Chrome OS
- Thread starter Arwin
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Don't think so.
I would disagree. Word has added massive amounts of features over, but the the union over all average users doesn't touch most of them. Yes, there have been some improvements since then, spell checking, grammar checking, outline fonts, etc but recognize that I had spell checking and outline fonts in the early 80s without even a graphical windowing system.
And I'd still put productivity with LaTeX for example, over and above Word, since LaTeX does more stuff automatically 'just right' that requires manual UI operations in Word.
As for iTunes and Java, as another poster mentioned. No, iTunes is written in C/C++/Objective-C.
latex also does stuff 'just wrong' that you can't correct for love nor money - putting a table or figure precisely where you don't want it, for example.
It's streets ahead of Word for anything involving anything remotely mathematical, and the typography is far superior, but for banging out a simple letter it's a lot of hard work.
Horses for courses I'd say.
There's a difference between saying it's had some improvements that helped productivity, and a full justification of the regulary bloatware upgrades sale. They should take a pairing knife to the thing after figuring out what delivers productivity and what doesn't. Don't like '80s, how about Office 2000 then? Did we really need everything added afterwards? Did we need Smart Tags, Product Activation, and the other junk? Did we need Clippy? Did Clippy enhance your productivity?
For example, they introduced completely useless XML and XML Schema support in Office back when XML was all hyped up (I'm not talking ODF/OOXML here). The percentage of users who benefitted from this was probably 0.1% No one cares about mapping XML Schema and documents into word documents, it's a solution in search of a problem, especially when Mail Merge and other things already existed.
The fact of the matter is, Microsoft has to keep finding more and more excuses for people to upgrade. Rather than sell based on speed, ease of use, or cost, they just lather up more and more junk every year.
My point is, if you plot the curve of your productivity increase vs the creeping bloat and features, you'd see that the gains are marginal. More and more junk is being added, and the UI is becoming more and more cluttered, but the amount of improvement in your workflow that each new feature adds is minimal. Microsoft has to invent new hackeneyed schemes just to hide the 90% features no one uses (like Adaptive Menus)
The funny thing is, despite multi-decade long work on Office, it is still fundamentally inferior to "toy" consumer apps like Apple KeyNote and Pages in some ways. Stuff like masking and editing images in KeyNote, and doing slick presentations is far easier than it is to do in Powerpoint.
Why do I love Chrome better than IE? leaving aside non-end user things like compliance with specs and better developer support:
1) easy to install (or rather, there is no install on OSX)
2) starts up so quick you can barely tell, far faster than other browsers
3) fastest Javascript execution out there
4) process isolation system works better than IE8
5) UI is totally uncluttered. Hardly any icons or buttons or menus. It does one thing good: browsing.
The simplicity of the UI is a big selling point to me. The fact that IE8 is still grossly inferior technically is just icing on the cake.
For example, they introduced completely useless XML and XML Schema support in Office back when XML was all hyped up (I'm not talking ODF/OOXML here). The percentage of users who benefitted from this was probably 0.1% No one cares about mapping XML Schema and documents into word documents, it's a solution in search of a problem, especially when Mail Merge and other things already existed.
The fact of the matter is, Microsoft has to keep finding more and more excuses for people to upgrade. Rather than sell based on speed, ease of use, or cost, they just lather up more and more junk every year.
My point is, if you plot the curve of your productivity increase vs the creeping bloat and features, you'd see that the gains are marginal. More and more junk is being added, and the UI is becoming more and more cluttered, but the amount of improvement in your workflow that each new feature adds is minimal. Microsoft has to invent new hackeneyed schemes just to hide the 90% features no one uses (like Adaptive Menus)
The funny thing is, despite multi-decade long work on Office, it is still fundamentally inferior to "toy" consumer apps like Apple KeyNote and Pages in some ways. Stuff like masking and editing images in KeyNote, and doing slick presentations is far easier than it is to do in Powerpoint.
Why do I love Chrome better than IE? leaving aside non-end user things like compliance with specs and better developer support:
1) easy to install (or rather, there is no install on OSX)
2) starts up so quick you can barely tell, far faster than other browsers
3) fastest Javascript execution out there
4) process isolation system works better than IE8
5) UI is totally uncluttered. Hardly any icons or buttons or menus. It does one thing good: browsing.
The simplicity of the UI is a big selling point to me. The fact that IE8 is still grossly inferior technically is just icing on the cake.
