And so it begins…

There’s a critcal update for Windows 7, this, even before it was released.

From Rixstep:

“Do not install this critical update until you have (successfully) installed Windows 7. The code in the update may corrupt earlier Windows systems, destroying your own data and making it impossible to upgrade to the fabulous Windows 7.”

You know, leaving aside the seriousness of this bug, and the fact that it shows, yet again, that Windows is the swiss cheese of operating systems, doesn’t it strike you odd that Microsoft is asking it’s users not to install this update unless they’ve first installed Windows 7. This could corrupt their system.

WHY DOESN’T WINDOWS AUTOMATICALLY SENSE WHICH OS YOU’RE RUNNING AND ONLY PRESENT THE OPTIONS FOR THAT OS?

You know, like Mac OS always has done?

It’s no wonder some Windows installs go bad – the OS doesn’t even help the user make the right choices.

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.

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?

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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Netcasts you love, from people you trust?

I’ve been irked of late with ‘This Week in Tech’ (TWIT), hosted by Leo Laporte.

One or 2 podcasts in the past have stretched my patience in terms of his attitude towards Apple.

On a recent ‘MacBreak Weekly’, we had a mixture of guests and one who was a self confessed ‘Mac-hater’. (All for impartiality of course).

The Mac users on the show spent some of their time, defending their platform of choice, whilst the hater piled on the sarcasm – not what I want from a Mac-centered podcast.

Maybe that’s why Scott Bourne has not been a contributor recently, he has on occasion been audibly frustrated with Leo’s obvious bias towards Windows.

Now, I know that Leo has to remain impartial, and sometimes my Mac-bias buffets up to that and some comments I can take the wrong way.

That’s why I continue listening.

However episode 210 of TWIT, I’ve just listened to has really pissed me off.

The 1st article was about Snow Leopard. Leo’s general attitude is that it contains nothing of merit, and people shouldn’t bother.

He accused Apple of a marketing ploy, selling to their users ‘a service pack’ that should have been free.

He generalised over the ‘features’, comparing it to WindowsMe.

Just before I listened to this podcast I read the incredibly detailed Ars review on Snow Leopard. I highly recommend it, even if you don’t understand some of it, please slog through every page.

After digesting it all, you’ll then begin to understand the anger I feel. Snow Leopard is not an ’service pack’ and it’s certainly worth the asking price.

I don’t think Leo had any right to say the things he said about Snow Leopard, without doing some research first, and it’s this aspect that shows what a radio-hack he is.

No research, misleading commentary, seemingly biased is not what I want to listen to anymore.

His parting comments were that he would get a roasting from the Mac-fanboys on MacBreak Weekly that week.

So, like a good little fanboy, I’ve sent TWIT an email, simply stating the following:

Can you please visit, read and digest the Ars review on Snow Leopard, before you complete the MacBreakWeekly podcast.

You’ll then begin to realise how badly researched you comments were on episode 210 of TWIT. I’ll then expect a retraction of your comments on MBW and the following TWIT.

Yours, a Macfanboy.

I’m not holding my breath, and being a Macfanboy, my opinion isn’t worth shit anyway.

At least I read an article from an expert though, before I made any comment on Snow Leopard, which is more than ‘The people we can trust”.

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…

Initial thoughts on the Microsoft retort…

In thinking about what my views are on Microsoft’s $300 million ad campaign, I’ve a few points that will hopefully give some structure to my thoughts over the next few posts:

________________________________________________________

Firstly, why bother?

Apple has (at best) 5-7% worldwide market share. Microsoft and the PC brigade account for just about everything else. At the very, very best, if Apple continue with the proprietary hardware and (sort of) open OS model, they can hope for 10% tops, and I’m being optimistic.

Are Microsoft that desperate for total domination that they can’t stand a competitor to have a tenth of their market share? What difference will it make to there day to day business & profitability? Absolutely none.

So why? The only reason I can see is that this is not business – it’s personal.

________________________________________________________

Secondly, why did they change direction completely after 2 ads?

I work in advertising, I’ve been present and had decision making input when agencies pitch for work. I can say that if the usual rules apply (and I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t here), what we are seeing is ‘pitch 2′. 

When pitching it’s usual that three ideas are presented. The first idea is what the agency wants, the second is what the customer wants and the third is a combination of the first two. The agencies pitch will push for their choice, and it will be the one that has had the most work put into it.

The Seinfeld ads were the agencies choice, the ‘I’m a PC’ ads are what Microsoft wanted. The 3rd pitch we will never likely see (unless Microsoft pull the ads again!)

The Seinfeld ads are typical high-brow, high-concept crap that agencies love because it’ll get them mentioned in Creative Review and maybe win an award, whilst having f**k-all use for the customer.

The ‘I’m a PC’ ads are the one created grudgingly by the agency in case they couldn’t convince them to go with their choice.

The 3rd set of ads are never meant to be chosen, because the agency can use them to agree with the customer that it is something they don’t want, this makes it easier to convince the customer that they need to agree again with the agency and go with their choice.

The brief from Microsoft will be along these lines:

“See those Apple ads? They piss us off. They’re taking the piss out of us every single frickin’ time! That PC guy? That Bill Gates that is! They’re telling lies! – none of this crap is true! Well maybe some of it is, but we want revenge! We want you to create ads that answer those ads and blow them out of the water!”

And so they agency create 3 concepts, one for them, one for the client and another they can throw away. They did well to convince Microsoft of the Seinfeld ads – they deserve an award for just that!

___________________________________________________

Thirdly, what the hell are the Seinfeld ads all about?

Their seems little point now in explaining because a) they’re cancelled, and b) the agency probably doesn’t have any clear idea either, but I will attempt a breakdown.

But not yet – I need to watch them just a few more times… Lucky me…

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.

Man gets Mac OS X to work with his printer…

Seeing as a 147 word article about a man printing a document with his Vista computer is considered news nowadays, I decided to partake my own experience along similar lines.

Today I had a document that I needed to print using my recently installed Leopard OS, on a printer I bought 3 years ago.

I selected ‘page setup’ and selected my printer.

I then selected ‘print’ from the menu, clicked ‘print’ in the dialog box.

A minute later the document printed.

The end.

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.

I’m sorry, this is just too funny for words…

Yahoo! say buh-bye to Microsoft and team with Google.

“Yahoo said it expects the deal to generate $250m to $450m in operating cash flow during the first 12 months, and that it represents an annual revenue opportunity for Yahoo of $800m. The deal is for an initial period of four years, with an option for Yahoo to extend it for a further six years.”

Google (with Steve Jobs smirking in the background) was reported as saying: “This is big, bigger than the biggest thing ever (other than me).”

Microsoft was reported as doing nothing much, except staring wide-eyed like a rabbit in the middle of the road, waiting to be run over.

“As part of the deal, the companies also plan to make their instant-messaging services interoperate, Decker said.”

Bye-bye Microsoft Instant Messenger, and within a decade – bye-bye Microsoft.

God I just love the world at the moment…

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.

Microsoft innovate at last!

Link from Mac Daily News…

Here’s a interesting quote from Microsoft to their ‘mobile partners’.

“It’s now my honor and privilege to announce a milestone that our partnership HAS ACCOMPLISHED. This fiscal year we WILL SELL nearly 20 million Windows Mobile smartphone licenses, making Windows Mobile one of the most widely used smartphone software platforms in the world.”

Emphasis is mine.

Is this now Microsoft’s approach? Instead of celebrating when they have reached a target, they celebrate in the past, BEFORE that target is reached (demonstrating breathtaking arrogance and taking their customer for a ride granted)?

Their innovation now knows no bounds – apparently as well as a ‘big ass table’, they’ve also developed a ‘big ass time machine’.

Humour aside, the hidden meaning of this missive, shows, unglazed how frightened Microsoft actually are.

Their ‘partners’ will survive, as Apple does not want to completely, unfairly dominate industries (like Microsoft do), but Microsoft is another matter – it has suddenly realised how vulnerable it really is.

Apparently, we’re weird because we like computers to look nice…

 

Apparently, we’re weird because we like computers to look nice…

Link: I’m going to write about people who I completely misunderstand.

This recent posting postulates the question, “Mac users don’t like others touching their stuff.”

The reasoning behind it is that because we pay so much (apparently) for our kit, we don’t like other people using it and supposedly breaking it.

But, as usual PC pundits fail to see the wider issue.

It’s because I don’t want ignorant PC users who see technology as a useless commodity, covered in stickers, touching my pristine Mac’s/iPod’s/iPhone.

It’s got nothing to do with how much I paid for it, it’s to do with the way in which Windows users treat their technology.

If I get another PC user coming up to my flawlessly clean LCD screen and smudge it with his or her greasy finger, I’ll scream.

I walk through our Windows IT department daily and see ugly tin boxes, covered in dust, stickers, pen marks, yesterday’s lunch wrappers and worse.

When the electrician’s come to my company and test all the electrical equipment, they have to put an ugly ‘tested’ sticker on everything. PC users are quite happy to have this sticker anywhere on their PC, I have almost punched said electrician for considering to stick it on the ‘front’ of my G5 Tower.

I had to loan a little iBook to a PC user once, I received it back a month later and it was filthy, and had what looked like jam on the LCD screen. I actually felt sorry for the poor thing and spent over an hour giving it a good clean.

PC users don’t care. PC users pay next to nothing for basement-spec PC’s. PC users think nothing of the hardware.

Am I weird? Probably, but I have to work with these computers all day, and I also have to be creatively active at a moments notice.

I, like most creative people realise that ideas best surface in a clean, ordered environment, where the equipment I use has had time spent on it’s look and feel (both hardware and software).

This is why we don’t like PC users, ‘using’ our equipment – they just don’t think that this is important.

 

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.

 

Safari for Windows… why?

 

What’s always struck me about Apple since Steve Jobs’ return, is they never do anything without a very good reason. There’s no half-hearted attempts at any enterprise, once they commit themselves, there’s no ‘try’ there is only ‘do’.

There are no sacred cows, they think the unthinkable, and they will quite happily cut off a leg to save the patient.

So what is the ‘very good reason’ for Safari on Windows, what benefit does it give them?

Why did Apple release Safari for Windows in the first place?

Why does Apple actively put engineer hours behind it keeping it updated?

Why is Apple aggressively pushing Safari onto Windows users?

Why does Apple bend over backwards (or a least slightly lean over), when those same Windows users complain that the way in which it’s aggressively distributed, seemingly spurring Apple to change it to appease them? This is unheard of from ‘focus-group free’ Apple.

Apple would only put man (and woman) hours behind Safari for Windows, if it benefited them in some way now, or in the future. Look at iTunes for Windows – it makes Apple a fortune.

So is this about the money? Is it simply so all those Windows users will use the Google search bar, and therefore make Apple even more dough? I’d like to think it’s more than just that.

Apple’s overall game plan is to sell Mac computers, and other Apple hardware. It’s where they make the most money. The move to Unix, Intel, creating iTunes for Windows are all about exposing Windows users to the Apple brand and enticing them over – the halo effect if you will.

But Safari for Windows isn’t hardware – it’s software. So is this about giving Windows users a better browsing experience, to entice them over to the Mac?

Well I think it’s all this and more.

In the future, once the pipe is big enough, cloud computing will be with us all, at least for consumers and business, for content creators such as myself, the pipe will NEVER be big enough for cloud computing.

All your data will reside on the internet, and the conduit for all that data is a browser, and if Apple has it’s way, that browser will be Safari, for both Windows & the Macintosh.

So does that mean .Mac for Windows? You heard it here first.

But, in true Apple style, it won’t be the same on both platforms. Windows users will get the Windows .Mac, and the Mac users will get the .Mac that’s tied closely and seamlessly to Apple hardware, giving Windows users another reason to switch.

