Pleasantville Beaux Arts

Today I hung the Pleasantville Beaux Arts show and I will be judging it with John this Monday. The show will be open the rest of the week and the reception will be Saturday, Nov. 8th at the Pleasantville Library.

Browser Wars 3.0?

Holy smokes! I thought the browser wars had come to a standstill with Internet Explorer as the raining champ (as far as market share goes) with Firefox slowly, but consistently nibbling away at that lead.

But suddenly, out pops Google Chrome. A browser I took for a whirl and forgot to stop using. Sure it's a bit glitchy as any beta program would be, but the speed and UI advances suite me so well that I am willing to overlook its shortcomings.

And of course, there is Safari for both the Mac and Windows. The windows version is surprisingly appealing. It did not drag me away from Firefox (like Chrome did), but I fire it more often then I do Internet Explorer.

And let us not forget Opera. The perennial 'also ran' that never gets much love but for a few fringe fanboys, has slowly morphed into a nearly prime time read app with some markedly nice and unique features. Features that other, more successful browsers had no quibbles about 'borrowing'. I may not be an Opera fanboy, but I sure have to give them the nod for coming up with a lot of brilliant stuff.

So, the original browser war (let's for the moment put Mosaic aside) was between Netscape and Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer won that war. It won based on a two prong attack: 1. Microsoft illegally leveraged it's operating system monopoly to intimidated PC makers from shipping new PCs with any browser but Internet Explorer. 2. Microsoft actually invested in making Internet Explorer a good browser. Internet Explorer 4 was truly better then Netscape. Then Netscape assisted Microsoft here by sending its own browser to new lows. Remember Netscape 6? Worst browser ever?

Round one of the browser wars goes to Microsoft.

Round two starts very much where round one left off. Firefox rises out of the ashes of Netscape and diddles around for a few years making itself into a usable browser, but posses no immediate threat to Internet Explorer. Fact is, the only real threat to Internet Explorer turns out to be Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer pretty much hit its zenith with 4. Following iterations ad bloat, bugs, headaches, and proprietary Microsoft crap.

I don't recall the exact build, but around .9, Firefox becomes what Netscape never was, an Internet Explorer killer. I switched full time to Firefox, and the slow migration from Internet Explorer begins. Internet Explorer wins round two, but Firefox has pried open the door and is making real progress in market share and has completely blown the doors off Internet Explorer in terms of performance, UI, and security.

Round three opens with Microsoft finally getting off its ass just enough to release Internet Explorer 7, which does not completely suck, but is still no match for Firefox from a performance standpoint. But I did not fully recognize round three as having started until today. Sure, Chrome and Safari had been released, and I love Chrome. But, I saw a browser today that I have to have. It came from out of the blue, like Chrome. But this one is Mac only. And worse, 10.5 only. I'm to cheap to upgrade from 10.4, so I can't get it.

But I want.

I really want.

It's called Cruz.

It has this simple little plug in that makes you think, 'Why didn't I think of that'. The plug in is called Browser Browser. It essentially lets you take one tab and split it (frame like) into two (or three) panes, so you can simultaneously see two (or three) web sites side by side. And you can control where the frame is (left, right, top, bottom) and how it behaves. Brilliant, and completely thought out. 

Of course, there are plugins for Firefox that let you do something similar, but there are so badly thought out and implemented as to be useless.

Cruz is, let us remember, a brand new browser (based on webkit) and a brand new plugin for that browser. Naturally, I saw this on John Gruber's site.

The heat is on. Round three is on.

Best Apple Deal Ever?

Amazingly, Amazon.com still has the last generation Apple MacBook Pro availble at a crazy low price of $1,643.99 after rebate. Just a couple of weaks ago, this was a $2500 laptop. Considering my view on the new models, this is flat out an awesome deal. Though, to be fair, the new MacBook Pro is quite a nice machine, not artificially crippled like the new MacBooks.

dead wrong

I respect the heck out of John Gruber. He is smart, clever, insightful, and writes well. So it's something special when he gets it wrong. It's rare, but he did it today. In speaking about the new MaBooks:

What’s important to Apple about this process isn’t that it makes laptops cheaper. It’s that it makes them better at the same prices.

