The guy from the article apparently is too attached to the past - he calls his bicycle a skateboard... and the article's first page of comments about the microwave bit say it all about how good and relevant his opinion is.

The Ribbon is being kicked around too much, but maybe it is because it actually deserves it. I find its principle of a task-oriented UI good but poorly executed, because those ribbons are a mess of icons.

I am not a fan of the *visual style* of iCal and do agree that skeuomorphic design (1:1 metpahors...) is being abused in detriment of good User Interface Experiences - it's giving more room to gloriously beautifying pixels than the content. On the other hand, I used Windows Phone 7 for a few months and while I agree that it is a fresh experience, it does get tiring after a while because it is too far off from what we are used to. It leads to relying too much on content as the means to define the visual experience. This makes it a problem because most content just sucks in terms of design or is too simplistic to make it immersive.

What is needed is a careful balance between UI design that relates to our experiences, both in UIs and the physical world, and content, so that this does not get overshadowed by the UI.

I think the author is just uninformed and being selfish in the way he writes. Going back to a 20th century UI because I'm too stubborn to accept UI evolution? No thanks.

Maybe I should start calling my laptop a typewriter...

With current and emerging standards (e.g. html5), do we still need to encourage the creation or maintaining of web sites/applications that use plugins? Isn't Apple here just subtly (contrary to their stance with iOS) discouraging or dispromoting the use of 3rd party, proprietary plug-ins like Flash and Java?

Yes, this isn't interesting at all. It sure must be good at catching the attention of the reader which is one of the primary goals of advertising. But shouldn't this kind of technology be relegated to digital magazines? Why put expensive and environment damaging technology in such a thing as (most of the time) disposable media?

The same with me exactly. I used to do a lot of 3D rendering before but not anymore now. I don't care about specs alone. Right now I'm more interested in the overall user experience and portability and that's why I just bought a 13" Mac laptop (1st apple computer, actually). I do a little bit of everything so a powerful CPU would be overkill for me. The important is what you just said, what best fits a particular use case.

Great news! I'm really looking forward to see what Steam, as a mainstream game distribution platform, will do for Linux and Mac.

... can somebody explain why could Apple get away with this policy and why Microsoft had to introduce a browser ballot in th EU?

Motion computing makes some fine tablets. The J3400 is particularly interesting and I believe it has earned some good reviews: http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/index.asp Couple it with a bluetooth wireless keyboard and its completely sealed design should work great.

Look in http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/ They already show apps accepted into the store that were made by devs with prerelease versions of Flash CS5... I think this is cool as it will enable people skilled in Flash to stick to their tool of choice. I would love to see a comparison between developing the iPhone SDK and Flash.

Yep, here's more coverage from Wired: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/03/kids-send-a-cam/ You may need to dig a bit in the Flickr slideshow but the amazing photos are sure there.

Adobe may officially not provide Technical support but I'm pretty sure everything works. The only app that is usually problematic with an OS upgrade is Acrobat because of the PDF printer integration (i.e. Vista printer installation is quite different from XP) and in the case of v7, the activation system was a piece of shit and would simply refuse to stay activated. It affected both Leopard and Vista, but I dunno about Snow Leopard (requires 64bit drivers...) All other apps always have survived OS upgrades. Some very occasionally with an easy, one time only workaround. I have friend who's still using Photoshop 7 on Vista, no issues... Your friend is most likely to behave in strange ways when attempting to compare CS3 apps with FOSS replacements so I would advise him to still use CS3 on Snow Leopard and wait for CS5 to upgrade. I can assure you that Adobe uses the "new OS, not tested, unable to support" excuse to scare people and have them upgrade. Oh, and you can find all fixable issues documented out there on the internet!

Well, I'm sad you took it that way but *your* immaturity is where mine begins. That's how I feel about windows for my own purposes and ethics. I'm not blaming you or anyone for using windows.
I would only like to see a replacement for a certain type of proprietary software. How and where you would run it... that would be up to you.