Follow the money…

Psystar’s Sales just 768.

Courtesy of Mac Daily News.

Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld. “According to a slide presentation that Psystar showed to venture capitalists in 2008, the Florida-based computer maker projected sales during 2011 of between 1.45 million and 12 million, with the first figure its ‘conservative’ estimate and the second number representing an ‘aggressive’ growth model.”

I don’t know who to be more surprised at, Psystar for assuming that they could take somebody else’s copyrighted product and market it for themselves, or the venture capitalists for seriously thinking this was a good investment.

Well, one (or more) of them thought it was – the one question that remains unanswered in this whole sorry debacle, who exactly gave Psystar their capital to start up their company to begin with, and who continued to fund them through the courts?

Calacanis? (There I said it). It would explain his attitude towards Apple of late, and his erratic diatribe against Apple.

It’s doubtful that the evidence still exists, it being shredded, stamped on, burnt, recycled, bleached and shredded and burnt again, during the period when Psystar went into their hiatus when the money ran out.

It can’t exist, because if it did, it would change everything.

Microsoft, please carry on…

Courtesy of Rixstep:

Spontaneous Shoplifting @ MSFT Store

Words don’t often fail me, but the sight of a dozen minor-geeks, awkwardly clapping and trying to dance, under the guise of spontaneity… well I don’t know what to say or where to begin.

Microsoft, you’re making a complete fool of yourself. You really don’t know what (hopefully) irreparable damage you are doing to your brand (such that it is) and your public image.

Years from now, when Microsoft are long, long gone, people will look back at the YouTube video and say that this was one of the 10 or so key moments where severe blows were dealt that added to this company’s downfall.

The reason why Microsoft have survived and prospered this far, is because of the army of Windows IT Professionals that have propped up this loose assortment of sloppy hacks and ass-backwards ‘me-too’ and ‘just good enough’ coding.

They have survived because of the mass-ignorance of your average PC-buyer, who needed their hand held whilst buying their computer.

But now things have changed. Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook and dozens of others have caught up whilst Microsoft were sleeping, and Microsoft’s customer has changed – they are armed with geek-knowledge and they know how to use it.

Ballmer, like the captain on the Titanic, tried to ignore it, but now, with market-share and mind-share slipping he has to do something.

He calls on his troops, but more and more of these troops are bringing in laptops with Apple logos on them. They have iPods, and iPhones, they use Google instead of Bing, and Office is the last thing on their mind with free alternatives readily available.

So he does something – Vista. A total failure that would have finished most companies – but Microsoft isn’t ‘most’ companies.

He tries ‘new’ and ‘different’ advertising campaigns. They are met with derision, confusion and worst of all – laughter, the ‘at’ kind, not the ‘with’ kind.

Plan B. If you can’t beat them – join them. Or copy them. Copy them in exactly the same way you’ve copied them before, back when that ‘computer for the rest of us’ was first released.

Copy it backwards and upside down. In such a way that although all the pieces are there, they just don’t quite fit together.

What you are seeing in this poor, poor, sad video above, is Microsoft in the raw. When the support from all the IT professionals has gone.

They have to compete. On their own. This is who they really are.

I’ve often thought Microsoft were indestructible and I would be writing this blog to the end of my days with them always there, always copying, always getting it totally wrong.

You know I’m beginning to see, at last, the end of this once never great company.

The whole widget…

With all the fuss around Psystar’s attempts to rip-off Apple IP, certain publications have been attempting to take the logical inference to all Psytar’s efforts, that it doesn’t really matter that Apple makes both the hardware and the software.

PC World (via MacDailyNews) – Is Psystar’s judicial deathblow a win for consumers?

This is as we all know – rubbish – but it’s not always easy to quantify to a PC user. I have little experience in maintaining a PC from day to day. I am predominantly a Mac user – I expect my Mac to work, and it does.

Apple’s crown jewel is the tight integration between hardware and software. To a Mac user, things just work, with minimal, or totally no, effort.

Yes there’s a few niggles but the one thing that has always worked is my wireless connection.

I keep Airport on all the time. I close the lid, it disconnects, I open the lid it connects in milliseconds. It works.

Now leaving aside the configuration of the router, I assumed that all computer’s act like this. I’d heard one or two stories about Windows wireless connection being flaky, but never paid it much attention.

Until last week. My little iBook is now over 5 years old. It’s a workhorse – I push it to the max, running all Adobe applications, ripping DVD’s & CD’s, watching movies, streaming TV, just about everything.

But then things started to go wrong. Kernel panic, after kernel panic was narrowed down to the Airport card.

I had the hard drive upgraded last month, and maybe, just maybe the damage that caused this ‘upgrade’ (I dropped a plate onto it) also may have damaged the Airport card.

Unfortunately the Airport card is on the motherboard, so it was a case of buying an external card on a USB stick.

A chose a good one, not too cheap, a well known brand and installed the driver, restarted and plugged it in. A USB utility program started up and sat there and did nothing. I configured it with my router’s settings.

It didn’t work.

Looked up ‘troubleshooting’ in the pdf manual. There wasn’t a ‘troubleshooting’ section.

Unplugged it. Plugged it back in again and looked at the network preference pane. It said it was there and had an IP address.

Went back to the USB utility program and saw that it had found 5 wireless routers. None of which were mine.

Pressed the ‘rescan’ button.

All of them disappeared and the network preference pane said that the USB stick wasn’t plugged in.

There then followed 15 minutes of going round in circles, unplugging, plugging back in, checking settings, changing settings until, all of a sudden, it worked.

Don’t know why it worked. It just decided to work.

Since then, every time the iBook goes to sleep, or restarts, you have the 5-15 minute merry-go-round of coaxing the USB wireless stick into life.

Not exactly a good example of hardware and software working in complete harmony is it?

It is though, a good example of Apple’s crown jewel, it’s tight integration between the hardware and software inside every Apple product – is worth paying for, everytime.

Apple Crushes Clone Maker in Court – BusinessWeek

 

Frankenmac

 

 

Not much to add here, glad to see it’s over (bar the shouting).

The only thing left that’s interesting in all this is to see whether we find out who their backers are – I assume now they are long gone, with all the paperwork and evidence efficiently destroyed.

If I were Apple I would ask Psystar to name their price – to name the scum that’s funded them for so long.

Apple Crushes Clone Maker in Court – BusinessWeek

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Mac users a cult? Hmm…

You know al those Windows drones who constantly well, you know, drone on about we Mac users are an elitist cult, worshipping at the church of Apple?

Maybe they’ve got a point:

Press Pass photos of 67th-Broadway Store | 9 to 5 Mac

A bet that backwards Apple logo really irks Steve though…

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An exploit of Microsoftian proportions…

New Malware Allows Hackers to Access Personal Information on Jailbroken iPhones – Mac Rumors

So the iPhone’s security situation worsens. This time it’s a really bad one. You can have your data stolen from your iPhone without even realising it.

You could walk past a coffee shop and someone with the right software could scan your phone and get at all your data. You wouldn’t even know it. Wow.

Of course this doesn’t affect me. Or just about anybody else who owns an iPhone.

Just those morons who took the advice from certain Mac-gurus and jailbroke their iPhones to ‘free them from the tyranny of Apple’s closed system’.

I think it’s time to admit that maybe Apple ‘knows best’.

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‘iPhone’ worm? Not quite…

Via MacDailyNews (sub-via the BBC, but I’m not linking to their FUD).

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So there’s a ‘worm’ that’s been discovered in the wild (or should that be outback?) in Australia.

Our intrepid license-fee paid for reporters at the Beeb, gleefully point out that it changes the wallpaper to a picture of Rick Astley, and as a side issue also point out that it only affects jailbroken iPhones.

In my opinion, a jailbroken iPhone is not an iPhone – not the iPhone that most people viewing the BBC news item would buy and use, so the headline ‘Worm attack bites at Apple iPhone’ is a little inflammatory.

Leaving aside that issue, where does this leave all the whiners who have constantly asked, nay, demanded that Apple make their iPhone an open platform?

(I’m thinking of such high-profile ‘Apple-supporters’ such as Laporte, Inakhto, to name a few).

Does this not validate and verify Apple stance of a closed system, with only approved apps allowed?

Apple said at the time that a smartphone is a far more vulnerable computer than a traditional laptop or desktop, and therefore needs a different approach in terms of what is allowed to run on it.

