A truly remarkable thing happened today: Microsoft released Vista to the public, yet concensus seems to be that few people care. There were no long lines at the stores, and the air seems completely devoid of buzz. Opening day seems to have come and gone with a whimper, not a bang.

Is it any wonder? Draconian licensing and a generally negative bias in the online press has scared experts away. A $400 price tag for a the full version needed for any sort of development work or virtualization is keeping web developers away. Steep hardware requirements are scaring off anyone with an older computer. The fact that a well patched version of XP is secure enough for most security experts leaves few compelling reasons to upgrade for those reasons alone. And a draconian DRM implementation has scared off anyone who cares about Fair Use.

Couple thease reasons with a generally broad and incremental set of features improvements rather than a single, killer app, and there is little reason to upgrade from a fully patched version of XP. So in the end, it all amounts to a perfect storm of nothingness. This has to be the stuff of Bill Gates’ nightmares. What a dud.

Sometimes, I swear that Microsoft is declaring war on its customers. As if their DRM debacle wasn’t enough proof, now it appears that Microsoft has made it impossible to install a clean version of Vista with an upgrade license.

Ken Fisher over on Ars Technica has written an excellent article on this topic:

From: Vista “upgrade” drops compliance checking, requires old OS to install
Upgrade versions of Windows Vista Home Basic, Premium, and Starter Edition will not install on any PC unless Windows XP or Windows 2000 is already on the machine in question…
KB930985 clearly states: “you cannot use an upgrade key to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista.” According to Microsoft, this happens because Windows Vista does not check for upgrade compliance. If you do not have a previous installation of Windows available, Microsoft recommends that you “purchase a license that lets you perform a clean installation of Windows Vista.”

What does this mean in practical terms? Wiping the drive and installing a clean copy of the OS–something that is necessary about once every 6 months or so–using an upgrade license is impossible. Instead, you’ll have to go through the 45 minute install for XP and then install Vista via the upgrade option directly from the XP desktop.

Anyone who has ever tried to upgrade to one Windows OS directly from another knows that this is problematic and not recommended. It is far more preferable to start with a virgin drive and install the OS from scratch. Microsoft has once again made a draconian license decision without considering–or more to the point, caring about–the needs of their most savvy and technical customers. It is almost as if the folks at Microsoft who dreamed up this inane restriction don’t use their own product. The thought of installing Vista directly from XP makes my brain hurt.

This is yet another reason I am recommending to all of my friends, family, or clients to stay away from Vista. If Microsoft is trying so hard to make us upgrade to Vista, then why put up so many obstacles? First, the ridiculously high retail pricing. Second, a nauseating array of product choices. Third, onerous and invasive DRM. Now this. I fear to ask, “What next?”

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection by Peter Gutmann is very well-written, well-reasoned, and well worth the read. Frankly, it’s an eye-opener to the extent to which Microsoft bent itself over backwards to please their Hollywood masters, while taking us all down with them in the process.

While the initial controversy surrounding this article was based on ignorance and the misperception that Microsoft could brick your computer simply because someone hacked a DVD using a chip that you happen to have in your computer, the Net community is correct to be outraged. It disgusts me to think how much time, energy, and money will be wasted on complying with Microsoft’s onerous DRM. Peter’s article breaks this cost down in detail.

I believe that Vista’s DRM is a paranoid and horribly inefficient mechanism that will make our systems more unstable and expensive.

I believe Fair Use is at stake, and Hollywood and Microsoft have declared war on their own customers.

I believe that this war will only invite piracy and criminalize the innocent.

I believe that the PC–my PC–is not a piece of consumer electronics, and Hollywood has absolutely no right to control major subsystems of it.

I believe that consumers should vote with their dollars and punish Hollywood and Microsoft for their practices and policies by staying away from Vista and the next-gen “premium” content delivery systems in droves.

I believe that Microsoft’s DRM is an erosion of my consumer rights and is yet another reason I’m staying as far away from Vista as I possibly can.

Links:

• Peter Gutmann: A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
• Wikipedia article on Peter Gutmann
• Output Content Protection and Windows Vista from WHDC.
• Windows
  Longhorn Output Content Protection from WinHEC.
• How
  to Implement Windows Vista Content Output Protection from WinHEC.
• Protected
  Media Path and Driver Interoperability Requirements from WinHEC.
• Security Now 73: Next Generation Copy Protection
• Security Now 74: Peter Gutmann On Vista Content Protection
• Security Now 75: Vista DRM
• EFF: Protected Media Path, Component Revocation, Windows Driver Lockdown

Update

On January 20, Microsoft’s Nick White posted a response to Peter Gutmann’s article here. This, too, is a fascinating read and a study in self-contradiction. The very same Dave Marsh who authored many of the technical papers cited by Peter Gutmann’s article is responsible for much of the post’s content, and many places, he contradicts himself. Looks like Microsoft is trying to spin this for PR purposes now that all hell has broken loose on this issue of DRM.

In response to the response, Gutmann posted his own point-by-point rebuttal, basically calling Marsh out as the flack he appears to be.

I learned this one from the Macworld Podcast, “OS X Hints at Expo.” As you probably know, you can switch between open tasks by hitting CMD+Tab. Did you know you also had full control over hiding and quitting apps from this interface as well?

