tao51nyc's Profile

  • Feb 04, 2011
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Latest comments made by: tao51nyc

  • A year or so ago, a friend of mine stayed the weekend at my home in rural PA. ATT claimed 4-5 bars on his iPhone. But after 10 failed attempts to call his wife in St. Louis (call kept dropping after a few seconds), he gave up and asked for the landline. This was why I chose to stick with Verizon - and now I can finally have an iPhone.
    tao51nyc had this to say on Jan 28, 2011 Posts: 45
    Why I Won't Switch From ATT
  • Run out of cats? Hey, there are always dogs. How about Mac OS XI, "Timberwolf"? With complete voice command and touch screen interface, like something out of "Minority Report"? New Macs could ship without a mouse or a keyboard, just a headset. I don't reasonably expect this, but it wouldn't surprise me, either. And what IS a paradigm shift in computer interfaces, unless it involves a more "direct connection" in human terms. The keyboard and mouse are next to go...
    tao51nyc had this to say on Jul 08, 2009 Posts: 45
    Mac 2.0 or How Apple Could Win the Desktop Wars
  • Give me another generation or two to get some faith in the new battery system, and I might be a customer. Meantime, the week the new models with the locked-down battery were announced, I went to my supplier of choice and asked if he had any "old" models still on the shelf, at discount. Turns out they were practically having a fire sale. So I got what was, until a couple days earlier, the "latest" model MacBook Pro 15 (and the last one with a removable battery) - 2.53ghz, 4GB ram, 300GB HD, for about $600 off. The savings allowed me to pick up both a second battery, and a 2TB networked backup storage unit from Western Digital. I'm sure these new laptops are all right, but I just feel better being able to swap out my own battery. Call me a luddite, I don't care.
    tao51nyc had this to say on Jul 01, 2009 Posts: 45
    MacBook Pro 13 Inch: First Observations and Experiences
  • That's exactly what's going on...this is Apple's payback for the recent Microsoft ads. Prince Mclean did a piece on this last week. (But AppleMatters won't let me post the link).
    tao51nyc had this to say on Jun 18, 2009 Posts: 45
    Is Snow Leopard a Bargain at Twice the Price?
  • I'm a huge fan of VMWare compared to Parallels. It took Parallels until v.3 to allow me to simply drag/drop files from my Win or Linux desktop to my OS X desktop and vice versa. VMWare had it right from Day One. As for Win 7, I'll hang on another year and check it out, but then I'll take a hard look at whether I really need Windows for anything anymore. The Codeweavers/WINE solution is getting better and better, if I really need a Win-only app for something, but with no "middleman" OS that I am reluctant to pay for.
    tao51nyc had this to say on Jun 17, 2009 Posts: 45
    Run Windows on Your Mac For Free With VirtualBox
  • I still use VPC7 on a dual-2.0 ghz G5 I have at home - but only because VMWare is Intel-only.
    tao51nyc had this to say on Feb 23, 2009 Posts: 45
    February 20, 2003: Microsoft Buys Virtual PC
  • Hey, Martha Stewart spent more time in prison than Steve will spend away from his gig, healing. Stewart's company didn't collapse without her at the helm. Apple will be fine.
    tao51nyc had this to say on Jan 21, 2009 Posts: 45
    Steve's Break is Apple's Opportunity to Shine
  • Apple is smart not to engage in a "race to the bottom" with commode-box makers. There is no upside for them in that space. None. That's why they don't make anything for large-scale point-of-sale (POS) operations, either. Margins aren't just razor thin in that space, they're actually non-existent. Those $399 specials are usually there just to get folks to the store so they can upsell them something that will actually turn some coin. But they're loss leaders, by and large. Apple has a market cap, today, even with all the fiscal problems out there, of over $85 billion. That's 4 times that of Dell, the biggest commode-box maker, just slightly less than HP, and just over half that of IBM. They have no debt, and $25 billion cash in the bank. Why risk the farm trying to crank out cheap Macs at a loss, in hopes of some halo effect? Vaporware.
    tao51nyc had this to say on Oct 22, 2008 Posts: 45
    What Would You Pay for a Low-End Mac?
  • So hey...now's the time to buy!
    tao51nyc had this to say on Oct 06, 2008 Posts: 45
    Apple's Plunging Value
  • How about "Virtual Reality for the Rest of Us"? I've been searching for various solutions of late, and they're largely PC of big-iron 'nix based, and cost you your first born.
    tao51nyc had this to say on Aug 13, 2008 Posts: 45
    Apple's Future Prospects
  • Not from my perspective. In those early days, Apple computers were largely do-it-yourself-here's-the-manual. From the perspective of a desktop support guy in the late 90's, the Worst Apple Ever was the Powerbook 5300. It was constantly breaking down, and being sent back for warranty work. Total Lemon. I laughed out loud when Jeff Goldblum used one to defeat the aliens in Independence Day. No way that would happen!
    tao51nyc had this to say on May 19, 2008 Posts: 45
    May 19, 1980: Apple III. Worst. Apple. Ever.
  • That last would almost make me want to move back to California!
    tao51nyc had this to say on May 09, 2008 Posts: 45
    Putting Microsoft's Bid For Yahoo In Perspective
  • In hindsight, was Raskin more the visionary in the case of the Mac? Rather than making it a high-end Porsche, truly make it a "computer for the rest of us" starting out of the gate at a VERY competitive price point? This could have slowed down Microsoft's growth significantly, as Windows would have had nothing of value to offer, other than price. Price parity at the very outset would have killed it.
    tao51nyc had this to say on Mar 03, 2008 Posts: 45
    March 1, 1982: Take this Job and Shove It
  • Microsoft has no choice but to be "the good guy" because Zune's aren't selling worth a damn.
    tao51nyc had this to say on Oct 09, 2007 Posts: 45
    Is It Me, Or Has Karma Finally Decided To Settle Up With Apple?
  • "Why is it, for example, that Radiohead is offering DRM free, name your own price MP3s and Apple is not?" Because Radiohead has better control over their own content than Apple does over theirs - in fact, Apple doesn't "own" ANY of the music/videos it sells at ITMS. Apple has narrow, limiting contractual agreements with content producers. Perhaps Apple would LOVE to sell mp3's without DRM...but their clients, the labels, will not allow that at this time.
    tao51nyc had this to say on Oct 09, 2007 Posts: 45
    Is It Me, Or Has Karma Finally Decided To Settle Up With Apple?