Maybe the oft-used and derisory statement that ‘Apple knows best’ is correct after all.

An insight into Jobs…

People in the know speak about Jobs…

Recently on CNNMoney, 8 people gave a rare insight into Steve Jobs, and it makes enlightening reading – choice quotes are:

“He does it in a very black-and-white way, while the rest of the world gets caught up in the gray — or caught up in themselves.” – Andrea Jung

“It struck me that there wasn’t furniture good enough for Steve in the world. He’d rather have nothing if he couldn’t have perfection.” – Larry Ellison

“He set the performance standard for product thinking and product execution that all the rest of us should aspire to hit.” – Marc Andreessen

And this is why we don’t see a tablet from Apple – yet. Many tablets have been created – and rejected.

I’d rather have nothing at all, than a tablet-like product looking for a market to fit into.

Looking at my options…

So I’ve had a rocky year with MobileMe that’s tested my patience to it’s limits. Many others agree with me:

Apple’s MobileMe Still Having Issues – SteveNet

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Although by all accounts it’s not as bad as when it first started (I joined after the MobileMe team were sacked replaced), it still could be so much more.

My plans were huge for Apple’s syncing service, I was going to connect up my freelance work, and sync the computers in my studio (about 6-7 Macintoshes) and much more.

The reality? I dare not do more than sync up one work Mac, with my home Mac.

The amount of troubleshooting I’ve had to do just keep this running smoothly means that if I pushed this out to the full studio, I’d spend too much time keeping it working – time I just don’t have.

Apple, I know that this is a small blog that nobody reads, but you really, really need to do something, and quickly – like the image above says, you’ve got 51 days before I’m forced into making a decision of whether to continue.

Ballmer must go? Say it isn’t so!

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: NY Times all but says it: Ballmer must go

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Surely any right-thinking person would admit that the total eradication to the technical dead end that Microsoft has taken us all down, must be a good thing?

If ‘total eradication’ is too strong then any reduction in their influence can only make all of our lives better?

The surest way to make that happen is to keep this total idiot in his place, in fact make it federal law that he has this job for life.

Microsoft still have far too much power, with the desktop still firmly in their grasp, and although Google, Apple and others owe a lot to their current success due to their sterling innovation and business acumen, Ballmer being asleep at wheel can only help matters.

I for one would feel very worried with a newly invigorated Microsoft with a new guy at the helm with countless billions to spend.

MobileMe – it could be worse…

MobileMe DOA?

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I’ve written before about the problems I’ve had with MobileMe, and that it doesn’t seem as rock-solid as we’d like.

I’ve had problems with data syncing, needing to re-set sync data on 2 occasions, and one problem needing to reinstall a combo updater.

Many pundits have written that maybe this is proof-positive that ‘the cloud’ is not and indeed cannot, live up to its promise – a totally reliable, always backed-up, always available media-rich experience.

I’ve decided to give MobileMe the benefit of the doubt and use it ‘carefully’ and with a constant overseeing to make sure that all is well.

I’ve commented in a recent post, that with all the problems Apple had and continues to have with their cloud, maybe we are seeing the limits of their competence and maybe after all, Microsoft with all their expertise, can do it better.

I’m glad to be proved wrong.

Microsoft just doesn’t care…

It’s hard to know where to begin with this. Microsoft bought a company called Danger in early 2008, and basically took a perfectly functioning online service for T-Mobile’s Sidekick users and whilst performing an upgrade, totally screwed it up in the worst way possible.

They actually lost their data. Forever. Gone. No backup.

What’s Microsoft current market cap? $230 Billion?

How is it possible that this could happen?

And more importantly, why do people constantly continue to deal with this loose collection of morons that dare to call themselves a company?

In all my criticisms of MobileMe, I have never lost even one ACSII characters worth of data. It’s been a pain to reset sync, and I’ve invented at least 4 new swearwords when I was troubleshooting Apple’s cloud, but Apple have made sure that I never actually lost anything.

Well done Microsoft for allowing confidence in the cloud to be dented even further than it was. Morons.

No such thing as bad PR?

Windows 7 doth approach, and Microsoft, in it’s wisdom have organised ‘Windows 7 parties’ to encourage the poor deluded majority to bet, once again, that this version of Windows is the one they will actually enjoy using.

The one that will at last, be intuitive, won’t crash much, will be free from viruses and malware, just like those other computers that they don’t like to mention very much.

The general reception that the Windows 7 party idea has had is predictably consistent; it’s an awful, cheesy, cliche and pain-inducing idea that only reinforces the idea that Microsoft are so totally uncool and unhip, that it’s a wonder their bums don’t fall off (to quote Zaphod Beeblebrox).

However one excuse for all the fallout has been, ‘there’s no such thing as bad PR.’ Meaning that it doesn’t matter that the idea is awful, it doesn’t matter that everyone is laughing at Microsoft, the number of column inches it generates is worth all the bad press.

However I do not agree.

Many years ago I worked alongside a person who I had great respect from in the creative and advertising industry. Our team was tasked with creating a straightforward campaign for a large supermarket chain to advertise a sale.

This advertising took many forms, but one part was bus-shelter posters.

Now being trained graphic designers we new that the thought process for the consumer was thus:

You hook in the consumer with a gimmick, an offer or an angle.

You then hold there attention with an attractive, easy to ‘consume’, flowing, logical design.

You then let them go, away from your adverts influence, with a thought, or memory of your offer.

The last part is the most important. The consumer will spend infinitely more time away from your ads influence, than being exposed to it. You don’t have long to get your message across and that message has to hit home first time, and it must stay with them when you ad is long gone.

This period is the time where your influence has to be positive so that the consumer can pass your message along to another person.

This is why ‘viral marketing’ is a difficult and dangerous approach. You have to get your message and every possible interpretation of that message absolutely right.

Anyway I digress a little- back to the supermarket’s ad.

We created what we thought best fulfilled those 3 critera, to hook, to hold & give right memory. However the client didn’t see it that way.

They wanted something much more direct, simple and gaudy. Put simply they wanted their ad on a dayglo green or orange background, so that it ’stood out’ and shouted their message.

It certainly would hook & hold, but the memory? My colleague commented that, “We’ve hooked them in, the ad will be noticed most certainly, they will even read the ad, but what memory are they left with? a cheap and nasty one.”

The client, whose product was most certainly not cheap and nasty, finally relented, but this experience made me think about the Windows 7 party.

It’s getting the column inches, and we’re certainly hooked and held, but what’s the memory we are left with? What are we saying to others about this approach?

Microsoft seems to think that any news is good news… I don’t think so.

Forward delete is an oxymoron…

Mac 101: Forward delete on a Mac laptop

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As part of my job, I come across dozens of Windows users every day. They have used Windows all their life and have little or know knowledge of the Mac.

These are, to coin a few phrases, the other 95%, the drones, the job security for hundred’s and thousands of IT Managers up and down the USofA.

Occasionally this ‘majority’ have to sit down and use a Mac for a period of time and it’s here where their ‘muscle memory’ of using the upside-down and back-to-front version of the Mac (i.e. Windows), comes into the realm of the way it was done first, and done correctly – the Mac.

One way in which this surfaces is the forward-delete key. This was first brought to my attention when a bemused PC user, typing a document, said, “where’s the delete key on this keyboard?’

My first reaction was that they couldn’t be blamed for not knowing. There’s nowhere on a mac keyboard that says ‘delete’. It’s the key with the left facing arrow, as a Mac user, I just know this through years of use.

However the PC-user, upon testing this said, “No, that’s the backspace key.”

“No it isn’t”, I remarked, “the backspace key on a Mac is the left arrow key, along with the up, down and right keys”.

Not understanding what ‘backspace’ meant, I then learned about ‘forward-delete’ from this PC-user. It’s always been on a Mac keyboard, but I’ve never used it, because it doesn’t make any sense to me. And neither does ‘backspace’.

To me, the word ‘backspace’ does not mean a destructive action. Backspace means, ‘to move back a space’, i.e. the left arrow key.

‘Delete’ means to delete something you have just done. i.e. You type a word, it is wrong, and you, going backwards using the delete key, delete that word. Where does the term, ‘forward’ make any sense in this?

You don’t place your insertion point at the beginning of the word and then when you press the delete key, expect it to move forward along the word, deleting it.