 

Safari malware..?

 

Unless you’ve been living under a penguin-shaped rock, it can’t have escaped you attention that Apple have released Safari for Windows.

Not only have they released it, but they’ve actively developed for it, and actively (and some say aggressively) marketed it.

Towit: software update for Windows tries to ‘encourage’ Windows users to install it by pushing it along with updates to iTunes.

This wasn’t well received by most PC-whiners. They feigned anger, saying that it was almost ‘malware’ like, but this was just a cover because they felt that it was an invasion of the Windows-space by Apple.

Most of the great unwashed would just install it without realising it and start using it instead of Internet Explorer – how dare they!

It’s strange that these same PC-pundits weren’t saying the same thing when Microsoft created Internet Explorer as a replacement for Netscape Navigator, and installed it by default, for free, even tying it into the OS, and making it impossible to uninstall.

Those same poor, great-unwashed users just started using Microsoft’s browser instead and Netscape died on the vine. Why wasn’t that described as ‘malware’?

No, I feel that all’s fair in love and war and if Microsoft can use these dirty tactics to grow their browsers market share, then it’s perfectly OK for Apple to do the same.

Oh yeah, by the way – it’s working:

 

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?

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.

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.

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.

The Windows maze… where do I begin?

I’ve long thought that the complexities of the Windows world were, in part, exaggerated by Apple users and their media (I’ve even been guilty of it myself), but I’m here to tell you now, it’s worse than everyone’s ever thought. 

I’m now in charge of the company’s website. I relaunched it in the middle of last year and when faced with the complete rewrite that was needed, I decided that the best approach was a Content Management System (CMS) for the website so that anyone with a basic grasp of computers could update it. I certainly don’t have time to administer the website using Dreamweaver, so the plan was to buy in a CMS so that the less web-ware members of my staff could update the site in my absence. 

The journey through this has been a difficult one with various problems too numerous to mention, except one. One that has shown me that the complexities of the Windows world are not exaggerated. 

At the heart of the website is a registration system that allows a web-user to fill in a standard html form, upload a couple of graphics and then submit this to a choice of a dozen or so destinations. In the background this submission is then uploaded to a centrally stored database, and then automatically emailed to 1 of 10 users of the system. Once received, these users then contact the web-user and process their registration. 

Except it doesn’t work. In fact in the 10 months or so since the website launched, it’s never worked.Of course, actually finding this out was an arduous task in itself.

Suffice to say after tracking the problem it appears it boils down to this: The web-users form is received centrally, perfectly. It’s when this form is emailed through my company’s webserver, we have a problem. It just never gets there. Doesn’t even register as spam, it just doesn’t arrive. 

Changing the destination to a ‘@googlemail.com’ domain – it works fine.

It’s something to do with the website’s backend software communicating to our email server, they just don’t get along. Of course the one set of Windows users (who run the back-end website software for us), blame the other set of Windows users (who run our email server). I have the envious task of arranging a meeting between these 2 groups to hammer out a solution. 

In the meantime, I, a lowly Mac-user, not versed in the intricate voodoo of email systems, has come up with a solution. All submissions from the website go to a ‘@googlemail.com’ email address, I set up for this purpose. They then come through to Apple Mail, where a Apple Mail set of rules, then examines the email, determines which destination it’s meant for and then forwards it on. This works fine. 

But why doesn’t it one Windows based email system, work with another? It seems to me that these ‘experts’ haven’t a clue, at a low-level, how Windows actually works, and that is a scary thought, and it has taken a single G5 Mac and Apple Mail, to sort out the problem (at least in the short term).

The Zune…

Well. The Zune. What can be said that hasn’t already been said a thousand times?

It’s not very good.

It’s too big. It’s too brown. It’s too restrictive in its DRM. It’s too confusing to use (Microsoft points?). It’s too difficult to install. It’s just too, well, Microsoft.
To Mac users, this isn’t surprising. We all know that, given a level playing field, (not one where they can leverage their monopoly), Microsoft just cannot do anything well.

Everything they have ever produced has always stank to high heaven. Now, in the business world, this doesn’t matter. Geeks are very forgiving.

They will put up with the workarounds, hacks and make-do’s to get Microsoft products working, because a) their jobs depend on it, b) they actually enjoy being knee-deep in this shit, and c) because the alternative (using another OS), is just too frightening to bear.
But in the consumer world, Microsoft cannot get away with it. When, (as one reviewer was forced to do) you have to manually create and install a .DLL file, just to get the Zune software working, you realise that there is something deeply, deeply wrong at Microsoft.

In principal, they are still a computer company, and by computer company, I mean a company that sells to geeks, first and foremost.

They see, and treat your average joe consumer with contempt, just in the same way as the Windows IT tech support at the company you, dear reader, work at, do also.

Everything Microsoft does is soiled with this central, rotten core. “Our software doesn’t work perfectly, but don’t worry, the geek in the family/IT department will sort it out”.

Well, this central premise doesn’t seem to be working anymore for Microsoft. The Zune’s sales are not only disappointing, they’re terrible. It’s funny to see all the so-called independent blogs that Microsoft secretly set up, clamouring for any good news. Several of them are no longer being updated.

Apple, on the other hand, have always been the ‘company for the rest of us,” and their time has now come.

Time to buy Apple shares again.

Microsoft to license Office GUI for free…?

Microsoft, purveyor’s of all that’s bad in design generally, have surprised many by offering to license, for free, the new interface for the next version of Windows Office.

This piece of news has passed most news outlets by, as slightly interesting but nothing to write home about.

Many people have concentrated on the irrelevance of Microsoft trying to license the ‘look a feel’ of a GUI. This is something that Apple tried and failed to do many years ago.

Microsoft references certain, “pending utility and design patent claims, copyrights, trade dress and trademark rights” in the license, but common sense states that these copyright issues are a smokescreen for a deeper more subtler reasoning from Redmond.

The official statement from Microsoft contains a clue as to why Microsoft is doing this, “Our goal is to help people so that we end up with a consistent experience across the set of programs that use the ribbon, that use this paradigm, much the same way as Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines established the paradigm of how menus work 15 years ago.”

Note the Apple reference, and this is where our favourite fruit company comes in.

Apple has been the thorn in the side for Microsoft for many years. Do you think Redmond like being seen to be playing catch-up with Apple all the time? This has been illustrated perfectly with the comparisons of Vista to Tiger/Leopard.

After years of work, and countless rethinks & redesigns, all Redmond’s hard work is dismissed even before it is released, as looking ‘very like Mac OS X’.

This must really piss them off. Apparently, when Microsoft envisaged their ‘iPod killer’ – the Zune – the way in which they motivated their Zune team, was to show them that very old video (when Steve Jobs had hair no less), stating that, “Microsoft have no taste.”

We all know how the Zune turned out, but that is by-the-by – I bet a similar discussion has been held over the Mac’s OS.

Microsoft want to differentiate the Windows GUI from Apple’s, and their new, “contribution to the user interface community” as they put it, is the ‘ribbon’.

But it’s not only differentiation that they are aiming for. The ‘ribbon’ effectively does away with the menu metaphor, and relies solely on icons to select parameters. This seems a little odd, a little difficult to grasp, a little, well, crap.

Menus have been one of the most consistent, widely used and most user-friendly aspect of a computers GUI since their inception way back at Xerox Parc. They got it right first time, there is no easier way to navigate through an applications features.

This hasn’t stopped Microsoft though. They are not interested in ease-of-use, or what’s best for the user. They are trying to change the fundamental principles behind a modern computer’s user interface, so they can call it their own, and take it to a place of their choosing, not Apple’s.

They envisage a day where the entire Windows OS and all applications therein use the ribbon metaphor. They are trying to enforce a new GUI on its users not because it’s easy or it enhances the user’s experience, but because it’s in their interests.

A the centre of the Macintosh user experience are menus. It’s one of the big differences between us and them – there’s a menu at the top all the time, which changes dependent on which application you’re in. Even the desktop has a menu, this differs greatly from Windows, where there’s a menu at the top of each window.

Once Microsoft have brainwashed all those poor Windows users into thinking that the ribbon is a better metaphor than the menu, (and they already have a few converts – some commentators are saying that it takes a few days to get the hang of it, and then you get used to it), then Apple will find it even harder to win switchers because the user experience will be totally different.

Then Microsoft have the upper hand on interface design, again, not because it’s better but because they will have the user’s on their side.

One fly in the ointment you might think is that developers might not take the bait. If developers see that menus are a better way of using their application, then they’ll stick to them. But I don’t think so.

Way back, when Adobe Acrobat Reader was first created, it had menus and pallets to manipulate documents. At around version 2 or 3, they changed the interface to what it is today, a confusing morass of little icons on square strips, with little or no indication of what they do. Their reason for this? They looked into who downloaded the Reader, what their favourite application was, and mirrored that user interface. That application was Word.

That’s why, today we are left with Acrobat’s appalling user interface – because of Microsoft useless GUI design.

Mr Jensen Harris, group program manager of the Microsoft Office user experience team, is quoted as saying, “we would like to see it [the ribbon] used as widely as possible because we are proud of our work.”

Everything Microsoft does has an ulterior, unspoken subtext – this is no exception.

The hatred of Justin Long…

In case you’ve being living under a rock for the past year, Justin Long is the ‘I’m A Mac’ guy in the recent spate of Apple adverts. He plays opposite John Hodgeman (I’m A PC’).

Now before I get into the gist of this article, I need to point out to those of you who just don’t get these ads, what their angle is. I come from a marketing background, so hear me out.

Apple Computer want to portray to the buying public the benefits of buying an Apple Macintosh Computer, over buying a Windows-based computer.

The problems in doing this are twofold:

1) As soon as joe public sees an advert with a complicated tech-device therein, their brain switches off. It’s just too difficult to portray the positive aspects of the Mac and the negative aspects of the PC in 30 seconds, and to hold your viewers attention.

2) Microsoft have done such a good job of lowering everybody’s expectations in what to expect from a PC, to the point that people just see them as a tool they replace every couple of years, that Apple has an uphill battle in getting people to feel passionate about computers, in the way that we all as Mac users already do. In order to switch a user, you have to make them care about their computing experience again, and make them realise that there is an alternative to the cycle of buying a computer, use it until it’s full of viruses, and then replace it with a new one or give it to your geeky friend to sort out.

So, what do you do to make computers more appealing? How do you subtly put across the benefits of a Mac, and the shortcomings of a PC, without going down the route of option 1 (simply showing a Mac with bullet points next to it?)?

You anthropomorphise them.

You turn the Mac and PC into a person. And every aspect of that person is personified in the computer. So the way the computer behaves becomes their personality, the way the computer looks becomes the person’s clothing, you get the idea.

Now with all of this in mind, it’s been interesting to see people’s reaction to the adverts.

First of all, a large percentage of PC viewers did not grasp the anthropomorphic stance of the ads, and were offended by them. The 2 people in the adverts denote the computers, not the users. Now you cannot blame the viewer for this, Apple obviously did not get their message across well enough, and they must try harder.

Secondly, the side effect of the PC being the butt of many jokes, made some viewers feel sorry for him, and because they did not get the fact that this person was NOT a manifestation of a USER, but the manifestation of a COMPUTER, they identified with him – they felt his pain.

And who inflicted this pain? Well, the only other protagonist in the advert – the Mac, or in their eyes, the Mac user.

This then explains some of the totally unwarranted verbal attacks on Justin Long. On a recent episode of TWIT, they discussed the apparent sacking of Justin Long by Apple, because he was coming under fire, and was seen as arrogant, smug and cruel.

Now this sacking has since been discarded as an incorrect rumour, but their discussion continued. One thing they all agreed was that Apple found it okay that Justin Long was coming over in this way, because that’s what all Mac users are like – smug, arrogant & cruel.

