patrick.net

Here's one of my favorite quotes from the Steve Jobs biography:
"You're ripping us off!" he [Jobs] shouted. "I trusted you, and now you're stealing from us!" Gates just sat there coolly, looking Steve in the eye, before hurling back, in his squeaky voice, what became a classic zinger. "Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."

The Microsoft/JBL TC1000, sold at retail nationwide a decade before the iPhone. Note the rectangular touch screen with square buttons that had round corners.

Gates did and still does...
In windows 7 no easy way to print out a directory listing...u must
1- open up a command box
2- surf to the directory via command line
3- pipe the fucker into a text file dir "directoryshit" > directoryshitfile
4- back to windows to print out

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

Jobs really expected the whole world to stick with a command line interface because he licensed or stole some cheesy ideas from PARC first?

Is it just me or does Steve Jobs look like Captain Picard with glasses?

Bill Gates outlined the iPhone and the Cloud in his 1999 Comdex keynote presentation.

I have never been able to find that video, but I definitely remember seeing it.

Android Kicked iPhone’s Butt At CES, And Apple Ought To Worry About Becoming the BlackBerry of 2014

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/android-kicked-iphone-butt-ces-130500755.html

Well I can't find the video but here's a highlight of what was discussed. Though not his actual presentation, just a description of it.

http://www.microsoft.com/misc/features/comdex99_billg.htm

And here is what his critics thought of his lofty pie in the sky description of the future of the web and hand held technology.
http://winsupersite.com/product-review/fall-comdex-1999-reviewed

Gates keynote focuses on 'Personal Web'
[11/14/1999 11:21:44 PM]
"Anyone know any good lawyer jokes?" Microsoft CEO Bill Gates asked at the opening of his keynote address tonight at the Venetian. Once the crowds had calmed down, Gates launched into a standard speech about the change from the PC model to a world populated with a variety of computing devices. It was all pretty standard stuff, though an extremely funny video segment featuring Gates as "Austin Gates" and Steve Ballmer as Dr. Evil was appreciated. Gates pushed Windows 2000 hard and gave an incredible demo of load balancing on Windows 2000 Advanced Server. But much of the keynote, especially a horrifically fake XML application, was clearly pie-in-the-sky stuff, similar to his "Office of the future" keynote from years past. We're still waiting for that to happen. Gates also demonstrated Microsoft's "new" Office Online, which is simply Terminal Services and Office 2000 running over the Internet. In other words, it's nothing new, with a new name. Still, the "Personal Web" concept has some merit: Gates justifiably takes credit for enabling the Personal Computer era in the 1980's and sees the Personal Web as the next logical step for the industry.

Oh and here's the iPad debut...

Showstoppers delivers on cool hardware and software (oh, and shrimp)
[11/16/1999 11:02:26 AM]
The annual Showstoppers party was one of the best ever, with a collection of small and large computer companies showing their wares in the grand MGM conference center. Intel and Mattel were demoing their cool microscope for kids, which attaches to a PC using a USB cable. Techsmith, makers of the excellent SnagIt32, were on hand with a new screen camcorder and video production tool called Camtasia. But the product of the show had to be the shrimp. No wait. Actually, the product of the show was Compaq's iPaq, a $500 legacy free Internet device (they avoid the word "PC" for some reason) that we just WANT to own. It's gorgeous, it's cool, and it's good technology. And, perhaps of all, it's made specifically for Windows 2000. They're taking pre-orders now, so head over to Compaq Dot Com and see what all the fuss is about.

I am not a fan of Apple. But after Windows 8, really looking for an alternative.

http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/threshold-be-called-windows-9-ship-april-2015

Windows 9 in 2015? Meanwhile, much of corporate America is still on XP.

:-/

donjumpsuit says

I see three pieces of vaporware...

The only vaporware is the Picard Padd. Everything else was a real product. Of course, not distinguishing fantasy from reality is a defining condition of Apple fandom.

SoftShell says

Gates did and still does...

In windows 7 no easy way to print out a directory listing...u must

1- open up a command box

2- surf to the directory via command line

3- pipe the fucker into a text file dir "directoryshit" > directoryshitfile

4- back to windows to print out

You do realize you can create a SentTo shortcut to do this or any other of the infinite number of arbitrary commands you could want to do, right?

Dan8267 says

You do realize you can create a SentTo shortcut to do this or any other of the infinite number of arbitrary commands you could want to do, right?

Actually, I didn't know that, and hadn't even found that solution. The nearest I had found was to print screens from Windows Explorer, and paste them into a document. Looking today though, I see MS has an article and a fix:

"How to add the Print Directory feature for folders in Windows XP, in Windows Vista, in Windows 7"

The issue with their fix is, it takes the word "print" to the extreme; it has Notepad launch the printer and does not allow any other use. I would have preferred to format the list, or copy and paste it, rather than automatically printing it onto paper.

curious2 says

Actually, I didn't know that, and hadn't even found that solution.

Yeah, there's billions of little convenience features one could want. If they were all built into the OS's shell, it would be information overload and no one would use more than 0.01% of them. That's why it's better to just let people make their own convenience feature for the task they do often.

For example, I often want to copy the full path of a file to the clipboard. So I wrote a little program in .NET shown below.

using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace CopyPathToClipboard
{
public sealed class Program
{
[STAThreadAttribute]
public static void Main (String[] args)
{
StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder();

foreach (String arg in args)
{
buffer.Append(arg);
buffer.Append("\r\n");
}

if (buffer.Length > 0)
buffer.Length -= 2;

if (buffer.Length > 0)
{
String str = buffer.ToString();
Clipboard.SetText(str);
}
}
}
}

Just build it and put a shortcut to it in your user's Send To folder, which on Windows 7, is something like:
C:\Users\[YourUsername]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

I rename the short cut to Copy Path to Clipboard and I can right-click any file and copy it's name like this.

For those who don't want to compile the source, you can download the 5KB executable at https://mega.co.nz/#!MxE0jLAJ!PXQdiCq3g7d5Bt15F6ECchOSWik8F_hETxHs2HBbh1E

I have corrected your comment:

jvolstad says

much of America is still on XP.

Yep, the pic and the jobs story EBGuy published explains Apple in a nutshell.

No doubt Jobs had anti-social personality disorder. This is a guy who paid his partner a few hundred bucks, and brought himself a sportscar, lying about how much money he made.

They curve the edges of a device and try to patent it, as if they were the first to think of round edges, and the fanbase says "WOW! Round edges! That's cutting edge, pardon the pun! No one thought of such technological genius before! My TV has rounded edges, as does this desk of mine, and my monitor and my kitchen countertops! But to round the edges of a mobile device, what genius! Those bastards at Samsung are ripping off Apple!"

thunderlips11 says

WOW! Round edges! That's cutting edge, pardon the pun!

Actually, it's literally cutting corners.