Last night Joe and I got in this huge discussion, and I was cursing out Microsoft. It’s been rough the past couple of days and M$ has not been making my life very easy. Every time I turn around I have to ghetto-fy my web sites to make them work in IE…

See… There are these things called Web Standards which were put into place to make web designer’s lives easier. As in, if they script to web standards, then all standards compliant browsers will show the site exactly correct. Well, I always script to web standards. The PROBLEM is that Microsoft decides that they are just going to do things THEIR way (I would say that they go by Microsoft Standards, but I really don’t think that they have any standards) - they don’t care about the rest of the world at all. There is a nice pie chart which shows the amount of time designers spend on each part of being a web designer. The biggest part of the chart is “Getting it to work in Internet Explorer”

Anyway, this morning I get an unknown number calling me through skype, so I think that maybe it’s a possible client. I pick up and guess who it is - MICROSOFT. Well, it is a Microsoft representative. Guess what he wants? My opinion on something. Before he even asks me the information I say “I only have one opinion to give to Microsoft, and that is that they should get their act together and make their Browser conform to web standards.”

The guy, first of all, admits that he is not a techie. Then he says “I’m sure most of the people that I talk to would disagree with that comment.” So I say “No, actually, most of the web design community feels the same way” (I also bring up that graphic). I explain to him that there are web standards that every browser conforms to but Internet Explorer, and IE is just making everyone’s lives harder.

It ended up that he was calling to get me on some kind of panel to make decisions (hah hah) - and I couldn’t be on it since there were “less than 2″ (isn’t that 1?) full time employees in my company that are web designers. Another mistake M$ is making. Most of the top, cutting edge companies in this business are 1 man shows (look at wishingline.com for instance, or simplebits.com)

So I know it didn’t make any difference, but I thought it was hilarious timing. I am so mad at Microsoft. I am even taking back my opinion that owning a computer should be based on the environment you feel more comfortable in. I don’t think that anyone should own a M$ computer. Everytime anyone I know gets one, I end up spending countless hours fixing it or getting simple things to work right that should just work. And get this - my friend Don bought a Zune (which is Microsoft’s version of the iPod) and he just got Vista - well, he hooked the Zune up to his Vista computer and they are incompatible with eachother. What is with that? They don’t even support their own stuff!

Besides the fact that all of the Microsoft employees I have ever encountered must have been brainwashed. I don’t know where they dig these people up.

Scenario: I am designing a site for a client. This was years ago when I still used Dreamweaver to put sites together (not like now with my trusty Textmate) - I had to work with a Microsoft Developer who was going to be doing the backend of the site. My client would save money by using him, a friend, instead of using me. It made sense. The problem was, this guy had no idea what he was doing. At the beginning he made some comment about how I couldn’t use “Macromedia” to create the site because “Macromedia” was not supported on most machines. He generalized all Macromedia products into the same group (DW is a Macromedia product - adobe now), and thought that since Macromedia Flash needed a plugin to install, that their web site would need a plugin. Then he made a comment that since he was scripting it in ASP.NET and the client was using a Macintosh computer, that they probably wouldn’t be able to even access the backend area. Which is not true either. At the time, I was constantly SCRIPTING ASP on my mac computer and successfully running the scripts from a web server. The only issue would have been if they were trying to host it on their machine. Anyway, after all of this wasted time, the client decided to go ahead and pay me to get it done.

Scenario 2: Different location (the first guy was based in Seattle - this person was in Dallas) - My friend meets with a woman about teaching her a language. They start talking about web sites (because I had just finished making my friend a web site - again in DW), my friend mentions that I made the site in DW and the woman says essentially the same incorrect information: “‘Macromedia’ is not supported and ‘Macromedia’ should not be used” - Untrue untrue untrue. What the heck is wrong with Microsoft? Do they really think they are that superior? And what do they gain by brainwashing their employees that things that work perfectly fine don’t work?

And if they AREN’T brainwashing them, then they are just hiring incompetant, pompous dumbasses. And if either is the case, why should anyone support their company?

So this is what Joe and I were talking about last night. And Joe made the point that M$ is kind of like Ford. At the beginning, they had some really good and revolutionary ideas. There wasn’t much competition (at the time, Mac had taken themselves out of the game by charging for code to script programs for their OS). So they got really popular. Now all of the things they are building are built on bad foundation. They could have really good, amazingly brilliant engineers working for them. The problem is that M$ is constantly doing the temporary quick fix, when what they probably need to do at this point is start from scratch (or focus on tearing apart and refining what already existed). Vista is one of the least user-friendly OS’s that I have ever seen. It has the potential to be a very good OS if they refine it and work the kinks out. But knowing M$, they will probably abandon it for a new system in a couple of years.

