Christopher Mackay’s Blog

VIDEO: Are Plastic Water Bottles Safe? : DivineCaroline: “Are Plastic Water Bottles Safe?”

I threw out three expensive water bottles late last year — models which the manufacturer has since replaced with bottles featuring a different plastic — and switched to metal bottles by SIGG.

The thing that annoys me most about this sort of threat — however small it may be — is that manufacturers are automatically given a pass until something is proven, at someone else’s great expense, to be harmful.

Don’t look for this to change soon. And kudos to NBC for showing some of their sponsors’ products in this piece: I’ll bet someone took some heat for that.

Just to jump on the London 2012 logo-bashing that’s all the rage (see Daring Fireball and Under Consideration), I must say in defence of the designer, that this has all the hallmarks of design-by-client and/or design-by-committee. They have my sympathies. It’s hard to pretend you weren’t involved when you were paid something in the neighbourhood of $800,000 US (from the public purse)…

Have you heard the news? Dell bought the CBC. Maybe there are other ads, too, but that’s the only one I ever see. Maybe it knows I surf CBC.ca from an HP desktop and an Apple PowerBook…

My point? CBC.ca should remain ad-free. CBC Television should become ad-free. CBC radio is, thankfully, ad-free.

Oh, and the lockout should be ended via binding arbitration. To paraphrase Mark Knopfler and Sting, I want my CBC.

Bill Gates has announced that Windows Vista (in a bewildering array of editions) and Office 12 will be released in the second half of 2006, amidst “the largest marketing activity that we’ve ever had”.

Against the backdrop of what CNN Money calls “the longest gap ever between major releases of Windows operating systems” — XP is now four years old — all Microsoft seems to be offering is warmed-over Mac OS X: semi-transparent windows, real-time search, and a brushed-metal interface for Office 12.

Then there’s Internet Explorer 7, which will reportedly include tabbed browsing and better CSS rendering. Like every other browser. Oh, and a brushed-metal interface,

It’s interesting that Apple chose to innovate its way out of the economic downturn, while Microsoft is choosing to market its way out the increasingly common perception that it’s playing catch-up with Google, Apple and open-source.

Plus ça change…

Microsoft has posted a hilarious web page warning people not to buy iPods. The page can be summarized as:

• But we won’t make any money and you’ll hurt our feelings if you buy an iPod like all your friends did…

Okay, so maybe it doesn’t say that, but it does say some equally foolish things:

1. “Understand the basics”: here they claim that hard drive-based players skip when you jog. What a cheap shot; I may not be a jogger, but I’ve never heard my iPods skip in three years of use, and I’ve never heard anyone else complain about their iPods skipping, either
2. “Make sure you’re getting all the goodies”: can’t say I’ve thought of high-quality headphones as extra “goodies”, and I like that I get to decide what accessories I want to pay for.
3. “You’ll want a display”: well, I wanted a display, and my 20-GB iPod has a nice one. Lots of people don’t need a display, though, as demonstrated by the popularity of the iPod shuffle.
4. “Let a professional make your next playlist”: translation; who are you to be choosing what you want to listen to? Listen to ads for car dealerships and sugar-water all day. Alternative translation; for God’s sake, don’t buy an iPod!
5. “Pick the right size for you”: first they’re telling us how to choose an MP3 player, now it’s a Windows Media Audio device. Bet ya hardly noticed the bait-and-switch, there.
6. “Don’t get locked into one online store”: Yeah, Microsoft has no history of customer lock-in, like with Windows, Office, Windows Media DRM. Most importantly remember — Microsoft’s proprietary is good, Apple’s proprietary is bad.