CMD+Tab repeatedly to select an application in the switcher. Then simply reach over and hit either H or Q to hide or quit, respectively, the highlighted app. That’s it.

Power tip: Use in conjunction with your mouse to instantly select an application icon in the switcher without having to hit CMD+Tab repeatedly.

This is very, very helpful in two situations I encounter daily:

1) Hiding Dreamweaver. I have Dreamweaver spread out over three monitors, and it often blocks my access to other background applications or the finder when Dreamweaver is, itself, in the background. Using this tip, I hit CMD+Tab, select the Dreamweaver icon in the switcher, and hit H. This instantly hides Dreamweaver without having to activate it which, being a Rosetta app, takes some time. Of course, this would work with any app.

2) Quitting a bunch of apps quickly. Sure, you could right click (or CTRL+click) each app in the dock, but since my dock is hidden most of the time, this can be time consuming and tedious. Using this tip, I’m able to quit my apps BAM, BAM, BAM.

The following is a list of features I hope are in the next version of Mail.app in Leopard.

Mail is a great app. It really is. It just could use a few improvements to make it even more usable.

1. The ability to make bullet lists rather than creating them in TextEdit and copying them over.
2. Much better Junk Mail filter.
3. In Rich Text emails, automatically hyperlink URLs and email addresses as I type them instead of insisting that I go to Edit > Add Hyperlink.
4. “Send To Same” - in Sent items, in addition to forward, forward to all, etc., an option to Send to the original recipients
5. Support for sharing and syncing all your accounts, including POP, across multiple desktops and computers. I frequently want to check my mail from either my desktop or my laptop, and I imagine I’m not the only person in this situation.

The following is a list of features I hope are in the next version of OS X. Most are nits that I’ve picked, but they’d go a long way towards improving the user experience. To be fair, these may very well be in Leopard, but I’ve yet to lay eyes on the new OS. Fingers crossed. Here goes…

1. Number one with a bullet: syncing between computers is a must have for anyone who uses both a laptop and a desktop. Being able to replicate application environments (e.g. Mail, iCal, and Address Book) is a must-have.
2. When navigating through folders, to have the ability to open a folder in a new window (in Windows, CTRL+clicking the Parent Folder icon does this)
3. When CMD+TABbing back to an app, focus on the previously focused window rather than the main app. For instance, when composing a new message in Mail.app, switching away, and switching back, your mail message is always buried underneath the main app; it should just be front and center by default.
4. Gather Windows to bring all windows back to the primary desktop. This is helpful mostly in a situation where you are VNCing into a remote desktop with multiple montiors. That app you need right at that moment always
5. Borrow the idea of the Drop Stack from Cocoatech’s excellent app, Path Finder. While you’re at it, borrow the breadcrumbs, tabbed interface, and search integration, too.

MyQuery Builder is a web-based, visual MySQL query builder that is built on top of the fantastic Script.aculo.us libs. The initial release is available over on SourceForge.net.

There’s one kink in my development pipeline that makes people question my sanity. Back in the mid-90’s, I started building database apps in Access. I cringe to think of how painful this was back then, but one thing Microsoft had from the earliest days of this app was a visual query builder. This dark corner of the app was pure brilliance. You simply drag and drop fields and tables to construct even the most complex compound query.

Fast forward to today. While I haven’t used Access to build a database in more than a decade, I still find that I use the visual query builder to build complex JOINs and conditional queries. In fact, aside from checking sites in IE and Firefox, this is the only other thing I use Windows for.

Because it’s a bit of a pain to fire up Parallels just to build a query, I’ve always kept my eye out for an AJAX-y tool that does the same thing. Oddly, I’ve never found said tool, so I wrote one myself.

MyQuery Builder allows you to drag and drop fields and tables to construct complex JOINs, conditional WHEREs, ORDER BYs, and GROUP BYs. I find that I’m using it more and more.

While it is far from complete, this initial version is about 90% of the way there. In the future, I hope to add support for additional query types other than SELECTs, in addition to improving the interface and easing the workflow. I also have dreams that people will find the tool useful and actually contribute back to the codebase with their own improvements.

One thing that I’m stuck on is a way to draw arrows between connected fields. If anyone knows how to do this, please email me a link to a tutorial to steve at stringer sites dot com.

Links:
MyQuery Builder

Quicksilver is an amazingly handy tool that sits on top of the Finder and vastly increases the speed with which you can launch apps. At its most basic, you type the first few letters of an app or file and hit enter. That’s it.

But the program is deceivingly simple. Once Quicksilver finds the app you’re looking for, you hit tab and can perform any number of app-specific tasks. For instance, type the name of a contact and Compose an Email instead of simply opening the contact in Address Book. Type iTunes and control the app completely with a few keystrokes.

Simply put, the app must be experienced to be fully appreciated. In a word, this tool is sublime, and now have a difficult time operating a Mac without it.

Links:

• Blacktree site
• Quicksilver download
• Wikipedia article

Spambots suck. grrrr.

I’m getting innundated with fake registrations and spam comments despite having the proper settings on the WordPress backend.

For the interim, I’m turning all comments off. If you’re interested in commenting, please feel free to email me directly at steve at stringer sites dot com.