That’s counter-intuitive isn’t it?

I suppose this all comes down to what you’re used to, but ‘forward-delete’ to me doesn’t make any sense to me as a concept.

However as the ‘majority’ use it, I must be wrong, right?

Every superhero has an Achilles heel…

Like any superhero the Mighty Mouse has an achilles heel.

Recently, the company I work for moved premises, and we all now have a shiny new open plan office.

The studio didn’t take long to set-up again, and we were up and running in about 2 days, but one thing was a problem.

Every Mac (and a few PC’s), have Apple’s Mighty Mouse and no matter what we did, they wouldn’t work correctly.

The mouse could only be used as a single button mouse, right clikcing didn’t work at all.

After stumbling around for a solution I came across this article at Macintouch:

Mighty Mouse: Problems

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It seems that the Mighty Mouse is sensitive to radio waves and non-grounded electrical fields and sure enough, when we took the mouse over to the other side of the office (a mere 30 feet or so), it worked fine.
If you touch the top of your Mac (a PPC G5), it grounds you and the mouse works fine also.

So what’s the solution? Well there isn’t one – I now use an old Macally mouse and because it doesn’t use a touch sensitive approach, it works fine.
The Mighty Mouse has been relagated to home use only and performs as normal.

There’s a rumour that Apple is about to release new mice that are totally touch enabled – let’s hope that they sort this problem out first.

‘Stand Up’ Mac Dock Mockup on Vimeo…

It’s not often that someone comes up with a ‘wow, why doesn’t Apple implement that’ moments, but this is one.
It’s a great intuitive and visual implementation of the ‘open with’ contextual menu.
Let’s hope Apple is listening and adopts this idea in a similar way they adopted the ‘Coverflow’ (and gives the guy a nice cheque along with it).

more about “‘Stand Up’ Mac Dock Mockup on Vimeo…“, posted with vodpod

I didn’t know I wanted it, until I needed it…

So a complete and total disaster has occurred, I mean a BIG one, to quote the late Douglas Adams (as I often do) – ‘bigger than the biggest thing ever’.

Due to a ridiculous turn of events, I dropped a rather sharp, heavy-ish object onto my iBook from a great height – by accident of course – slap bang on the area, to the left of the trackpad, just where the HD is.

This resulted in the iBook stopping dead in it’s tracks. It was happily playing iTunes to itself, and then – nothing. Black screen, dead.

Restarts resulted in the dreaded flashing OS 9-style folder – couldn’t find a startup disk.

That was in itself worrying, however when starting up from a CD, and running disk utility, it couldn’t even find the disk itself – it couldn’t be repaired, it was gone.

This wasn’t just worrying, it was terror inducing.

After a stiff drink and a think, I tried to calmly look at my options. I remembered that I had being backing up this computer, ever since I upgraded to Leopard using Time Machine.

Without me doing anything other than plugging the disk in occasionally, Leopard has quietly backed up everything on my now dead iBook, and I’m sure that somewhere in the back of my mind I had read an article on how to restore a whole disk using Time Machine.

A few clicks on my iPhone I had the article.

Grabbing a spare external HD, I plugged it and the Time Machine disk in, restarted from the Leopard CD, ran the ‘restore’ command, and it restored  my dead disk from its backup, also making it bootable on the way.

An hour later, I’m now typing this article from that system.

The poor little iBook needs a new HD, and it won’t cost the earth either. I should have it back in a couple of days, with a brand new and bigger HD to restore that backup to.

This to me sums up why I use a Mac. The one technology that Leopard introduced that I didn’t really care for was Time Machine. It has now saved my system.

It runs smoothly and unobtrusively in the background, quietly doing its thing. It has little or no features, you can’t configure it much, and it’s about the most simple backup out there.

But it works. It – just – works.

iTunes Extra (& LP) answered, but keep it to yourself…

The ever-excellent Roughly Drafted goes into great detail here, about how iTunes Extra & LP work.

From what I can tell, the whole iTunes Extra experience is done inside iTunes 9, using Javascript, CSS & HTML. The media file, is actually a bundle, a mini website if you will, all under a framework called “TuneKit”.

So that’s my question answered, however Roughly Drafted also goes on to postulate that the real benefactor for this approach is Apple TV, or whatever it’s successor is to be called.

The real kicker though is the fact that all this is done using open standards – no proprietary Flash or Silverlight required.

It would be really nice if certain people, who have lambasted Apple in the past for their horrible, closed proprietary systems, to maybe just admit, just for once, that Apple just might have the user’s interests at heart.

And of course, as RD points out, their own hardware sales. Once Apple’s users have enough iTunes LP & Extra content on their Mac/PC, Apple will release Apple TV 3.0 and all that content now plays on that device, effectively replacing DVD players in one fell swoop.

As always, there’s far more info in Roughly Drafted’s article, it’s highly recommended, but sometimes I wish RD would keep these plans to himself – we don’t want the enemy knowing all our plans do we?

iTunes Extra: How?

On a slightly more serious note, it’s interesting to see iTunes Extra with interactive content, basically like the content you get on a DVD.

I’m interested to know how they’re doing that – is this embedded in the downloaded file, or is it hosted remotely on iTunes?

I’m no techie-expert but I remember that Quicktime supports hyperlinks, but this is more than that.

I wonder whether you can buy iTunes Extra movies, or just rent?

Apple – iTunes – Explore the new iTunes.

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FM tuner done the Apple way…

Steve, you genius...

Apple – iPod nano – FM Radio – Listen to the radio in a new way.

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So it’s over. Steve looked fine, new iTunes, new Touch, new Shuffle, new Nano, iTunes LP, blah, blah, FM tuner, blah, iTunes at 70-odd%, Microsoft at 1% (silent laughter), blah, blah, no Apple TV.

Or iTabletslatepad.

Wait a minute – FM tuner?

How can you get excited about an FM tuner? the one thing that you would have bet your Mac that would never be in an iPod?

Ah, with an Apple twist – you can pause live radio and tag songs for later purchase in iTunes.

Steve, you bloody genius. Now you see why it’s never been a feature until now, until Apple made it actually useful.

I will probably buy it just for that feature, but it’s US-only – for now.

Queue the articles about Steve’s health in 3, 2, 1…

90% of the crowd look up and sigh…

…and the other 10% have another chuckle at the expense of the deluded majority.

Offensive line not the only thing broken at Oklahoma game

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Sony Walkman outsells iPod?

Bloomberg.com: News

<sarcasm>

OMG! Apple is dying! What more evidence do you need? The Zune can’t be far behind!

Before anyone sells all their Apple shares, let me point out that this ’survey’ conveniently leaves out iPhone sales.

Ah, you say – the iPhone isn’t an iPod? Well all you naysayers, take a look at the iPhone default home screen.

See that little orange icon? It says ‘iPod’.

I.P.O.D.

What’s next? When Apple on September 9th, announces that the iPod loses it’s click wheel and goes all ‘touch’, by this articles rules, there won’t be any more iPods.

Hooray! The Zune outsells the iPod at last!

</sarcasm>

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The days of the standalone GPS device market are numbered

MacDailyNews – Thanks to Apple iPhone, the days of the standalone GPS device market are numbered

Could not agree more, I recently had to take a major detour on the way to an important meeting and, not knowing the area at all, managed to find my way perfectly using an iPhone 3GS and the standard GoogleMaps app on said phone.

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SneakPeek Photo Adds File Information to QuickLook

SneakPeek Photo Adds File Information to QuickLook

Very nice, but who chose those fonts?

First rule of typography: Though shalt not set type all in caps

Second rule of typography: And italics look awful as well.

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Apple = Microsoft Calacanis? Yeah right…

The recent diatribe that Calacanis scribbled out has been difficult to comment on.

I’ve commented on it on a few blogs, and my basic approach is that the content of what he wrote is pointless drivel, it’s the effect that it has on his profile that matters.

If he was serious in his comments, then:

a) It would have been much shorter and to the point

b) Would have been better researched and water-tight

c) Wouldn’t have seemed like the rambling writings of someone writing off the cuff, wanting to say something, anything controversial to make himself relevant again.

But, with all that aside, when you condense the it all down, you can say that the point of his ‘article’ was to point out that Apple either is, or is in danger of, becoming evil.

You know – evil. Bad. Not good.

Just like Microsoft was accused of being, but worse. A lot worse.

