The beginning of the end..?

Bad news for Microsoft.

Yes, I know I’m an Apple fanboy, and yes I know it’s hard not to gloat, and yes I also know that Microsoft will always be around in some form or another, but are we really beginning to see the behemoth stumble?

Vista AND XP below expectations, sales slumping by 24%, a 4.6% drop in the share price, and sales of ONLY $4 billion (I guess there’s still a few fools out there still buying Microsoft).

 

However, this also happended today:

Apple releases Common Criteria Tools for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

A set of tools that map out the security features of Leopard, so that enterprise customers can buy in confidence.

Is this it, is Apple really serious in going for the Microsoft juggler(jugular)? Seems so.

While Microsoft is juggling, having several dozen balls in the air at the same time, Apple is trying to pull the rug out from under them.

And let me just remind all the Apple-faithful, it’s 2 YEARS, at the earliest, until Microsoft releases Windows 7, the OS that’s going to solve all your problems (apparently).

(again)

(even though Vista was supposed to do that)

(and XP)

(and Me)

(and 2000)

(and 98)

(and 95) – you get the picture.

If Apple can keep up selling 2.6 million Mac’s a quarter, with 50% going to new users, that’s an extra 10.4 million Windows converted, minimum.

Are there going to be any Windows users left to buy Windows 7?

Microsoft PlaysforSure, doesn’t play for sure anymore (for sure)…

Here’s the bad news.

It’s amazing that this has not been reported more widely in the press. After countless arguements that Microsoft’s DRM was the future, and you’d be mad to go with iTunes, now comes the news that puts Microsoft’s take on the user/provider firmly into sharp relief.

Put simply; you know all that music that you spent your hard earned cash on from any one of a number of ‘PlaysForSure’ partner of Microsoft’s?

Well, they want it back please and no, you don’t get your money back.

Can someone please explain to me again, why Apple isn’t at 95% market share and companies like Microsoft at 5%?

Why do Windows users put up with being slapped in the face constantly – do you think they actually like it?

Can anyone really trust Microsoft again?

I’m glad that all my online music purchases are from iTunes, because at least I know that Apple will still be around in 10 years time.

It’s strange that back in the 90’s the ’still being around in 10 years time’ was the reason given by a lot of IT Managers when giving a reason for choosing Windows over the Mac.

How times have changed, it’s a pity a lot of IT managers haven’t.

You have got to be kidding me…

Courtesy of Macfixit, via Psystar support:

“We absolutely do not support customers attempting to install the Leopard operating system on our Open Computer themselves. This is due to a difficult process that we go through to get Leopard to function on our computers. We encourage you to purchase an open computer, and select the option to have Leopard Pre-installed.”

Of course, the reader asked what options were available in the event of a major system failure requiring Leopard reinstallation, to which Psystar suggested a return shipment to the company.

“Currently, (shipping the computer back to us) is the only option available. If the HDD dies, you can ship it to us for $50 plus shipping, so we can replace it for you.”

Yeah, these Psystar systems seem like very good value.

And people complain that you have to send your iPod/iPhone back to Apple to change the battery?

For chrissakes, buy a second-hand Mac for $400, or put your friggin’ hand in your pocket and buy a Mac, everyone else is doing so:

Apple buys a chip company… wait… what!?

 

Click this, as it’s quite a good read.

With all the furore over Apple slowly becoming a software company, (put about by those pundits with an ulterior motive to see Apple’s demise), can we all just now state categorically that Apple is first and foremost a hardware company?

Just how much ‘hardware-like’ can you get – they’ve just purchased a chip company for goodness sakes.

Admittedly, this purchase is to do with the iPhone, but I think it shows how much Apple holds the ‘make the whole widget’ approach central to its strategy.

Today the iPhone, but I can see this purchase fueling innovation and invention in the Apple-branded mobile gadget area for decades to come.

There’s a few thing that are certain; nobody saw this coming, most won’t understand its significance, and most clueless industry experts will wonder what the heck Apple are playing at, isn’t everybody touting ’software services’ as the future way to make money?

“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purposes and plans,” said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling. 

Stock price will probably go down as well. Guaranteed.

Also, expect Microsoft to purchase a chip company in the next 12 months, once Apple’s investment begins to bear fruit, but completely mishandle the entire process, making both companies worse off than before.

Apple continue to surprise me, and baffle Windows-centric PC pundits.

 

The Apple-hater’s wet dream continues…

 

Think before you click.

Think before you click (again).

Let me start by putting something into perspective that a lot of Mac supporters, and people who are neutral tech observers don’t realise.

There are people (bloggers, journalists & users) out there who have Apple hatred in their DNA.

I won’t go into the reasons why, but briefly, they hate everything Apple stands for. They hate the logo, they hate Steve Jobs, they hate the hardware, they hate OSX, they hate the iPhone, iPod and especially the users. 

Apple has a long history of bucking trends, and proving people wrong and they have upset a lot of people along the way, some get over it, some definitely do not.

With this in mind, my attention has been brought upon the recent controversy of Psystar, and this has opened the ‘debate’ on whether Apple really ought to release Mac OSX to work on open hardware.

