No More KHAAAANNN!

Another era has come and gone with the death of Ricardo Montalban.  He had a rich career that included ‘Fantasy Island’ , Star Trek and many other appearances throughout the Hollywood movie and television scene.

The reason I bring it up is the startling difference between the coverage I’ve seen on the Internet.  On the one side you have people that remember him for his time on ‘Fantasy Island’, as the mysterious owner and host of guests to the resort on the island.

For many of us though ‘Fantasy Island’ is merely a footnote on the one thing he did: Kahn. Kahn represents on of the greatest villains in science fiction and certainly in the Star-Trek universe.  I’m not great at quotes but William Shatner is very well known for his legendary scream of torment and hatred in the direction of Kahns character.

I certainly am not doing this wonderful man justice.  It is a sad day to see another piece of my childhood pass to ashes.

 

OS X – Duck!

I’ve now spent the weekend with Windows 7.  I loaded it on all the computers in the house that we’re capable of supporting it.  I've also spent a lot of time working on trying to break it.  I’ve yet to break it.

I’ve been paying attention to the feature casts on Microsoft.com and reading articles from people that were working on earlier pre-Beta releases of the operating system. Since I started paying attention my feeling has been that, Apple better watch out.

Apple has been experiencing the same sort of growth that they experienced during the Windows ME days. Apple is very good at playing off the short comings of Microsoft and Vista has been a debacle since the beta with Apple exploiting it to the best of their abilities.  I’m not saying that Apple is doomed, or is worse or anything, it’s just not enough better than Windows 7.

OS X is quite possibly one of the best operating systems ever written. I’m a hardcore PC guy and I’ve been flirting with getting a Mac just because of the ease of use, hardware construction, and the fact that I can still use Windows in VMware or Parallels without any issues.  With the release of Windows 7, my interest in that will go away. Windows 7 is everything that Vista ‘should' have been.  It runs fast, it installs fast, configures with little trouble, manages the network better, manages users better, ease of use is central to the design and it’s pretty.

In summary OS X is in danger of finding itself on the short end of the stick as Microsoft brings an actual player to the table.  I hope Apple doesn’t, competition is everything in an open market, and with Apple competing we got Windows 7.  I only hope that apple responds in kind with further progress.