rowan.depomerai

In my last post, I discussed one of the interface changes in Windows 7, with reference (probably too much reference) to a blog post by Paul Thurrott, and I explained how that article wound me up a bit. Today I got incredibly annoyed with an article by the same author, and it got me wondering just how you find the voices you trust and like amoung the millions of bloggers out there…

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Microsoft recently released a public beta of Windows 7, which means you or I can go and download the next version of Windows right now and give it a try. This seems like a great opportunity to see what they’re up to, so I’ve had a quick play and I’ve read some reviews and articles around the web. Now we all know I’m a big Mac fan, so of course I have a habit of noticing the new features which bear a striking resemblence to existing MacOS features. And there are a lot. I thought about writing a post about that, but there were too many to mention, plus it would be pointless; good ideas are worth using, and Apple has certainly ‘borrowed’ features from Windows over the years too. Sometimes it just makes sense. So rather than moan about Microsoft stealing ideas, I thought I’d celebrate one idea in particular which they’ve stolen, because it leads to a big improvement in the usability of Windows. The feature I’m referring to is the task bar, which has undergone quite a radical overhaul in Windows 7. The thing is, some of the more vocal and established Windows fans seem to hate the new design – where I rejoice that it’s much more similar to Apple’s superior Dock interface, they complain that it’s too similar to Apple’s rubbish Dock interface. Hmmm… it seems this could be one for personal preference. Here’s why I like the Dock, and (mostly) Windows’ new taskbar.

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I’m starting this post with about 5 ideas in my head of what I want to talk about, and they’re only loosely connected. This is probably not a good way to write an engaging and well structured post, so I apologise now if it’s a bit rambling and rubbish. But bear with me; hopefully I have some interesting things to say, and I definately have some interesting links to share.

This week at CES, Palm announced the Pre and webOS, a new touch-screen smart phone and its associated operating system. Cue much media hype, cries of “iPhone Killer” etc etc. I got dragged in to the story a bit and my initial impressions were very favourable, however after a bit of reflection the story is a lot more complex than it looks, and interesting not just because of the Pre itself, but what it tells us about the iPhone, Blackberry and even media coverage of technology.

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This is very sad, but something just brought a little smile to my face. There I was, saving some files with numbers in the filenames. Something along the lines of 1.txt, 2.txt … 8.txt, 9.txt and then I thought, “Oh Bugger. There’s more than 10 files. I should have used 2-digit numbers. D’oh!” For I had expected that the old computers-are-dumb problem would leave me with a folder of files in the order 1.txt 10.txt 11.txt 2.txt 3.txt and so on. Usually, these things get ordered by first character first, then by the second character and so on. So 10 comes before 2.

But hallelujah! It seems that MacOS 10.5 has some basic intelligence! My files get listed 1 to 11 in proper order I’ve even attached a screenshot to prove it…

Now this could have been around for years and I just didn’t notice it. It could even work in (shudder…) Windows too. But as someone who spends his life working with technology and having to deal with it continually disappointing me, it’s nice when it works and you didn’t expect it to!

Happy new year everyone. A proper post coming soon…

Last time I  told you about the efforts we’ve been making at BBC HD to get an A/V sync test to your TV in order that you can measure the synchronisation between audio and video in your home TV setup. You’ll be very pleased to know that we’re done and the test has made it to air! Andy Quested has posted in his blog about how you can use the sync test – and its counterpart the test card – to line-up your equipment. I therefore won’t repeat that here, but I wanted to give you a bit more detail about what we’ve achieved and how. Read the rest of this entry »