Here’s what Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, has to say about Apple’s upcoming iPhone product:

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent of them, than I would to have 2 percent or 3 percent, which is what Apple might get.”

Oh yeah! There’s no chance in HELL he’d be biased against an Apple product! Surely he’s speaking from his heart and from a stance of logic and a strong sense of fairplay in this, one of the most caring and giving markets in the world. Really, he’s just being honest. As responsible consumers, we should just take Steve’s word and simply ignore the iPhone. Mr. Job’s has just been playing us for saps all along. Only Microsoft has had our best interests at heart all this time. Thanks Steve! Too bad you have the same name as that shady Jobs character!!

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: 94

If you work with code of any kind on your Mac you’ve likely heard of Smultron. If you haven’t and you’ve paid for an advanced text editor (i.e., TextMate) then you need to be let in on something… Smultron. First off, this is a SourceForge project, so its open source. Second, the developer has dedicated a lot of time to improving on the application, and it really shows in 3.0.

Smultron is a very straightforward editor, but under the hood lie a wide range of features. It comes with a load of syntax highlight definitions and scads of text manipulation tools. While its no BBEdit, it does do most everything a coder would need to get work done. It also sports a nice Snippet feature, and the new 3.x line has a scalable document dock which I hope means previews in the near future.

There are three tools I use to make Church of Tyler work and one of them is Smultron. The others are CyberDuck FTP and ImageWell. In CyberDuck I can click on Toolbar button to open a document in Smultron, edit it, and click save in Smultron to upload the changes through CyberDuck. My needs are simple Oh, and Smultron is free, though I would suggest a small donation to the project.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

Fluid dynamics has never been so cool, and neither has Pong. There have only been so many variations of the classic Pong play mechanics. Sure, games like Breakout and its many iterations have been the one-player successor to Pong, but Pong itself has never seen such a cool update as it does with Plasma Pong.

The amazing aspect of this game, which you can’t see in a still, is that everything is constantly flowing in bursts of color and light. A lot of times you aren’t even sending the ball back with your paddle as much as with a stream of plasma. The two streams of plasma fight for control of the ball, and if caught just right you can make point just as the ball comes off of your opponents paddle.

Oh, and its free for the Mac (yeah, and Windows… whatever). Steve Taylor, you rock, sir!

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

First, I’ll fess up. I’m a hypocrit. Microsoft delivered a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate the other day and I have installed it. I said not long ago on MoboDojo that I would never touch Vista with any length of pole, 10′ or otherwise. I am glad, however, that I’m a nerd and could not resist installing it moments after the RTM version arrived from Microsoft. If I hadn’t done that I would not have learned the following two things.

A) I would not have discovered how different the release version is from the last beta I tested.

B) I would not have found out how much a clone of Mac OS X the new OS is.

Both A and B together go even further to prove to me that Microsoft is not an innovator and that Apple has been at the forefront of systems design from day one. I am going to be writing a bevy of articles, each one about a single shared element of Vista and Tiger. I do this to show in as comprehensive a way possible that Microsoft does not deserve the attention it gets.

If you want a computer, buy a Mac. If you buy a Vista system, its your mistake.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Opinion

Ouch! I know. Its a terrible headline, but it looks great in the RSS feed. Anyway, TI has announced they are upgrading their ridiculously old calculator line this fall with the new TI-nspire line. These nifty looking units can likely handle a great deal of complex equations, and if I was good with math I could probably confirm that. There are some kickarse looking features, though, like Page Sorter, a kind of calculator version of Apple’s Expose´feature, and the swappable button plate which offers the old TI-83 model key layout. Sweet, in a gadget kinda way.

Oh, and on the Mac side, while there is a Windows version of the desktop software now, there will be a Mac OS X 10.4.x and up version coming out early next year. Maybe they should higher some more programmers!

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

Okay, so the news is that Apple has now sold its 100 millionth iPod. I love this headline over at Fark, “Apple has sold its 100 millionth iPod. Microsoft announces Zune is rapidly approaching fifteen units sold.” Maybe now we’ll see a fourth iteration of Microsoft’s DAP marketing plan in action since the last three failed (general support for 3rd party OEMs, PlayForSure initiative, and now Zune). I’m going to guess marketshare increase for Apple’s iPod this holiday season.

If that weren’t enough, Apple finally unveiled the blazingly, shockingly, abominably, ridiculously, intensely fast 8-core Mac Pro, featuring two 4-core Woodcrest Intel Xeon processors running at 2.0, 2.66, and 3.0 GHz. OMG! What a sweet deal that Apple is now offering a free upgrade to a 10-seat copy of Mac OS X Server with the purchase of one of these bad boys! Hel, they’re even offering the Unlimited version for just $349, the same price as the 10-seat version.

Oh, wait. They’re not offering that in the US or Canada. Ooops.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

If you love Battlestar Galactica (its ok to love both the new series and the original), you love games, and you are on a Mac, then you’re gonna love Beyond The Red Line. Based on the classic Freespace 2 engine, this free title brings BSG to your Mac in grand style. How much will it cost you? Nothing! That’s right. Its free, as in NO MONEY. These guys are fantastic.

Check out the site here. Its very cool. You may note that there is only one Mac mirror, at least last time I looked. The site does offer a BitTorrent version, but not many people were latching on when I fetched it. With that said, you can download a copy direct from us here. Its a big file, so be prepared for a wait.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

I admit that this is a bad time to go into this in-depth series because Tiger it EOL and Leopard is just around the corner. I must, however, because I have done something awful. I have, against my word to never upgrade to Vista, done so… and I’m liking it! Shocking, I know, but the enjoyment of Vista is tainted deeply by Microsoft blatant, unrepentant, unapologetic thievery of Apple’s innovations and refinements. If that weren’t bad enough, they turn around and say that these ideas are their innovations! Appalling!

So here, on COMAC, I will go through each and every one of Vista’s “innovative” new technologies and compare them to the Apple technology which came first (in many cases several years in advance). Why would I do this? Why would I waste my time? I don’t know for sure, but it seems like a good idea. If I can get one Windows weenie to look at this and say,” Damn! Microsoft has been fooling me all these years,” then I suppose I’ve made some headway. Keep your eyes open installations as frequently as I can get to them.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Opinion

This one’s great! In this Vista ad image I found over at Engadget there are two happy children playing with a Mac. Its an iBook to be specific. How sad it must be to be Microsoft and not have control over much anything at all because you a) simply don’t care, b) prefer to be rich rather than look good, c) find it funny, d) think Steve Ballmer is a shrewd business man, e) are trying to push the idea that kids love Apple computers, f) have no clue who you are hiring to prepare advertising, g) are working on a version of Windows which will run natively on Macs, or h) don’t know that your entire ad trafficking division is made up of cardboard cut-outs of real people.

Personally, I think this is just another in an endless line of stupid gaffes that the Jolly Greed Giant gets away with and nobody takes the time to point it out. I prefer to think this simply means that Microsoft truly believes that children are happy when using a powerful, stable, easy to use computer instead of their own Vista. (Sub-observation: I think they chose the name Vista because it doesn’t rhyme with any unpleasant words I can think of. -Ed.)

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Opinion