Rather than discuss the massive market share of Windows that OS X can only hope to chip away at, or picking on the recent perception problems with Vista, I’ll mention one thing we can all agree on.  Bill Gates started the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest charitable foundation in the world with an endowment of $34.6 billion.  The foundation has gone on to fight malaria and AIDS in third world countries, funding education worldwide (including $1 billion to the United Negro College Fund), among other great work around the world.  Say what you will about Bill, from his cold, harsh personality in the board room to his nerdy appearance on camera.  He’s used his success with Microsoft to start a foundation that will donate more money than any other in history which will touch many, many lives for years to come.  And for that, Bill, I salute you.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?

I strongly encourage you to check out the rest of his email.  It’s quite entertaining, and makes Bill seem a little more endearing.  Bill’s not oblivious, he knows there’s major usability issues.  The thing is he’s handling 2 mile high situations, not the ground level issues that we face everyday.

But to my point.  “It just works.”  I know, I know, it sounds kind of cheesy, smug, and annoying.  But in the end it’s true.  Windows fan boys thing it’s a slogan for technically inept people who still use AOL.  Windows fan boys wonder what’s the big deal about taking 2 or 3 or 10 extra steps to do the same thing on a Mac?

One case: When I want to install a program on a Mac, I drag the application to the trash.  And I can empty the trash to make it permanent.  Done.  On Windows, I go to the Control Panel, Uninstall Programs, wait 10 seconds for the list to populate, click on the program to uninstall, and wait another 30-60 seconds for the program to finally be eradicated.  I also routinely check that the program has been removed from the Start Menu to keep it clean.  Now imagine all the other little, minute tasks I want to do on Windows versus a Mac.

It’s the culmination of all those ‘little things’ that makes the Mac “It Just Works” perception very appealing.  I’m not back in high school with free time to hack the registry to make some software work properly.  I don’t have time (or threshold of annoyance) to dig through 5 different menus or control panel options trying to figure how can I make my notebook sleep when I close the lid.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like tweaking stuff.  I like customizing every last pixel of my desktop, every little option making it work exactly how I want to.  But I want to spend time tweaking stuff I WANT to do, not every little thing I HAVE to do.

I’ve always been under the impression that Microsoft is very programmer driven, that the entire interface of Windows is decided by software programmers, not UI analysts, not focus groups.  It certainly feels that way with the 100 options thrown in your face.  I used to like getting a new cell phone, digging through the manual learning how to navigate to 20 different places to do 20 different things.  Now I’ve grown up and I want stuff to work out of the box and be obvious.  I really wish Microsoft would shift their focus to a more friendly, streamlined interface.  Granted, Bill’s email is 5 years old, but I think Windows has not shifted far enough from those problems since then.  Vista has tried, but it’s a very clunky, Frankenstein, thrown-together attempt.  Hopefully the Windows guys will come around and start to “Think Different” when it comes to the UI in Windows 7 (unlikely) or the next incarnation.

In comparison, I’ve found Internet Explorer 7 to be lousy on Vista.  Microsoft seems to have a hard time making a decent web browser for their own platform, and I won’t be holding my breath for IE 8.  Safari sucks on Vista as well, and I don’t appreciate Apple trying to bundle Safari with iTunes.  As much as people say Apple is (Think) ‘Different’ from Microsoft they use many of the same tactics.  Safari actually runs fine on Leopard, but the lack of customization is a huge deal breaker.  Why use Safari when Firefox will automatically check my Gmail and Google Reader every 5 minutes so I don’t have to?

One major criticism of Firefox 2 was it’s speed and memory consumption.  The benchmarks on the latest Firefox 3 release candidates have shown that Mozilla has taken care of these problems and is just as fast if not faster than the major competitors.  If you’ve never used Firefox (is this your first day on the Internets?) or you decided that Firefox 2 wasn’t up to par, today is a good day to test drive Mozilla’s latest outing and decide if it’s time for a change.

EDIT: I forgot to mention one more little tidbit: Firefox 3 will come installed with a matching theme for your OS!  So if you’re on a Windows machine, the Firefox default theme looks similar to IE, and on a Mac the default theme mimics Safari.  Linux even has it’s own version.  A nice little touch by the folks at Mozilla IMHO.

