Archive for May 27, 2016

Friday, May 27, 2016

Google : 2010s :: Microsoft : 1990s

Jason Snell:

So when I look at Google and see a latter-day version of 1990s Microsoft, I don’t mean to portray it as a monster. Truth be told, just as I used Word 5.1 back in the day, I use many Google services today. My email is served by Gmail, and my comings and goings are arranged with Google Calendar. Most of my podcast and website collaboration happens in Google Sheets and Google Docs. (I also thought the Google I/O keynote last week was the best one I’ve seen–disciplined and focused in a way previous I/O keynotes weren’t.)

But some of the stuff Microsoft pulled in the 1990s was awful, and made users angry. And Google seems to still be making decisions that are more about promoting the greatness of Google than showing respect for users.

[…]

As someone in Google’s ecosystem as well as Apple’s, I’m happy that they continue to develop apps for iOS. Unfortunately, every time I open one of them, I’m brought back to the mid-’90s and Word 6.

John Gruber (tweet):

Jason specifically calls out iTunes on Windows as being in the same boat. I’d add the late Safari for Windows, too.

Don Melton:

We simply couldn’t compete with Google when they were paying everybody to bundle [Chrome] and blitzing TV.

People don’t realize the Safari for Windows team, the platform engineers, was only three people. That’s it.

And if I could have gotten marketing support dollars, …

… I could have gotten the engineering budget to support the effort to address those issues.

.NET Core is Boiling the Ocean

Aaron Stannard (via Hacker News and Reddit):

.NET Core is about decoupling .NET from Windows. Allowing it to run in non-Windows environments without having to install a giant 400mb set of binaries.

This will allow .NET to run in containers on Linux and lots of other places it can’t today and presents a very exciting opportunity for those of us in the server-side .NET development space to start taking advantage of modern DevOps and deployment tools.

[…]

I had originally imagined that .NET Core would be “released” in a stable form this year, 2016.

Now I no longer have any certainty with anything in regard to .NET Core, because the roadmap has been changing rapidly.

[…]

I’m left with the impression that .NET Core is trying to do everything at once: static linking, new tooling, support for 3D games, web applications, cross-platform desktop applications, browser-based apps, and anything else that could be aptly labeled under the masthead of “panacea for .NET developers.”

The Mac Admin Library

Tom Bridge:

No matter how you learn, there are good resources in print for the Mac Admin, be they books and manuals, blogs and journals, magazines and other news media. This library, catalogued below, is far from canonical, but it does have the resources that I consider to be the best of breed.

FaceTime, iMessage Hang in the Balance After Apple Loss to Patent Troll

David Kravets:

Patent troll VirnetX, fresh on the heels of a $626 million FaceTime and iMessages patent victory over Apple, now wants a federal judge to permanently turn off those popular features.

VirnetX on Wednesday also asked the judge presiding over the litigation to increase the damages the East Texas jury awarded in February by another $190 million or more. Apple wants a retrial, claiming that VirnetX’s lawyers misrepresented evidence to the jury and that the evidence presented at trial didn’t support infringement.

Update (2016-05-28): See also: Hacker News.