I was listening to this in the car at the time, and I physically staggered. How can anyone feel this way, and generalise over a group of people who they have never met?

Does Justin Long come over like this? I wanted to find out so I took a quick look at a selection of Apple ads on their website.

Well, after looking at them, and re-reading the scripts, I could find little or no reference to anything that Justin Long says that could be construed as being smug, arrogant or cruel. In fact, most of the time he comes across as quite understanding, kind and very neutral – to the point of being a little boring.

So why do PC users feel this way?

Well, I think it comes down to pride. Whether you get the anthropomorphic angle of these ads or not, what they are saying is, is that you, as a PC user have made the wrong choice in choosing Windows.

PC users are a delicate bunch, and I think Apple has not realised this, (or maybe they have and are just going for the jugular). As I have said in a previous post, whole careers, whole lives and whole personalities are built around the Windows monopoly.

Criticising their choice in Windows opens their flesh and bares the rawest of raw nerves, and strikes at the core of everything they believe in.

Justin Long has said little or nothing inflammatory, nothing rude, or condescending, go on – check for yourself. Nothing that would illicit the hassle he is getting.

I think what we are seeing, in the reaction by Windows users to these adverts, is a kind of reverse emotional response.

They see the truth, unvarnished, of what using a Windows PC is like, and they cannot accept it. They feel hurt and betrayed be Microsoft, but again, they cannot accept it – to walk away from Microsoft is too much of an upheaval for them.

So what do they do? they look for a scapegoat, someone to blame, someone who is responsible for all that pain, and, identifying with John Hodgeman, they blame Justin Long, and spout vitriol at him whenever they can.

Windows PC users are really screwed up, and they really do need to Think Different.

So much code for so little life…

So another so-called virus raises its ugly (well, slightly less than better-looking) head.

And Mac users yawn…

And PC users scream…

And tech columnists spin tales of woe and doom…

The OSX.Desperation, (sorry OSX.Macerena) virus, stretches the definition of the term ‘virus’.

People use the word virus to describe all sorts of computer problems, in OSX.Macerena’s case they’re partially right, the program infects all files that reside in the same directory, it doesn’t actually damage the files however.

It can’t infect outside of the directory it’s in, so it is light years away from the kinds of viruses that infiltrate PC’s where just connecting via ethernet can infect your PC with all sorts of nasty stuff.

My views on viruses in regards as to how it affects my working life is one of careful indifference. I have ClamXAV installed on all the Mac’s in my studio, and I try to run them once a week or so, but this is more to keep the Windows IT Manager off my back than it is to actually search and destroy a theoretical Mac virus.

Let’s just imagine that we all wake up one morning to find a serious Mac virus has appeared and it’s infected a lot of Mac users. It’s the one we’ve all been waiting for (for various reasons).

The one that’s got all Mac users worried, all PC users happy (look Mac users, you get viruses as well – I haven’t made the wrong choice in dedicating my life to this pile of shit that is Windows!), all tech columnists extremely happy with their hit counts, and all anti-virus companies salivating with unbridled lust. What then is a Mac users next step?

By its very nature, it will only affect Mac networks, so Windows businesses have no worries. Only Mac users need to do something.

And what is that something? Download ClamXAV, or one of the dozens of freeware apps that will pop up the very next day to eradicate the virus, install the one of your choice, and run it. Virus gone, job done, back to productive work.

Why the potential threat of a virus necessitates the need to install anti-virus (at least one that costs money), is beyond me. Symantec anti-virus gobbles up at least 40% of your CPU even when it’s idle, so why should we install it?

No-one really asks the question however as to why? Why do people write these things in the first place?

Most of the time it’s to make money by turning your Windows PC into a zombie so that it can be used to send out spam, or it’s to install a keystroke logger so that they can find out your credit card details.

But in our case it’s different. These attempts are designed to wipe the smug smile off all Mac users faces, or in one case, to stub out a lit cigarette in our eyes.

What causes such hatred towards us, what have we done?

We’ve dared to got against the grain is what we’ve done. We’ve dared to suggest that the choice of computing platform that most IT people choose is the wrong one.

Most Windows IT people have extremely insecure personalities. Being nerdy, or a spod is something that has made them very unpopular since school. Used to a lonely life, and being picked on in their youth, they see IT as a way of grouping together with other like-minded individuals, and exercising some power for a change on all those people who ridiculed them. They might not be popular, have bad skin, smell and generally have zero social skills, but they can make you feel inferior in awe of their Windows IT skills.

And, by it’s very nature, when you use Windows, you need people like this. The whole Microsoft infrastructure makes them feel wanted, needed and superior. Whole careers, whole lives, even whole personalities are propped up by the Windows monopoly.

Then, along comes Apple and all their Mac users (and to a certain extent iPod users), with our different, fruity computers threatening all of this.

We have no respect for these people because we don’t need them. Free of the need of a geeky friend or spoddy IT support staff, we see them as they really are – sad, lonely nerds with no people skills and personalities moulded by spending far too much time fixing Windows, when they’d be far better off staring out of one for a change – this might actually stimulate an original thought.

Windows geeks, spods & nerds may not even realise this, and not admit it to themselves, but Mac users touch a very sensitive nerve that strikes at the very core of their being just by existing.

This raw, sensitive nerve is exposed every time a Windows IT Manager tries to shut down a Mac department, every time a Windows web designer ignores the Mac, every time a Windows colleague makes a jibe at the expense of Mac colleague, and every time a sad, lonely Windows geek in his bedroom, has another crack at that Mac virus he’s been working on for the past couple of years, and still can’t get to work properly.

In the Macarena code is a message from its author, it reads “so many problems for so little code”. Obviously this little statement illustrates that they are having difficulty in getting a Mac virus working.

It doesn’t occur to the author that the Mac OS is stable, well written and naturally secure from the ground up. Under ordinary circumstances any normal person, with a stable, well-functioning personality would switch platforms, or at least give the Mac some credit. But we’re not dealing with normal people, we’re dealing with people who have severe personality disorders, and they’re really pissed.

In order to vent their frustration, they’ll go back to their Dell PC in their bedroom and have another go. Best of luck.

I’ll still be here using a stable, productive, virus and problem free Mac-based network waiting for your next effort, just like the other 20 million plus Mac users out there.
It’ll be interesting to see what comes next, but only from a morbid fascination as to the motivations of people who’s lives operate like this, I won’t lose any sleep, nor will my Mac experience any downtime.

Jonah and The Whale…

Or to give its longer title:- Advice on setting up, running and maintaining a Mac-based design studio in a PC-based company.

The rather irrelevant title to this article relates to its metaphor of existing and thriving inside a huge organism without being part of its lunch, i.e. how can a Mac-based design studio co-exist with a rabid, Microsoft-loving, multi-headed Windows IT department who eat Big Mac’s for breakfast? (Or is it Mars bars? which would explain their complexion).

In order to illustrate my rather over-zealous stance here, you need to understand some of my experiences over the last 15 years. These have been illustrated in some of my other posts.

Believe me, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Windows IT managers have a hard-wired hatred for Macintoshes. I’m not going to get in to the reasons for this, as any decent psychoanalyst could write several papers on the motivations, and layered, contradictory and self-served reasoning with these people.

My experiences have been so consistent from company to company, I have often wondered if all IT managers have some website somewhere where they swap techniques on how to get Mac’s out of their company – I’ve yet to find it (and I have looked).

Note I say ‘their’ company, because as we all know, most IT managers either do run the companies they work for (because the MD hasn’t a clue how computers work), or because of a Napoleon complex the IT Manager’s think they actually do.

All in all, I’ve worked for about 5 separate companies over the years and each job has entailed starting up an in-house design studio from scratch within the larger PC-based organisation.

Right from the start I’ve assumed that the reception from the Windows-based IT department would be hostile. Some are better than others, but all have shown signs of Mac-hatred, (or maybe it’s envy?).

This hatred usually starts even before you’ve started your new job. In one job, I learned of a 10 page document that was delivered to the MD on why not only the Mac was a bad choice, but why a design studio and the designers therein were a bad idea. Luckily it was ignored. Why was this? Well because the MD was heavily involved in print management at his company, and he spent a long time with Mac-based design houses, so he new how good the Mac was and the benefits that it could bring.

In another job, on my first day I was presented with a document outlining the things that I could not do, in terms of IT within the company. Most were irrelevant because of my setup (more of which later), but one item outlined the fact that they would not allow the Mac-version of Office on the network. Their workaround was to have a PC in the department that solely ran Office. This basically sums up Windows IT people. It doesn’t matter how inefficient the solution to a task is, the solution will be the one that serves their interests, not the users. In the end, I bought Mac Office myself personally, and didn’t tell them. Safe to say they didn’t notice, because as we all know, the documents are platform independent.

Once Windows IT Managers grudgingly accept that a Mac is coming to their company, their next steps vary. Some, outwardly don’t even acknowledge that it’s happening. Inwardly however they certainly do, and they’ll put a few barriers in motion that will make your life difficult. It’s important to realise that they will do anything, ANYTHING, to get Mac’s out of their company, and you need to be ready for all eventualities.

THE IT CHARTER DOCUMENT:

Most companies have an IT charter which outlines what you, as a user are allowed to do on their network.

These are usually over-draconian, but understandable, given Windows’ swiss-cheese record. They will try to update this document to include the Macintosh. So, you will not be allowed to install programs, surf the net, install fonts, add hard drives etc without their say so. They can’t do it either, as they don’t know the Mac, but that’s not the point. The point here is that they are trying to put you in your place.

It’s impossible to run a reprographics department under these circumstances, so the way around this is to strike before they do. Get a document together which outlines a few key things, and have this ready even before you start the new job:

• Their lack of knowledge regards Mac’s, and your greater understanding of reprographics, and the IT that’s involved.

• The fact that as part of your work, you install fonts, programs, change hard drives etc all the time, they won’t have time to do it for you and may do it wrong.

• Make a definite distinction between Office IT, and Reprographics IT, they are 2 different things. You’d be surprised how ill-trained most IT people are. Their Windows IT department does not understand the IT that’s required for Reprographics.

• If needed, get to know the company that recommended to the MD to choose Mac’s in the first place. Chances are he will respect them more than his own IT department, so get them to back you up and maintain that good relationship with them, they could get you out of a sticky situation.

• Make everyone understand that a design studio is a deadline-driven department. If a computer has problems, you cannot afford ANY downtime. With you doing your own IT you can make sure that their is none (if you follow my guidelines), with them doing the IT, it could be days before you’re up and running again. Play on the bad experiences the MD will have had with his own IT department.

• Play the Mac’s trump card – no viruses. It’s important now more than ever, that you keep on top of the latest developments in this area, regarding Mac OS X and viruses, because you can bet the Windows IT department is as well. Be ready to counter any arguement FUD, with the facts. Mac’s are getting more attention from Windows zealots and a Mac virus is coming – you need to be ready.

• If their is any disagreement, ask for a 6 months trial. If there are any significant problems in this time then you’ll give in, (but there won’t be, if you follow my guidelines).
If you do this, then anything that the IT department says has no effect on you.

THE HARDWARE SETUP:

This part is the most important part of the set up and guarantees that the Windows IT department won’t even know you exist – and therefore will have no ammunition to kill your department.

I’ll keep it simple, just the basic set-up, but in it I’ll sow the seeds to allow your department to grow.

The workstation – a mid to top range tower, with as much memory as you can get away with.

Monitor – needs to be colour managed, so a CRT is best, although LCD are getting better in this area. Aim for the biggest screen you can get, and get 2 if possible.

