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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Tiger math

I'm impressed with Tiger, but I have argued that it's a minor upgrade and not the major upgrade that Apple is touting. Most problematic, in my mind, is the "200+ new features" claim that Apple makes. Has anyone bothered to look at the list? I mean, what exactly constitutes a "feature"?

In Apple's world, just about anything. For example, Dashboard, which one might think of as "a" new feature, somehow gets credit for 15 individual features on Apple's list. How does one feature (Dashboard) get counted as 15 features? Simple. Just count every single Dashboard widget as a separate feature! Here are all the Dashboard-related "features":

Address Book Dashboard Widget
Calculator Widget
Dashboard Keyboard Activation Preference
Dashboard
Calendar Widget
Dictionary Widget
Flight Tracker Widget
iTunes Widget
Phone Book Widget
Sticky Note Widget
Stock Widget
Translation Widget
Unit Converter Widget
Weather Widget
World Clock Widget

Seriously, they list "Dashboard Keyboard Activation Preference" as a feature that's separate from Dashboard.

Spotlight is even worse. In this case, that one feature gets counted as 17 individual features:

Spotlight Contact
Document Properties (adds meta data for Spotlight to find)
Spotlight in Open/Save Panels
Spotlight Menu Hot Key
Spotlight Menu
Spotlight Service
Spotlight Support for Network Homes
Spotlight Window Hot Key
Spotlight Window
Metadata Info & Preview (view meta data that can be found by Spotlight)
Smart Folders
Spotlight Find
Spotlight Results Group View
Spotlight Font Search
Spotlight Search in Mail
Spotlight Preferences
Spotlight Command Line Tools

My favorites here, of course, are the hot keys. That's hilarious: You know they're cheating when a "dedicated keyboard shortcut" is called out as an individual feature. Twice.

OK, I get that it's easy to have fun with marketing. But give me a break.

[ Posted at 3:59 PM | Permalink ]