Week 2 581 Pirates of Silicon Valley/Tec Talk

The Pirates of Silicon Valley was a great movie!!! Besides the acting it was very well done. What captivated me the most was the story line. It was really interesting to see how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created apple. Prior to watching the movie I had no idea that Steve Jobs was such an interesting person. Not sure that he was the greatest guy, but very charming and dynamic. Steve Wozniak struck me as the most centered person between Paul, Steve, and Bill. Another idea that struck me was the amount of luck that was involved in the creation of Bill Gate's empire. Crazy how Bill Gates dealt with IBM and Steve Jobs. His drive to be number one was truly unstoppable. Bill gates happened to be in just the right place at the right time. It adds considerable credibility to the book Outliers. Very hard to believe that Bill Gates lied to IBM about having a DOS. Then sent Paul Allen to purchase a version of DOS for $50,000. Even more amazing is that they transformed the DOS to a QDOS and made the whole thing work. This was ultimately what made Bill Gates. Poor Tim Paterson who sold out for $50,000. The last thing I wanted to comment about was the dishonesty involved between all parties. I guess it was a little disappointing to see how how much they stole and copied each others ideas. Prior to seeing the movie I thought Bill Gates and Steve Jobs came up with the technology individually.
For my Tec talk I choose to talk with my dad who is an engineer. He is always upgrading and working on computers. He primarly works on his own Mac. Anyway, as we were talkng he told me how he upgraded his memory on his Mac. He gave me the web site that told me th type of memory I would need and he gave me a link that showed a demonstration on how to take out your old memory card and how to install a new memory card.

Week 2 581 MAC OS X (Snow Leopard)

For this part of the assignment I choose to look at Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) as a possible alternative OS. Currently Snow Leopard is advertised for $29. Not sure if we will upgrade on our home computer yet. My dad is a huge Mac guy and he has Snow Leopard and he really likes it (my Dad is an engineer and really does his research so I put a lot of stock in his opinion).
HISTORY:
Mac OS X Snow Leopard was preceded by Mac OS X Tiger and Mac OS X Leopard. Tiger was released in April of 2005 and advertised 150 new applications. Mac OS X Leopard was released in October of 2007 and included 300 new applications. What I found interesting about this is that when Snow Leopard was released it included no new features. This was very strange for this industry. The rational for this was that Apple improved all 300 applications and streamlined all of them. This was an interesting risk and gamble considering the competitiveness of the industry.
FEATURES
According to the write up Mac Os X Snow Leopard won't get viruses and it automatically provides updates that protect against malware. Also, I watched the tutorial on parental controls. This is another great feature and I was amazed at how user friendly that application was. Mac OS X Snow Leopard is built on the UNIX foundation. It runs off 64-bit, multi core processors and GPUs. Also, I was very impressed at how compatible Mac OS X Snow Leopard is with other systems. It is compatible with most window applications, can convert most files including PDF, JPG, ZIP, MP3, and PSD. It will also hook up to almost all Digital cameras, printers, hard drives, mice, and keyboards with USB connections. Finally, Snow Leopard uses OpenCL 1.0, a framework that allows for the use of cores inside your graphics card. This means that for "gamers" Snow Leopard would be a great choice. I was impressed with all that Snow Leopard had to offer. However, what impressed me most was that Snow Leopard included no new applications over the Leopard version. That leads me to believe that Mac OS X Snow Leopard really has worked out most of their bugs in their OS system.

Week 1 581

I enjoyed our first class and discussing our first memories of computers. It seems that we live in a world now where without the computer civilization as we know it would come to an end. I also really enjoyed the video that we watched in class. I found it very interesting and it made me think about computers a little bit differently. At the time the video was produced I did not own or use a computer (with the exception of at school). In fact the first computer I purchased was with my wife in October 2006 and it was a MAC. Prior to that I was either given a laptop with my job, or used my roommates computers. I must say that I am very unaware of how computers work. I knew prior to this class that they ran off millions of "on" and "off" switches and that silicon was the element that made all of the electrical impulses possible. However, beyond that the inner workings were a mystery to me. I feel far more comfortable poking around under the hood of my car then under the hood of a computer. Today for the first time I poked around the inner working of a computer. I was surprised at the overall simplicity of such a complex machine. Everything had a place and was very well organized and very easy to find. However, this is where the simplicity stopped. Each of the major components were extremely complicated and unbelievably small. The central processor being the most impressive with it's small size. I look foreword to learning more about how computers are actually but together.