Hohumnology

Yesterday's news contained two tech stories.

The first was a diss by Verizon on the new Apple-Cingular deal. Verizon said that they passed on the deal that Apple offered (Verizon produced their results yesterday and had a down quarter save their wireless division - a 38% drop in profits while adding to their customer base in wireless). Who knows whether it is true or whether this was a smokescreen to cover the lousy results And more importantly, who cares? WIreless services are pretty much the same - although since I have been a Cingular customer I have been impressed with their depth of coverage (I really have noticed fewer dropped calls than when I was with T-Mobile or Verizon). But I am also a Verizon data customer (their Express card is pretty good) and I have found that to be a reliable service. But Verizon's announcement was almost school yard.

The second was the five year delayed release of Vista the new operating system for Windows based computers was done in the dark of night, last night. From one press report, the (small) lines at one store were based more on the doorbuster deals in the particular store on other technology than on the buzz of this software upgrade. (But wait, it is probably not for most Windows based computers because most current Windows users will need to upgrade either their memory or more likely their computer). (And but wait, most of the chatter on the street has been that Vista is Mac OSX - Tiger - lite. There is also some chatter among the technoranti that Vista has not really done much to plug the security holes in Windows.) Much of the look and feel of the "new" software is what Mac users have had for more than a year. Most of the analysts have said wait for Leopard - the new version of the Mac OS to see interesting bells and whistles. At one point, Windows users could claim that if you wanted some obscure program that counted the droppings of Yaks in Asia that it would only run on Windows - but of course with two programs (Boot Camp and Parallel) any Mac user can run Windows effortlessly. I have not ever put up the Windows features because I am not really that interested in Yak droppings or any of the other obscure programs that only run on Windows.