Windows hates my camera!

I thought I was bound to have something nice to say about Windows for this post, but no alas, one more thing has decided to ruin it for me. I have a Fuji s9600 camera, often described as a bridge camera since it is a bridge between a digital compact and a full SLR. It's a great camera, but unfortunately Windows just doesn't get on with it.

The camera can rotate images by changing the exif data within the photo to say what orientation it was taken. This manual setting is set to 0, or 90 degrees so that when it is opened and edited it is the right way up. this ensures that the quality of the picture is the best, since the file does not have to be rotated and re-saved. Unfortunately Windows seems to completely ignore the orientation of the image.

Vista presents this portrait as a landscape, if I rotate the graphic and re-save it, it will open incorrectly on computers that understand orientation properly. Besides quality will be lost if I do this with a jpeg, since every time you save a jpg you get one generation loss of quality like ye olde video tapes.



Windows 7 shockingly still has this bug.



Mac here is displaying the same image, no surprises, everything works fine and I get a useful indication of the orientation data. Interestingly detected as TIFF data, which is what could be throwing Windows. Mind you, the Mac works whatever you throw at it.



Ubuntu does an excellent job of interpreting the orientation data.



My conclusion is possibly a tad extreme, but I don't think I could trust any version of Windows to give me consistent results in the realm of photography.

To be fair to Windows the fault probably lies with Fujifilm, except this does not explain why OSX and Ubuntu seem to work fine with every image I have thrown at them from many cameras. The issue can be sorted out by editing the orientation tag with a windows application.

Hello, I'm a PC

Steve Ballmer went swinging for Apple during an interview with PC Magazine (US). Amongst the snippets of wisdom displayed, Ballmer said that Macs were overpriced "Have you ever seen a cheap Mac?", and that Macs had little place in the workplace "Do Macs work in business? No, they do not".

He also dismissed Apple's extremely successful chain of retail stores as a desperate act "Apple started doing stores because nobody wanted to sell it's PC's". Remarkably Ballmer criticised a Microsoft application shooting himself in the foot, and the Microsoft Mac business unit in the back when he said "Can you find the applications you want on a Mac? Well, you don't really get full Microsoft Office". He then apparently tried to explain 'The Apple Tax' and that 'Windows offers far better value'

1. Have you ever seen a cheap Mac? Answer: No, although a Mac mini is great value. Apple tend towards quality rather than quantity.
2. Do Macs work in business? no they do not. I beg to differ, having used a Mac daily in my job building Windows installations and working with windows servers, fitting in perfectly with our Microsoft back end systems for well over a year without a squeak of a problem.
3. Well you don't really get full Microsoft office. Perhaps I have more faith in the Microsoft Mac business unit team than their own CEO, I find Office 2008 for the Mac to be quite a good deal. In some ways Microsoft office 2008 on the Mac is nicer to use than office 2007 for Windows, and it is improving all the time.
4. I must confess that I don't really understand the Apple Tax, can anyone enlighten me? Personally I have spent less money, and enjoyed computing much more since I have owned a Mac. I don't even have to mention the amazing digital lifestyle apps that come pre installed on a Mac as opposed to the 'crapware' that is installed on most PC's!

I don't mean to make Steve Ballmer sound incredibly stupid, he seems to have that one covered! But couldn't he just stop acting like a child and work with Apple, and the open source movement and embrace new technologies and open standards? Many talented engineers at Microsoft appear to be doing exactly this. Steve Ballmer seems to kick his own staff and Microsoft partners in their mouths every time he opens his own.

Steve Ballmer, oozes understated charisma and professionalism as he leads the worlds most popular business software maker. Steve Jobs on the other hand simply leads the worlds most popular consumer hardware and software maker. I'll leave you to watch further videos of the two Steve's, and ask one simple question. Which Steve would you trust with your computing needs? ;)

The six versions of Windows 7!

Yes, you read that right. From a PCPro story today, it looks as if Microsoft is wasting a massive opportunity to simplify a confused market.

Starter Edition: "A lightweight version for netbook computers, that will only be capable of running three applications concurrently. It will lack the vast majority of the advanced features, such as Media Center and touchscreen support, but will include the new Taskbar and Home Group feature."

So netbook owners are not expected to want to watch media, use a touch screen or do more than 3 things at once! How will Windows stop you running more than 3 things at one time, with a helpful error message? Sorry, but what a crock of crap. I'll stick to Ubuntu.

Home Basic: "For emerging markets only. Microsoft has, bizarrely, appeared to swap the meaning of Starter and Home Basic. Intended to "access the internet and run basic productivity applications"."

erm, so all this OS does is allow you to access the internet and run basic apps? Again, a crock of poo! Give me Ubuntu any day.

