iTunes 7 was released a few days ago as I'm sure many if not most Mac users are aware of. It's a pretty nice upgrade in terms of features. Nothing all that exciting, but some nice new visual sorting/searching techniques. The flip through album covers feature is cool, and iTunes finally is able to look up album artwork which is nice. I'll no longer have to look add it myself.

Ok, so what's with the title? Well I've been a Mac user for a long time. I like the consistency of the OS. Having all of my applications look and feel the same is really nice. Apple's done a great job keeping their applications about the same over the releases. Aqua started it all and then there was metal that followed and contrasts the aqua feel nicely. iTunes 6 had this new "plastic" (as some have coined it) look. It took a while to get used to, but it still bothered me a little every time I looked at it. Don't get me wrong, it looks nice, but it looks different from all of the other brushed metal apps.

4 Comments Tags: Apple, Cocoa, iTunes, Microsoft

I'm not a fan of Microsoft. In fact, most of the time I really despise much of what comes out of Redmond, but I'm excited for Windows Vista to come out. No, I'm not excited because I plan on using it. No, I'm not excited because I think it has a lot to offer. From everything I've seen and read so far, there appears to be little new in Vista from a user standpoint. Maybe things will be easier to set up. (Who are we kidding? That won't happen.) Maybe it will be easier to navigate between different things you're doing with their eye candy that looks a lot like things Apple did in OS X years ago. But who cares? People will continue to beat into the ground how great Vista is and everything new that it has to offer. Others will continue to beat into the ground how those features have been around in other applications / operating systems for a long time. None of that really matters, though. What matters is how many people upgrade.

1 Comment Tags: Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Vista, Windows