Calacanis apparently left Microsoft a decade ago and embraced Apple, but now he’s saying that Apple is even worse.

The cheques must have bounced.

But how bad were Microsoft? Some would argue (and I’m amongst them), that nothing has changed and Microsoft are just as bad as they ever were, they’ve just got better and covering their tracks, but how low are Microsoft willing to go?

Take a look at this very interesting article over at Rixstep, entitled, “Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet.”

Choice comments from the “lovely, not evil at all, and is not evil as Apple” company are:

They were going to replace the DNS with their own proprietary technology.

They were going to replace electronic mail with their own proprietary technology.

They were going to replace the world wide web with their own proprietary technology.

They were going to replace the DNS with their own proprietary technology.

They were going to replace electronic mail with their own proprietary technology.

They were going to replace the world wide web with their own proprietary technology.

This was 1994, but again, as Calacanis’s article content isn’t the point, it’s the underlying message, the same applies here.

The same people, the same attitude, the same evil, still perpetuates at Microsoft.

What’s Apple been accused of? Nothing that a few policy changes wouldn’t fix.

What’s Microsoft been accused of? Nothing short of making a fascist state of the internet.

To say that Apple are worse than Microsoft is insulting, and shows that Calacanis’s reasoning is flawed and suspect. I don’t trust him – or Microsoft.

Safari 4 beta

Apple surprised everyone recently by announcing Safari 4.0. It’s released as a beta, put don’t let that put you off, it’s every bit as stable as the previous version.

Opinion is divided on some of the new features, with some people hating the fact that the tabs have moved to the top (as Chrome), the ‘Top Sites’ feature not being particularly useful, and the intrusion of ‘Cover Flow’ into bookmark & history browsing.

Other people love these features, but I think it’s a mixed bag. The feature that wowed me first was the ‘Top Sites’ feature, however this enthusiasm has faded as I realised I cannot seem to find it useful. Time will tell.

The feature that I hated at first was the ‘Cover Flow’ intrusion. I don’t like Cover Flow, I don’t use it in the OS, or iTunes, however it seemed to make more sense in Safari, because it’s better than what it replaces, and I’m warming to it.

The traditional way, by earching your history by looking at hundreds of similar named bits of text, is not user-friendly at all, however quickly skimming through thumbnails of those pages is much more intuitive.

Thurrott is having a bad time in finding anything to like in Safari 4 beta. This isn’t surprising, but he seems to blow lukewarm to cold on Apple, depending on whether he needs to up his site visits. I’m purposefully not linking to his article.

Everyone seems not to mention the speed. The stats seem incredible, and although they seem to be true and not exaggerated, (they have been independently tested and confirmed), the average surfer won’t see much difference.

The question for me remains, is why are Apple introducing more (albeit useful) eye-candy into Safari? It’s a browser, and shouldn’t it be lean, fast & mean?

It comes down to pushing the hardware. I do most of my personal surfing on a little iBook G4 and it’s beginning to show the strain. Apple need to keep selling their hardware, so they keep pushing the specs, to make you upgrade.

I’ve held off, because, like most I can’t afford to upgrade my hardware every time Apple releases new Mac’s.

I put it off for as long as possible, and I’m planning to purchase a MacBook when Snow Leopard is released.

It seems that Apple are heading towards Snow Leopard as the pinnacle of what they can achieve, after they threw away OS9 all those years ago.

Snow Leopard seems to be everything that Steve Jobs has been aiming for – a lean, mean OS, with no legacy code. A good foundation to build upon.

I predict that after Snow Leopard has been released, together with the hardware that’s designed to take full advantage of it, Steve Jobs will announce his retirement, with the knowledge that his job is done.

However it will be sad when SJ retires. To most new Mac users he has significant, but not irreplaceable influence.

When he does go, I’m sure that Apple will carry on, and be better off in the long run, but the Apple that I have grown up with (since System 6) – my Apple – will never be the same again.

Safari is all part of this, and it’s apparent that Apple are slowly putting the pieces together to make the Mac best tech-experience, bar none.

MobileMe isn’t particularly mobile, at least for me…

This is a difficult post to write.

More often than not, the content of this blog is pro-Apple. I make no apologies for this, and although I do critcise Apple from time to time, I also cut them some slack.

Recently I purchased MobileMe. Now, despite a hiccup in purchasing, which wasn’t Apple’s fault, but the resellers, things went smoothly.

At first, things went smoothly. I have an iBook running Leopard, an iPod Touch and a G5 Tower running Tiger, all syncing to the cloud.

This worked fine for a little while. I kept getting a lot of contact an calendar updates on the G5, which was a bit suspicious, but things worked OK.

That was until last week.

The G5 at work was syncing OK, no problems, the iBook & Touch worked flawlessly. Just to check a configuration, I clicked the .Mac Preference Pane on the G5 (it’s running Tiger remember).

It wouldn’t open. It beachballed and then gave me a ‘Could not open .Mac because of an error.”

I’m a seasoned troubleshooter, so I logged into another account – same result. OK, that points to a system-wide pref file that’s corrupted.

So I moved all the .plist files I could find and restarted.

Oh dear. This time the G5 stalled at the desktop. It couldn’t load the .Mac menubar item. So I did a bit of system-voodoo and removed that menubar item so it wouldn’t have to load.

Restarted.

The system now started ok (sans the menu bar item), but upon launching System Preferences, the .Mac Preference Pane wasn’t there.

Ouch. Never seen that before. At this point I thought about cache corruption. The preference pane was in the system (I checked) but it wasn’t loading.

So I cleaned the local caches and restarted. Now my Keyboard & Mouse Preference Pane is in Chinese. I kid you not.

Anyway, this G5 is a production machine, so I left it there, so I could do some more research.

This research has given me a few pointers, which I will try soon. There’s a couple of files I haven’t trashed yet, so we’ll try that.

If that doesn’t work, then I’ll clean all caches, including system.

If that doesn’t work, I’ll try reinstalling the combo updater.

If that doesn’t work, it’s a install of a new system.

How is it possible that enabling a product on your system can cause so many problems? I have over 20 years Mac experience and I’m grasping for solutions.

How is it possible that a product can simply stop working for no reason?

And, let’s not forget, this is an additional service I’VE PAID FOR.

Which is why this article is difficult to write. 

MOBILEME IS NOT READY – AT ALL.

It works for lots of people, but not all. I certainly could not run a business on this. Even the little web-design service I do in my spare time.

I don’t expect this from Apple, I really don’t. 

Are we seeing here the limits to what Apple can do reliably? Are we seeing the edges of their competence? Were all those Windows users right in saying that Apple just doesn’t do certain things as good as Microsoft?

Now that Steve’s away, I hope that Tim asks some serious question of MobileMe. It’s damaging the brand severely and they need the courage to fix it properly, or pull it off the market, trash it and partner with Google, rebrand their offerings and give us a service that we can all be proud of.

Will I be renewing in a years time? At this moment, I’d say no.

Microsoft’s retail stab in the dark…

Upon thinking about Microsoft entry into the retail space, a few thoughts occur.

Microsoft have a really deep seated envy of everything that Apple does. Now, they’ve always had this from the very first meeting about Windows 1.0, and in the past they could get away with it.

After all, despite all Apple’s efforts, they were not a mainstream company. Microsoft and their partners dominated and no-one outside Apple’s niche had ever heard of them.

All the great unwashed saw was ever greater ‘innovation’ coming from Redmond. They did not know that this innovation was a photocopied, me-too agenda based upon what Apple did.

This approach works fine, as long as Apple remains a niche.

Can you really say that Apple Inc. is at this current moment ‘a niche player’?

Group together everything that Apple does, the Mac, iPod, iPhone etc, and their approaching 10% market share (and even greater mind-share), I think not.

Why does this make a difference? Well, Microsoft can keep up the pretense of being an ‘innovator’ as long as no-one (or at least the majority) knows that Apple exists.

This is all the more difficult, and one very good reason this is getting harder, is because of those pesky Apple Retail Stores.

People used to listen to their ‘geeky friend’ on what computer to purchase, which was usually, if not always Windows.

That’s not the case now, they see an Apple Store, go in, and more often than not, purchase. I don’t know what their footfall conversion rate is (the % of customer who enter a store and either do or do not purchase something), but according to Apple 50% of those purchases are to Windows users.