There’s also the side-issue put forward by some pundit that they could legally be forced to.

Now, I don’t care about Psystar. I think that Apple will shut them down, and if they can’t they’ll release an update that trashes the hardware.

This in turn will either force those users back to Windows, (no problem, because they weren’t going to buy Apple hardware anyway, so no lost sale there), or it will pique their interest and encourage them to buy Apple hardware.

So whatever happens, it won’t hurt Apple, in fact, in might help them.

But, coming back to those pundits who have that DNA-fault, they are constantly on the lookout for news that will, under their encouragement, allow them to fulfill their wet-dream.

That dream being that Apple will disappear, be absorbed or destroyed. They will no longer have to consider them, report on them or have to even say the word ‘Apple’ ever again.

They will of course write page upon page of drivel, baiting the old-Apple users and force them to realise that they were right all along. Apple is dead, Microsoft have triumphed. Yes, they are that petty and childish.

This latest development with Psystar, is just another facet of that dream. The PC-pundits see this as an opportunity to kill Apple, or at least push us all to that conclusion.

They feel that if Psystar is successful it will start a snowball that will encourage Dell, HP etc to join in and simply release hardware that can run OSX.

And they know full well that Apple cannot exist on that model. Without hardware sales, Apple is gone, it does not exist anymore.

Certainly Apple as a software company would not have the disruptive effect it has at the moment. Indeed, Apple would fade to a shadow of it’s former self, effectively a niche software provider, if not dead completely.

I suppose in their twisted minds, they want everyone to be the same. They are jealous that Apple users time and time again prove them wrong again on all fronts.

We are the scratch they can’t reach, we are the irritating song they can’t get out of their heads, we are always there, in the background, constantly reminding them that they have made the wrong computing choice.

I suppose that what they’re saying is, is that if we won’t join them on the Windows side, then they want our OS to be as buggy as their’s (by being on open hardware), because there’s a very good reason why Mac’s ‘just work’ it’s because Apple control the hardware & software.

That’s another aspect that they can’t swallow, that proprietary software (Windows) on open hardware is buggy and unmanageable. Open(ish) software (Mac OSX) on closed hardware is much more reliable and easy to manage.

So, over the next few months, until this all dies down, if you’re reading articles about whether Apple should become a software company, or the fact the Apple is days away from being sued and being forced to sell the software on open hardware, just remember what this is all about.

They want us to not exist. Let’s keep proving them wrong.

Package, repackage, repackage…

 

So here we go…

The likes of ‘Pwn to own’ is a vital tool in the arsenal of the computer bug-fighting community, boldly going into the fray, fighting those bugs so you don’t have to. Bringing to light otherwise unknown security issues into the viewpoint of the public, and using their carefully honed skills to keep your computing life safe.

For the good of the community.

Not for any other reason.

Honestly.

Not so they can stub (another) lit cigarette out in our eyes, maybe.

No, definitely for the good of the community.

…

OK, back to reality. As you can see I’m not at all enamoured by this stunt. But before you (quite rightly) state that I am a Mac fanboy, let me just put across what I’m on about.

Yes Safari has a bug, quite a serious one and one that needs addressing. A carefully crafted website can give, once visited, root access. This is a biggie, a serious one and I’m in no doubt that Apple is currently fixing this ASAP.

However the bug isn’t the issue here. What is the issue is the way in which this bug has been demonstrated and ‘launched’ into the public arena.

This whole exercise is not about safeguarding the computing public, this is about sad Windows users getting maximum exposure for a bug they have discovered in Safari.

The whole ‘pwn to own’ is a packaging exercise, a PR stunt, to get the largest exposure possible for the discovery of a flaw in Safari’s webkit, I work in marketing and PR, and I know a PR stunt packaged as ‘reality’ when I see one.

Think about it.

1) The MacBook Air. Why the MacBook Air? Why not a Mac Mini?, or an iMac? Because it’s Apple’s flagship product, they’ve pumped millions into its advertising, so any flaw discovered would taint Apple’s top product – and give maximum exposure to the ‘event’.

2) Hacked in 2 minutes? Right. I think you mean 2 weeks and 2 minutes. The website they visited to take advantage of the flaw had been previously created by them. It took them 2 weeks to figure it out.

So a competition was set up just at the same time as they just happened to have finished constructing a website that demonstrated the flaw?

No, what happened was that they discovered the flaw, and were about to announce it when it occurred to them that simply just announcing the flaw wouldn’t be enough.

It’s been done before and it’s old news. Everyone would simply say, “A flaw? Oh, right a bad one. Hmm that’s not very good. But I expect Apple will fix it soon. Next news item please…”

So they held onto their discovery until a suitable PR event occurred, or maybe (and more controversially), a phony competition was packaged around the bug, for maximum media exposure.

Either way, they got that exposure, well done everyone.

When you look at this whole incident from this viewpoint, you have to ask yourself, Windows users are seriously in need of some therapy.

Oh, and the excuse that they won the MacBook Air and are Apple users? Of course they are, how else do you expect they know so much about hacking a Mac?

 

Are you complicit in iTunes downfall?