Demo you obviously have a chip on your shoulder. That is fine, but I was only talking about one thing whether productivity was better now than in 88 in Word.
That has nothing to do with whether IE is worse than chrome, or chrome is the best ever, nor if keynote is wonderful.
And actually like I said I quite like the ribbon introduced in 07. Activation? That has nothing to do with productivity it has to do with limiting piracy hardly something I will shout at them for. It is better than the way most games DRM works. And from what I hear people doing programing like the new formats.
Does that mean I think they should continue increasing bloat? Does it mean they should not "take a pairing knife to the thing after figuring out what delivers productivity and what doesn't"? No obviously I would not mind, but you seem a bit overzealous to me in regards to trashing them when I actually find the user experience quite good in comparison to WP which I started with, open office which I have used quite a bit as well. I don't have a mac so I cannot bask in the glory of their superior included apps.
I don't spend ages looking for the best program though. I find programs that work and have few annoyances. I use FF b/c IE bothered me. I use alternative plotting tools to excel b/c they are easier to get good results in, but I still use excel for other things.
That has nothing to do with whether IE is worse than chrome, or chrome is the best ever, nor if keynote is wonderful.
And actually like I said I quite like the ribbon introduced in 07. Activation? That has nothing to do with productivity it has to do with limiting piracy hardly something I will shout at them for. It is better than the way most games DRM works. And from what I hear people doing programing like the new formats.
Does that mean I think they should continue increasing bloat? Does it mean they should not "take a pairing knife to the thing after figuring out what delivers productivity and what doesn't"? No obviously I would not mind, but you seem a bit overzealous to me in regards to trashing them when I actually find the user experience quite good in comparison to WP which I started with, open office which I have used quite a bit as well. I don't have a mac so I cannot bask in the glory of their superior included apps.
I don't spend ages looking for the best program though. I find programs that work and have few annoyances. I use FF b/c IE bothered me. I use alternative plotting tools to excel b/c they are easier to get good results in, but I still use excel for other things.
One part of the Office suite that unfortunately no one has been able to quite match, even Open Office, is Excel. I think that any crazy feature you think of there, someone uses it. People even write VBA scripts! Companies even base official forms off VBA 'enhanced' excel files.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Uh, if there was only "ONE" thing that was implemented from 1988 to 2007 it would still be so incredibly world bending and changing that productivity would suffer without it.
WYSIWYG. And that's just one major feature that has been implemented in Word processors over the years. Granted the Mac at the time had very basic and vestigial WYSIWYG but it was incredibly basic and vestigial compared to how it is now.
Even from 1995 to 2007, the improvements made within just that ONE feature have increased productivity significantly.
I have to question anything you say with regards to everything else if you are saying there has been no advancements in productivity in word processing between 1988 and 2007. I have to question if you've even been using word processors for productivity during that time frame if you can make such a nonsensical statement.
Regards,
SB
I've been "word processing" since the first word processors were available on 8-bit computers. Still doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of word docs I receive on a daily basis could have been written in a Notepad equivalent.
Talk all you want about per-pixel control over layout, I worked in the Advertising and print publishing industry for a period of time in Manhattan, and no one at the time used Word for doing magazine article layout, ads, flyers, etc.
I've been working in and around corporate computer environments for 20 years now, and I get pummeled with Office attachments all the time, and I would classify the vast majority of them into 3 categories:
1) Word documents written to convey about what someone would want to type in an email or blog post. Namely, internal corporate memos.
2) Excel spreadsheets containing data from internal sensors, CRM/ERP systems, sales, finance, etc. Sometimes with crappy Excel graphs.
3) Powerpoint Presentations
and then there's a fourth category for people who should rot in hell:
People who attempt to develop "applications" using VB gluing together Excel, Access, et al.
I'd say that of those 3, it is Excel that has contributed the most to people's productivity by allowing them to set up simple computation models and play what/if games. I'd rank PPT #2 since it is important to communicate your conclusions and cardboard slides or hand marked transparencies don't cut it.
But Word, spare me, 90% of the Word documents I receive use no more advanced Word features than are available in RTF or HTML RichText.
And as I mentioned previously, I can write a very nice mathematical report using TeX that looks professionally done with awesome typography that would take some Word jockey 3x as long fudging around with equation editors.
Talk all you want about per-pixel control over layout, I worked in the Advertising and print publishing industry for a period of time in Manhattan, and no one at the time used Word for doing magazine article layout, ads, flyers, etc.
