the last word

The process was entirely uneventful; a textbook example of what a user’s first experience with the new product should be. Except for the usual IQ test associated with the clever, but sometimes opaque, Apple packaging, the physical part of the operation was smooth and intuitive. Even figuring out how to get the darn thing out… [Read More]

In the early eighties, there was a lot of controversy about how many buttons a mouse should have. Unix computers often used three button mice. The Xerox PARC computers, which most consider to be the ur-GUI for both Microsoft and Apple, used three button mice. The first version of Microsoft Word shipped in 1983 with… [Read More]

The Droid X appears to be a worthy competitor to the iPhone. It is a less mature product, with releases to the OS coming thick and fast, and it is a bit less polished. The philosophical difference between the two OSs appears to be similar to the philosophies of the two companies: Apple’s approach sacrifices… [Read More]

I wasn’t getting anywhere with the Exchange client that came with the Droid X, so I downloaded one called Touchdown. Not only did Touchdown work better for me, it provided logs of its interaction with the server which helped me to figure out what was going wrong. With the Exchange client working, I downloaded and… [Read More]