The wiki is not really 95% complete.

On Black Friday, one of my coworkers bought a new laptop that came preloaded with Windows 8. Last week she brought it in and asked me to look at it because she couldn't get anything with Flash to work in IE.

I know Flash in the "metro" IE is supposed to be severely limited in what it can do, but even the desktop mode IE refused to run Flash. This despite the add-on being present and showing as enabled. After googling around and fucking with it for about 45 minutes, trying to get something to work that should have just worked right out of the box, I gave up and just installed Chrome for her so she'd have something that could run Flash stuff.

She later managed to find a Windows 7 laptop somewhere, bought it, and returned the Windows 8 laptop. When she returned it, the clerk asked her why, and she told him it was because Windows 8 was awful. He told her that Windows 8 machines were being returned to that store in droves, and every person he asked gave him the same reason.

Messing with her laptop was my first experience with Windows 8, and if I can help it, it will be my last. I found it to be a jumbled mishmash of confusing crap, and I've been doing IT for 20 years-- I can only imagine how hard non-techies are going to reject it. I am going to cling to Windows 7 for as long as I can.

Agreed, I would much rather read the transcripts to x-rated films than watch them. Way better.

Good call outs here. Every local news station has the worst video player mechanism. Rarely does my browser crash but it happens more than half the time I stumble on a local news site video. I try to exit those tabs as soon as I realize because those pages are loaded with shit. Local news sites are the absolute worst players and then they doubledown with 20 other concurrent flash apps playing at the same time. Idiots.

People abandon videos that don't play, big surprise. This has nothing to do with poor video quality. Experience tells users that if it's going to lag at the beginning it's probably going to lag the way through. Seems lke more short attention span than demanding quality expectations. It's surfing useless entertainment. These users aren't trying to watch something that their life depends on. Laggy video is not entertaining, so you switch it off. This isn't much of a scientific study. Anyone who publishes their video on a stats based player, such as brightcove are used to these abandonment stats.

Apple doesn't have a problem with competition, where other companies make original stuff and pit it against Apple's products. They have a problem with "copytition," where other companies just stamp out slavish knockoffs of Apple products and ride on their coattails.

I suggest you look at the 130+ page Samsung-produced document comparing features and appearance of elements of the iPhone to what Samsung was working on at the time. On pretty much every page, the suggestion is made to change the Samsung phone to make it more like the iPhone.

I'd say it's pretty damning evidence.

Oh yeah? Form a soft drink company and sell your product in a bottle shaped like this, and see how long it takes a cease and desist letter to arrive.

Trade dress is applicable in more than just the computer industry.

Yeah-- last time, the company that copied Apple's stuff got away with it.

Which is why this time, they patented everything about the iPhone that they could, and why they are suing the shit out of the companies who still attempt to copy it.

Because the cell service providers are fucking greedy pigs-- which has been true since before the iPhone ever existed.

I think he might mean that a HDD sitting in a server and running 24/7 will likely last longer than a HDD that's in an external enclosure and gets physically moved around and powered on/off frequently.

> Is there any evidence that anyone has *ever* bought a Galaxy Tab when they meant to buy an iPad? Any?

Just this article. Excerpt:

"Samsung was forced to release a bunch of documents it had been keeping under seal that show the likeness between its products and Apple's. Examples outlined in the documents include comments from Samsung workers discussing similarities with Apple's products, and reports Samsung got from retailer Best Buy that Samsung tablets were being returned because customers thought they were getting iPads."

~Philly

Fuck off.

~Philly

What idiot modded this troll? It was right on point.

Windows and Office are cash cows, yes, but other than Ballmer's incompetence they're the biggest part of the problem-- everyone at Microsoft is afraid of doing something that might threaten Windows or Office. That's why Microsoft spent years trying to stuff bloated desktop Windows into tablets and phones-- and why they were made to like complete asses by Apple.

And XBox? Pfft. They bought their way into the video game market, plain and simple. IIRC they haven't yet reached the break-even point because of the billions they pissed away at the start. XBox is the last time you'll ever see them be able to pull that move, too. No more showing up late with a mediocre product and coming out on top only because they can outspend their competitors.

And Sharepoint is just another product designed to increase corporate IT inertia and maintain Windows' dominance on enterprise desktops.

~Philly