I've been working in and around corporate computer environments for 20 years now, and I get pummeled with Office attachments all the time, and I would classify the vast majority of them into 3 categories:
1) Word documents written to convey about what someone would want to type in an email or blog post. Namely, internal corporate memos.
2) Excel spreadsheets containing data from internal sensors, CRM/ERP systems, sales, finance, etc. Sometimes with crappy Excel graphs.
3) Powerpoint Presentations
and then there's a fourth category for people who should rot in hell:
People who attempt to develop "applications" using VB gluing together Excel, Access, et al.
I'd say that of those 3, it is Excel that has contributed the most to people's productivity by allowing them to set up simple computation models and play what/if games. I'd rank PPT #2 since it is important to communicate your conclusions and cardboard slides or hand marked transparencies don't cut it.
But Word, spare me, 90% of the Word documents I receive use no more advanced Word features than are available in RTF or HTML RichText.
And as I mentioned previously, I can write a very nice mathematical report using TeX that looks professionally done with awesome typography that would take some Word jockey 3x as long fudging around with equation editors.
I think you overlooking something here. While I would instantly admit that Word is the worst of the Office bunch (Excel the best for me), IMO Word has really gained a couple of productivity features that make Word 2007 a better and more productive product than, say, Word 2000. For me these features are the ability to adjust (scale, crop, etc.) images right in the document and spell checking while-u-type. Saying Word hasn't become more productive throughout the years reveals are very narcistic POV. The world does not revolve around you, Demo. Different people have different needs.
I bet you can. But for me the time to learn TeX would not pay off given the amount of word processing I do. I want to hop right in there and start typing. Word lets me do this, making it more productive for me than TeX (unless there is a WYSIWYG TeX now. Last time I seriously came across TeX 486 CPUs were the latest fashion).
I think Word 2007 is good enough, but there are still some flaws. Word processing needs a rethink though. Basically it needs to force you to separate content from layout. You can do it with Word 2007 almost perfectly: if you stick to using templates and styles only, and ignore every other darn feature in the system. Unfortunately I don't know anyone in my vicinity but me who uses Word like that. People think they are Word expert if they can use the Format Painter (shudder).
Arwin isn't that rather the point of LaTex? Separation? Not that it matters this thread is going a bit off topic anyway. I will just say my experience doesn't match Demos and I actually quite like what they did in office 07 for everything really (Word, Excel, PPT, and access). It was a big jump unlike say office 2k-->xp which was rather pointless. Makes me wonder if 2010 will likewise be pointless though.
Of LaTex, and of XML too. That another system supports is irrelevant to me though. 
Anyway, Word 2007 is moving in the right direction in that its filesystem is just a zip containing a bunch of xml files, separating styles and content. I've designed a template application where the actual questions used are stored in that zip file along with the rest, something that Word 2007 supports and is really neat. You can reopen the document and display the original template questions (and answers!) and change stuff (using our add-in). Having written against Word like this for many generations, this has brought Word to a point I can really appreciate. The new Content Controls are also near perfect. And I can now fairly easily create Word documents without using Word also. So yeah, definitely heading in the right direction. Took long (too long!) to get here though, and I would still offer a mode where you work in LaTex mode if you want to call it that completely in the User Interface (it can keep wysiwyg, just as long as you just say - new chapter heading, book title, etc. instead of bold/italics, etc. and can't change any layout other than changing the layout of something you've labeled as content. And this should work flawlessly for numbering, tables, etc. Numbering and table layout in Word are still weak. Especially numbering - the user interface for defining it is ... crap!).
Anyway, Word 2007 is moving in the right direction in that its filesystem is just a zip containing a bunch of xml files, separating styles and content. I've designed a template application where the actual questions used are stored in that zip file along with the rest, something that Word 2007 supports and is really neat. You can reopen the document and display the original template questions (and answers!) and change stuff (using our add-in). Having written against Word like this for many generations, this has brought Word to a point I can really appreciate. The new Content Controls are also near perfect. And I can now fairly easily create Word documents without using Word also. So yeah, definitely heading in the right direction. Took long (too long!) to get here though, and I would still offer a mode where you work in LaTex mode if you want to call it that completely in the User Interface (it can keep wysiwyg, just as long as you just say - new chapter heading, book title, etc. instead of bold/italics, etc. and can't change any layout other than changing the layout of something you've labeled as content. And this should work flawlessly for numbering, tables, etc. Numbering and table layout in Word are still weak. Especially numbering - the user interface for defining it is ... crap!).