The problem is that the new MacBooks are slower then their predisesors. Their clock speeds have stepped backwards, not forwards and they are stripped of Firewire. Those two reasons are why Apple laptops got nixed off my list of potential next computers.

MacBooks are standing still in processor speed and price, but in this industry, if you are not increasing performance, you are raising prices. Oh sure, the GPUs are better, but what is that good for, games? Really Apple? Are you serious?

When I bought my MacBook, it not only had better features then a similar Dell, it was actually cheaper. Those days are long gone.

And to make matters worse, Apple still has one old school MacBook left, basically a left over the the last generation that comes in at $1,000. So Apple can say that they have dropped their price, but the reality is that the 'white' model is now the ghetto model, it says you did not have the cash for a 'real' MacBook. And this one is underpowered too!

The MacBooks now get completely spanked by competing PCs. Case in point, for $1275 I can buy an HP dv3500t with a 2.53 Ghz quad 2, 4 gigs of ram, with a 512mb geforce graphics card, running Vista 64 bit. This is all important because it will simply blow the doors off the MacBooks if you want to do some work with Adobe CS4 which, for the PC, will be 64 bit and able to use the GPU if it is a geforce with at least 512mb.

Hmmm, $1,300 for a pretty case, or $1,300 for a screaming machine that will rip the face off of CS4?

And about Industrial Design, when it is good, it makes stuff easier to use, increases performance, and reduces price. Apple forgot that this time round.

The new MacBooks are pretty though... Too bad it's only skin deep.

Elitism - Why it is Essential to America's Success

Every political season, "elitist" is a dirty word slung mostly at Democrats. This is the epitome of stupidity. This is the epitome of pandering to the lowest of social standards. This is the epitome of wanting America to fail.

What is an elite? Simply, an elite is someone who excels in his or her field. An elitist is someone who surrounds, or wants to surround, themselves with the best people in their respective fields. So any politician selling themselves as not being an elitist is a flat our moron.

Getting Religion... at the wrong time

I just can't stop thinking about how dumb Republican Congresspeople are. Really, first they vote against the bail-out, then for it. Granted, the bail-out is really hard to swallow, but in the end, it was clearly necessary (to anyone who has any clue about the economy).

After years of spending like drunken sailors, they finally get religion and say no to a really big spending bill. Except, it was exactly the wrong time to go against spending because it was a critical moment for the economy.

So, since Congressional Republicans dropped the ball and could not do the responsible thing, the Senate had to take up the bill and get it passed. Which they did.

Then the bill (now bloated with earmarks) went back to the House where enough Republicans decided to be flip-floppers for the bill to get passed.

This demonstrates that there is a large chunk of Republican Congresspeople who are just really dumb and don't know what they are doing or what is good for America. Bravo.

Bankers More Hated then Lawyers?

One aspect of the current financial debacle that might make some happy is the very real likelihood that bankers will become even more hated then lawyers. Of course, that's only good for lawyers and is bad for bankers, but then, that is the least that bankers deserve.

Bankers should count themselves as lucky if people only hate them. By bankers, I mean mortgage lenders. Or anyone involved in 'repackaging' bad mortgages into 'securities'.

Maybe I'm being too harsh on these poor guys.

No.

These are just bad guys. Everywhere you look, you can see bad behaviour. Even big 'normal' banks like Chase were involved in irresponsible (and I think, criminally negligent) loans. If Chase is doing it, there is not doubt that everyone else was too. It was simply too big a pie for these greedy bastards to resist.

Am I sad to see poor old Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch get crushed by their own incompetence? No, their egos and pay checks were too grotesquely large for me to have any empathy for them.

And now Paulson and Bernanke want 700 billion (who are we kidding, the real number will be way north of one trillion) to fix this mess, no strings attached. They tell us we need this because the system is just, 'too big to fail'.

They have not said it yet, but they really are selling this as the only way to avoid another Great Depression. The problem (well, one of the problems) is that this is what Bernanke has dreamed about, to be the guy who gets it right this time and saves us all from another depression. Don't mess with a boy and his dream.