Home Premium: "The mainstay version that Microsoft will put the majority of its marketing weight behind. Will include Media Center, touchscreen support, full Aero glass graphics, improved media format support and streaming, and the option to easily share files across a home network with the new Libraries feature."

Ok, so this combined with Windows 7 Ultimate should be windows 7 home. I don't see why this would not run on a netbook since the Windows 7 Ultimate beta already works fine on many netbooks. However, I would like the windows installer to allow you to choose which bits of the OS you would like to install if you don't have much hard disk space on your netbook, like windows used to do. Unfortunately this version of Windows is unlikely to be included in any purchase of a netbook. Sorry, but this is another example of Microsoft missing a massive opportunity to cash in on the netbook craze!

Professional: "A business version for home workers and small businesses not operating on a volume licence. Will include features such as advanced network backup and Encrypting File System. However, BitLocker encryption is once again reserved for the Enterprise and Ultimate editions."

So home business users are not expected to want to use an encrypted file system? And the (finally) easy to use BitLocker encryption is excluded. Sorry, but I can't believe this is happening!

Enterprise: "For volume licence customers. Will include all the Professional features, plus BitLocker protection - including the new option to encrypt USB flash drives and external hard disks. Will also include DirectAccess, which allows remote workers to securely access a company network without a VPN."

So DirectAccess would not be usful for home business users that cannot take advantage of volume licences? Pathetic, I am growing more and more tired of technologies such as BitLocker and DirectAccess because they are not cross platform.

If somebody bitlockers a drive with a video on it to edit, then gives it to a Mac user, they just get an unreadable disk. It would be far better to use an open standard such as PGP which could be decrypted by all platforms and allow governments to not lock their precious data into a proprietory encryption scheme.

I am sure DirectAccess enabled servers for home working would not be usable with any other computer. Why not ignore DirectAccess and use open standards for remote working, or at least a third party proprietory cross platform solution. Struth!

Ultimate: The all-encompassing version of Windows 7, although there's no repeat of Vista's much-maligned Ultimate Extras. Branded as the "no compromise SKU for tech enthusiasts" it will include every single feature available in Windows 7.

What is wrong with having Windows 7 home, Windows 7 business, and Windows 7 server? Put all SKU's of Windows 7 on one disc, if you install it on a 64bit processor you get a 64bit version, likewise for 32Bit. Include an option for the user to do an advanced install and choose the components they would like.

Am I mad and completely alone in wanting Windows 7 ultimate to be Windows 7 Home, Windows 7 professional and Enterprise to be just Windows 7 business available to both home business users and as a volume licence, and Server 2008 to be Windows 7 server.

Microsoft seems to think they can charge a premium for Windows 7 Ultimate, which contains features that should be in all versions of Windows 7 home. Home users have different priorities than business users, fair enough, that's why there should be just two versions to cover this Windows 7 Home and Windows 7 business.

And there I was thinking Microsoft were actually improving and listening to their customers! Confused? You will be, this is looking closer and closer to a joke I was sent the other day. Enjoy!

Ignore standards at your peril!

If you are a web developer, you really need to think about who is out there using your sites. Browser market share has changed dramatically from the time when your audience was 95% Windows and IE, with 5% 'others'. Today approximately 10% of web surfers are OSX users, with 88% running Windows.

Windows 7 even though it is still a beta product is proving to be very popular, seeming to suggest that Microsoft will have a hit on their hands when they release it replacing many older copies of Windows out there. The Windows 7 beta includes support for h264 encoded Mp4 video files as well as AAC audio.

This is absolutely huge from the point of view of anyone creating media or including media on their shiny new web 2.0 sites. The h264 codec is incredibly important as it is an open standard which is in use by a very large number of professional industry heavyweights such as, The BBC, BBC iPlayer, SkyTV, and practically every Hollywood studio / editing facility.

This means that if you encode your video as an MP4 file using the h264 codec, it will be natively playable 'out of the box' on OSX, Linux, the Web, the iPhone, and many other mobile internet devices and now Windows 7 using windows media player. The video also does not have to be re-encoded to support YouTube, the BBC iPlayer, and Flash.

I give Microsoft a standing ovation for making use of and adopting open standards. I urge everyone producing content to use Mp4/h264 rather than closed proprietary video formats. I'm sure this would never have happened while Bill Gates was running Microsoft, however, I'd like to see them go one step further and make h264 the default as Apple did several years ago.

Have a look at The quicktime HD guide and Vincent Laforet - Smugmug to see what h264 can do. Sorry, but the next time I see scabby 320x240 video on the web that can only be played on a small number of platforms I will scream!