So what is Microsoft to do? Well there’s only one thing to do, fight fire with fire.

But Microsoft has a problem, and it’s a problem that cannot be got around. The PC model is proprietary OS on open hardware. Apple’s model is open OS (sort, parts of etc), on proprietary hardware.

Now I don’t care what people say, Apple’s model gives us more reliable computers, Microsoft’s model gives problems – lot of them, with more chances to go wrong.

Apple’s model is naturally fits the retail environment. People enter Apple Stores for an experience. Yes, they take their computers in to be fixed, and Apple manages that quite well, as their model keeps those fixes down to an acceptable level.

Microsoft? Their model invites problems, how the hell are they going to manage all those PC users with viruses, spam, malware and faulty hardware because their ‘geeky friend’ made their computer?

This should be interesting to watch…

Thank you all for listening…

I know that this lowly blog isn’t totally responsible for this news:

Amazon fails to dent iTunes

but it’s nice to know that the record companies plan to cripple Apple’s dominance in the downloadable music industry, isn’t working.

Amazon’s entry into the market has nothing to do with consumer choice. They have allowed Amazon to have DRM-free music, because they want to stop Steve Jobs from keeping prices of music low.

If Apple is reduced to an also-ran, then they can safely ignore them when they increase prices across the board, and believe me they would.

Amazon, being the faceless corporate behemoth they are, will simply roll-over and take it up the ass, but Apple? Steve will probably pull out of the industry all together.

Which is what the music industry wants.

Anyway, I’ve always wondered why people have such a problem with Apple’s Fairplay DRM. 

It is the fairest out there (obviously), and I’ve never come up against it’s restrictions. But then again, I don’t pirate music.

So, if you are fair with the music industry’s property, you don’t come up against the DRM. It’s perfect.

If you never come up against a DRM mechanism, can you really say that DRM exists?

Anyway, it now seems that Apple is finally winning the battle, with the rumours that they will have DRM-free music shortly. But, I spoke too soon:

Labels making specific demands in iTunes talks

It seems that they are still holding out. Time will tell whether they make the right choice for consumers.

iPod software development…

I love my iPod. Well actually I love my iPods, because I have 4 of them, but there’s one thing that’s been troubling me.

The hardware changes, the design changes, but the underlying software features don’t seem to change.

Things have moved on from version 1, and I know that Apple like to keep things simple, but there’s one thing I wish they would add, or I could add myself.

More often than not, I’m listening to my music on shuffle, and I come across a song by an artist I really like, and by extension I like other songs by this artist.

Why can I not simply skip to a list that says:

1) Shuffle to other songs by this artist

2) Shuffle to other songs in this genre

3) Shuffle to other songs in this year

Maybe this could be a special section that you could programme from iTunes, so you would have an Applescript that does this, but it executes also on the iPod.

I know that the ‘KISS’ principle (Keep It Simple Stupid), is behind a lot of reasoning at Apple, but time and time again I come across a situation like this in the car.

The only way around it is to navigate back to the top level,  select ‘Artist’ and shuffle from their entry – it’s not very easy and probably quite dangerous and distracting if you’re driving.

Maybe now that the AppStore is open we’ll see this, but what with Apple restricting certain apps when they duplicate in-built features, it’s not likely.

I didn’t buy an iPhone…

Well not quite. In the end I bought, in my opinion, the next best thing – the iPod Touch.

AND I CANT PUT THE THING DOWN!

Seriously, it’s glued to my hand and I can not stop surfing the net, looking at photos, reading ebooks (using the excellent application, Stanza, checking my email and last, but not least, posting on WordPress.

Most, if not all, Apple products are a joy to use, but this device is incredible.

I cannot understand what problem people have with the keyboard, as I’ve picked it up fine. I’m typing pretty quicky and making few mistakes, certainly no more than I would on a normal keyboard.

It’s not often that using a piece of technology actually makes you smile, and indeed, I actually laughed a couple of times because the GUI is so smooth, so refined, so perfect that you cannot believe that technology could be this good, this cool, this wonderful to use.

Surfing the net is a revelation. The clicking, zooming in, the speed is great. I’ve found myself not even using my main Mac for surfing or email, it’s just so simple to just pluck it out your pocket and quickly surf and go.

And I haven’t even played any games yet.

It has really surprised me what a game changer the touch platform is, and it is a platform, make no mistake.

The touch has become my platform of choice for surfing, email, viewing photos and reading, with my 30gb iPod being primarily for music and podcasts and my little shuffle for the gym.

I cannot wait to see what Apple do next with this, an iPod tablet device, an iPod camera with iPhoto touch, the possibilities are endless.

Are there any negatives? Not really, even copy and paste doesn’t seem necessary, but Steve’s onto a winner here.

Reaction to Microsoft’s answer to ‘GetaMac’

I’ve not published for a while as I have been knee-deep in the negotiations to convert my company’s website from a standard informational website in to a fully-fledged ecommerce site.

So I’ve let pass the current effort by Microsoft to counter the resurgence of the Mac with their own set of advertising, costing $300 million no less.

Being very busy, I don’t have the time to look into the metaphorical reasoning behind the Seinfield ads, but I assure you I will sooner or later.

I’m a marketing guy and I deal with peddling bullshit to consumers on a daily basis, and at first glance these ads seem amateurish at best.

In addition, I’m too late – they’ve been pulled already.

Microsoft have continued the assault on Apple with the ‘I’m a PC’ ads. Again however, the ads seem poorly thought out and clumsy in their execution.

But I’m not going to go into detail, but one thing I’ve noticed is the reception that any advertising effort by Redmond seems to generate in the media. It seems that the press is resoundingly negative in their judgement.

Why is this? Surely something can be said of these adverts that would give Microsoft some hope? Even myself at my most impartial, could, if pushed, muster some sort of positive morsel.

It seems to me that the tables have been turned.

Back in the 80’s & 90’s, the main motivating factor, the thing, above all that would sway someone’s opinion on whether to choose an IBM PC or a Macintosh, was their friendly (or not so friendly) neighbourhood geek.

The spotty nerd at work, the weirdo that fixed the computers, the clumsy nobby-no-mates that bored you senseless with talk of RAM, memory, DOS & hard disks.

And his recommendation was (you guessed it), the DOS (and Windows) PC. He scoffed at the Mac, calling it a toy, lacking in software, no powerful and something that nobody used.

And his recommendation stuck. For years. And years. We’ve been at the brunt-end of that decision ever since. The entire IT industry is geared towards pushing us to Windows and the PC.

Fast forward to the last few years. After years of crashes, viruses, trojans, malware and ever cheap computers, that seem to last little more than 18 months, the consumer who relied of their geeky friends recommendation just doesn’t believe them anymore.

So who do they believe? Well who’s left?

Their not going to listen to a Mac user either, because we get lumped together with those geeky weirdoes.

The only thing left is the media. They are listening to the media, the ad-men, all those artists who use Macs in all the creative departments up and down the land, all those PR agencies and marketing people who use predominantly the Mac.

The Mac’s time has come – for years the IT geeks recommended the PC to anybody who would listen, well those days are gone. Now that the consumer’s ear is turning towards the media, we will recommend nothing but the Mac.

Poetic justice for all the years of misery they’ve put us all through.

And the penny drops…

Or rather the sprout does.

SproutCore is the name for Apple’s open source, platform-independent, Cocoa-inspired JavaScript framework for creating web applications that look and feel like Desktop applications.

Note the most pertinent part of that sentence: platform-independent, Cocoa-inspired.

Effectively – Cocoa for Windows.

Cocoa for Windows is something that’s been rumoured to exist at Apple, ever since it was mentioned (but apparently shelved), almost 10 years ago when Apple first bought Next, the fore-runner to Mac OS X.

Obviously someone’s been working on it.

The penny has dropped, because in a recent posting I wondered why Apple was devoting so many man-hours to Safari.

SproutCore will work in any java-compliant browser, but in order for Apple to make sure that this support continues, Safari for Windows has to exist.

However the vigour with which Apple pursues Safari for Windows (and MobileMe for that matter) seems to me to indicate that greater things are afoot and with SproutCore, we’re beginning to see maybe what those things are planned to be.

Hate my employer, but love my job…

A recent post on Slashdot highlights the fact that Apple’s wage structure is lower than that of say, Yahoo or Google, and to avoid a brain-drain, they need to compensate their staff now that there’s cash in the bank.