Storage – aim to handle your own backup – this is VITAL as it could be one area where the Windows IT department gets a foot in your door. If they handle your backup they can complain that your files are too big to backup, you slow the network down etc. so do it yourself. Backup software – there’s only one (substandard) choice – Retrospect.

Scanner – most scanners are pretty good now, the technology is so mature that the only thing to differentiate them is software. However I still don’t rate the bundled software in any package so just go for a scanner that’s compatible with Vuescan – a shareware application that’s as good as it gets.

Printers – You’ll need an A3 laser for quick proofs, and a colour calibrated A3 inkjet proofer. Most models from Xerox and HP are good choices here. Password protect them if you can, and don’t connect to any PC printers that show up on your network.

Network hardware – here’s the crux to your setup. It’s vital that you separate your network from the PC network. Never, NEVER have your network running through their servers. Never just plug your ethernet into the ethernet wall socket. It’s always best to have your own internal gigabit ethernet switch, where you plug all your Mac’s, printers etc. Then have one ethernet cable running from this switch to the connection to the wall socket which is routed into the PC server network. This way you can disconnect it at any time – for reasons I’ll get to shortly.

Network software – Do NOT, NOT, NOT connect to any kind of VPN, or Active Directory network. They’re just too flaky to be reliable and will give the IT department more ammunition. Keep your network totally separate from their’s. Set up all your Mac’s with fixed IP addresses, do not rely on the Windows server giving out IP addresses with DCHP. Get a range of IP addresses (10-20) from your Windows IT department and setup all your Mac’s & printers with these addresses with a few spare.

Email – this is one area where you may face problems and it depends on their setup. In my experience, never connect to an Outlook Express Server, it just doesn’t work reliably. If you have no other choice, then I pity you. From a stability standpoint you’re probably better off running Outlook through an emulator or separate PC. You need to put aside your prejudices in running Windows and remember what we’re after here is stability and not to give the Windows IT department ammunition in closing down your Mac’s.

If you can, see if your company has a webmail version of their email server, you can connect Apple Mail to the address this is at. I have this setup at the moment and it works fine. You’re also good from a stability standpoint because you’re not connecting to their server, your connecting to their webmail as if you were using a browser.

Internet – Windows IT managers have a weird attitude to internet access. They see it as a privilege that they give out. You need to take this away from them. Try and get your own router installed that connects directly to the internet. This way you can control what’s seen, and change the password so you control it. If the IT department complain that you don’t need access, make the excuse that as IT admin for the Mac’s you need to update them over the internet, you also need to buy stock photos over the internet, you gain design ideas from here, you transfer artwork this way etc.

Viruses – you’d think that this wouldn’t be a problem. However I’ve seen IT managers feign ignorance concerning the lack of viruses for the Mac in the hope that they would fool the MD, so this is why you’ve already pointed this out in your charter document that this isn’t the case. However you must play the good citizen, so install ClamXAV, an open source anti-virus that doesn’t have much overhead and run it once a week.

The last piece of advice is for your future. Once a company realises that they have a design department, your workload will quickly grow beyond its initial remit, so expand as quickly as you can, and take on more people. Try and get jurisdiction of the website, and get it away from IT, which is where it usually resides. A new member of staff who specialises in the web would be a good bet here. Once this person is under you, then you have the website and all that entails, such as web access, FTP access to the web server (which you can use to transfer large artwork files to remote agencies), and even the company intranet. A lot of power can be got here in terms of your standing in the company – and this all runs on Mac’s. Get as many workstations as you can into the company, but keep them under your control, don’t let the IT department have any say in who administers them.

Why all this paranoia? Well it’s because over the years I’ve seen what these people are capable of, and what lengths they will go to as part of their sad little lives.

What if I told you that one IT manager tried to hack OS 9 Mac’s on the network, using a utility that’s passed amongst IT people, trying to crash them? I found this out by noting the times of the crashing, and they stopped when we disconnected from the network, unplugged the PC connection from our switch, and when the Windows IT manager went on holiday. The software had a legitimate purpose, but had a side effect of crashing a Mac if you wanted (nicely convenient). He was told to stop using the software, after my intervention.

Another IT manager purposefully ran ‘tests’ on the Virtual PC clients on the PC network that purposefully caused them to belly-up and needing to be completely reinstalled? His excuse? When he saw the name ‘Virtual PC’ on the network he thought they were virtual PC’s that didn’t really exist and you could run tests on them.

Remember the problems that Safari had a while back, when if you configured a JPEG in such as way, it would crash Safari whenever you viewed a webpage that contained said JPEG? I wonder how such a jpeg ended up on the front page of a companies intranet that I was working for? It took over a month to get the IT department to update the page.

What about rules on a companies email server that purposefully missed in filtering out spam to email addresses that were on Mac’s (so we got inundated with spam), and filters that gave Mac emails a low priority? I found this out after a Windows IT Manager left the company.

Or another time when a Windows IT support staffer kept on sending 50mb jpeg files to our colour proofer over the network (by mistake of course) to jam it up. This happened so often we had to password protect it?

The only time, in 15+ years of using a Mac have I ever got a virus was when I accepted a floppy disk (which had been infected with the MDEF OS 7 virus), from the Windows IT Manager. How it got on there is anybody’s guess, I have a good idea though.

And the deliberate unplugging of connections to the iSDN line in one company I worked for, which happened so often, I stopped complaining and simply walked into the IT server room and plugged them back in? Apparently it was a in-joke with the IT department.

So you can see why I keep the Mac department isolated from the PC network as much as possible. The key here is to almost run the Mac department as a business with a business. Keep it all separate as far as you can – even run your own email server if that’s possible, which is something I’m looking into.

Your ultimate, long-term goal is to have your own full-service, Mac-based studio, that is totally independant, with its own network, in the belly of the beast. If your department gets really big (10+ people), you need to start thinking about becoming your own Mac-based IT manager. Then maybe, just maybe, when the MD walks around your department, seeing a productive, virus & hassle free department that works 24-7 that’s based on Mac’s, he’ll start to ask important questions as to why the Windows side of the company is plagued with problems all the time and needs an army of IT staff to keep it running, when it seems your department runs itself.

Your overall, more short-term goal, is to become as independent and as invisible as you can. If you cause no problems on the network, they have no ammunition, and without this, they cannot launch an attack on your department.

A lot of Windows users and potential switchers, go on about Mac-zealotry and the reasons for it. I fully understand where the zealots are coming from. We are angry. Angry that we have to put up with this every day.

When someone posts lies about the Mac, and they then get flamed by angry Mac users, there’s a good reason for it – THEY STARTED IT.

Get the Windows IT manager out of your department, and keep him out – he’s no business there (pun intended). Good luck.

A tale of 2 internets…

Recently a direct mail flyer from Staples dropped through my letterbox. Now usually, these kind of things end up in the bin after a brief flick through, but something this time caught my eye.

As part of my job I produce a large amount of direct mail, so I always feel obliged to flick through any direct mail I receive because I understand how much hard work goes into creating these things. Not just in terms of design, but the logistics of making sure that stock is available roughly when the direct mail is likely to hit a doorstep is an art in itself.

Anyway, the thing that caught my eye in this instance was an all-in-one printer from HP. I don’t remember the model, however it was for sale for the very reasonable price of £49.99.

That seemed a great price to me, so I did a little research on the model, to find out what kind of compatibility it had with the Mac. After a little searching on-line I regrettably found out that it was a dog. HP’s driver’s were either flaky or non existent, and the printer itself wasn’t particularly good quality.

However, upon looking around I realised what good value all-in-one printers were, so I convinced myself I needed one (I don’t have a printer at home, I usually do any personal printing at work), and looked around for a decently priced printer with good Mac support.

I quickly discovered that the best printer’s came from Brother, and after a quick search online I found a discounted Brother DCP-115C on PC World’s website for £45.17 (online price only).

So, credit card in hand I decided I would purchase it, and here’s where my troubles started.

After placing the printer in my virtual basket I proceeded to the virtual checkout. Before I could pay (thank goodness in retrospect) they needed to locate at which branch this product was located, and if it was near, you could go and pick it up yourself.

Except it didn’t work. The part of the page that gave you the locations of the nearest PC World remained blank.

So I tried Firefox – this was a little better, it actually displayed the locations, but on clicking proceed, the website declared I hadn’t made a choice, and wouldn’t let me proceed.

So I tried Camino – a similar result to Safari.

So I tried Internet Explorer – even worse, it actually crashed the browser.

So I sent an email directly to their complaints department and gave up. I assume this will be picked up by PC World complaints, passed onto the Windows-based webmaster, he or she will simply smile and throw the request in the bin, along with all the others.

But I still wanted a printer, so undeterred, I tried various other online stores and none of them had the printer I wanted at the right price.

In desparation I tried Amazon. I’ve used Amazon before and been amazed at their Mac-support. Their website works flawlessly, and in this case that had the exact printer I wanted. A few clicks later it’s bought and I’m now waiting for delivery.

Guess I’ll be using them in future and to let them know how pleased I am with their service, I sent them an email thanking them for their Mac-support.

But (there’s always a but isn’t there?) my story doesn’t end there.

I’m still awaiting delivery. It’s not late, but Amazon have sent me an email and a link to track the order, so I decided to find out where it was.

At the moment it’s in the hands of Parcel Force UK, so armed with a reference number I visited their website to find out where my package is.

And guess what? Their site doesn’t work with Mac’s. There’s no indication that it doesn’t work, but when you get to the part of the site that displays the information you want, it’s just not there.

I’ve gone through the same steps as I used with PC World’s website, with the same results, including the email complaint, which I assume again will make it through to the Windows-biased webmaster who will silently guffaw to himself and throw the request in the bin.

It’s hard to say what part of all this makes me more angry. If the website simply did a browser check at the start of the process and informed me that this site didn’t work with Mac’s, I wouldn’t have a problem (much). I wouldn’t waste my time with it and move on.

But the problem here (and this seems to be more and more common), is that they don’t announce this at all. They simply let you click through their site, until you get to the part that doesn’t work, and you curse and curse that you’ve wasted your time – again.

Maybe they realise this, they just want to piss Mac users off as much as possible.
All this hassle, and I haven’t even installed the software to run the printer yet. Let’s hope this goes smoothly.

My main concern here is switchers. They are used to going to any online store and (viruses notwithstanding), having no problems in buying online. With the Mac it’s a nightmare and they are all too quickly going to regret their purchase.

It could just be my bad luck I suppose (I do bank online with no problems), but their has to be a solution here.

Virtualization springs to mind. It wouldn’t help me as I have an iBook, but couldn’t Wine (and open-source virtualization tool that emulates the Windows API, so you can run Windows apps without running Windows) help in this situation?

I don’t mean running a version of Internet Explore for Windows on your Intel Mac, what about a plug-in for Safari, that (using Wine), emulates the parts of Internet Explorer that are needed so that we have 100%, transparent compatibility with our Windows friends (I say friends through gritted teeth).

Maybe then Mac users won’t be classed as second-class citizens on the net, and we can end the 2-tiered internet experience.

Going Office cold turkey…

The office move that I’m currently experiencing (I’m moving offices – physically), is going reasonably smoothly, at least for me as a Mac user.

Working near a standard PC user however, has demonstrated to me the gulf that separates a Mac user from a PC user. Over the past week, this PC user has had to call IT support at least once a day. But this aspect, although entertaining to a Mac user, is not the focus of this article.

One thing that struck me is that they haven’t installed Microsoft Office on this PC. No, in order to cut costs, they’ve installed Open Office. This is part, I have learned, of a drive to rid themselves of Microsoft Office entirely.

PDF has supplanted Word as the format that which documents must be formatted in for emailing purposes in my company. This is, in part, because we deal with a lot of overseas companies in the Far East and they communicate almost solely in PDF.

