Well, I'm nearly done with another post, and as you can see from the increased posting frequency, I've more or less finally gotten over all the problems arising from last year's transition from MSN Spaces to Live Spaces. On the other hand, this certainly doesn't mean everything is working great, at least on my Mac (running the latest Mac OS, 10.4.8, BTW).

I have to click on a post before I see the archives, which then appear on the left. Categories may work if you know how to put together the URL, but I can't get the list to appear anywhere on my Light Side pages (at least with my Mac/Safari), which is a major annoyance, and a post's particular category isn't displayed. I've been meaning to get on a PC and check this out. I wonder if it's fine with Firefox or only (I assume) Explorer.

I still don't like the appearance, which can't be changed from a Mac using Safari (guess I need to finally try Firefox soon), though it doesn't bother me as much as it used to. Mostly I'm just wondering how long it will be until Microsoft "tears up the street" again. Maybe it will be a while, because they really don't seem to be paying much attention to Spaces right now.

That's both good and bad, in that when they leave Spaces alone for a while, I tend to get back in a rhythm of posting every so often. On the other hand, it just makes me further convinced that even a decade or more after MS supposedly finally got the internet "religion", they really still don't have that much commitment to it, or even really understand it.

The net is the inverse of a carefully controlled ecosystem like Windows, and the unwelcome message it keeps sending is that they need to tear up their old business model and get a new one. I wonder if Microsoft will follow in the footsteps of so many other top companies and fail to listen in time.

As I noted at the beginning, I appreciate Microsoft's providing Spaces to us for free, even if it's not quite as likable as it was a year ago. I do wish, though, that MS would be at least a little less paranoid about embracing the Mac, and also get out and go talk to real people and make a serious effort to finally understand what the net is all about!