Firstly, despite what Skippy says, Boris Johnson is neither a great person nor a great politician; he’s a member of the Conservative Party, which all but precludes either.

Getting to the point: AppleScipt is an awful, awful language. I tried writing a scipt yesterday, for a fairly simple task (for every entry in the address book with both a nickname and a home email address, print out the details in a specified format). Not only did there not seem to be a consistent way of checking if a variable was empty (nickname was equal to missing value if it wasn’t set, but I’m yet to work out how to tell whether there’s an email or not), but the entire thing became an exercise in “how many different ways are there of describing what I want to do, using only pidgin[^languagenote] English?”.

In other news, I’ve (finally) moved into my new place, with Ed and Seth. I’m still moving my stuff up the hill, but the important bits are all there (three computers and a sleeping bag).

[^languagenote]: The language geek in me feels the need to point out that AppleScript is probably actually a creole, not a pidgin; a creole is a pidgin that is actually learned, as opposed to made up as needed

Skippy, just because ?the Apple adverts are stupid doesn’t mean that Windows is a competitor.

1. Windows XP doesn’t just work; I have tried and failed to get sound and USB running on my 4+-year-old laptop; Debian handles it fine. And preinstalled Windows may be better, but then you have the problem of vendors installing stacks of crap on them coughdell*cough*.
2. The point is that it’s easier to “make amazing stuff” with MacOS, not that you can’t with anything else.
3. A Mac is the only machine you can buy that’ll run all major OSes (Windows, MacOS, GNU/Linux, {Free,Open,Net}BSD) natively. PearPC, being an emulator, is slow, as is Parallels.
4. If I remember correctly, when I was setting up a machine for course-related stuff a year or so ago, I had a dozen viruses within a day, and that was without downloading anything stupid and it was behind a firewall.
5. Nothing to argue with here, except possibly the suggestion that I’m willing to have anything to do with compiz/beryl.
6. All new Macs come with shiny new Intel chips. Not all new Windows PCs do, though they’ll be more common now they’re required (or as good as required) for Vista.
7. See point 1. I’ve spent less time hunting for Linux and BSD drivers than I have for Windows ones (Linux supports a wider range of hardware than any other operating system ever, except probably NetBSD).
8. Not sure what your point is here.
9. Ah, but most Macs come with a camera built in. And just because you don’t want to doesn’t mean it’s not easy to do on a Mac.
10. You’d need to install Photoshop or Picasa. iPhoto works out of the box.
11. I cannot believe you’re comparing Windows Movie Maker to iMovie. I should just stop now.
12. I believe their point is that you can make a better website with a given amount of effort on a Mac than with the same amount of effort on a Windows box. Whether anyone else will care is another matter; buying a Mac doesn’t guarantee you friends.
13. Yes, but it’s easier (supposedly) on a Mac.
14. Ditto.
15. Something you’re not. :P

(Via Rich)

Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple Computer, in case you live under a rock) posted an article on DRM. It’s quite an interesting read; Rich says he’ll go into more detail later, and he’ll probably give more insight into it than I will, but I’m just going to briefly comment now.

Jobs appears to be saying that the only reason Apple uses DRM is that iTunes wouldn’t be allowed to use most of the music it can at the moment, because the companies that hold the copyright to the music (or “own” it, as they seem to like to call it) won’t allow it. If those companies would allow the distribution of their copyrighted material without DRM, iTunes would do so in a flash - after all, Apple has nothing to gain from the DRM, since they don’t own the music.

He also points out that those companies do allow the distribution of their copyrighted material without DRM - on CD. They just appear to be too dense to realise that DRM on downloaded songs won’t make a dent in “piracy” if CDs can be copied without a problem (the discs that do have DRM technically aren’t CDs, since they don’t comply with the standards and won’t play in many standard CD players).

Ah, idiocy and hypocrisy from American big business; whatever next?

Apple’s ‘“I’m a PC.” “I’m a Mac.”’ adverts are really getting on my nerves now. The Mac is a personal computer, so when you’re describing Windows boxen as being designed for the office while Apples are designed for the home, you can’t really claim that it’s not a PC. And nobody but Apple is perpetuating the myth that “PCs” are what IBM makes; for a start, the term “IBM-compatible” had almost gone out of fashion when I started using computers more than ten years ago, and IBM don’t even make PCs nowadays - they sold their personal computing division to Lenovo.

Apple Macs are personal computers. And they are better than Windows-based PCs, but with the switch to Intel processors last year, the differences are few and far between (a Mac has a pretty case and a decent BIOS). But advertising them as being “better than a PC” is just perpetuating ignorance.