Now, while I can’t comment on the wage at Apple and whether it is a fair one, it seems that a point is being missed.

The wage that I get paid isn’t bad, but sometimes, after being given ‘another’ direct mail campaign to organise, in a timeframe that would make lesser mortals cower in the corner in panic, I sometimes admit to myself that I hate the company I work for, and if I had a choice I would work for someone else – indeed, I’m always on the look-out, and have been all the way through my career.

But, in this search, money is not my prime concern. Obviously I want a living wage, but I would rather be happy, than earn an astronomical wage. But what makes me happy? – using Apple technology.

I say that without a hint of irony – the only thing that motivates me in my current position, is that although my job is difficult, stressful and annoying almost all of the time, I enjoy and am happy in using the Macintosh every day.

The thought of doing the same job with Windows? I would be practically suicidal, because it wouldn’t be possible to produce the output I currently do – and remember: I use Windows & Mac everyday, I know both platforms.

That’s something that’s difficult to get across to Windows users – I actually like doing the work that I do, even if it stressful and means working 16 hour days sometimes, because Apple technology makes me smile; it works, it’s reliable and needs minimum configuration.

I had a Windows users, who passing through my department said of us, “Your one of those b*st*rds who enjoy their job, aren’t you?”.

I have 2 Windows computers in my department, and they have a support call almost every other day. Printing doesn’t work, can’t access the network – the list is endless. That’s why they’re not used for deadline-based, mission critical work – I (or our IT) spend more time fixing them than using them.

So coming back to that Slashdot article, it seems to me the reason why Apple’s employees are not leaving en masse for more money, is maybe because actually enjoying their job, using Apple technology day-in, day-out, is more important to them than chasing a few more dollars.

My god, these people still exist..?

Live with it: Mac is not the greatest

Oh dear, I thought we’d already discussed this a million times on every forum in the known universe.

The public has spoken, and they want Mac’s, not PC’s – live with it.

I thought that people like this would just, y’know, go back to their server rooms or something, but it seems that every now and again, between chocolate bars, squeezing spots and the hosing down and reinstallation of Windows, they post flame-bait like this.

They can say anything they like, because they are journalists with a PC-bias, and we are just Mac-users who just want to tell everyone that there’s a better way.

We can’t say anything in retaliation because if we dare to speak up, we’re pigeonholed as blind cult followers.

All those stories you hear about Windows users switching to Mac and then wondering why they didn’t do it years ago, well that’s just lies put about by these ‘weird’ Mac people.

But you can’t win with situations like this, so I suggest to everyone that please, please, please when the next Windows-spod pokes his head from around the server-room door, and tries to convince you that all these Macs are a waste of time and you ought to be on Windows, just ignore him.

Please don’t reply to his article, even if it’s well meaning – he’ll just use it as ammunition against us.

If you want to post a retort, then start your own blog if you have to so you don’t give him the traffic that he most sorely needs.

In another few years these people will quieten down, after the people they work for/with start bringing in iPhones, and telling everyone they’ve just bought a Mac as well, and that they’d wished they’d done it years ago.

Still they don’t get it…

I’ve recently subscribed to a new podcast, ‘MacNotables‘ hosted by Chuck Joiner (a great name and a great podcast).

Episode #824 caught my attention, because it discussed in the main, the new Napster music store, and then the topic of the Amazon music store and why the music labels have given more favourable terms to other music stores at the expense of giving them to Apple.

Now I’ve discussed this before here, and I feel I make a valid arguement that the reason why this is happening is nothing to do with consumer choice, but is mainly about the music companies getting their industry back from Apple, so that they can control it again, and raise prices, re-introduce DRM, and make even more money for themselves.

But after listening to this podcast, I can see that even the most intelligent and insightful Mac-pundits simply cannot see the wood for the trees (or the music for the albums as it were).

Andy Inakto Innhakto Ihnatko, (who joking aside, have enormous respect for), is totally wrong here.

In listening to the quite heated discussion amongst the protagonists in MacNotables #824 episode, the conclusion I can draw from Andy is that he feels that Amazon’s music store is a good thing, and iTunes could do with the competition.

He uses iTunes to search for music and listen to the samples, but then goes to Amazon to buy it.

To save what amounts to a few bucks.

Every buck he saves erodes Apple’s dominance, and further entrenches Amazon’s.

Now I’ve nothing against Amazon, I use it all the time to buy stuff, it’s the way in which Andy, and others like him have been totally suckered by the recording industry to effectively allow them to, sooner or later, completely ignore Apple when they argue with them over pricing.

And when that happens, all those little bucks that Andy has been saving, will be won back when the recording industry is allowed to raise prices, because they can safely ignore Apple again.

Well done Andy.

OK, now Me is interested…

.Mac…

I’ve signed-up to the free trial now 3 times in as many years.

Every time I read about it online I think to myself, “that sounds good, and very useful, let’s give it a go.”

Every time I fully expect that I’ll put down my £60 and subscribe properly for a year, instead of just kicking the tyres.

But I don’t. I sign up for the free trial, take a good look around, try out a couple of things and just let it fizzle away to nothing.

What puts me off?

Well certainly not the cost. £60 for what you get is very reasonable, although you can duplicate a lot of it for free.

It seems to come down to me I think. I’m just not that well organised digitally, and a lot of what you can do with .Mac takes a certain amount of organisation and effort in terms of figuring out how to do things. I guess I’m just lazy.

But, now an iPhone is on my horizon (it’s still blurry and a way off, but it is there), .Mac seems to make more sense.

So I signed up again, and took a look at the iPhoto integration, and was very impressed.

No, scratch that – I actually verbalised a ‘wow’.

I know this has been around for a while, but posting a web gallery from within iPhoto to .Mac just blew me away.

I then started to play around with iWeb, and could see the potential there as well.

Actually, and really for the first time, I started to get it, I’ve started to see how .Mac can be part of my life.

 

But now we have ‘MobileMe’.

Not the best name ever, but I didn’t like ‘MacBook’ when I first heard it, and now it seems the most perfectly natural phrase.

Push services, full integration with iPhone, and much, much more for the same price as before, this is the icing on the cake.

It’d be nice if ‘Back To My Mac’ would just friggin’ work though.

OK, now I’m interested…

A while back I posted a piece that talked about the things that would have to happen in order for me to part with my hard earned cash and buy an iPhone.

Y’see I’ve used Mac’s for years. I’ve also used PC’s for years but, like any sane person who has to use both, side-by-side, day-by-day, I will always choose the Mac.

Apple’s products just have that certain something, the fit, the finish, the attention to detail, the tight integration – Apple products really do ‘just work’.

However I couldn’t bring myself to buy an iPhone.

Now, I’d like to I think it’s more to do with my aversion to smartphones, but even I could not bring myself to be wowed with iPhone version 1.0.

Too expensive, missing features, too restrictive (1 carrier), the list is a long one, and my god, I almost sound like a Windows apologist.

But, unless you’ve vacationed on Mars, you’ll notice that WWDC has just occured and Apple have released iPhone 2.0 – has my opinion of the iPhone changed? Kind of…

In my last article, I put forward a number of desires, that if satisfied, would result in me buying the GodPhone.

 

1) It’s not a smartphone. I don’t want or need to carry my life in my pocket, I have a brain for that. 
It’s still a smartphone, so not a good start. However I’m seeing that Apple are making the iPhone a platform (along with the Mac & Music), so I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet on this one.

2) Touchscreen? I think it would have to have this. 
Along with the above – it’s a platform with the touchscreen at its centre.

3)  Camera? Not really important, but OK let’s include it (2-3MP is fine), with the ability to download these pics to iPhoto as well.
An increase in MP’s would have been nice, but with MobileMe, iPhoto integration is a given.

4) Address book, contacts and notes that sync up (via Bluetooth) with Address Book, iCal & Stickies. This syncing is 2-way, so the phone must have the ability to input simple info. (Should be fun on the small screen, but that’s why I said simple).
MobileMe is the future here.

5) Email? Not interested. Life is stressful enough.
It’s still here – I’ll live with the stress.

6) Internet? Not practical on such a small screen, don’t want it anyway.
Not really applicable, but it’s nice to have, and at 3G speeds too.

