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Thank you, Steve Jobs!

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Bong Hit

sad macI am an unambiguous fan-boy of all things Apple, so I was understandably gripped with melancholia when I heard the news that Steve Jobs was stepping down as head of his revolutionary company. It's no secret that his poor health led to him taking this measure and I wish him all the best.

Apple is clearly in good hands with CEO Tim Cook but these recent events make me ponder what the computer environment would look like had there never been an Apple to act as both burr under Microsoft's saddle and guide-dog to user friendliness.

How long, for instance, would it have taken MS to have instituted its windows interface and how long would DOS have remained the choice of geeks without Apple leading the charge? Without any doubt, MS's operating system would be much more primitive and less user-friendly (Hah!) than the one we know today.

Do you like Halo? It was developed for the Mac and bought by MS shortly before its release.

What would digital video look like without the development of Apple's superb Quicktime? (MS actually stole QT code in the 90s to make its own video properly sync its audio. The eventual legal settlement over this case required a huge financial investment in Apple on MS's part and a promise to always develop Office Suite for Mac.)

I would also wager that there would now be but one mainstream browser and it would be IE. It would suck much worse than the current version as there would be no alternative. Keep in mind that MS routinely locked out third party programs and once used its corporate might to quash Netscape Navigator.

It was also pretty clear in the 90s that MS was instituting proprietary code in its browser that would work best with web sites built to its standards. It doesn't take a genius to extrapolate that MS's ultimate goal was to control every aspect of the internet, but that's just how MS thought about the 'net back then.

In the eventual lawsuit brought by the government MS was judged a monopoly and had to mend it ways, but the lawsuit would never have gone forward without Apple's David contrasting against the Goliath of MS.

Photoshop was developed for the Mac because the Mac was designed for programs like Photoshop. And desktop publishing took off as the Mac incorporated a robust system that used modern fonts and a graphic system that worked well with the newly introduced laser printers.

Has Apple made mistakes? Certainly, but in almost every case that a new product failed the root cause was affordability. The Lisa, the 20th Anniversary Mac, the Cube, the Newton, all were way over-priced for their time. In the case of the TAM, which retailed for a whopping ten thousand dollars, the phrase "What the fuck!" comes to mind. That being said, I own a used Cube and it will always be the most beautiful home computer ever made.

Although I'd never own a PC I honestly appreciate MS because it has encouraged the engineers and designers at Apple to go that extra mile to show the world what a modern computer should be really like. Dog bless 'em for it.

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T
he Cartoon: In case you haven't figured it out the parade of images I used above illustrate all the things that make me rapturously delighted to be a Mac user. If they don't make sense to you then count your lucky stars.

=Lefty=

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Republican Job Creation Update

john boehner"We're going to have a relentless focus on creating jobs." - John Boehner, February 10, 2011.

The following is #71 in a list of Republican job creation activities since they gained control of the House in 2011. None, sad to say, have yet to result in one, single new job.

(71) 8-26-2011: Hey! It's our old pal Darrell Issa again, and he's hired a very nice man named Kurt Bardella to work for him on the Oversight Committee... only it's the same Kurt Bardella he fired five months ago for breach of trust. Guess this leopard found some really effective spot remover.

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Dump Fox News

Fox News Lies!And what manner of lie is Fox News spewing today? Eric Bolling removes Rick Perry's foot from his mouth and inserts words. "Treacherous... yeah, that's the ticket!"

Click here to help Drop Fox from your cable system.


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DOS, the Registry, DLL's, Zune, BOB, BSOD,
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Thanks for everything, Steve Jobs!