journal: win

Fullscreen playback now in free Quicktime

By Liam, July 12, 2007

Quicktime 7.2, released on July 11th, was not a major update. It fixed a few bugs and patched a few security vulnerabilities. It also added fullscreen video playback to the free version of Quicktime, a feature that has remained Quicktime Pro only for a long time. Many have wondered why that is, but now Apple has had a change of heart.

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XvsXP now MacvsWindows

By Liam, June 28, 2007

The days of pages being sorely out of date are OVER

Believe it or not, XvsXP has had much to do with the formation of Deep Thought. In fact, Nick and Pilky, the founding fathers of Deep Thought, met on the XvsXP forums. So it’s pretty damn newsworthy when they fundamentally change, like they have just recently.

With the release of Vista and the looming thought that the X moniker won’t be used by Apple forever (try as they might,) it was clear that XvsXP needed a domain name change to something a bit more timeless. Today, that change has happened. XvsXP is now Mac vs. Windows, and with that change comes an interesting twist: the shootout is now a wiki, free for anyone to edit.

The wiki method was used due to the time-consuming nature of maintaining the comparison. That same factor caused the site to change ownership from the hands of Dan Pouliot to James Scariati and Michael Moriarty in late 2005. The new format isn’t a 100% free-for-all. Instead, only Scariati and Moriarty can create pages or edit the conclusion section of each page. Any user can register and edit pages, but only users promoted for having made meaningful contributions to a comparison will be able to upload and insert images. “The days of pages being sorely out of date are OVER,” Scariati said in a post to the Mac vs. Windows forums.


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Safari for Windows

By Liam, June 14, 2007

Introduction and Installation

I don’t ever watch the actual WWDC keynotes, nor do I take that much interest in them, but I will have a look at the Engadget or Ars feeds after it’s all over to see just what kind of carnage took place. In this case, that carnage was the announcement of Safari 3, which has been ported over to Windows. The reasons why are pure speculation, ranging from allowing the widest range of developers to be able to test iPhone applications without having to pay for Macs all the way to wanting web developers to take Safari and therefore WebKit seriously, as they have come to do for Firefox and Gecko. (Lack of) reasoning aside, Safari 3 is here, at least as a beta. Not only that, it’s here for Windows. In this review, we’ll see not only how Safari stacks up as a web browser, but how Safari stacks up as a Windows application.

Downloading Safari is much like downloading iTunes from Apple. You select a radio button, the click a button and download/run the installer. There is an option for Windows that downloads Safari plus the omnipresent Quicktime, but users can opt to download only Safari instead. Installation is, unsurprisingly, just like installing any other application on Windows.

I will say up front that the only thing in Vista that Safari actually supports is a 256x256 icon. Safari windows have no drop shadows and do not animate open/closed and minimized/restored (Figure 1). They also don’t use…
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Popular Mechanics reveals Microsoft Multitouch Platform: Milan

By Eric, May 29, 2007

Based off of Jeff Han’s multitouch technology, Microsoft has developed a new platform of computing, which they are calling Surface (codenamed “Milan"). This revolutionary technology surrounds the concept of being able to touch your computing. The multitouch technology is most simply a glorified touch screen, one that can sense multiple touches, including movement. As can be seen from the early conceptual video by Jeff Han, the use of the technology is nearly endless. We have already seen it in the iPhone, slated for release next month.

Microsoft has taken it a step forward by putting it into a coffee table. Quite seriously however, Microsoft has really raised the bar by integrating wireless technology and the ability to simply place a device on the surface and transfer files to it tirelessly by dragging it to the device itself, right on the surface. Be sure to check out the entire video at Popular Mechanics. Microsoft is going to be selling the technology initially for commercial use, as in hotels. It will cost around $5k-$10k, possibly by the end of 2007, so keep your eyes out!


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How Stacks (the Windows Vista kind) Work

By Liam, April 24, 2007

Search in Windows Vista has been an interesting beast for anyone who followed Vista during the Longhorn years. First it was going to be pervasive throughout the system to the point of making the user folders (Documents, Music, etc.) virtual folders (smart folders, for those who know the Mac version of them.) Slowly and without mention, the search features were brought back into a more manageable feature set. One facet of the old search that remained through to Vista final was called Stacks.

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Bill is just your average, run of
the mill guy, worth a trifling
$50 billion

Few people know how stacks work, or even what to do with them. Stacks have received minimal press coverage, and no one really seems to know or care about them. They are neat, but not even Microsoft really explained them enough to get people interested. Luckily, they fit well into the whole desktop metaphor that most modern operating systems have at least a minimal base in, so figuring them out wasn’t too much of a challenge.

To understand stacks in the digital sense, one must think back to a physical desk. Let’s say that Bill works in an office in the time before computers. Let’s say that Bill wants to temporarily organize all of his memos in a folder marked “Floor 4 Correspondence” by the date sent. What’s the most logical thing to do? Arrange them into stacks. Stacks are just a quick way to organize files based on a trait, such as…
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