping of Apple has reached a new high. The Windows Taskbar now resembles the OS X Dock, with larger icons and more functionality. Windows 7 also introduces multi-touch controls, which Apple has been adding to OS X over the past couple of years. To the casual observer, there now seems less difference between the two operating systems than ever.
But appearances can be deceiving. What appears similar on the surface can be quite different when you actually start using it. So here are five reasons why OS X still has a considerable edge over Windows:
Interface design: The Mac’s main advantage has always been its clean, simplified, human interface, and this remains the case even when Microsoft assimilates Mac features. Windows, by contrast, remains crowded and cluttered, as Microsoft feels the need to serve up all possible options to the user at any one time. Also, Apple takes a more restrained, tasteful approach to eye candy.
Killer features: Speaking of eye candy, three features introduced in OS X Leopard showed how it can be functional. CoverFlow utilises an iTunes-style interface to flip through documents. QuickLook lets you preview a document’s contents without launching an application. And Time Machine lets you go “back in time” to recover documents using a slick 3D-style interface.
Virus-free: After eight years of use, OS X remains free of any self-propagating viruses. Apple even ships its Macs with the firewall turned off by default, and most Mac users don’t bother with anti-virus software. By contrast, Vista has slowed rather than stopped the flood of malware on Windows, and it remains to be seen if Windows 7 can do any better. Whether you subscribe to the “security via obscurity” myth or not, the bottom line is, computing is more secure on the Mac.
Core technologies: Since the advent of OS X, Apple has introduced several under-the-bonnet technologies that can be leveraged by itself and third-party application developers to create leading-edge applications. These include Core Image, Core Video and Core Animation. OS X Snow Leopard will introduce more core technologies, including Grand Central for fully utilising multicore processors, and OpenCL for tapping into the power of graphics processing units.
iLife and iWork: Apple’s “iApps” are a big part of the software value-add Apple uses to sell Macs, and the ‘09 versions of both have just been released. Key features include facial recognition and geotag support in iPhoto, music lessons with the stars in GarageBand, anti-shake and precision editing in iMovie, and new templates and effects in Pages and Keynote.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar