I have to agree. They’re just adding clutter and backporting annoying eye-candy. OS X used to be a dependable, solid OS that was a pleasure to work with. Now they’re curtailing users’ ability to run stuff, abstracting the filesystem, adding eye-candy that causes clutter, and reducing computers to some kind of network appliance cum social experience. Apple’s design has always been noted for it’s minimalism. How is it that their software development is headed in the opposite direction? It’s becoming clunky.

Yes, Leopard (on G5) and Snow Leopard (on Intel) have been their high-water marks so far. I fear they’re going gaga over social networking and consumer electronics.

OS X 10.8 “Hello Kitty"

Finally a slashdot article that doesn’t go *WHOOSH* over my head.

I’m a heavy numerical user and I prefer using elegant-looking NUMBERS compared to cluttered EXCEL. Then I feed everything into Risk Engine (a Mac app) for Montecarlo analysis.

Perfectly enviable workflow with essentially no tradeoffs, and largely invisible as far as those whom I exchange worksheets with are concerned. (They send and receive standard .xls files, how they get processed my end is my business.)

I have a desktop, a server, a NAS, an audio streamer connected to my stereo, a pair of AppleTVs, and a pair of Ethernet-sporting flat-panel LCDs all wired with 1000baseT ethernet.

However, wherever possible, I’ve also configured the same devices to use WiFi if for some reason the cable comes out, so that, for example, the video stream does not fail if somebody trips over the AppleTV’s ethernet connection and yanks it out of the jack.

Then there’s the incriminated iPhone4, an iPad2 and a MacBookAir exclusively on WiFi.

Granted.

The greatest disappointment of all? That they somehow engineered a desire for it into me.

I for one was hugely disappointed that Apple’s latest iPhone refresh (iPhone 4S) did not address 5GHz WiFi connectivity. The iPhone 4 has supported 802.11n since it was released last year, but, unlike the iPad, it does not support the 5GHz band, constraining use to the already oversubscribed 2.4 GHz band.

The end-result is silly: for example, I’m running a 5GHz 802.11n network for all my devices at home, but I’m broadcasting an extra 2.4GHz signal for the sole benefit of my iPhone 4. I hoped Apple would address this obvious shortcoming but obviously they didn’t. Sad.

That’s rude. I’m Italian and I hate the situation.

And yes, I hate this fool’s proposal too.

I wonder what country you herald from? What’s your country’s worst historical figure? How about I compare you to that person?

“Keynesian”, “refute”.

(I am unacquainted with the sound-bites of this particular charade, so if those are deliberate errors deriving from some moron politician’s dicta, ignore my post.)

It’s simple: because it’s difficult... just because they almost couldn’t.