Joe made a beautiful illustration using video games. As soon as the XBOX 360 released, Microsoft dropped all support for the XBOX. Forcing people to switch. There are no new games coming out for the XBOX at all. Now look at Sony. After the PS2 was released, they still supported the first playstation. And now that the PS3 is out, guess what was the best selling video game system this past christmas? The PS2! And there are new games coming out for it still. Sony constantly supports their older hardware. While Microsoft abandoned theirs. Just like they are not even supporting their older OS’s! My grandfather HAD to buy a new computer with Vista and spend hours learning a new OS because Microsoft is not supporting ME anymore.

My mom made a comment that I should be a spokesperson for Macintosh. As much as I love my Mac, I’m not trying to push Mac as much as I am trying to get people to stop using Microsoft. There are other options like Linux (and the Linux operating system “just works like it should” - but there are some programs not supported on it). Microsoft is just a terrible company and they make shoddy products. But if you have no choice and you have to use a microsoft computer, at least do yourself the favor of downloading Firefox, Opera or Safari and viewing the web as it was meant to be viewed.

So our questions have been answered.

Just a recap - Whenever we tried to watch Blu-ray disks on our PS3, it would freeze for about 10 seconds or so. It would do this sporadically through the movie, and then start playing again. We thought it might have been the disks from Netflix, because they were a little smudged.

This wasn’t the case. It actually was an issue with the PS3. Apparently, something with using the Sixaxis controller as a remote (even just having it turned on for standby) and having the wifi enabled while watching a blu-ray movie was too taxing for the system. So to remedy this, we simply have to remember to turn off the wifi before we watch a movie. We haven’t had any problems since (except when we forget to turn the wifi off).

So now we are fully enjoying our HD experience, and our Netflix account - with no worries.

Joe and I recently purchased a PS3. So, since there are no video games out on it (aside from Resistance, which Joe has already conquered), we decided to take advantage of it’s Bluray player, and the fact that our TV goes up to 1080p resolution. Since Bluray Disks are semi-expensive, and have limited availability, we decided to do online rentals. We made the decision to go with Netflix after visiting Blockbuster’s stupid and aggravating web site (if their web site is that aggravating when they are trying to get you to PURCHASE their service, why would we expect it to be better when we HAVE the service?), and speaking with Blockbuster’s less-than-informed managers (we assume that Blockbuster Online did not have HD DVD or Bluray Disks since no one seemed to know and we couldn’t find it on their web site).

So far Netflix has been okay. Their web site has many nice features, is very easy to use. It has a “Friends” feature, where you can add friends who have Netflix, see what they are watching and what they thought of the things they have seen, and send notes to them. I am trying it out with my friend Mike Schmid, and it is interesting. Although I think I am annoying him with stupid crazy notes.
The movies come the next day. If I send a movie back, it gets to them the day after and I receive my next movie the day after that. It is very fast. We’re still in the first week of our 2 week free trial and so far we have received 4 movies (if we would have started with the 3 out-at-a-time we would have had probably 6 movies by now).
The only problem we have had thus far is every Bluray disk we have gotten has had horrible problems with skipping. The first movie that we had seemed to play fine after Joe wiped it off very extensively, but the disk we watched tonight still had problems, even after he cleaned it twice. We aren’t sure if this is due to a crappy player built into the PS3, or if it is the disks themselves and the way they may have been handled by Netflix. We haven’t had any problems with DVD’s we have gotten through them, but we have played them on our DVD player.

Hopefully everything turns out good, and we figure out what is going on. If anyone else has had this problem with Blurays, let me know. Other than the weird skipping on those disks, I’m happy with the service, and if we get things sorted out, then maybe we’ll be long-time customers.

I love my mac computers. So much that I own two of them, and would gladly purchase more if I had a good excuse. If my company gets big enough, I would outfit my entire staff with Macbook Pro’s. I’ve also owned an iPod for 3 years which has been very good to me.

I haven’t always been a mac user, I have owned PC’s in the past, and I also own one now to run tests on, and for my husband to use. So I have plenty of experience with PC’s, and although I didn’t care too much before going mac, now that I have used one it is very difficult to go back. There are so many positives to owning a mac that most people wouldn’t understand until they actually use one themselves.

And no, Macs are not infallible.  They crash just like PC’s.  Although, my PC did crash a lot more.  Most people argue that if people would take care of their PC’s they wouldn’t crash, well, I took good care of my PC.  I don’t have to think about taking care of my mac.  99% of the time it works without a hitch.  And when it doesn’t work, I’ve never had a problem where a quick call to Apple support didn’t fix the problem.

Although I try to do my part to recommend macs to computer purchasers, there is only so much that I can do. Here are some resources for anyone interested:

Why buy Mac instead of Windows

Tell me one thing you can do with a Mac that you can’t do with Windows

Mac VS. PC Myths Debunked

X VS. XP Scoreboard