Life, as John F. Kennedy once helpfully pointed out, isn’t fair. Neither is the market for technology products. There’s no law that says that the best products win: The history of tech is pockmarked with breakthrough hardware, software, and services that were dismal failures in the marketplace. (It’s also rife with mediocre products that became […]
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VisiCalc Turns Thirty
Posted by Harry McCracken on June 5, 2009 at 10:08 am
This week marks the thirtieth anniversary of the public debut of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet and the personal computer industry’s original killer app. Co-creator Dan Bricklin has a post with some memories of the launch and links to videos of him and VisiCalc’s other father, Bob Frankston, talking about the debut. Dan says that VisiCalc […]
Hide File Extensions, Invite Hackers?
Posted by Harry McCracken on May 5, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Mikko, at F-Secure’s Weblog: …in Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista, Explorer used to Hide extensions for known file types. And virus writers used this “feature” to make people mistake executables for stuff such as document files. The trick was to rename VIRUS.EXE to VIRUS.TXT.EXE or VIRUS.JPG.EXE, and Windows would hide the .EXE part of […]
Apple is Headhunting Gaming Executives
Posted by David Worthington on April 30, 2009 at 9:31 pm
The evidence keeps coming that Apple is getting serious about gaming. In just the past week, the company has hired a senior Xbox executive from Microsoft, and earlier this week, a graphics expert from ATI. Apple’s headhunting follows its investment in a graphics chip maker in December. Today, Gizmodo reported that Apple now employs Richard […]
How Would You Market Windows?
Posted by Harry McCracken on April 6, 2009 at 12:22 am
Over in the comments on my post about Microsoft’s new “Giampaolo ad,” blogger/Microsoft employee Bob Caswell asked me how I’d market Windows. I didn’t give a full-blown answer–hey, I’m grateful that it’s not my problem. I was, however, inspired to pose the same question to my pals over on Twitter (where I’m @harrymccracken and a […]
Technologizer Predictions: What Could Be in 2009
Posted by Harry McCracken on January 12, 2009 at 10:11 am
Back on December 31st, I asked the Technologizer community to make technology-related predictions for the year ahead. You made scads of them–from ones that seem like sure bets for 2009 to ones that might never come to be. Highlights follow after the jump–thanks to everyone who contributed. Once 2010 rolls around, let’s rate the accuracy […]
The Single Greatest Year in Tech History, Part One: The 1970s
Posted by Harry McCracken on December 1, 2008 at 11:34 am
With movies, it’s unquestionably 1939, the fabled year that saw the release of Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights, Dark Victory, and Goodbye Mr. Chips. With baseball, there are multiple contenders, including 1924, 1949, and 1998…but I’m a Red Sox fan, so let’s just say it–it was 2004. Rock music? […]
Don’t Fear Pegman: New Google Maps Street View is a Winner
Posted by Harry McCracken on November 25, 2008 at 4:06 pm
McCracken’s Law of Software Mascots states definitively that they’re almost always a truly lousy idea. Most of the evidence has come in the form of grating, patronizing Microsoft characters, from Bob to Clippy to Rover, the miserable mutt who shows up in Windows XP’s search. So I was alarmed when I heard that Google Maps’ […]
The Twelve Greatest Defunct Tech Magazines Ever
Posted by Harry McCracken on November 20, 2008 at 6:17 am
And so it came to pass that on November 19th, 2008 publisher Ziff Davis announced that PC Magazine–in the print version that gave it its name–was going to the great newsstand in the sky. When it gets there, it’ll have plenty of company: Most of the most important tech magazines ever published are no more, […]
The 13 Other Greatest Error Messages of All Time
Posted by Harry McCracken on October 7, 2008 at 4:29 am
People just love error messages. Love ’em, love ’em, love ’em. At least that’s the conclusion I’m drawing right now: “The 13 Greatest Error Messages of All Time” is by far the most popular story in Technologizer’s short history. And hundreds of folks didn’t just read the article–they shared their own favorite errors in the […]