Roger Wong's Profile

Dictionary.app or the Dictionary widget will save you time. Before Tiger came out I thought Dashboard was just nice eye candy. When I finally installed Tiger I still thought Dashboard was nice eye candy. But now that I've been using it for a couple of weeks now, I can't live without Dashboard. I don't have to manually go to my Yahoo! portal page to check my stocks and weather. All I need to do is to activate Dashboard to get those things plus much more!

Being a long-time Mac user/owner, I had to buy a PC laptop several months ago for work and testing purposes. It was one of the most depressing and confusing experiences in my life! First of all, I was confused by all the different types of processors. I couldn't find a good comparison chart that told me the pros and cons of Centrino vs. Pentium M vs. Athlon 64. Secondly, laptops from the largest PC manufacturers are so ugly and heavy and thick! It's been 4 years since Apple debuted the 1-inch thick PowerBook G4. I couldn't find one reasonably priced and featured PC laptop that was less than 1.5 inches thick. I ended up with a Compaq, but my wife insists that we can't leave it out in the open because it's so ugly. I'll admit that I am a graphic designer and therefore I give a higher priority to the aesthetics of objects than most people. But design is also about functionality. To me, having an 8-pound 2-inch laptop is not functional when it could be 7-pounds and 1-inch. Not only is my PC laptop heavier and bigger, but it consumes more power than my 15-inch PowerBook G4 (aluminum).

Podcasting might fail. And you bring up some interesting points. Obviously, just like blogs, the podcasts with more interesting things to say will be more successfull. But I've already seen at least one example of a non-amateur podcast: the Battlestar Galactica podcasts which are basically the producer/writer's commentary track to each episode. (http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/downloads/podcast/) Also, according to my definition of "blog," I consider AppleMatters to be a blog, but you probably do straddle the line a bit. My understanding of what makes a blog a blog is that it must meet the following: (1) It must be frequently updated. (2) It must be updated as content becomes available (versus putting out issues of content like magazines). (3) It is written in a casual manner. Also, blogs usually have feedback mechanisms with readers via comments and trackbacks. Blogs can have multiple authors, look at BoingBoing. Not that anything's wrong with AppleMatters being a blog. :)

I've been a life-long Mac owner. I recently had to buy a PC laptop for testing purposes. And I was shocked at how confused I was. All these vendors. Which one is the best in terms of quality? Then all these choices for processors! Which was the best for what I needed to do? I ended up buying an Athlon64 Compaq laptop, but it took me a long time to settle on it. I was definitely bewildered. To me, consumers (*consumers*, not geeks) don't really care what's under the hood. They just want to know that it goes fast and will do what they need. I appreciate Apple for making the choices for me (in most cases). I don't need another equivalent type of chip. Deciding on what speed is choice enough.