somefoolwitha.com ...since 2002

One such copy seems indicative of the whole Vista experience. On boot up, instead of seeing potentially confusing system messages, you now see a progress bar and the word Microsoft. This is a lot like the boot up screen with a Mac. Except, the word Microsoft is blurry. I know, who cares? But it is a great metaphor for the Vista experience. Decent (stolen) ideas, bad and lazy implementation.

The money shot in this article, "Lessons I've Learned" - No.4, is not entirely surprising: Hasta La Vista, Vista.

And the "my rendering's better than your rendering" argument continues ..

The issue is reminiscent of the "I hate black bars on wide-screen films" brigade who believe that the film should be chopped, panned, scaled and otherwise distorted from the artists original intention simply so that it fits better on their display. #

The "Apple way" still makes far more sense to me, especially when you see the two side-by-side showing the odd relative scaling caused by the Microsoft philosophy. The Apple rendering enlarges the width proportionately to the height as you'd expect; whereas the Microsoft rendering seems to go up in blocks of 3, suddenly jumping to the next width whilst the height increases.

Legibility-wise, surely no-one claim say that the smaller sizes are more readable with MS's rendering than Apple's? People don't read letters, they read the whole shape of the word and for this Apple's smoother, somewhat softer rendering is far superior.

Even more detail and views. (via)

There's an interesting discussion doing the rounds at the moment about the various pros and cons of Apple versus Microsoft font rendering caused by Apple's recent Safari for Windows beta release. I've posted grabs in Flickr how I have mine set up in OS X and Adobe Photoshop's foibles in font rendering, but with regards Apple versus Microsoft I definitely prefer Apple's way. It's certainly a personal preference; Apple's softer, more close to the original font designer's look; or Microsoft's harsher, sharper, arguably more legible (I dont think so) system. There's a good comment on TAUW's post about this. Apple certainly shouldn't in my opinion have swayed from the Microsoft system for their Windows version of Safari, imagine if Microsoft had done the same - leave it to what the user is familiar with.

People do seem to be divided by which OS they use the most, and that makes perfect sense but I do cringe ever so slightly when I glance at a Windows screenshot, or over the shoulder of a Windows user. The Microsoft anti-aliasing is for me just too sharp and clumsy looking. Small text looks barely smoothed at all and larger type is unsubtle, rough looking. Whereas Apple's smoothing is soft and rounded, so the text is easier to read and less straining on the eye due to the comparatively lower overall screen contrast.

From the Webkit blog:

We're continuing to monitor feedback on the beta from the web, forums and bug reports. [...] We appreciate all your testing and will continue to make Safari and WebKit better.

Theres a screencast on this site of the new build of the Parallels 3036 build which allows you to run Windows and Mac apps along side each other and even boot Parallels from a Boot Camp partition.

Wow, after all the open source prize winning fuss, Apple release their own Windows dual booting App. Now I really need a MacBook Pro.

EFI and BIOS

Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.


Word to the Wise
Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it'll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.

He! "Macs DO Windows" lol