I'd say Mac OSX has shitty UI. The dock is just kludging together the taskbar concept from windows, the quicklaunch bar and the notification area into one big The problem is it doesn't do any of those very well. When I click an icon on the dock, I don't know if I'm clicking on a task or a launcher. Well I guess there's a little dot beside the icon when its a task, but that just indicates the app is loaded, not that I've had it open... many of those dots are there because MacOS decided to start that app at boot.

If you have more than one window open in a single app, There's no easy way to switch between them. I can right-click on the icon and select on, or press F9 and use expose. Expose, while it looks cool, is bad UI because it requires me to watch an animation, look at all the windows and pick out the one I want. When you use expose the windows are always in a different spot so you have to re-orient yourself everytime you use it. With a real taskbar, the button for your window is always in the same location.

If I want to open a new window for an app, I have to check for a tiny dot. If there isn't one then just click the icon on the dock. If there is a dot, then I have to right-click and select new window. If I happen to not notice the dot and just click on the icon, I get the window I had open before. FAIL.

I guess you're not supposed to have more than one window open for a single app in MacOS. except if you want to move a file to a different folder you have to have two finder windows open because MacOSX doesn't allow you to cut and paste files. Odlly copy and paste works ok, just not cut and paste. Very inconsistent.

The problem with the MacOSX UI is its constantly working against itself. You need to right-click more often in MacOSX than any other OS but apple seems to discourage right-clicking by providing single button mouses and having only one button on their laptops. Yeah you can buy another mouse or do a two-finger click but it seems like apple doesn't want you to use one button on the hardware side but makes you use two button on the software side. The dock makes it difficult to manage an application that has more than one window open, so it discourages you from having multiple windows open for a single app, but finder requires you to have two windows open to move files.

My experieince with MacOSX in general is that if you do things the way Steve Jobs thinks you should be doing things, everything works fine. But if you stray from that path, everything becomes unnecessarily difficult. The Apple slogan shouldn't be "think different" it should be "think like steve jobs".

Posting this from Ubuntu on a Macbook Pro. I tried MacOSX for three months and then had to install an OS that makes sense.

See Dunbar's number. This is a concept covered, as my Anonymous sibling is correct to believe, in The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

Yes, you can RDP on Android. Not sure about iPhone.

or jailbreak it.. if all you want is to run your own apps jailbreaking is sufficient and free

The Yahoo! Messenger client for iPhone uses notifications; once you're signed in you will be notified when a message comes in, even if the phone is on standby or if you're in another app. This type of notification support was added in iPhone OS 3.0, I think. Dunno if other IM clients use this, but I'm pretty pleased with the Yahoo! one.

Planned obsolescence is when you plan for your product to become obsolete some time AFTER it is sold. What we're looking at here is a new format that will already be obsolete when it first comes to the market.

There's a rational reason for planned obsolescence: it allows you to make more profit by convincing your customers to upgrade to a newer product in the future.

Releasing a product that's already obsolete usually results in zero profits, as what few sales you do achieve are less than your initial investment in R&D and promotion. This is a strategy usually only seen with businesses run by morons. Of course, many businesses are run by morons, so it's not that unusual, but that's no reason to refrain from criticizing it.

Somehow, I don't think that missing a full night's sleep causes a permanent drop in IQ, otherwise slashdotter's would probably be some of the dumbest people alive. Same with checking email. The effects are likely temporary. I don't find it hard to believe that there is a permanent and compounding effect associated with drug use, however i doubt that it's a full 4 point drop EVERY time you use... likely there is a temporary drop then a rebound that's not a full recovery which over time stair-steps down.

Mind you, I have done no research in this topic.

Very specific needs" like wanting my OS & apps to load as fast as possible? Putting OS, apps, pagefile etc on the SSD greatly improves system responsiveness. FLACs, MP4s & JPGs can stay on a spinning disk,

Putting your swap file on a RAM-Disk has long been the stereotypical geek example of human stupidity...someone who knows just enough to be very dangerous.

Additionally, if you have excess amounts of RAM available, every modern operating system will cache all disk reads, thereby offering instant access to your apps/files, the SECOND time you open them. Combine this with eg. S3/suspend support proliferating, greatly reducing the reasons for most people to ever shutdown their systems, and with the fact that system memory caching will be faster than any disk, and it's not hard to make the case that more RAM is more beneficial for most common usage patterns.

It doesn't seem like you know what a monopoly is and why Microsoft got into trouble in the past since this is pretty much the same situation. When you have a significant portion of the market and you utilize anticompetitive practices you get yourself into a lawsuit. This is why Microsoft got into trouble a while back and why Apple hasn't gotten into trouble yet. If Apple had larger marketshare than Microsoft they would be in much hotter water than MS ever was.

If Intel had only done the nasty compiler trick they may have gotten away with it, but all the OEM strong arming and nasty licensing restrictions for AMD also contribute to the lawsuit. Intel did everything it could to prevent AMD from gaining any marketshare. AMD did gain a lot of marketshare regardless but that's not at issue here. It is one thing to compete on merits, and it is another to use your marketshare to cut out competition.

Which they've fixed.

Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner on Monday successfully completed the wing test the jet failed last May, and now looks set to fly before Christmas, according to two sources familiar with the test outcome.

Engineers are still analyzing data from the repeat test and haven't yet given the official thumbs-up, but the composite fibers in the wing did not delaminate when it was bent to the same point as in the previous test, the sources said..

Again, it has to pass the design limit test before the FAA will let it fly, so since it just flown, they've proven it's safe.

I think he was referring to the common misconception that a tenured researcher has guaranteed pay, whether he actually "works" or not.

No AdBlock? I've been using the Chromium version of AdBlock Plus for a few weeks now. That chromeextensions.org site has been live for quite some time.

The amount was chosen because it was McDonalds coffee sales for a day (or week or something). It wasn't to compensate the woman, but to punish McD for perceived uncivil behavior. Think the Pinto writ small (pint size you might say. Because , see the cups...)

Idk man, I've been using wintabber for well over a year. It's great for poorly written apps that want to open hundreds of windows. (ATT's OOS ticketing system for example). Tabbing has some nice advantages.

This has nothing to do with phones that have built in GPS. All cell tower positions are very accurately measured, and any cell phone in range can be triangulated against these known coordinates.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gps-phone.htm