They aren’t giving up on Windows completely (they’re still a Windows-centric organisation, using Microsoft SQL Server, and various other proprietary Microsoft products), but Office is definitely on the way out. The writing seems to be on the wall for Microsoft here, how they will react is anyone’s guess – but it’ll probably be sneaky, underhand and potentially illegal.

Their first assault is to supplant the PDF with their own proprietary format. Good luck with that BG. I’m sure more will follow when Vista finally materialise.

My department has used the Mac version of Office since it was set up. I’ve used it in every job I’ve ever had, not because I like it, (I absolutely hate Word & Powerpoint, but love Excel), but because I felt that it kept me compatible with the rest of the company I was working for, and the outside world.

It also kept the Windows IT department off my back, so they had one less reason for recommending the replacement of all my Mac’s with PC’s – not that this has ever occurred. I’m reasonably lucky, but I think it’s more to do with the fact that I’m a pretty good tech guy on the Mac or PC, and PC IT people are uncertain they’d win an argument with me.

This has resulted in a chance to also rid myself of Mac Office completely. So I dutifully downloaded NeoOffice, installed in on a test Mac to see if I could really do it.
Word, as I said, I’ve always hated. I only use it to read other people’s documents. Indeed, when creating a text document that other PC’s may need to read, I always start off in the Mac’s TextEdit, and when it’s finished, open it in Word & re-save. I know you can do this all from TextEdit, but I take this extra step, just to be sure. Word document’s open fine in NeoOffice.

Powerpoint, gladly, I’ve never had to use much. I need it to open other people’s Powerpoint documents. Strangely, one of the main uses I have for it is to open PC users Powerpoint documents to print them, because for some reason Powerpoint’s printing on the PC is very flaky. Powerpoint document’s open fine in NeoOffice also.

Excel however I use daily, and have for years. A lot of my work is connected with marketing, and I use Excel to sort address files, do budgets, get price lists, perform calculations on address file databases and numerous other tasks.

Of all the individual suites that Office contains, Excel is the yardstick by which I will measure NeoOffice.

The results of this are mixed. Although NeoOffice opens and renders quite complicated spreadsheets ok, it is only useful for the most simple of documents.

NeoOffice’s speed is its biggest issue. Spreadsheets seem to lag a bit sometimes, and opening big Excel documents with multiple pages and complex calculations can take minutes rather than seconds.

Re-saving these documents in Excel format, makes little difference, however re-saving in NeoOffice format, makes a big difference, the document loads almost immediately. However this screws up your file compatibility, which is the main reason for switching in the first place.

Apart from that, things seem fine. Although I will dip into Excel occasionally (mainly when I’m in a hurry), I can safely say that I will never upgrade Microsoft Office again, nor will I buy it for any new Mac. I really think that, in the long term, Office’s days are numbered both on the Mac & PC.

This all begs the question, does the OpenOffice movement open a door for Apple to rid themselves of their Microsoft dependancy for good?

Apple are very careful to remain best buddies with Microsoft, because in the past it has been quite rightly observed that if Microsoft pulled the Mac version of Office, the platform would be mortally wounded. However are we now seeing a faint glimmer of hope with NeoOffice?

Apple have released Pages & Keynote, which can be vaguely compared with Word & Powerpoint, and rumour has it that ‘Numbers’ is on its way, which would also compete with Excel. But these are not in direct competition with Office. iWork are commendable, feature-laden applications, but they are no Office replacement in the eyes of business.
You must remain compatible with Office, or you are not taken seriously in the business world. With businesses now moving towards OpenOffice, is there an opening here for Apple?

What about keeping iWork as an Office replacement for the consumer, but have an Apple-sanctioned and supported version of OpenOffice installed free on every Mac? I don’t think that it would cost Apple much in development costs (with Apple’s knowledge I think they could iron out the speed issue), and would allow them to remain compatible with the business world, and showing that they take business seriously.

Demonstrating the gulf that divides us…

I’ve written long and hard of the battle that goes on every day between the PC camp and the Macintosh camp.

Like any conflict, it all boils down to each side failing to see the others point of view. Each side thinks that the others viewpoint is ridiculous and sortie after sortie is launched (on digg & macdailynews to name but two) in the hope of scoring some advantage.

Myself, being a hardened and battle-weary Mac-user for 15 years (although I started out, and continue to use Windows PC’s to this day), am constantly on the look out for aspects of this battle that simply put the foolishness of the Windows camp into simple, geek-free, easy to grasp terms.

Yesterday this was demonstrated to me in a way I had not experienced before.

As you may or may not know, I run an in-house, Mac-based marketing & design studio, that sits in a larger PC-based company, and we are currently in the midst of a departmental move.

I am to receive a shiny, new, larger office, with an additional member of staff, and my original office is to be converted into a PC-based office for 2-3 people to work in.
However, there is a transfer period that must occur. This has resulted in a PC user and her PC being shoe-horned into my already overcrowded workspace. But, it’s only temporary, some I’m not too bothered.

The PC-setup is not that complex, it’s a PC, running the latest version of XP, monitor, A4 laser printer and a separate fax machine.

Now, I know my way around a PC, (I have a couple of PC’s in the studio to access the Windows XP based stock database), and I certainly know my way around the Mac.

I set up this studio myself from scratch (much to the anger of the Windows PC department). It started out as a simple 867mhz G4 Mac, with monitor, scanner, external hard drives, A3 laser printer, A3 inkjet colour proofer. Since then I’ve added 3 more Mac’s (an 800mhz G4 & 2 G5’s), another A3 printer, and 2 A1 large format printers.

Everything works fine. I’ve had no reason to call in any IT support, and I’ve had 1 days downtime in 5 years, and that was to upgrade to Tiger.

Admittedly, I am an experienced Mac user. I know how to troubleshoot software, and my hardware experience only really equates to installing memory and adding internal hard drives. I certainly don’t know as much about the Mac’s hardware as the PC IT department knows about PC hardware, but then again, I don’t have to – it just works.

So, back to the PC in question. How long do you think it took the IT department to get this PC working?

Not half and hour (which would be my estimate if I were setting up a Mac), not an afternoon, not 1 day, not even 2 days, but 3 DAYS.
3 days.

At first, they brought the PC down to my department and tried to set it up. They couldn’t get the PC to see the monitor. After a couple of hours, the monitor was declared DOA.

A new one was brought in and worked fine.

Next Windows would not start. It would get as far as the log in screen and freeze. After another couple of hours it was removed and taken back to the PC department. I don’t know if they replaced it, swapped something out or hit it with a mallet, but the next day it was brought back and this time it got past the log in screen and to the desktop.

Next – the printer & fax. This took the rest of the day, and they got through half a ream of photocopy paper trying to get it working. At the end of the day it was.

The next day was connecting to the stock control system database. This is located in another part of the company, via a VPN connection.

Now, this VPN connection seems to be some sort of voodoo spell that is cast upon the company. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Our IT department has experienced people in it, but most of the time the VPN connection is beyond them and they have to bring in a consultant to configure it.

They tried to get the VPN connection working, but couldn’t. After 2-3 hours of phone conversations with the consultant it finally worked.

The PC operator can finally sit down and get some REAL work done, and clear up the backlog that has occurred because of this 3 day delay.

The key point to all this is however, is that the IT staff actually ENJOYED it, and got EXCITED about it. The problem of this malfunctioning PC brought joy to their faces. At one point, 3 members of staff were stood around this PC, shaking their heads and actively discussing this latest problem.

They failed to see the wider problem here – the PC should have worked, out of the box in the first place. Their systems should just work, if they are not, then a serious, wider problem is taking place.

Windows, as you all know, is a mess, and I always thought that IT staff saw this as a problem. They don’t. The morass of settings, config files, registry errors, all of which is a nightmare to those of us who do productive work for a living, is the part of the job that IT people enjoy. The chance to be knee-deep in this unproductive, labyrinth of crap that Windows users take for granted makes them salivate with lust – the chance to make themselves seem superior to those of us who have better things to do with our time, like making the company we work for some money.

I admit, this isn’t the norm. However, it’s not that rare either. I hear story after story from my company similar to this. It can take literally days to get any one troublesome PC working.

I’m not advocating a wholesale switch to the Mac, as there are many reasons why this isn’t practical (maybe I’ll talk about that in another posting), but this little anecdote demonstrates the viewpoint of your typical Mac user.

We see a world, in our little design studio’s, advertising bureau’s & printers where this doesn’t happen. Ever. The PC world constantly dreams of computing heaven where there are no crashes and everything just plugs in and starts working.

It’s not a dream, it’s already here and has been here for the best part of a decade now, it’s time for PC users to wake up.

Is Bill Gates trying to re-invent himself..?

I’ve just read David Pogue’s blog concerning Bill Gates at:

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=74

I cannot begin to write how much I disagree with his point of view – here’s a quote from it: “In fact, when you step back far enough, Mr. Gates’s entire life arc suddenly looks like a 35-year game of Robin Hood, a gigantic wealth-redistribution system on a global scale.”

All very nice, but he wasn’t stealing from the rich to give to the poor, he was stealing from me (I’m not rich), and all the other poor suckers that have had dozens of PC’s over the years, running buggy, second-rate hacked together code.

This buggy code has allowed him to release, year-after-year, an OS that is a magnet for malware, spyware, viruses etc, which in turn has funded drug barons & terrorists worldwide, AND IT IS HIS FAULT.

Giving away your wealth to help the poor is to be commended, but let’s not forget what this guy has done in the past before he was ‘reborn’.

His fifth rate OS has created more wealth for the evil people in this world than he has made for himself. No wonder he feels guilty.

This has nothing to do with him anyway, it’s his wife that has encouraged him to do it. He’s still the scummy little geek he always was, he’s now just a scummy little geek, who got lucky, and then guilty.

Where is Steve Jobs going with this?

Okay, it’s been a while, but after reading various viewpoints on the whole scenario of Bootcamp, Intel Mac’s and Apple’s true intentions, and after having commented on various forums about my viewpoints on the subject, I finally feel ready to get down on paper (well not paper exactly, erm… pixels maybe), what I feel is inside SJ’s head right now, and where he’s going with this.

I’ve thought long and hard, and those thoughts have been both positive and negative, and all the compass points in-between, but I’ve finally decided. Decided what? Well read on, but let me just say from the start that I am right, and you are wrong.

This article covers a lot. It covers Apple’s move to Intel chips, Boot Camp implications, Apple’s support (or lack thereof) of Windows XP, is Apple moving to Windows, adopting the Windows API, adopting the Windows Vista kernel and many other things in-between, so, it’s a ‘biggie’.

Apple’s move to Intel Chips – why?

The reasons for this were obvious. The Motorola/IBM team simply did not have the funds/will/intelligence to create a chip in sufficient quantities for Apple Computer to use in order to drive sales of the Mac, and to keep up with the Wintel camp. The mhz myth became the ghz myth and it was difficult to have to admit that maybe Intel had a point.

Although I think Steve Jobs’ plan from the start was to eventually move to Intel chips (the Marklar project is proof enough of this), he wanted to put it off for as long as possible.

Why? Well, Apple had to wait until they had decent emulation of the PowerPC chip, to ease the transition, and Apple was trying to encourage as many developers as possible to move to Xcode. They had been pushing this for years, way before Marklar was confirmed, and I think this is another clue that Apple had been planning to move to Intel eventually. The Xcode development suite started life at Next, and had always been binary compatible with Intel chips, and now, simply clicking a tick box compiles your app for Intel.

So you can argue the pros and cons of PowerPC/Intel, but I think it was inevitable. The recent problems that Sony is having with the Cell processor is proof enough that Steve Jobs was right. Apple are now in the enviable position of having a limitless supply of (relatively) cheap, fast chips. Historically, Apple have never been able to create Mac’s quickly enough to meet demand, now they can, it’s a win-win situation for them.