7) Unbelievable, incredible, game-changing battery life – we’re talking weeks here, not days.
A pipe dream, but battery life has been increased. Gotta love the state-of-the-art OS at the iPhone’s heart here.

8) It must look exactly like the old iPod Nano, black, with a black screen.
A shame. I don’t think I’ll ever see this.

9) I am morally and spiritually against contract phones – it must be pay as you go.
And here we have our answer. Pay-as-you-go is now an option.

O2 have yet to release the pricing (pricing is announced tomorrow), but this is the reason I will be purchasing the iPhone on July 11th (or some time soon thereafter).

I’d expect about £269, I’m hoping for £199. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

 

Carpet bombing flaw in Safari is not a problem because…

 

Link from Slashdot to arcticle at The Register

So let me get this straight, a flaw in Safari, could allow a malicious attacker to download files (1, 2 or thousands) to your Windows desktop without your perrmission.

But the flaw doesn’t allow execution.

Because Apple’s not that stupid.

You know, to allow just ‘any’ file to just execute without permission.

So what’s the problem? Other than it being a ‘design’ flaw? It’s certainly not a security flaw is it? the files cannot be executed and therefore cause untold damage can they?

Ah, right but those files can…

By a flaw in Windows.

Not Safari, then.

So it’s Microsoft’s problem then is it?

That’s right it is.

And when will Microsoft fix this flaw?

No word on that. Yet.

I’m sure they’ll get round to fixing it asap, once they’ve blamed Apple for drawing attention to their SECURITY flaw, by a DESIGN flaw that Apple, quite rightly, didn’t really think would cause too much of a problem, because no company is stupid to allow files to execute by themselves.

Except Microsoft. Again.

 

So Microsoft shills have found another anti-Apple story…

 

Climate Counts does 10 minutes research.

One of Microsoft PR’s stories finds a clueless journalist.

You know, it astounds me sometimes the lengths to which Microsoft’s PR arm will go to planting stories that slowly chip away at Apple rise to dominance.

Climate Counts have done 10 minutes research and looked around on the internet to see if Apple is leading the fight in saving the climate.

Despite the fact that Apple make 4-6% of the world’s computers, and therefore they’re impact is quite minimal, and the fact that if Apple led the way it would  seriously impact on they’re ability to actually be a successful company that made profits and therefore stayed solvent, the amount of headlines they create far exceeds their size, so the bright lights are shone upon them more often.

For the record, Microsoft did better (marginally), but that because (obviously) they in the main make software, not hardware.

But the story from Computerworld is the culmination of a series of phone calls that started in Redmond, through their PR agency, which ends up with a weblink ending up in someone’s inbox, which then turns into a ‘newstory’.

I work in PR, I know how this works. We plant ’stories’ all the time with newspapers to the detriment of our competitors. Some are picked up by clueless journalists, some don’t. It costs us nothing either way.

I don’t blame Climate Counts, they are a pointless agency who seriously think that pieces of paper which show what a company is ‘trying’ or ‘aiming’ to do about climate change, will somehow help the climate.

The only thing that will help climate change are difficult and serious discussions with countries like China, Russia the USA (amongst many others), whose ignorance about global warming is damaging the planet, and people like you and me, who will have to stop travelling by plane and give up our cars for good.

Well we ‘aint ‘gonna do that are we? I need my car for work, and I deserve to spend 2 hours on a plane once a year for a well earned rest.

But I digress. I care about the planet, people who write anti-Apple, Microsoft sponsored drivel under the guise that they care about the planet is in very poor taste.

 

P.S.

Expect an informative and insightful take up of this ’story’ from the ‘totally impartial and not at all a 1997-based, Microsoft-loving, Apple-hating’ tech-writer, Jack Schofield at the Guardian’s tech blogs in the next few days…

 

More Windows problems…

 

Currently I have a PC in my studio that is connected to a USB printer, and this printer in Windows is being shared to the network.

I also have a couple of Mac’s that access this shared printer, and occasionally use it if the main workhorse A3 laser printer is busy.

This has worked fine on the Mac side, but occasionally, about once a month, the Mac’s connection to the printer doesn’t work.

The standard way to fix this is:

Test the PC to see if it still prints, 100% of the time it doesn’t, so we call in our in-house Windows IT spods to recreate the printer and share it again.

The Mac’s then work normally again, with no reconfiguration at all, they simply pick up the new printer and they’re good to go.

The mantra is, “If the PC prints, then the Mac will print also. Automatically.” This is why I use the Mac, it just works.

 

However, last week this wasn’t the case. The Mantra didn’t work.

As usual the Mac stopped printing to the shared USB printer. However this time, the PC printed fine.

So I asked the Windows IT spods to recreate the printer anyway. They did, it still didn’t work.

So I recreated the shared printer on the Mac and this is where we got to the bottom of the problem.

When you connect to a shared Windos printer on the Mac, it asks you for the login information for the PC. We knew this info, and we put this info in correctly, however the PC wasn’t accepting it, giving a ‘NT ACCESS DENIED” error, whatever that is.

So we thought the problem was with the Mac, and after half an hour trying different things, I gave up, telling the Mac-user to print to the A3 printer instead in the meantime.

I thought that was that, except next day the Windows PC wouldn’t log in to it’s desktop at all. The same log in info now wasn’t working on the PC either.

The spods came in, took it away, seemingly recreating the user with a new account & login.

Guess what, when I tried recreating the shared PC printer on the Mac – it worked fine.

So the problem was the PC simply deciding that it had had enough with that account and the only solution was to create a new one, which in turn solved our printer problem.

One day, Windows simply decides it’s not going to work anymore and needs massaging back to workability, and a whole career has been created around this concept.

I can see now why WIndows IT people are needed – and why they are scared sh*tless of the Mac.

 

A thought about Psystar…

Hold on a minute… what about security updates? 

Supposedly, in order to stop Apple from ‘bricking’ these Frankenmac’s, the Mac’s software update has been disabled by Psystar.

Now Psystar say that any updates from Apple will (presumably after alterations by Psystar) be posted on their support site.

Updates from Apple that correct bugs and add features are one thing, a user can live without these if needs be, but what about security updates?

Security updates usually come from Apple as separate entities, can we be certain that Psystar will a) be actually be able to offer them and b) after altering them to suit the specific hardware that Psystar is offering will they work effectively?

Apple has teams of engineer’s who know the hardware intimately, Psystar has, by all accounts, a unnamed brother.

Do you feel secure? I wouldn’t.

It’s gonna be a headache for Psystar, but I feel that they just won’t bother, all they want is your money.

But what does this mean in the long term?

Let’s say that Apple does nothing (they’ve done nothing so far).

Let’s say that Psystar’s Mac’s are a great success and sell by the boatload.

Let’s say that a really bad security vulnerability appears and Apple, as it’s duty permits, releases a security update.

This security update may also have code in it that brick’s Psystar’s Mac’s. Psystar then takes this update, examines it and somehow strips out the ‘bricking’ part. I don’t even know if this is possible, I’m not a programmer.

Even if they could, it’s going to take them a while to do this. All the time, the FrankenMac’s are vulnerable, and this happens, time, and time again. Apple releases dozens of security updates a year.

It’ll be too painful to update, and it’s not automatic so users just won’t bother.

This means that there will be a sizable proportion of Mac’s that are wide open to attack to malware & virus writers and Apple will be able to do nothing about it – it’s Psystar’s problem.

However, running the Mac OSX, Psystar’s problem IS Apple’s problem.

Psystar’s Mac’s will be the insecure bastard brother of the true Macintosh.

I think it’s very irresponsible of Psystar to potentially make the Mac-platform a target for virus-writers, simply just to chase a cheap buck.

Thinking this through – Apple, you really need to do something NOW, before this gets out of hand.

So the evil twin of the Mac has been created…

Engadet has reviewed it here, and here’s a summary of their findings:

• The graphics card appears to be an NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT, but it doesn’t show up in ASP, so we have to confirm. Psystar’s store says it’s supposed to be a 256MB card, but we have 512MB — strange.

• It’s LOUD. Crazy loud. OS X doesn’t seem to interface with the fan controller, so it runs at full tilt all the time. It doesn’t really come across on the video, but it’s loud enough so that it’s hard to talk on the phone when the machine is running. There’s no way we could deal with this thing on a daily basis.

• The DHCP lease drops every fifteen minutes or so and you have to manually renew it in prefs.