Meanwhile, keeping track of your various computer temperatures is a bit convoluted.  The ONLY gadget I’m aware of is Speedfan Meter.  The latest version is 1.5 (not 1.2, as labeled in the picture).

Unfortunately since I’ve downloaded this awhile ago, the original website is down.  I’ve managed to locate an alternate source here.  Please leave me a comment if it’s no longer available and I’ll upload a copy for people to download.  But that’s just step one.  The gadget itself is just a display.  It actually needs the program SpeedFan running in the background.

This is a regular application, not a gadget, so you’ll need to download and install this software on it’s own.  Finally, the labels in the gadget are very ambiuous.  You’ll see labels like Temp1, Temp2, etc. with coordinating temperatures.  So you’ll need to go back to the SpeedFan program, go to the ‘Readings’ tab, and click on configure.  There will be a column called ‘chip’ telling you which piece of hardware coordinates to each temperature you see on the gadget.  Go back to the gadget’s configuration, which will let you change the labels, and label accordingly.  Are we done?  Kind of.  If you restart your computer your gadget will read no temperatures because SpeedFan doesn’t start by default.  To get this configuration running automatically at startup, make a shortcut for the SpeedFan application and drag it to the Startup folder in your Start menu.  If you don’t want this program covering your screen at start up, click on ‘configure’ in the ‘Readings’ tab, go to the ‘Options’ tab and check the box ‘start minimized’

I told you this whole process was convoluted.  How convenient.  Yay gadgets!

Not into widgets?  Well you’re in luck!  Last week iSlayer created another version of their iStat Pro with iStat Menus!  This offers all the same functionality, except this will integrate the meters directly into your menu bar.  It offers some extra features, such as displaying a calendar when you click on the clock in your menu bar.  I don’t know why Apple hasn’t already done this, but they can thank iSlayer for doing their work for them.

Many people consider the iStat Pro a must-have application for anyone that owns a Mac.  And to top it off you can’t beat the price!  iSlayer does accept donations, so if you find this useful you might want to throw some change their way.  (And no, I am not affiliated with iSlayer in any manner, much less know the person or persons that work there.)

The relevant news here was the announcement of Snow Leopard.  Developers attending WWDC got to hear the details, but won’t be sharing it with us because of the NDA.  What we do know is that the Apple rumor mill leading up to WWDC was in the ballpark.  Snow Leopard is scheduled (we know how that turned out, right ‘Apple is always on time LOL Windows is always late!!11!!’ fanboys?) to be released in approximately a year.  And while there aren’t many details, so far it seems like this iteration will indeed feel like an iterative step.  Details posted on the official website explain mostly under-the-hood features, like taking greater advantage of 64-bit processors and multi-core systems.

If Snow Leopard indeed focuses on under-the-hood improvements and only a handful of new user features, will buyers perceive this as buying a service pack?  You can bet many people will feel slighted at the thought.  On the other hand there are many people, especially among the Mac contingent, who always want the latest and greatest Mac product out there, even if it means 12 new wallpapers and 2 new bundled dashboard widgets.

What’s hilarious is how Mac fanboys are spinning this.  ‘I’ll pay gladly.‘  Yeah, we have no idea what’s in the box and your wallet is already open.  Another person already waiting in line – ‘I’m trying to think of the last time Windows released a performance only update. Oh that’s right – never. ‘  I don’t know what Windows has to do with this, but Apple basically admits that Leopard can use improvements, wants you to pay for them, and you’re happy about it?  I don’t want to buy a car that gets 20 mpg just to find out that I it can actually get more mpg but I have to pay for it.  If Microsoft came out last week and said ‘In one year you can pay $129 to make Vista feel faster’ the Mac fanboys would flood the streets screaming and dancing like it’s Love Parade. Admit it Steve worshippers.

Now let me rewind a bit.  We don’t know if there won’t be enough major new features to make this an issue.  This may be a non-issue.  Or Apple may actually step up and release this for free (or a very reduced price…which is still pushing it IMHO).  I would be a very satisfied customer.

In the meantime, Leopard runs fine for me.  It’s snappy©, no noticeable bugginess, and I’m very happy with it.  I haven’t experienced as many problems as some others have, so if Snow Leopard is indeed an under-the-hood upgrade, I won’t be paying for it next year.  Bring on Puma/Thundercats/lolCats or whatever the hell 10.7 is going to be called!