This could be cool, especially if it is running on a tegra2 netbook.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/09/24/tegra.based.netbook.with.google.chrome.os.coming/
The only possible trouble is that these things might be short on RAM, with no way to increase the RAM yourselves.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/09/24/tegra.based.netbook.with.google.chrome.os.coming/
The only possible trouble is that these things might be short on RAM, with no way to increase the RAM yourselves.
According to Techcrunch there's likely going to be a first alpha version of Chrome OS released next week.
Exciting times. Hopefully it will run on x86 so I can load it up in a VM.
Exciting times. Hopefully it will run on x86 so I can load it up in a VM.
Blazkowicz
Legend
At worst you can run it under qemu if it's ARM only.
it seems a given it's a portable OS (what OS isn't nowadays) and that they can build a much bigger userbase if supporting x86. Many people will be interested in wiping their netbook or an old PC to use it. Low-cost (200€) netbooks can use it too.
What to be expected of it (fast browser, fast javascript and good quality flash plugin all meant to run on a slow ARM CPU) will make it desirable to install on old P2/P3 and celeron, where ubuntu+firefox is SLOW.
I even expect third parties to port it to Power PC, so you can use it on old jelly iMac or other marginal platforms.
for a geek it may become "poor man's OSX", too. let google take care of the drivers, UI, browsing, media playing parts etc., then we can add the gnu/unix command line environment to get other parts of computing done.
it seems a given it's a portable OS (what OS isn't nowadays) and that they can build a much bigger userbase if supporting x86. Many people will be interested in wiping their netbook or an old PC to use it. Low-cost (200€) netbooks can use it too.
What to be expected of it (fast browser, fast javascript and good quality flash plugin all meant to run on a slow ARM CPU) will make it desirable to install on old P2/P3 and celeron, where ubuntu+firefox is SLOW.
I even expect third parties to port it to Power PC, so you can use it on old jelly iMac or other marginal platforms.
for a geek it may become "poor man's OSX", too. let google take care of the drivers, UI, browsing, media playing parts etc., then we can add the gnu/unix command line environment to get other parts of computing done.
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The broad specs are up.
http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os
TBH, I don't know whether to hate it or love it.
The good
1) It absolutely rocks for normal people using netbooks in a manner consistent with their target market. The security/app model is a real advance from the present. But I have severe doubts about using this thing for myself. Read on why.
The bad
1) For a start, a netbook running Google chrome OS will be a google's computing console, period. There is almost no control of your own machine for someone like me.
2) I can't write a prototype python script and run it on my netbook without ssh support.
The ugly
1) NO DESKTOP APPS=> no tinkering/screwing/modding/hacking your own machine the way we know it.
It's great to see someone take a chainsaw to the windows empire and the mac castle. PC technology needs a boost and it is a welcome breath of fresh air into the present market. But I can't shake off the feeling that you'll be buying a machine pwn-ed by Big G.
As for the linux desktop, I hope to see a lot of distributions based on it coming up that will let me have my gcc and python and also allow me to have the chrome nirvana. If they allow some user (sudo'ed if necessary) to sign software and then run it, that could work for me.
Bottomline, anything that locks me out of compiling my apps/hacks is not acceptable to me.
What are your opinions on this thing?
http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os
TBH, I don't know whether to hate it or love it.
The good
1) It absolutely rocks for normal people using netbooks in a manner consistent with their target market. The security/app model is a real advance from the present. But I have severe doubts about using this thing for myself. Read on why.
The bad
1) For a start, a netbook running Google chrome OS will be a google's computing console, period. There is almost no control of your own machine for someone like me.
2) I can't write a prototype python script and run it on my netbook without ssh support.
The ugly
1) NO DESKTOP APPS
=> no tinkering/screwing/modding/hacking your own machine the way we know it.It's great to see someone take a chainsaw to the windows empire and the mac castle. PC technology needs a boost and it is a welcome breath of fresh air into the present market. But I can't shake off the feeling that you'll be buying a machine pwn-ed by Big G.
As for the linux desktop, I hope to see a lot of distributions based on it coming up that will let me have my gcc and python and also allow me to have the chrome nirvana. If they allow some user (sudo'ed if necessary) to sign software and then run it, that could work for me.
Bottomline, anything that locks me out of compiling my apps/hacks is not acceptable to me.
What are your opinions on this thing?
