Kawaspammy

A couple of days ago, I tweeted: “…is debating whether or not to keep Guy Kawasaki’s tweets. Interesting bits but kinda spammy. Like a crowded flea market on a hectic weekend.“

I had figured that if GK had searchbots monitoring the Twitterverse, he might pick that up. And he did: “@anguswong how about PBS with Telethons. And there is no spam in my tweets. You opted in to follow.“

To which I replied: “@guykawasaki Agree; that’s why I said kinda. Your content still winning but I’m not the competition so don’t want to be driven crazy :-)“

Now, for the record, I agree that his tweets are not spam. And I did opt-in. It’s just that there’s so many updates from him. My flea market simile was meant to convey the concept of intermittently finding nuggets of useful stuff among a vast array of goods, and that’s what I’m seeing with Guy Kawasaki’s tweets. But there’s also the barrage factor. To use an overused image: Drinking from a firehose.

Then again, it’s all relative. I’ve also been accused of sending “spam” via email to family and friends, even though all of those “FYI” emails contained useful (and sometimes critical) information. And my recipients didn’t even opt-in. I guess they didn’t opt-out either.

So I’m thinking, maybe there should be a word to describe this kind of “communication.” It’s not exactly spam, but it’s “kinda spammy.” And guess what, my Japanese friends tell me “kawa” means “river” in Japanese. How cool is that?

So, folks:

Kawaspammy –Describing non-spam communication that is actually useful (and even highly useful), but comes at you like a torrential river.

(I sure hope Guy isn’t offended by this. I don’t mean it to be at all, but if he is, I’ll have to see how offended and try to convince him that it’s actually positive coverage for his “over the top” alltop.com viral marketing.)

Maybe not so Power-ful?

I just finished checking out power.com and am not too impressed. It looks to primarily give “Alt+Tab” functionality to people with multiple social networks. While that aggregation function is a “kinda” killer app, per se, I don’t see much staying power (pardon the pun). The domain name might be worth quite a bit though.

Facebook should just buy it out and take whatever I.P. it owns so as to reduce (delay?) the commoditization of its peering (and, let’s face it, identity) database.

Maybe I didn’t look closely enough, but if power.com had cross-posting functionality (not just message friends but update status, URLs, and all such user content) and the ability to intelligently identify relationships across multiple accounts (e.g., that you might know someone on a certain network because you are related to some folks on two other networks), now that would impress me.

Secret iPhone tricks

Ever since Steve Jobs raised the bar for executive keynotes, I haven’t really bothered to RTFM for any of Apple’s products (two exceptions being Final Cut Express and the iPhone SDK). So I’ve been happily amused to discover two iPhone tricks on my own.

The first, which I submitted to the TipBITS sidebar on TidBITS, is the iPhone screen capture button combo:

“Press the Home button and Power button briefly at the same time, and an image of your screen will be saved to the Photos app…”

(search for “iphone screen capture” on the TidBITS website).

Another trick is declining incoming calls when your iPhone screen is locked. As you probably know, when the screen is locked and your iPhone is ringing (“Ring, ring!”), it appears as if you can only slide to unlock, and thus answer. But pressing the Power button twice will actually decline the call!

Usually this will just send the caller to your voicemail, but if you’re on a GSM network that supports standard * commands, you can use the *67* redirect option to route your incoming call to a landline.

If you’re not sure how that works, feel free to leave a comment and I will clarify, or try Googling for an explanation of GSM * commands

Opportunity Observed (for iPhone)

Apple has been rolling out its worldwide iPhone Tech Talks tour. After attending one of them, I’ve come away with an idea for a compelling iPhone enterprise app that so far has no viable competitor. There are two products on the market right now that attempt to address the demand but they do not do a proper job, nor IMHO are priced correctly. I am in the midst of looking for a programmer to partner with on this project, otherwise I’ll have to roll up my sleeves and program this myself (which will take ages, as I’m rusty at this level of hands-on coding).

(Of course, to derust myself, nothing beats doing the actual coding, but my current forte is at a higher level of granularity and time is probably of the essence.)

Storm to blow over

I was interested to read about the new BlackBerry “Storm” until I came to its wireless specs and saw that it doesn’t have Wi-Fi. WTF?! Do they really think they are leapfrogging the way the first Mac didn’t have 5.25″ floppies, or the iMac only had USB? I think that’s a pretty big gotcha!

(NEXT!)

Microsoft, Revisited

(This article originally appeared in the August 2008 issue of ATPM)

The Microsoft marketing team is on the war path to clean up “misconceptions” about Vista, with a massive advertising campaign reputedly gunning for Apple’s fabulous “I’m a Mac” series. Well, I say, more power to the Redmond team. Really. If Microsoft has great products, then the world should know, and I say that without sarcasm.

I’m always amused by the propensity of (some) Windows users to simplistically label me a “Mac fan,” as if my choice of platform has less to do with technical practicalities than ethereal trivialities such as peer group identity or chromatic preference. Honestly, my criteria are much simpler than all that: the tools just shouldn’t suck. Now, I know that outside of BBEdit (if I recall, the original “It doesn’t suck” product) great tools might be hard to come by, but somehow there seems a greater number of them on the Mac than Windows, including the Mac platform itself.