Boot Camp & Virtualization – why?

The inevitability of someone hacking the Intel Mac, in order to boot Windows was well, inevitable. What surprised everyone, was that Apple would come up with the technology themselves. The question is, did Apple plan this from the start, or did the quickly come up with this technology when they heard that some geek had hacked it together?

The answer is that this is all part of Apple’s long term goal.

Once Apple committed themselves to moving to Intel, then running Windows on Mac hardware was something they must have anticipated. They new that this was one of the aspects of the move that would have happened whether they liked it or not, so they must have planned to find a way to turn it to their advantage.

What is the advantage? Well, it all comes down to the series of decisions that any computer user must make when contemplating a switch. A PC user switching to Mac has to take into various costs, such as the move in hardware, software & peripherals.

This is why the switcher campaign did not return the numbers, peoples interested was captured, but on further investigation, they balked at the cost.

With the move to Intel, this has greatly smoothed the way. Hardware isn’t a cost anymore, they were going to buy a computer anyway, software cost has been lessened, because a lot of what the average computer user uses is already free on a Mac, and any software that isn’t can be run using BootCamp or virtualization which I guarantee will become part of Leopard. Peripherals have never been a problem anyway. Most USB based devices work out of the box.

For those of you who say that Mac’s are still expensive, then you are comparing bargain basement PC’s, or build your own – markets that Apple isn’t interested in. You cannot maintain the Apple experience on cheap or build your own PC’s, or maintain a decent profit margin.

Apple support (or lack thereof) of Windows

Apple will not stop you from running Windows on your Mac, they’ve even given Windows users an easy way to do it, but this isn’t because they are moving to Windows. It’s because it knocks away another reason that Windows users have cited as their reason for not moving to the Mac – can they run their Windows apps, just in case they don’t like OS X?

However, they will not support you, (maybe because the support calls alone would eat away at their billions in cash reserves in amount 10 minutes). They’ll let you to run Windows if you want, this is why they changed the name of the portables to MacBook & MacBook Pro – if you decide to run Windows, you are still reminded that you’re running Windows ON A MACINTOSH (it keeps the brand alive in their heads).

So why have they allowed this? Well in part, they couldn’t stop it, and it’s better to have a Windows user running Windows on a Mac reliably, instead of relying on a geeky hack that doesn’t work all the time. If Apple had not done this, and a Windows user installed Windows on a Mac using the geeky hack, any problems (and their would have been plenty) would be blamed on the Apple hardware, further damaging the brand in their eyes.
But Apple mainly did this because again, it’s all part of their grand plan. (More on this at the conclusion of this article).

Is Apple moving to Windows, adopting the Windows API or adopting the Windows Vista kernel – what?

This ball started rolling with Mr Dvorak. Other Mac users much more gifted than I have pointed out the flaws in this argument and pointed out that Dvorak and people like him know as much about technology as a cab driver knows about the Apple vs Apple court case, but let’s take them one by one.

Is Apple moving to Windows?

Avie (the guy who basically invented OS X) could not have left at a worse time. (Sometimes I think Apple does this because Steve gets a kick out of seeing users squirm – but it does create interest in Apple, so maybe THAT’S the point). Avie retired from active input at Apple years ago. This was just a coincidence.

Is Apple adopting the Windows API

No, nope, nein and every other way you can say something in the negative. It sounds easy – simply adopt the Windows API (call it the Red Box, Pink Box, Purple Box Environment if you like), and all Windows applications would run alongside Mac OSX, much like X11 & Classic apps do. Except it’s not easy, and although possible, it would take years of development (it took Apple 5 years to get Classic working and they own the source code), and even then most software would not work because there is no Windows API as such, most of it is hacks and undocumented hooks. So the Apple ‘it just works’ catchphrase would go out the window (no pun intended).

Is Apple adopting the Windows Vista kernel
Oh my god, somebody please shut Dvorak up! It just goes to show how little this guy understands computers, let alone why Apple has survived this long. His basic premise was that Apple could adopt Vista, and then simply run a Mac OS X ’skin’ on top. Like, yes that’s the difference between the 2 OS’s, the way they look.

Apple’s ‘reason for being’ is the tight integration between hardware and software. It’s the reason they don’t crash, why they’re stable, why they work, and yes, why they are a little bit more expensive. If Apple did this, they would basically become an EOL supplier of Microsoft’s OS, competing directly with Dell, HP and the others. Where does this leave the Apple ‘it just works’ benefit. Why would you buy from Apple? I wouldn’t, they’d be too expensive. They’d be dead in the water.

If Dvorak doesn’t even grasp this simple premise and see why his ramblings are not only wrong but embarrassing for a mainstream tech-writer then he doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. Anyway the only reason he writes things of this ‘calibre’ is to drive traffic to his blog. Have you heard how many times he mentions it on TWIT?

Conclusion – so what is Apple’s overall plan?

All these things are connected. Apple does NOTHING on the spur of the moment, they plan, they scheme, they anticipate. Apple are profitable and healthy, the one thing that eludes them is market share, at least big gains in market share.

So this is all about attracting people to the Mac. Which people? Well there is a saying that says that if you grab somebody while they’re young, you’ve got them for life. So that means consumers.

Aren’t Apple interested in the enterprise? Well, yes and no. They’re interested in being a ‘good citizen’ on Windows networks, and playing happy with PC’s, but the real attack is at the enterprises of the future and that future lies with consumers, they are the enterprise of tomorrow.

So how will Apple do it? This is the plan, taking into account all that’s been said above:

1) Apple moves the current customer base from PowerPC to Intel hardware, moving the software at the same time, having very good emulation software built in.

2) Apple makes this move a smoothly as possible, so as not to alienate current, loyal Mac customers.

3) In order to counteract piracy, Apple creates a stable, geek-free way of running Windows on Mac hardware. Either using BootCamp or virtualization, this satisfies 2 types of new user:

a) Bootcamp users: These are users who want to move away from Windows, but dare not. This gives them a safety blanket in case they don’t like the Mac OS. They will, and within 6 months they’ll wonder how they ever put up with Windows.

b) Virtualization users: These are users who are fed up with Windows, and want to move to Mac but cannot because there is a piece of software that they must use on Windows. Within 6 months they will find a replacement or learn to live without it and use the Mac full time.

4) Apple’s market share starts to go up. It is irrelevant that some people who have bought a Mac just to run Windows, it will show as a Mac sale, much as in the same way that a PC user who buys a Windows PC and install Linux on it, still shows as a Windows sale.

5) Apple now has a significant number of new users who run Windows on a computer that can easily run Mac OS X AT NO EXTRA COST.

6) Apple then encourages them to switch by offering incentives that mean they must boot into the Mac, such as movie store that is tied into .Mac. (You would stream the movies from your account, to your Mac, but only if you run OS X), and by pushing the benefits of iLife, buy releasing new hardware, iPod related devices that leverage iLife, such as the iPhone. More controversially, they would either cancel iTunes for Windows, or make an enhanced version for Mac users. BootCamp users would not have a problem here, it would encourage them to boot more into the Mac.

7) Apple market share continues to climb.

8) Apple releases an update to XCode that allows you to compile the application you just wrote for the Mac, to run on Windows, (a specific hardware configuration only, probably teaming up with Dell or HP). Apple now controls Microsoft application development for all apps that have both Mac & Windows versions. Companies such as Adobe would jump at the chance because of the development cost savings, and new developers would contemplate XCode as a way of entering the new market of increasing Mac users, whilst still selling to the bread and butter market of Windows users.

9) Apple now controls a significant portion of Windows application development.

10) Apple buys Microsoft, closes it down and gives the money back to the shareholders. Windows IT managers around the world scream and hang themselves with used USB cables, their last words being, “Our pointless livelihoods have just been destroyed and we would have got away with it to, if it hadn’t been for those pesky kids at Apple computer!”

Okay, those last 3 were BS, (well except the bit about USB cables maybe, I went a bit Dvorak, you know, by doing about the same amount of research), but this seems to me to be a logical process that I would take if I were running Apple, all perfectly feasible, and it would grow market share.

Apple Launches ‘Get a Mac’ TV Ad Campaign…

Excellent, I like the virus one. When Vista comes out they need another one, exactly the same format, but with the PC guy wearing a colourful clown hat and loud tie.

Dialog could be:

PC Guy: “Hi, I’m a Mac”
Mac Guy: “Hi, I’m a Mac…. what?”
PC Guy: “Yeah sure, look I have this great hat, and really fashionable tie”
Mac Guy: “Erm, there’s a little bit more to it than that”
PC Guy: “Well of course, I also have these amazing devices that prevent me from getting an infection, look, I’ll switch them on”
Mac Guy: “Nothing’s happened”
PC Guy: “What?”
Mac Guy “I said nothing’s happened”
PC Guy: “Sorry can’t hear you, it’s not configured properly, let me try this…”
PC Guy collapses to floor, and immediately gets up again, saying “No I’m fine, fine, just great”
Mac Guy “So what’s changed?”
PC Guy “Sorry, can’t speak to you without the correct password”
Mac Guy “What?”
PC Guy “Thanks, OK are you sure you want to talk to me?”
Mac Guy “Well no, not really”
PC Guy “Are you really sure?”
Mac Guy “Go on then”
PC Guy “Thankyou.” He then sneezes and collapses on to floor.
Immediately 10 IT guys turn up and carry him away and replace him with an exact replica.
PC Guy “Hi, I’m a Mac”
The Mac Guy puts his iPod on.

These ads are a great metaphor, and communicate a complex topic easily and humorously.

Computer’s as appliances..?

With all the news about Sony clogging up the airwaves (can you say that it internet parlance? how about blogwaves?, interwaves? webwaves? whatever). Anyway Sony – all the bad press Sony has been getting recently has made me think about another one of Sony’s cash cows – home appliances; specifically TV’s, VCR’s & DVD players.

I have recently bought all three of these appliances, and I can tell you, all the talk that computers (especially Apple’s) are nearing the nirvana of an appliance are way off the mark, in fact completely missing the mark. It is in fact, the other way around.

I don’t know about your experiences, but as far as I was concerned, you could buy a TV in 1995, turn it on, watch it, switch it off thousands of times over the years without a hitch. Then buy a brand new VCR or a DVD player a decade later, plug it in and guess what? with minimal configuration it would work. Very Apple like, everybody’s happy.

Then came the problem, (in my experience anyway), digital TV. I’m talking from a UK perspective here.

About a year ago I bought a Sony DVD player, my first DVD player (I know I’m late to the game, but I don’t watch a lot of TV). I hooked it up to my Tatung TV (about 10 years old), this TV also had a Samsung VCR (about 5 years old), and it did work fine. Watching TV, VCR’s or DVD’s was easy, recording TV as easy as it ever was.

Then, unfortunately the TV died, and by coincidence so did the VCR (however the VCR was never the same after having food pushed into it – I have a child under 2 you understand).
So I was in the market for a new TV & DVD player. I decided (with hindsight a mistake) to go all-Sony. After all I had a Sony 12″ TV from my university years that still worked fine, so my decision was made. It was made at a great price as well, a new VCR & 28″ Sony TV (with Freeview) for £500.

After the inevitable purchase of a new aerial to get Freeview, I settled down with the new set-up, happy that I was cutting-edge (well as sharp as you can be for £500).
Then almost straight away things started to go wrong. For some reason the DVD player stopped working. Usually opening and closing the DVD drawer would switch the TV to the DVD channel (again, very nice, very Apple). For some reason this no longer happened. DVD’s played (I could see and hear the actual DVD spinning up and down & counting), but no picture.

