Facebook’s ambition

Recently there was some news in regard to Facebook interested in making its status update system more robust and accessible through APIs for developers and presumably users.  This is a direct shot against Twitter and their own system of micro-blogging.  The question that comes to mind though is the sense of community between services and if there is a brand loyalty or do people just see these tools as a means to an end.  I think the majority of people do in fact use these services to stay in contact and if their contacts  aren’t on a particular service then it won’t catch on in that social circle.

 

With that said, both have an immense following with Facebook currently around 200 million users with Twitter being much less than that but growing by leaps and bounds and attracting many from the mainstream.  Facebook of course using its leverage on its other social networking features and user base will try to capitalize on the market, but does that necessarily mean that it will push out Twitter?

Windows 7 thins its product lineup

Well maybe, it depends how you look at it.

• Windows 7 Starter
• Windows 7 Home Premium
• Windows 7 Professional
• Windows 7 Enterprise
• Windows 7 Ultimate

Starter will be available with new PCs but is very crippled (no glass, can only run 3 applications at a time, etc.).  Home Premium and Professional will be the major push for retail and the average user while Enterprise will provide features for businesses and Ultimate will include everything but won’t be marketed as extensively as Home Premium and Professional according to Microsoft.

So what we have here for the average consumer is really a choice between Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate (for those who really need to have it all).  Which really is the same number of versions that you had with Vista when you think about it (Home Basic, Home Premium, and Ultimate).  From the way Microsoft is talking though I suppose their marketing campaign will differ though to simplify the apparent choices.

It’s important to remember than unlike Vista, each version of 7 supersedes the previous, lower version meaning that as you move up from Starter you will always be gaining features never losing what you had from the lower tiers, which is a very smart move.  I just hope Microsoft is as smart with their pricing as they haven’t yet released that information.

The UAC Debacle

As I’m sure you’re all aware (if you’ve been following the very popular Windows 7 beta) there has been some issues with how Microsoft is handling UAC (user access control) in Windows 7.  Initially they wanted to lower the default alert threshold so users wouldn’t be bothered when changing settings for Windows since it was a major complaint with the way Vista operated with UAC.  Then in an outcry from the security-conscious testers/observers Microsoft bends to their demands for it to be more like Vista (more secure but more alerts) considering malware on the system could lower or disable UAC and not prompt the user—leaving the system open to run anything without the users consent.

It just seems that Microsoft can’t please everyone and the user base can’t agree what they collectively want from the vendor.  Personally I feel that Windows should be as secure as possible and the user needs to adapt to the world in which we live where security is a survival trait—we can’t remain to be lazy and naive about real threats that exist and no Mac OS X isn’t the solution.  Apple handles their version of UAC the same way (high alerts) and they have already proven that they aren’t immune to attack.