I am not confident that their plan will work because the greedy bastards that got us into this mess will be the ones 'we the people' will have to deal with to get through it and based on their performance so far, I think it likely that they will just grab for the money. They will sell 'we the people' bad mortgages for much more then they are worth. They will add fees and other hidden costs to get every last dime for themselves. And when it is all said and done, they will buy new politicians to deregulate some other financial sector and start all over again.

But wait, say it does work, we stabilize the financial sector and it does not crumble. What do you think will happen next?

Taxes skyrocket.

It's very simple, this mess we are now in was completely foreseeable. I started to realise the implications when my wife and I bought a home in Texas in 2001. I saw that it was way too easy to get a mortgage and I looked around and saw a lot of people with sketchy finances getting really sketchy mortgages. I'm not an economist and even I was able to see it.

So why do taxes skyrocket?

Confidence in America will crumble. President Bush has been working real hard in chipping away at our standing in this world and this crisis will be the last straw. At this point, who in their right mind would invest in this country? We throw a trillion dollars at a useless war, we throw a trillion dollars at bad mortgages, really, who wants to be around that kind of stink?

So then all those other countries that have lent us all that money to buy all that junk will start wanting their money back. And that will cause a run on the bank. But in this case, that bank is the United States of America, or 'we the people'. So to pay that bill, we will need to pay a boat load in taxes.

This storm hits before Christmas season when all the retailers make most of their money for the year. But Americans are stupid (that's what got us into this mess) and may not fully appreciate the magnitude of the catastrophe. In which case, this will be the last Christmas for a long, long while. Might as well live it up one last time, right? But if we do wake up, them Christmas won't be much fun this year. It will look like a dream compared to what 2009 will look like. And that will be a cake walk compared to 2010. And 2011, well, I think I'll stop there, lest I get depressed.

The main problem is that we are just tapped out, there is no more money and we will soon be at the end of our line of credit.

From the "You Paid for That" dept

Microsoft has ended its recent ads featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. It is being debated if this was premature and simply in reaction to the negative reaction the ads have received. I thought the ads were OK, even a little funny. And though they did seem to ramble with no point, there was a subtle element to them that was humanizing Bill Gates and, by extension, Microsoft. But since Bill does not run Microsoft anymore, the timing seemed a little odd.

Now Microsoft's ad company will start to air commercials with a John Hodgman look alike as a direct confrontation with Apple's, "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" ad campaign. Aside from being in poor taste to rip off your competitors characters, does Microsoft really think it's in their best interest to look like they are ripping off Apple... again?

Historically, one of the main complaints and accusations of Microsoft Windows was that it was just a bad rip off of Apple's OS. Now, with their ad campaign they are doing the exact same thing. Granted it worked for them in the past, but they had a lot more going for them at the time and I'm not sure that rekindling that old rip off argument will serve them well this time.

I wonder how much they paid their ad company for such a stunningly bad idea?

Even if the ads come out OK, the ridicule they will cause will likely negate any positive effect.

truth

"The Fed cannot afford to stand on principle. The myth of free markets ended with the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Actually, it ended with their creation."

- Michael Lewitt

John Maeda, I think he gets it

John Maeda is the new President of RISD (my alma matar). In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, he said, "Artists change how we see the world -- and that can have value in the way people do business." Having lived in Corporate America, I think he is right. But, I wonder if he will be able to sell his idea to business. They are often def to anything but thier own noise and this does not strike me as an idea that they will want to hear.

I am hopeful that he will be an effective leader for the RISD community, he is the first designer to hold this position. That strikes me as downright bizarre, it is long overdue to say the least.

During my time at RISD, I was rather disappointed that the liberal arts requirements kept going up and studio time kept going down. It looked to me like RISD was becoming just another liberal arts college. Some in the field no longer see RISD as a real contender as an elite art and design school. I think this academic shift is to blame. All it does it produce students with the same average liberal arts education as everyone else. I am hoping the Maeda sees and understands this and starts to reverse it.