Then I realised that the VCR wasn’t recording. At least wasn’t recording the digital channels. Analogue channels recorded fine. It would record the digital channels, as long as you didn’t change channel, or turn the TV off, or turn the sound down (now I ask, what is the point of that?).

So I look round the back of the TV at the cables. This originally had been reasonably straight forward when first setting up the TV. It took a while, but following the manuals I had it hooked up as they specified. However, it was a cable mess. No longer is there just a couple of cables going from analogue, through the VCR to the TV, you now have almost a dozen cables, all going in different directions, god knows what any of them do.

So I check all the cables to see whether anything has popped out, but this in itself is difficult. The icons & writing on the back of the TV, telling you what each port is for are black, embossed onto a black background. Impossible to see, even in daylight without a torch. There are 3 different manuals, one for VCR, DVD & TV. This you would expect if they were all from different suppliers, but these all all Sony products. These products can be used with other products, so you do need separate manuals, but you would expect the manuals to look the same, be structured the same, and use the same names for each port – they do not, so you have to always translate between them.

After a lot of trial and error, I realise that the Sony scart cable supplied with the DVD is faulty, so I purchase the a new & better one, from a local independent electrical supplier. That’s the DVD sorted, but I find out that recording digital channels is purposely disabled in this way. Not taking no for an answer, I resort looking on the internet. There is a work around, but here it is:

Can you believe this? I’m still not sure this will work (I need to put aside an entire evening to find out, and guess what? I have slightly more important things to do with my time than translate the above diagram into reality).

All this reminds me of the original iMac campaign. One of the selling points of the iMac was it’s ease of setting up to the internet, and its lack of cables. One of the TV ads that was used shows this perfectly:

That PC is exactly what my TV, VCR & DVD set-up looks like.

Imagine if the above iMac was translated into an Apple branded TV/VCR/DVD…

The idea that computers need to become like appliances is misguided. Today’s appliances are just as complicated to set up as a Windows PC, but there’s an opportunity here for Apple. I really wish that Apple would enter the home appliance market because if they followed the same ease of use in both hardware & software that they do with the iPod & Mac, they would wipe the floor with companies such as Sony, and change the face of home technology for ever.

Sony are a huge company, it should be perfectly possible with today’s technology, to have 3 appliances, a TV, DVD player & VCR, and have 1 power cable, 1 cable going from the wall to the TV and the 2 more cables from the TV to the DVD & VCR. Apple does exactly this with all their technology why cannot everybody else? Why does no other company get this simple premise?

It’d be nice as well if the software they used to drive the settings for these 3 appliances was Apple-like as well, but I do not believe it is possible to do this outside Apple’s campus.

The interfaces used to drive these 3 devices are all different, break just about every GUI guideline there is, you have to learn different skills for each one, etc, etc, etc. It’s like Apple Human Interface Department never existed.

Is Front Row and the new iMac a move in this direction? Maybe. Just think for a moment about these words, iMac, Powermac, Xserve. Now think of the differences between them. Now think about iPod, powerPod & xPod, a pod for the consumer, professional and administrator?

I for one would put my Sony products on eBay, and buy the Apple equivalents in a heartbeat.

Sony, don’t bite the hand that feeds you…

One of my favourite authors is the late, great Douglas Adams. His humourous insights into any topic that caught his eye made him an immensely enjoyable read. The book (or books) he is most famous for of course are the Hitch-hiker books and one of his observations is pertinent to a situation that has recently rocked the tech world.

Now, bear with me, ‘cos if you haven’t read the books, this isn’t going to make much sense. Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect have just ridden on the back of a Perfectly Normal Beast and have gone through some sort of hyperspace rift into a new world, one that is populated by (amongst other things) a transport café, which they visit in order to gain some refreshments, and to see The King (yes THE King). There’s some REALLY funny bits about a credit card, restaurant write-ups and nibbling fingers, but I digress.

Once entering, the author remarks on the customers of this café. The establishment is a dark and moody place, full of dingy corners and shadowy, nasty ne’er-do-wells, such as drug dealers, murderers, assassins and record company executives.

This small observation, made in jest perfectly sums up the people we are dealing with here in connection with the Sony rootkit scenario.

The problem here is one of control. The record companies know that at some point in the future (not to far away either), all media will at some point in it’s journey from producer to consumer, pass through a computer.

Now the consumer sees this as an opportunity to transform & manipulate that media into whatever they want, in order to transfer it anywhere for their convenience. After all, they bought the media and they should have the right to do whatever they want with their property, correct?

The producer (in this case it is not the musician, it is the record company), sees this opportunity in a completely different light. Previous forms of media transportation (such as cassette, LP), had little in the way of copy protection because you could never make a perfect recording, the same applies to VHS. The record companies were not too bothered by this, and there was little they could do about it anyway, the technology didn’t exist that would have allowed them to stop it, so they grudingly lived with the situation.

CD’s took them by surprise. From what I can see, record companies are run by people who have little understanding of technology. They failed to see the upcoming danger of personal computers and ripping CD’s to MP3, and are now playing catch up.

This ‘catching up’ basically consists of making up for all the (apparent) lost revenue they saw since VHS Video cassettes first came onto the market. In their eyes, when you buy a CD or DVD, you are not buying the contents of that media. What you are buying is a licence (details of which varies from country to country), to experience that media under the conditions of that licence, and to a certain extent, they are right.

Now the conditions of that licence have changed little over the years, but what is different now, is the Record Companies see that with the potential use of technology (Black Hat Rootkits), they can enforce that licence in a way they have never been able to do before, and even change the conditions of that licence when they see fit. They see this as their last chance to enforce something they’ve wanted all along, potentially make a pot load of cash in the process and they are not going to let go of it easily.

There are a number of problems with this viewpoint, they do not see them, but we do:

1) A pirate is not a potential customer, and never will be. The record companies think that every pirated copy of a song is a lost sale. This is obviously incorrect and ignores a basic understanding of how consumers operate. Bill Gates once said in connection to piracy rates of his software in China, (and I’m paraphrasing here), “If they’re going to pirate software, let’s make sure it’s ours. We’ll figure out a way to collect later.”

2) Fair use. Now this little loophole in the licensing conditions differs from country to country. Where the law applies, you can make a back-up of the CD’s you have bought for your own usage. Some countrys are less than flexible (such as the UK), and other laws state that you cannot broadcast the songs you have bought to other people. The law regarding fair use is badly thought out and confusing. Consumers need a simple, fair system that takes into account their listenting & watching habits, plus takes into account the use of new technology. Until this happens, consumers will feel it is their right to treat their music in any way they want.

3) Respect for the consumer. What the record companys don’t understand, is that by tighteneing the grip on the listening conditions of their media, they will squeeze all the life out of it, and kill it stone dead. The consumer will not agree to (for instance), buying another copy of their music CD to give to their friend. They will simply copy it using iTunes, as they did before with LP’s and cassettes. The record companies have not lost a sale, because their friend would not have bought it anyway. The tenuous relationship that exists in this licence is the best they are going to get. If they push too hard, sales will go DOWN, not up.

What they should be doing is introducing fair DRM, like iTunes, on their CD’s. (Apple – a chance to licence FairPlay here please?). How about lowering their prices, and giving better value for money with these CD’s in terms of discounted tickets for live events, fan clubs & merchandise? This would give added value to the physical CD, and is something that is impossible to pirate.

Record companies, and all media companies have a problem with piracy, but this is not a new phenomenon. Their business model is totally reliant on a flexible approach to usage rights and if they try to alter this approach to the detriment of their customers, these customers will simply walk away, (probably in the direction of BitTorrent). The best way to fight it is by treating this threat as a competitor for your customers, not by treating your customers as criminals.

If you haven’t read the passage in Hitch-hikers as described above, the following won’t make any sense either, but a statement in this book sums up the attitude that media companies should have towards us:

“You should never bite the hand that feeds you. Nibble it occasionally, even suck on it really hard sometimes, but not actually bite it.”

What switches a switcher..?

There’s a process of thought in marketing that outlines the different strategies in which businesses can operate. You can be ’sales orientated’. This means that you go out to your customers and you target anyone who may want to buy your product, and hard sell them.

Another is ‘marketing oriented’. This means you perform extensive market research and find out what it is your customer wants and you fill that market. Another (and quite outdated) is ‘production oriented’. This means that you create a great product, regardless of whether you know the market wants it, and you advertise that product, hoping the market will come to you. This approach is commonly known as, “build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.”

Now, which approach do you think that Apple ought to follow?

Let’s face it, the first (sales) ain’t Apple strong point. They’re famous for making great ‘brand-awareness’ advertising, but when it comes to product, their adverts are strong on concept, but lacking in hard-sell. The reasons for that a partly down to the long-term plan they have for the brand. Put simply, they do not wish to cheapen the product line. I can see the idea behind this, as they are not a mass-market supplier, they fill a niche and fill it well. This isn’t the best approach to increase market share however.

What’s next – the marketing approach. Apple are famous for abhorring ‘focus groups’, instead relying on gut instinct. Interesting. You can argue the business sense of this, but hey, the are the original ‘crazy ones’.

Thirdly we have the ‘production’ orientatated approach. This approach is all but dead in modern business practices, but Apple generally follow this plan with good success. The idea being is that you create best-of-breed product and hope that the market will notice and beat a path to your door.

You’d think that this approach would not work as people simply buy what advertised to them strongly enough (i.e. Windows). It doesn’t matter if it’s an inferior product, there is a hugely strong ‘herd’ instinct in buying all high-tech products where a degree of knowledge is required to make an informed purchase. Most people lack the courage to go against the flow. Everybody else chooses this computer, so it must be right. It’s tragic I know, but Apple has something else up their sleeve that backs up this production orientated approach (hardware) and that’s SOFTWARE and it’s effective.

Let me impart a story that shows how it’s effective.

A work colleague of mine has used PC all his life. He’s never come across a Macintosh at all. His opinion is like most PC users – indifference, he’s no power user. He’s never used a Mac, doesn’t see what all the fuss is about and doesn’t have an opinion either way.

Anyway, this colleague was brought into my design department in order to help out with some simple graphics work. After a hasty crash course in Quark Xpress & InDesign, he’s pretty well up to speed, and has helped a great deal in the more mundane work in the studio.

After showing him the obvious, (such as how to do forward deletes, where all the applications are in the dock, the menubar is always at the top of the screen etc.), he, like most Mac newbies has picked up the Mac basics pretty quickly, and it’s been interesting to see a virgin Mac user up close, going through some of the trials & tribulations that most new switchers must go through.

It has taken him about 3-4 weeks to realise he can experiment with his system without breaking it. It’s taken him about 3-4 weeks to suddenly realise that his computer hasn’t crashed or frozen. It’s taken him about 3-4 weeks to realise that all the viruses we get sent via our company-wide emails don’t affect his computer at all. It’s taken him about 3-4 weeks to suddenly realise that he’s had no problems printing. I could go on, but you get the picture.

I first saw the glimmers of a switcher when he saw my iBook, which I bring into work. He asked the price, he asked what it could do, whether it could run Office, Adobe CS etc.

One day he brought in a DVD. This DVD was a DVD that a local company had created showing a wedding that a member of his family had attended. He wanted to know whether it could be copied as the company that created it was going to charge £200 for this, on top of the £1000 it took to create it.

His father (who owns his own PC-based photography business), had tried to copy it, but to no avail, and he said that it looked like ‘one of those Mac-DVD’s’. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that but I took a look at it.

Straight away I realised that it was created in iDVD. It used the ‘flowing curtains’ effect and looked really impressive to the layman. I realised that it was OK, but certainly didn’t push iDVD at all in the effects department, and was quite amateurish actually.

I pointed this out and showed my colleague iDVD. He was stunned. “So this DVD was created using software that comes free with all Mac’s?” he said. I answered in the positive. It turns out that his father had seen this DVD, and wanted a slice of this business. He had looked around for a PC-based program that could do this, but to no avail.