• Apple System Profiler doesn’t know how to read the configurations of several systems, notably memory and audio. The Audio screen just says there’s no built-in audio, while the Memory page returns an error.

•The included copy of Leopard was out of the shrinkwrap, but there’s no way to install it — it shows up in Startup Disk but it won’t restart, and it’s not recognized at boot.

That’s just first impressions – expect things to get worse.

Ooooh, can’t you just feel the quality?

So, in summary, it switches on and runs, but there are some annoying glitches, errors and parts that just flat out don’t work which I’m (not) sure that Psystar will get around to fixing very soon.

Who would buy this? Hold on, doesn’t that summary sound just like Windows?

I’m sure Windows users who have spent their entire life thinking they get ‘value’ from their ‘cheap as chips’ PC’s, will feel right at home.

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?

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.

 

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?

 

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.

There’s a very good reason why ‘it just works’…

 

More evidence (if any more were needed) that Windows users are delusional: 

 

Think before you click. 

The reason why they constantly spout this, “if only Apple would release Mac OS X for generic PC’s” crap is because they fail to understand the reason why Apple’s Mac’s are fundamentally more reliable than PC’s.

 

IT’S BECAUSE THE HARDWARE IS TIED TO THE SOFTWARE AND VICE VERSA. IT IS THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE IT ‘JUST WORK’.  

 

Windows users believe that if the OS maker (Microsoft) could just get the spec requirements right then a proprietary OS on open hardware could be made to be reliable.  

 

This is why they’ve stuck with Windows for so long, because they really do believe that Microsoft will, sooner or later get it right, if they would just spend more time bug fixing, working with partners etc.

 

Well, they can’t get it right, history has proved this and it’s finally looking, slowly at least, that some of them are starting to understand this basic concept:

 

IF YOU WANT A RELIABLE DEVICE, YOU MUST MAKE THE WHOLE WIDGET. 

 

And, in some cases this means maybe paying a little more, but believe me, having had several Mac’s at home, and controlling half a dozen Mac’s at work, with no significant down time in 6 years, it’s worth it.

In response to this pile of drivel…

  

Think before you click please 

Every reason over the years that stood in the way of a Windows user to switch has been shot down.

Can’t find anywhere to buy Mac’s? – Sorted with the new Apple Stores.

Mac’s use non-standard chips – sorted with Intel.

Mac’s haven’t got the exact software I need – sorted with dual booting or full-speed emulation.

No games – PC’s are on the way out for gaming, buy an XBox/PS3/Wii.

No, there’s only one thing left to shoot down, and that’s the army (and I mean ARMY), of Windows IT support people who still, to this day, recommend Windows over the Mac. We’re making some inroads with these morons and some are seeing the light, but we’ve only scratched the surface and there’s a long way to go.

I feel that we’ll have to wait until the die-hards retire or drop dead through over prolonged exposure to Stockholme Syndrone until we see the tipping point and Apple’s 1/2 point increases in market share start to accelerate.

Macworld 2008…

So it’s been and gone. This year’s Macworld was amazing and slightly-less-than-amazing in equal amounts.

The problem that Steve Jobs faces now is that Apple announcements seriously affect the share price. This is partly Apple’s fault, but at one point in the past it was worse, because Apple attended various trade shows, the date of which was out of their control, and they had to have a ‘whizz-bang’ product at every one.

Now, at least, Apple has 2 main shows, the WWDC, which announces (generally) software and pro-hardware related items, and Macworld which (again generally) announce consumer hardware and software.

Notice that Apple announced the Mac Pro update, before Macworld because it doesn’t fit at Macworld. Notice also the ‘one-more-thing’ was just a musician, not a product.Steve has to back off from the hype that ‘one-more-thing’ has become famous for.

Product expectation at Apple from its users has now reached ridiculous levels and cannot be sustained in the long term, and believe me, Apple is in this for the long term. 

As I said, all this hype is Apple’s fault, but they can now be seen to be in the midst of managing these expectations.

On the one hand we have loyal users and bloggers in the media who whip everyone into a pre-event frenzy, but post-event are reasonable in their critique of the products announced.

However, on the other hand we have a group of rabid anti-Apple bloggers and journalists, who also whip everyone into a frenzy, but for different and more sinister ends.Witness the drivel that the likes of Enderle, Dvorak (who seems to have calmed down a bit), and the lesser known (globally at least, but well known in the UK), Jack Schofield who blogs for the guardian (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/).

They either bless us with faint praise (pretend to actually like Apple, but…), or (in Jack’s case) are still stuck in 1997 and are seemingly quiet when Apple has good news (no mention of their last stellar quarter), but all over us like a fly on sh*t when they can extract something negative out of say, the MacBookAir.

Which brings us to Macworld 2008.

Out of all the announcements the MacBookAir seems to be a ‘good’ product (not great). I think Apple purposely produce products like this that stir up differences in opinions.

Any publicity is good publicity Jack, so blog all you want please.

My stand-out product at Macworld however was the ‘Time Capsule’.

Of course, the likes of Jack Schofield remark that this product isn’t revolutionary, you can create it yourself with the right hardware and know-how.

Much as in the same way you can create anything that Apple produces, if you’re a narrow-minded Windows user with 10 years+ experience in how Windows and technology works.

But as we all know, that misses the point completely. Windows users like this cannot be reached with the ‘just plug it in and it works’ mind set.

The point here is that Time Machine ONLY works with Time Capsule. You can’t use Time Machine wirelessly with just any hardware.

This facility was present in builds of Leopard but was pulled at the last minute. Reasons for this are that Apple wants to sell a lot of Time Capsule’s, or that using third party hard drives just cannot be made to work reliably.

I think it’s a bit of both personally, but it comes back to the  ’just plug it in and it works’ angle.It goes beyond ‘plug-and-play’, because ‘plug-and-play’ actually means, ‘Install Drivers, Restart, Configure, Plug It In, Hope It Plays, If Not Try Again‘, at least on Windows, I know, I work next a Windows based IT department that do this daily.

I think I’ve just discovered a new buzz word for Windows –  INDRCPIIHIPINTA!

Don’t think it will catch on though, do you?

OK, I might buy an iPhone, if…

I firmly stand in the, ‘I’d rather have several devices each doing tasks well, rather than 1 device that does several tasks badly’ camp. This is the main reason why I’ve never bought an iPhone and never will. 

I’m also, a ‘pay as you go’ guy as well, but that’s another reason and another argument. 

I once owned (for my sins) a Palm M130. I have vivid memories of trying, time and time again to fit this device into my life, until, just like Steve Jobs said, I left it in a drawer and forgot about it.

I have an iPod however (3 in fact). I don’t need to say, that it’s a perfect MP3 player, it has no equal. But I don’t use it to read text documents, look up contacts or appointments. It just doesn’t do these things well.

But I do have a mobile phone. A cheap, pay as you go, Motorola L6. And, of course, it’s awful, the interface is illogical to the point of inducing anger, the shortcut keys take so long to get to it’s quicker to actually USE YOUR BRAIN AND TYPE THE FECKING NUMBER, and the battery life stinks.

Considering all this however, I would be willing to buy an Apple branded mobile phone to replace the L6 if it had these specs:

1) It’s not a smartphone. I don’t want or need to carry my life in my pocket, I have a brain for that.

2) Touchscreen? I think it would have to have this. 

3)  Camera? Not really important, but OK let’s include it (2-3MP is fine), with the ability to download these pics to iPhoto as well.

4) Address book, contacts and notes that sync up (via Bluetooth) with Address Book, iCal & Stickies. This syncing is 2-way, so the phone must have the ability to input simple info. (Should be fun on the small screen, but that’s why I said simple).

5) Email? Not interested. Life is stressful enough.

6) Internet? Not practical on such a small screen, don’t want it anyway.

7) Unbelievable, incredible, game-changing battery life – we’re talking weeks here, not days.

8) It must look exactly like the old iPod Nano, black, with a black screen.

9) I am morally and spiritually against contract phones – it must be pay as you go.

Basically I’m after a standard, mid range Apple branded mobile. Do I think Apple will ever make one? I hope so. This entry-level iPhone Nano would be a good gateway drug to the more expensive iPhone.

Except in my case of course, because I would never buy one.

Now, the iPod touch with a 3rd party VOIP client (once the SDK is released), THAT’S a different matter entirely.