The TechNow

Happy new year from all of us here at TTN, to you, our readers! Thanks for a great year; we hope for many more!

This post was written by BMatt, and he/she may not represent the opinions of this website or it's owner.

I’m going to be quite blatant honestly. There is no other solution to it, and this idea will not settle well with many, including me, who wants to see Apple succeed at everything. It’s the way they’re geared. Microsoft is a hulking giant waiting to be tripped up. Should Windows 7 not be a run away hit, they’re dead. Apple’s prices are justified, and extremely appropriate, but not for many in the market.

Microsoft. I hate the company, yet can’t help but admire their luck in the market. Their OS is the worst of the options. They’re a bloated supergiant who controls the market in everything that comes with their OS. IE is the worst browser of all time, and yet maintains a roughly 2/3 marketshare. Windows is a bloated, buggy operating system, yet maintains 90% marketshare. This isn’t right, and cannot settle well with the consumer, nor the manufacturers. More and more manufacturers are provided fully supported Linux options on their computers, and the FREE label is really drawing some buyers. Microsoft is a monopoly in the market, and it’s wrong. They’ve been outsmarted and outdone by Apple, yet controls the market. I don’t comprehend it, but just as GM fell, Microsoft will follow.

Apple is my company of choice. They are smart, innovative, and unique. They make the OS for the hardware on which it runs. They also have the flexibility to charge extra for this. That simple fact drives countless potential buyers away, and to the mainstream manufacturers - Dell, HP, Acer, and Toshiba. But Apple is more of a cult symbol more than any other company, legions of devoted followers (myself included), and such a huge impact on culture, through the iPod, and the instant hit - the consumer smartphone - iPhone. But the prices, and the lack of a mainstream market will restrict them immensely, and many will leave once the King of Apple; a Steven Paul Jobs, leaves, retires, or dies. He is the brains behind all that is Apple, and without him, I and many others have no faith in the product that they are buying. It will keep Apple alive, by a hair and Microsoft’s fall.

Linux. The dirty word, the area that nobody wants to deal with. It’s an amazing operating system, but not without it’s major faults, wireless networking being the largest issue that is universally shared by it’s users. But when you add the support of the community, as well as the manufacturers, and suddenly you have the ability to release a perfect product - completely free, easy to use, and flexible. You suddenly get the developers, the gaming, the everything. And it’s all free, in a number of flavors - Ubuntu, Mandriva, Red Hat, SUSE, and many others. If you expose the public to it, and it’s supported, it’s an instant hit. The Year of the Linux Desktop has yet to happen, but it just might yet.

Please note that this is a 100% opinion piece, and in no way reflects any future events. I have no crystal ball, I don’t know what may happen, but consider the possibility here. Microsoft is the de facto monopoly. Apple is the exclusive company, Linux is the open and limitless option. Or if you want to compare it to any number of other things.

This post was written by brewstermax, and he/she may not represent the opinions of this website or it's owner.

Vista.

The one operating system that will forever go down in history as the worst OS ever, including WinMe and BOB. *shudders*

Before Vista, everybody in XP and Windows 2000 land was mostly happy. Then Microsoft announced Vista, a new OS that was like nothing else. Revolutionary. Or so they say. It was rushed out, unfinished by at least six months. Many people bought new computers in excitement for the new OS, but found it horrid upon first use.

Now you may be saying, “it’s just the drivers’ fault!” Sure that worsened the problem, but the problems are still there today.

People lost all faith in MS.

Then recently MS announced they’d have a free version of Office, but with hardly anything and guess what,

IT’S AD-SUPPORTED.

Yup, now you can get the annoyance of ads right on Word. Great. I could het OpenOffice.org for free and not ad-supported.

After that, Microsoft just kept getting crazier. I could keep rambling on, but that’s what Google is for.

#bing

This post was written by britishtaco, and he/she may not represent the opinions of this website or it's owner.

iPhone is one of the most widely used cellular devices, surpassing the 5% market share Steve Jobs was aiming at. It also holds full web browser capabilities (save Flash and Java, of course), and an App Store with 65,000 apps. So why, a technology as simple as Multimedia Messaging, take so long?

Imagine this phone, with over 10 million USA customers, [almost] all on AT&T, all with an unlimited data plan. Can you imagine the load on the cellular towers? 10MB or less applications can be downloaded over 3G or EDGE, and this causes immense pressure on the cellular networks. This causes the towers to possibly achieve capacity and no longer serve customers.

It’s hard to run a company, and AT&T has done a good job holding up their company, providing fast 3G speeds, and not charging for Caller ID (*ahem* Rogers, you don’t need to charge $7 for a basic service).

So don’t be mad at AT&T for not providing MMS earlier. They’ve done the best they can.

This post was written by j.dhanani, and he/she may not represent the opinions of this website or it's owner.

A little while back, Opera posted a page saying “On June 16th at 9:00 a.m (CEDT), we will reinvent the Web.” Now, with less than 24 hours until whatever it is that they have planned, I’m wondering, what do they have coming? Opera 10 is in beta as of now, with some cool features like Turbo Mode and Custom Speed dial, but maybe the release version of Opera 10 has even more.  (Total list of changes in the beta here)

But Opera 10 is not the only thing they could release, is it? Maybe they really will “Reinvent the web”, and do something totally different. I still think they will release Opera 10 with some beefed up features.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

This post was written by R.Kiley, and he/she may not represent the opinions of this website or it's owner.

Hey guys, you probably don’t recognize me, because I’m the new guy, Ray Kiley.

Maybe you guessed, I’m going to be writing here. Right now, I’d like to know what you guys want to see more of. Tell me in the comments.

I’m on Twitter, @manutdfan_539, and you can reach me there any time. Soon, I’ll have an e-mail here, and you can hit me up there too.

Can I get a round of applause?

This post was written by R.Kiley, and he/she may not represent the opinions of this website or it's owner.