 

 

Recent developments in the market place for digital downloads of music have resulted in iTunes being seen as the black sheep in the family.

Although Apple have made a lot of money for the record companies, (Apple sees iTunes as a break-even arrangement, taking very little from each song sold, making money from sales of hardware instead), the record companies are not happy.

iTunes success, has resulted in Apple having a great deal of power in terms of the prices they are willing to sell music at (regardless of what the record companies want), to-wit – we see prices on iTunes remaining pretty consistent across the range.

This benefits the consumer, (who are Apple’s main focus here), for other online retailers who have allowed the music companies to dictate pricing terms, have not been as successful as Apple, hence their almost complete demise.

This has irked those record companies greatly, for they are used to having almost total control of their industry.

So we have seen a change of direction; they have now started offering competing online music providers, different, and much better terms and arrangements to sell their music, while Apple is left out in the cold.

We’re seeing no DRM, better choice of music and lower prices in competing services.

Most, if not all the media see this as a benefit to the consumer, and a sign that the record companies are finally giving in and embracing the future, and hey, iTunes having competition is a good thing, right?

They’re wrong. Why? let me explain.

Apple have remained steadfast in their demands that pricing on iTunes is consistent. The record companies wanted tiered pricing, and Apple correctly stated that one of the reasons why iTunes was successful, was the ‘across-the-board’ pricing.

The record companies then realised that this was a battle they could not win, unless they sacrificed a couple of things in the short term, to win back something in the future.

These 2 things are DRM, and pricing.

They sacrificed DRM because a) of a change in customer demand and media momentum which they couldn’t control, and b) to give them leverage against Apple, hence the offering of DRM-free music to the linkes of Amazon.

They sacrificed pricing to again, give them leverage against Apple, but only temporarily.

Why do they want leverage against Apple? They want this so they can bring competitors to iTunes dominance.

Is that not a good thing though? NO IT ISN’T.

Why isn’t it? Because 5 years from now, if they are successful and iTunes dominance is eroded to the point where the record companies don’t have to listen to it’s demands, what will be left?

You will have the record companies on one side, and on the other side a number of partners who will not be powerful enough to dictate pricing terms, as Apple has in the past.

What will then happen?

PRICES OF ONLINE MUSIC WILL RISE. GUARANTEED.

They will then be able to do what they like, kill online music stone dead if they want to and return to the more profitable and controllable model of CD’s, or worse.

Do I have any proof of this? No, of course not. But answer me this, if this isn’t true, and the only reason why the record companies are doing this is to bring competition, cheaper prices and no DRM to the industry, then why don’t they let Apple join in now?

By not letting Apple join in now, they seek to erode its dominance, and they want to topple iTunes, so they can get the pricing back under they’re control.

So the next time you buy music online from Amazon, just remember that you giving more power to the record industry with every purchase, and taking power away from Apple.

Apple want to keep music prices cheap and consistent, the record companies want you to pay more. Just remember that.

 

Superenthused?…

So Bill Gates is wheeled out before the press in order to distract everyone from the complete disaster that is Vista. (For the definition of disaster, see here.)

After the first negative reviews of Vista came in, Microsoft was careful to say that the next version of Windows (given the creative-free title of ‘7′), would be 3 years away, but we all know that in Microsoft-years, that means at least 5 years, probably 7.

But, even when I strip away the layer upon layer of pro-Apple skin that encompasses my entire body, when I look at this as objectively as I can, Vista has been a laughing stock.

The company I work for has completely ignored Vista – totally.

The companies I deal with on a daily basis act like it doesn’t exist.

Put simply – if it wasn’t for Microsoft’s cash hoard, they wouldn’t exist either.

So along comes Bill Gates to assure everyone (again) that the next version of Windows will be the one we’ve all been waiting for, the one that will work, the one that he’s been promising since, since, well forever…

Hang on, hasn’t Microsoft been doing this all along? Every release of Windows has been awful, without fail. It’s full of bugs, it doesn’t work as advertised and to get it working, it assumes you have an army of IT specialists, on-site to make sure that once they do get it working, nobody touches or changes anything, in case it all comes crashing down like the fragile deck of cards that it is.

So….. Windows 7. It’ll be great, it’ll work on the desktop, it’ll work on mobile devices, it’ll also have, wait for it… multi-touch.

Just like all the other versions were supposed to have (apart from multi-touch of course).

Sigh…

Of course, being a Mac user I couldn’t care less, but don’t Windows users feel, you know, deep down inside, just a little bit, you know… conned?

Of course Microsoft have always done this. It’s a standing joke in the tech industry that Microsoft waits for Apple to innovate in their small niche space and then arrogantly takes that innovation and applies to their Windows monopoly.

Your average Windows user, who doesn’t even know Apple exists, only sees ‘Microsoft at the forefront of the tech industry, yet again.’

However Microsoft’s ploy only works if Apple remains in its niche. Now that Apple has a greater consumer presence and it’s market share is on the rise, those average Windows users are beginning to smell a rat.

That joke isn’t funny anymore, and the FUD that Microsoft relies on is being challenged at last.