In my dreams I called Steve Ballmer an “ugly monkey with a shitty empire.”

As I said, false sense of entitlement. Thank you, Mr. Alsup.

7 is here, olé! This will be the first time in over a decade that I’ll be spending money on a Microsoft operating system. It’s not really that it’s so effin’ great to make a long-time Mac head like me switch back, it’s just that I need it to power my media center box which has been existing on various betas and RCs of 7 so far.

Now, Windows 7 comes in roughly a gazillion different editions, surely there’s one that fits my needs, right? Let’s see:

1. I would like it run Media Center.
2. It would be great if it could backup my media content to a NAS (for noise reasons in a different room).
3. I live in Japan, and even though a Japanese OS would be fine for me and even though I’m not a native English speaker, I prefer to get the “original” version in English.

Okay, so lets have look at what edition fulfills my needs.

1. Home Premium or up
2. Professional or up
3. Enterprise or up for a multilingual user interface or any version, as long as I could get it

Even though it’s ridiculous, I could ignore the network backup functionality and replace it with a free 3rd party application. The real bummer though is point 3, the interface language. It doesn’t even need to be multilingual, a single lingua would do it for me. But it’s really not that easy to find a version of Windows that is not designated for the market you’re in. And considering that I’ll use this exclusively to watch TV and movies, I don’t really want to dole out ¥20,000+ for this. Of course I’ll try to get an OEM version, and that makes it even harder to find an English edition.

So the options I’m looking at right now are:

1. Download the English Home Premium edition from the Microsoft Store for $199 (¥18,300).
2. Get the Ultimate OEM version for ¥24,000.
3. Wait and look for an English OEM version to be offered around here.

Gee, am I glad Microsoft is offering so many different version to help me get the right one for the lowest price. Wait, what’s that? Snow Leopard lets you switch to any language on the fly and it even backs up over the network, for ¥3,300*? Get out!

*) Not an entirely fair comparison, but at least Apple gets their product editions right: One Disc to Rule Them All.

I am researching various Tokyo train applications at the moment and came upon this “gem”: Tokyo Underground by Presselite. They’re touting the Augmented Reality aspect of this app a lot, which actually may or may not work okay; I can’t test it since I’m using an iPhone 3G. For what this app is supposed to be—a Tokyo metro map—it’s utterly useless. To be fair, both the map and the list of train lines are exactly what they display on the homepage. To be frank, that means they’re static. Seriously, there’s a dedicated tab for train lines, and all it is is a list of line names. All you can do with it is scroll up and down, that’s it. No tapping for more info, no nothing.

The really frivolous part are the Points of Interest though. I’m not really sure why this is supposed to be an integral part of using a subway map to begin with, but get this: Each “type of POI”, restaurant or konbini chains (Starbucks, Yoshinoya, Lawson etc), is sold via an In-App-Purchase for $0.99 a pop! In total, there are some two or three dozen POIs to be purchased, for a dollar each. For information that is freely available in a better interface through Google Maps.

Shame on you Presselite, shame on you!

Chris Rawson at TUAW is proving that Snow Leopard is faster than its predecessors with, wait for it, Geekbench! Of all the things he could’ve done, he chose the one thing that misses the point entirely. As is often the case, the real information is in the comments.

I know you’re not supposed to kick a man when he’s down, but all the hubbub over Convertbot right now reminded me of one thing that’s been on my mind for a while:

I think Convertbot is not actually as great as people make it out to be.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful application, the interface is wonderfully animated and even the sounds are gorgeous. It’s just not very usable. From starting the app to getting a converted result, including choosing a conversion type, choosing two units and typing in a number, it takes me at best 8 taps (counting entering a number as 1 tap). In the initial 1.0 release the same operation took 10 taps.

1. Open app (not counting tap).
2. Rotate dial to conversion type.
3. Tap left unit, wait for animation to finish.
4. Rotate dial to unit.
5. 1.0: Tap OK, wait for animation to finish.
6. Tap right unit, wait for animation to finish.
7. Rotate dial to unit.
8. 1.0: Tap OK, wait for animation to finish.
9. Tap “display” to open keypad.
10. Delete number if not 0, digit by digit.
11. Enter new number.
12. To really finish: Tap “display” to close keypad.

Note that many steps are accompanied by a somewhat lengthy animation sequence. In 1.0 it was actually necessary to tap OK after selecting a unit. Somebody went through the trouble of creating an alert sound and a cute error message in case you didn’t.

Overall it is really quite a lengthy process, especially if you, you know, just want to convert a unit, like, now. I admire Tapbots for the work they’ve done, graphically. I just think the user interface was designed with the wrong focus.

A recent new entry in the “converter space” on the iPhone, Convert, does a much better job at this. 5 taps for the same operations. It’s absolutely gorgeous in its own right, there is a metric ton (2,204lb) of detail in there. But most of all, it’s streamlined for its intended purpose.

AppleInsider writes on the latest frivolous stab at Apple by Psystar:

The filing claims that Psystar is entitled to be able to buy copies of Snow Leopard on the market and install them onto its own computers that it re-sells.

Wether the term “entitled” was chosen by AppleInsider or Psystar I don’t know, but they certainly seem to feel entitled to something. The whole Psystar saga has spawned a huge controversy over Apples closed model and wether they should have to open up.

Since this is one of my pet-peeve stories, just let me get this straight:

• Company A builds, markets and sells product line X.
• Company B wants to take a central part of product line X and resell it as product line Y, without approval of company A.

Honestly, I don’t see why there’s even any discussion about the case. Apple hardware is build to run Mac OS X and Mac OS X is build to run on Apple hardware. Wether or not it is technically feasible to separate these two components, they are designed to work exclusively together. There was virtually no objection to that during the PPC era, why does anybody think that had to change after Apples switch to Intel processors?

Apple is offering what they’re offering, a walled garden, a complete experience from soup to nuts. It’s their business model, and it’s not anti-competitive. Within that walled garden everybody is free to do whatever he or she wants. Take it or leave it. But don’t run your truck through the garden wall to make your own side entrance and charge for admission.

What’s the outcome supposed to be here?

1. Apple will be forced to resell OS X to third parties.

   This would require a huge shift in Apples business model, just think support and compatibility testing. It’s a burden a company can only voluntarily accept, it can’t be forced to do so.

2. Third parties will be allowed to resell OS X without the approval of Apple.

   In this case, could Apple be held liable if, oops, an update would break compatibility with said unauthorized third party hardware? Can a company be held responsible for compatibility problems with products it never vouched to support in the first place? If it could, that would be equivalent to outcome #1. If it can’t, I don’t see Psystar playing the update cat-and-mouse game for very long, nor any of their customers.

Psystar can’t do anything but lose here. And the sooner they do the better.

Everybody and their mom got the Google Voice app story wrong because of a wrong interpretation of facts. And everybody and their mom got hyped up beyond control over nothing, or at least very little.

I propose a new standardized process for this sort of thing the next time the whole internet wants to go crazy: Use the Office Space Jump to Conclusions mat. About the same outcome with twice the nerdiness.

I was starting to wonder when somebody would pull this off. This is a cute application, albeit not quite at beta quality yet.

Now if only Windows would get an AppStore as well, it’s needed a lot more over there I think.

Apple censored an English dictionary.

‘Nuff said.

The dictionary in question, Ninjawords, is really quite excellent by the way.