Re: So we know who the replacement for Anna Leach is
"Hmmm... The fact that you claim to use the devices you apparently despise (and spending well over two thousand quid on a Mac and an iPad in the process) leads me to believe that one of two things are happening here.
A: You're an idiot, who's somehow incapable of using hardware you DO like, or....
B: You're lying about using Apple hardware, in a poorly thought out plot to make your uninformed and hysterical hate to the fruity firm seem a taaaad bit more reasonable.
In any case, you've failed good sir. Failed hard..."
Thank you for your thoughts and conclusions.
Allow me to suggest C.
C: My employer has had a fit of the Apples; has given me an iPad a year and a half ago; has installed a couple of Appley things (iMacs) in communal work areas.
The iPad, I use all the time, as a leisure device, away from work. Great to get it out for a quick bit of browsing whilst eating at home or stopping at a coffee shop. Even for the occasional unimportant email, where I can afford the spelling 'adjustments' to inject the sort of linguistic use I'd normally be embarrassed by. But, hey, these days things like proper spelling and grammar and punctuation and capital letters are apparently unknown to so many that I can allow myself to be one of the herd, a little. And after all, what do you expect in return for finger-pecking at a flat sheet of glass.
The funny thing is, when I was first given it I used to take it ino the office every day. Now it stays in the car as I never used it when there were so many proper keyboards and screens at hand.
The iMacs, there is a story of persistence if which I'm slightly proud. I made a point of using them for at least some of every day. It turned out that the other 100 or so people who'd drift into and out of the shared work area would sometimes stop and look and say, 'Wow. Don't they look good'. But they hardly ever used them, preferring the much older, cheap-screened Windows computers. Even with my determination I'd rarely stick it for more than an hour before also returning to Windows (Outlook, Word, Excel, VNC (note the subtlety)) or heading back to my Office and mostly Linux on desktops or in Amazon's cloudy land.
During my self-imposed iMacness I learned quite a lot of OS X keyboard shortcuts and found tha the terminal / bash did expose some familiar, usefulness. I seemed to overtake most of the few 'We've got an Apple at home. Do you know how to...' Apple users (who also seemed, mostly, to prefer using the Windows computers in the shared area).
The screen was great. But, of course, if 2/3 of the amount had been spent on decent screens for the Windows computers they'd have been even greater.
The thing that bugged me the most was how slow the iMacs were from the moment of clicking to start a program to the moment when it was ready for input. It seemed that most of the processing power had been steered into making icons wiggle and fly around the screen. Great to look at, but a bit frustrating when it took longer to do actual work than on a, typically, two years older and a quarter of the price Windows PC.
Software? On the iPad, that I use more than any other electrical gadget outside work, Safari freezes or crashes maybe once every day or two. Remember? Like browsers used to do years ago. I'd forgotten. (Well, except for Firefox until it started to sort its act out at 3.something. But Firefox always has other compensations). And after a while I got used to his Jobsness knowing better than I do that 9 tabs and one window is enough browsing for anyone.
BBC news site? Yes, you get used to 'this content (video) is not available for your device'. Jobsy had good reason for banning Flash. It needs more processing power than an ARM-based tablet can muster, so far. Ever noticed how things like timers in non-active tabs stop running? Hmmm, must conserve CPU cycles for shimmery stuff that cool users will notice. I remember single-tasking OSes from the 60s, before the days of MVT and MVS. Well, Apple seems to have reinvented them for iGadgets, which I can understand, given that ARM is, currently, battery life rich but CPU power poor.
(Funny how you get used to things. I was genuinely shocked that iPads were, almost, single-tasking when they first came out and now I just think, oh, that's what they do).
But, I go on too long. And to no purpose. After all, I expect you knew exactly what you were talking about when you told me that I'm an idiot and a liar. My respect to you, sir. You are clearly a very experienced computer user and assessor of character. And I'm sure that your 'A' and 'B' exhibit the same omniscience and insight that The Jobs did when he knew that no one needs more than 9 tabs in a browser.
Sent from 'my' iPad, as I believe we're supposed to say.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
