the tindog coffeehouse

Gizmodo has a post out about what Microsoft’s successor to Windows 7 will look like. Pretty much anyone you talk to will mention the same things: more cloud integration, better hardware management, better security, faster boot time, expanded use of virtualization, etc. All good answers, and I think accurate ones.

But my gut tells me that if you really want to know what Windows 8 will look like, just look at an iPad. Forget Windows XP, Vista, or even Windows 7. Windows 8 will more closely resemble Apple’s iOS or Google’s Chrome OS than any of its predecessors.

Why? Several reasons:

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I’ve had my iPhone 3GS now for about three weeks, and overall I love it. It’s easy to use, the apps are great, and it’s just a fun and handy device to have around. But it’s not perfect, nor did I expect it to be. After using it for a few weeks, here are some things I would change about it if I could:

1. Add an option for different sound profiles. Every other cell phone and smartphone on the planet has this option, but not the Jesus Phone. I want the ringtone to be louder when I’m in the car but quieter when I’m in the office. Or maybe turn the ringer off but have the message tones still on. Is there an easy way to change that? Nope. You can go to Settings and adjust the volume slider, but there’s no way to assign these settings to different profiles. And as far as I can tell, there’s not an app for that.
2. Add a native To-Do app. I can plug my iPhone in to my computer and sync the Calendar, Contacts, and Notes with Outlook, but for whatever reason, the iPhone doesn’t have an app for my Tasks. Apparently Steve Jobs assumes Apple fanboys don’t do anything, but really this seems like a really dumb omission. Yes, there are third-party apps to get around this limitation, but why can’t Apple just include one natively?

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It’s a given that when you buy a version of Microsoft Windows, you don’t just get a bare-bones operating system; you get other stuff with it. Is it an app? Is it a feature? Is it an annoying service I can’t seem to get rid of? Yes, yes, and yes.

Last week I ran through a few quick initial impressions I had of Windows 7 Beta 1. This week I’m going to look at a few of the other “enhancements” that come with it.

• Internet Explorer 8 – I won’t say much about it here, mostly because it’s been reviewed pretty extensively elsewhere (see here and here for starters). But the reality is, even with the latest version, IE is a dinosaur. It’s fine for most casual home users, but most techy Windows users have already moved on to Firefox, Chrome, or Opera. It does have a couple of new and notable features, however. InPrivate Browsing (aka “porn mode”) allows for anonymous web surfing. (A similar feature already exists in Chrome and will be included in Firefox 3.1). IE8 also includes a feature called Web Slices, which allows you to subscribe to portions of a web page. (Why anyone would actually use that, I don’t know.)

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In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the creation of ARPA (the Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Department of Defense agency that would give birth to what is now the Internet, Vanity Fair has attempted to compile an “oral history” of the Internet, from ARPA to today.

So how’d they do?

Al Gore aside, they did pretty well, at least at a high level, interviewing pioneers such as Paul Baran (the inventor of packet-switching), Vint Cerf (the inventor of the TCP and IP protocols), Bob Metcalfe (the inventor of Ethernet), Marc Andreessen (Netscape), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Jerry Yang (Yahoo), Larry Page (Google), and Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia).

It’s mind-blowing to think that something so basic as a computer network wasn’t always so obvious, and how technology that we use every day and take for granted could very easily have never existed but for a few brilliant minds.

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