Hello Halfass Readers, all tens of you!
I’d like to address this to the portion of my readership who happen to be Mac nerds. I am seeking Mac buying advice as it is time to replace the decrepit 20” G4 iMac. Although I find its design has remained fresh and it’s the nicest looking of all [...]

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iPhone mania is hitting Vienna. The release of the unlocked version in France and Germany resulted in a bit of a gray market here in the Austrian capital. Retailers and individuals have been traveling to Germany and France, returning with unlocked iPhones (which somebody told me are selling nearly as well as the carrier-locked versions) [...]

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Since there exist innumerable, thorough, smart, capable reviewers of technology all over the internets and innumerably more assholes with opinions, my technology reviews are uniquely halfassed. I give a strong opinion, then back it up with a list. In this case, my recommendations are for people who don’t really want to know every little geeky [...]

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So I guess it was in the news very recently that Sun Microsystems is changing its ticker symbol to JAVA. The company who was the dot in dotcom, and has, for probably over a decade, had the slogan “the network is the computer”, is now going to heavily brand itself with what it believes to [...]

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Obviously, much has been written regarding the iPhone and, of course I want one. However, we here in Europe are not so lucky as to have any available yet and, even if we did, I’d probably wait for revision 2 or at least one with G3 because I’m just not the type of guy to [...]

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Has there been a huge explosion in the market for customer location awareness software recently? Within the past few months, more and more websites care about where I’m coming from. Some block me because I’m not in the US, some arbitrarily switch my interface to German language when I don’t want them to (I’m looking [...]

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John Gruber of Daring Fireball linked to this article about Chris Pirillo breaking up with Vista. His take, “Chris Pirillo is the sort of user who wants to like Vista; it’s a very bad sign for Microsoft that he doesn’t.”
Now, I agree with all of this except for the fact that it’s a “bad sign” [...]

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Flickr’s new branding decisions grate on my nerves.

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Anyone who knows me or reads this site and actually remembers anything I’ve ever said knows that I hate Real products with a passion and won’t install them on my computer. Period. This goes for Rhapsody as well because it’s a Real product.
I was doing some Daring Fireball archive reading, and stumbled across an [...]

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I don’t doubt this for a second. Indeed, I think Mac market share in the home market may already be at this figure. From personal experience, just about everyone I know has already switched or never left the Mac platform. Look around at any wireless hotspot, and you’re likely to see more than 10 percent [...]

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Apple, which, according to most industry sources, has a paltry single digit percentage market share for computer operating systems, generated $13.93 billion in revenue in 2005. Microsoft, which has over 90 percent market share, earned $39.79 for the same year. While Microsoft’s earnings, profitability and software capabilities are not in question, doesn’t that seem like [...]

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This week, the Halfass has been cruising into one of the office park areas of Vienna for a technical training from Microsoft. My commute takes me to the U6 and the Baden Bahn—a regional tram. Both trains are far more interesting in terms of sheer diversity of the passengers than are the trains I take [...]

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After reading this review of Windows Vista, I realized something. Let me trace it for you.
I knew a guy back in the 90s who was studying Usability Engineering on a post graduate level in Sweden. At the time, I thought, “that’s a lame field.” It didn’t seem “techy” to me and, during the run up [...]

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They make me do all the work and somebody took a shit in the fountain

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After careful study and a long engagment, one of my counterparts at our trusted partner (a giant in the outsourced technology business) and I have come up with what we believe to be a very elegant and thorough solution to bottlenecks encountered when backing up massive amounts of data to tape drives or other storage [...]

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