Saturday, July 05, 2008

A Brief List of Grievances

Since PCW is a little too parochial to attract the attention of Defenders of the Mac Faith such as Chairman Gruber, I shall take it upon myself to provide a page-by-page list of the slights inflicted by its September issue (plus it's raining out and when I decide to suddenly start updating again I really suddenly start updating again).

Grap a copy and read along at home!

Cover story: "Buy a Mac, get a PC" Oh, boy. It seems as far as PCW is concerned, the only good Mac is a Windows-running Mac. Cue six pages dedicated to installing Windows via Boot Camp. OS X — constantly referred to as "OSX" throughout — gets a thin side-box, where Cover Flow, Quick Look and Spotlight are highlighted. Seriously. Those are the highlights of OS X? Not at all superficial, then.

p.7: Editorial Editor Kelvyn Taylor doesn't like the "bouncy icons" or "odd menu system".

p.8: The iPhone is described as "revolutionary" ... hold on, that sounded complimentary.

p.9: Okay. Analysts are quoted dismissing it as "no market changer". Normal service has been restored.

p.13 (among many others): I give up: what exactly is an "iTouch"?

p.14: Ahem: "The iHype over iPods and iPhones leaves the impression that iApple started the iFashion for putting a small i in front of everything." Do you see what they've done there? "In fact, Compaq started it back in April 2000 with the launch of its iPaq handheld." That would be the April 2000 which occurred before the May 1998 when the iMac was launched, would it?

p.19 (top): "... the old Apple disease of form overriding function." Of course, some would argue that the two were inseparable.

p.19 (bottom): Where Clive Akass explains how the fact that Cubase 1) inflicts draconian — and quaintly old-fashioned — dongle-based DRM on its users, while 2) apparently not making a PDF version of their manual easily accessible on the Mac proves that the Mac is "not a user-friendly operating system".

And ... this is about the point where I'm starting to lose the will to live. Oh, look! It's stopped raining.

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