I left my colleague with this information and thought no more of it until a few weeks later when I was asked by my work colleague which Mac I would recommend to create these sort of wedding DVD’s. I gave a few suggestions and now his father is the proud owner of a top of the range iMac G5, with DVD Studio Pro. It doesn’t stop there however.

All this happened about 6-12 months ago, and at this point he has all but transferred his entire business over to Mac’s, and guess what gave him the final impetus to switch totally? it’s Apeture, the latest software from Apple that’s directly targeted at his sort of business.

And what of my work colleague? Well he’s just offered to buy my iBook from me for a very good price. It means I can replace this iBook with a brand new one for a couple of hundred pounds.

So there you have it. The reasons for these 2 PC-users switching were exposure to the hardware (my work colleague), and exposure to the software (his father). This approach by Apple is an approach that is unique in the computer industry and I can tell you now that it IS working.

Mactel… this changes everything…

Apple dropping the PPC platform and embracing Intel chips shocked a great number of people, and for several, quite different reasons.

Some people expected it all along. The Marklar project was one of the most talked about rumours for years, and although when you thought it through it did make sense, (Apple would have been very foolish not to have had this as a back-up plan), it still surprised numerous respected Apple commentators.

Next, (which is the OS that Mac OS X was based upon), was originally coded for Intel. Xcode is built from the ground up to be platform independent, (a simple tick box compiles you code for PPC or Intel) and Apple have been encouraging developers to embrace Xcode for years.

With these points in mind, in my opinion, Steve Jobs has been planning this ever since he came back to Apple. I think though that the failure of the PPC platform surprised even him. Failure? Yes that is a harsh word, but in terms of what matters, (i.e. consumer perception of your product), the PPC platform has been holding Apple back for years.

Yes, there are great things coming from IBM (apparently), but if the latest dual core chips are anything to go by, then all the old problems remain. We now have a dual core chip that is actually slower (in GHz terms) than the previous version. Yes I know it is faster in real terms, but try telling that to Joe Public. The portable version of this chip is non existent. Freescale just cannot deliver. Look at the latest offering for the Powerbook’s. For the very first time in the Powerbook’s history, there is NO speed increase in the latest refresh.

Freescale may have upped the speed a little if Apple had not announced the move to Intel, but I doubt it would have been by much.

No, what matters is speed & production volumes. IBM & Freescale do not have this and never will. Your only option is Intel and their roadmap looks very exciting indeed. Their speed increases look very impressive (especially for the laptops), and Apple will never have to worry about production volumes ever again.

One aspect of Apple that has astounded me, is that they cannot get their products produced quickly enough, there is always a holdup in getting chips from IBM, and they just cannot ramp up production quickly enough. Imagine how many sales have been lost due to this one annoying bottleneck. Imagine the lost sales and subsequent lost market share increase.

So, you can argue forever the finer points of IBM chips versus Intel chips, but it will happen anyway, we are all moving to Intel, and it looks like the transition will be swift and relatively painless now that Apple have decent emulation for the legacy PPC chip.

But the ramifications of this transition have not really been realised yet. Broadly speaking, is this positive or negative news for the Mac? Well I think it’s positive, very positive.

When Apple’s transition is complete and the whole product line has moved over to Intel and all major applications have been converted you will effectively have Apple branded hardware that comes installed with Mac OSX, all wrapped up in some sort of DRM that will make it difficult to transfer this OS to a standard Intel box.

You can purchase it as a normal Mac and not even realise that the chip inside is different.

You could if you wanted install either Linux or Windows on this Apple hardware and simply run it as you old Windows PC if you want, Apple will not prevent you (but they won’t support you either).

This isn’t as bad as it sounds because remember, it makes no difference what OS your running on this Mactel, the market share numbers will regsiter a Mac sale. I guarantee that a great number of Windows users will do this straight away (as I bet that the hardware will be very competitively priced) and Apple’s market share will skyrocket, even though a significant number of users will install Windows on it.

This will continue for a while until you have a situation where a large number of Windows users have hardware that is capable of running Mac OS X. All you then need to do to make these Windows users switch to the Mac, is convince them to move to the Mac partition – for free. This is much easier than it was before because there is no need to purchase new hardware or software.

But what will be the carrot to lure them to move to the Mac partition for good? One word – software.

This is why Apple has been beefing up its Applications Division since Steve Jobs took over. Apple make the best set of applications – bar none. the iLife suite, and their collection of Pro Apps are best of breed and will never be released for Windows.

This will encourage Windows users to come over, but the thing that will totally convince them is Office. Apple will either bundle Office with the Mactel’s or they will adapt Appleworks, cross it with the open source version of Office and bundle that for free.

And where is Microsoft in all this? Well they’ll be happy because they still get the OS sale and the Office sale (less happy if Apple release an Office competitor), but I’d worry more about Dell, HP & other hardware manufacturer’s. They are not in a very good position for future growth. Why would anyone buy their products when you can get similar priced hardware from Apple that runs more OS’s, more best of breed applications, looks better and is more reliable?

I look forward to the transition being complete and 5 years from now, the tech industry will look totally different. This really does change everything.

Keeping IT under control…

About a decade ago I made a decision that changed my working life. No, I didn’t choose the Macintosh; that decision came almost a decade earlier, and has been a choice that has richly coloured my life ever since.

No, the decision that changed my life for a second time was to move away from the more traditional feeding grounds of the Mac, such a advertising agencies, printers & imagesetting bureaux, and towards areas where the Mac was making inroads into larger, Wintel-based companies.

After the slow-down that hit the UK advertising industry in the mid-nineties, I decided that I couldn’t base my career around such a unpredictable & volatile industry, where losing one client could mean the company cutting it’s wage bill in half.

I took a job working for an ‘in-house’ studio, as part of a larger PC-based organisation, and in the following years I have worked for several companies, but all of them have followed this ethos. By and large, this working environment is much more agreeable, and has allowed me to relax and plan a future for myself and my family.

I say agreeable, but there has been one aspect of this arrangement that has proved irksome – IT departments.

I have many a horror story to tell of my dealings with stubborn Windows Managers, too many to go into here, but I must make a clear distinction of who I am talking about. By Windows Managers I am talking about people in a business setting who have had no contact with the Macintosh or Mac-people whatsoever, and whose only reference to Macintosh are the odd sarcastic article in PC magazines. I in no way refer to the countless numbers of Macintosh IT Managers who in my experience do an excellent job of managing Macintosh & Windows based networks.

I always gave Windows Managers the benefit of the doubt, thinking that the Mac-hating attitude that they’d so often dish out was simply an isolated incident, and didn’t reflect the wider opinion of IT professionals and Network Managers. However, having looked back over 3 or 4 separate companies of which I have worked for, and the opinions and attitudes of the IT staff therein, I’m beginning to see a pattern.

When a particular company first decides that it makes business-sense to bring their design & repro in-house, they are at a loss as how to approach it. What tends to happen is they bypass the usual avenues for buying IT equipment, i.e. they don’t approach their IT department. They ask their current provider for advice, be it a design house, printer or consultant. They will recommend the industry-standard – the Apple Macintosh. Then recruitment begins, and it’s usually these recruits that set the whole studio up. As you know, the Mac’s so straightforward, this is just a matter of a couple of days.

Then the problems start. Usually you need some information from IT, in order for the Mac to integrate into the PC-network. IP addresses, SMB printer file-paths, email, internet, proxy settings, the list goes on and on, and it’s here where I usually hit a brick wall, (with a Windows logo on it).

What follows are endless arguments, one-sided discussions and vitriol on their opinion of the Macintosh, which I try my best to avoid getting involved in. This exact scenario has happened on more than one occasion, and it begs me to ask the question, ‘why?’, and I think I have an answer.

The reasons for this are quite simple, and in the UK at least (which has to be the anti-Mac world-capital) it seems to be hard-wired into these people. They have spent their entire working lives keeping Windows stable and operational. They know nothing else. Most don’t even know that the Macintosh exists, and of those that do, they would never contemplate recommending them, and thought that in their working lives at least, they’d never have to go near one.

IT underpins businesses of all kinds; the bigger the business, the more powerful they become. Company Directors become slaves to their IT departments, and they slowly begin to lose control of the company that they run. All business decisions at some point must be run through IT, if IT thinks it’s a bad idea then it won’t happen.

Slowly but surely, this power starts to go to their heads. When Windows decides that it’s not going to work, whole companies grind to a halt. Then a multitude of IT staff crawl out of the woodwork like ants, swarming over each computer, re-setting it all up, while the company is paralysed, losing money every second. On asking what has gone wrong, or how long will it take until things start working again, you at worst get a mumbled grunt, or at best get a cacophony of gibberish of what has happened. They feel powerful, wanted and they are in control. How many times has this occurred in your company?

Occasionally, amongst all of this chaos sits a lone Macintosh studio. A simple set-up, just four or five Mac’s, monitors (colour managed), fast colour laser printer, slower colour accurate proofer, scanners, tape-back up and maybe a small server, with a smattering of external hard drives & digital cameras. It works, all the time. No down-time, no glitches, no errors (at least none that cost money). When the Windows server goes down, the Mac-studio continues without a hiccup. You even get other people in the office coming to you to print their Word, Excel or Powerpoint files for them, because the Windows network isn’t working or their printer keeps eating their jobs. To make matters worse for IT, Mac staff (horror of horrors!) also know how to install applications, they know how to troubleshoot printing problems, manage their fonts and their systems, and what’s worse; they are allowed to!

IT staff feel impotent, unwanted and not in control in Mac-situations. They just don’t ‘get’ the Mac, and why should they? If they did they’d realise they’d be out of work. Had they
been involved at the out-set, Mac’s wouldn’t have been allowed in the company. A standard Wintel-box would be recommended, just like the accounts department. They might not understand reprographics, but they do know what’s best for the company that they control. They make the fatal mistake of assuming because they know computers in a business setting, this somehow gives them an insight into computing for specialised industries. They don’t like the idea that somebody in the company knows more about computers than they do, or has a more powerful computer than the Windows Manager – this gives them cold sweats in the middle of the night.

‘Colour-management’, they’d say ‘what do you need that for?’

‘Back-up?’ they’d retort, ‘you don’t have to worry about it.’ (Until you need a file that you’ve accidentally deleted, and you have to wait days to get it back because they’re too busy).

‘Colour-proofing? Use the companies colour-laser like the other 400 staff have to.’

‘Server? What do you need that for? use this soulless Wintel box like everyone else.’
I once even had a Windows Manager state that the studio shouldn’t be allowed to accept files from outside the company, in case they contained a virus! Having then pointed out that this was the way the department made money, by printing clients files, he quickly relented.

It all boils down to one word, ‘CONTROL’. They control the company, anything that jeopardises this cannot be allowed to happen. The Macintosh suddenly introduces a variable in the company they have no jurisdiction over.

All of this may sound extreme, and I expect a lot of you, even Mac users, & especially in the US, will say that this diatribe is a load of biased rubbish. But things are very different here in the UK. Getting an Apple Mac into a company that isn’t graphics oriented is near impossible. Anti-Mac bias is all around you, on the TV, (the BBC is the worst), newspapers, (IT specials regularly trash the Mac), in computer stores, (PC-World staff have to be seen to be believed), banks, (try online-banking and you’ll be amazed at how you’re treated as a paying customer), and even the government, (try to fill out on-line tax forms).

If Apple want to succeed in the UK, they need to approach things very differently here. My experience is to bypass IT completely, you haven’t a hope in selling to them. Concentrate on the real people who run the company, the Directors. In my experience they just want the best solution to the problem, and in the area of reprographics that will always be the Macintosh.