This is not to say that I’d neglect to give credit where it’s due. Indeed, I am going to take a break this month from my usual pastime of conjuring up irreverent phrases to annoy the heck out of Microsoft staffers (which by doing so, I entertain myself and, hopefully, many readers). For this particular installment of my textual creativity, I would like instead to highlight choice offerings from Redmond that I’d be proud to be seen using. (The Zune isn’t one of them.)

To start, let’s look at something my fiancée says I spend way too much time with: the Xbox 360. Yes, we know that the Xbox franchise probably would not have gotten as good a start as it did without Halo. And we all know where Halo hailed from: Bungie, originally a Mac-only developer. But we should not discount the very real possibility that the Xbox would have eventually become quite successful even without Halo, primarily because Microsoft can leverage its extensive experience and working relationships with highly talented Windows game developers.

Another thing Microsoft did right was the Xbox Live service. The Xbox Live infrastructure successfully enabled for the first time a highly convenient, easily accessible virtual universe of like-minded gamers, in the comfort of our collective TV rooms. No longer do we need to scour esoteric chat groups to locate other players for our choice of poison. Just turn on the box and go. (Good luck to Sony trying to replicate that experience for the PlayStation 3. That company hasn’t exactly been on top of any of its games, pun intended, in recent years.) Microsoft now has a strong position from which to battle the Wii, the PlayStation 3, and the Apple TV.

But the world’s largest software vendor is not best loved (or despised) for its gaming console. The Windows franchise is immensely more significant and profitable than Redmond’s entire entertainment division. So it is astounding that Microsoft managed to screw up the Vista roll-out so badly. In fact, it is precisely because of Vista’s poor reception that I find myself so impressed by Microsoft Office 2007. Not Office 2008 for the Mac, mind you, but Office 2007 for Windows.

Yes, folks, I am actually saying that I like Office 2007 and even dare to think it’s still the only serious office suite for the enterprise market, iWork included. And the reason for my opinion goes beyond just the newfangled user interface, but let’s talk about that for now. The Microsoft Office team has given Office 2007 a spectacular “geek makeover,” and it works for me. Take Word, for example. Even though there’s still Microsoft’s legendary feature bloat, Word 2007 is the first version of the program since Word 5.1 (released in 1992) that I’ve been excited about. The scribe sharing my corporeal footprint is very discerning about writing tools, and Word 2007 makes me actually happy to use the program and almost forget that I am on Windows (that part I am still unhappy about). In fact, I feel the user interface improvements of Office 2007 have achieved the rare combination of being both functionally efficient and aesthetically pleasing; the same sweet spot that we love the Mac OS for hitting. Office 2007 is ergonomically better than its predecessors and meets (or exceeds) human interface improvements by alternatives.

But the real pièce de résistance is OneNote 2007. I can almost hear the screams of NoteTaker and NoteBook fans that OneNote isn’t that much different from their choice of note-taking software. I agree, but Microsoft has nicely integrated OneNote 2007 functionality into the rest of the suite, and even with Internet Explorer, so capturing notes is quite seamless and convenient. OneNote 2007 shares the ergonomic refinements of the rest of the suite and has become my information-capturing tool of choice. That’s saying quite a lot, for someone who is so gung-ho about the Mac platform, and to be honest I wish I could use all of this on the Mac, rather than put my data at risk on Windows.

Which leads me to a very important point: To use this stuff, I need to run Windows. It’s the old “killer app” battlefield again. It’s the same reason Microsoft spent so much cash and time offing Netscape. It’s the same reason the Java wars were (are?) waged. If you own the user experience, you own the rest of the pie. But wait, there’s more.

Office 2007 is the only version of Office that gives me seamless, reliable compatibility with any older Microsoft office document format. This is the most important takeaway here. Even though it natively uses the highly controversial Microsoft Open Office XML format, you can set Office 2007 to default to the older Office 97–2003 format. For better or (probably) worse, the reality is Microsoft has a hard lock on the most ubiquitous business file formats in the world (except PDF).

I have not seen seamless compatibility with Microsoft office files with iWork (despite Apple’s claims), OpenOffice.org, or even the Mac’s Office 2008. While those alternative suites generally are able to load files from Word and Excel (and, to a lesser extent, PowerPoint), from what I’ve experienced, there are oftentimes spurious formatting problems that make the transition less than perfect between the platforms and tools. That might be acceptable for personal or academic documents (or environments where you do not exchange files with Microsoft Office users), but it’s a deal breaker for the business world. I wouldn’t, for instance, want an extra carriage return somewhere in an official press release, or a misaligned caption on a product’s datasheet.

So while Apple has been winning numerous battles against the old regime in the “Computing World War Two” of recent years, I feel this is a key area that has yet to be seriously contested. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been quite adept at defending its turf, as can be witnessed by its victory with the OOXML specification.

Ideally, we would be free of proprietary format and protocol locks on our data (including the rendering of the raw data), and be able to choose front-end tools based on their independent merits. But for the time being, Microsoft has a stronghold in the enterprise and can probably withstand a very long siege, even with a growing population of Macintosh hardware clients (which can’t completely get away from running Windows).

As for Web 2.0-based Google tools and iPhone-Exchange interoperability, Microsoft still has a weapon-of-mass-deployment with the Office suite, and seems to be so focused on honing this advantage that the company’s actually produced a quality product, impressing even moi! Microsoft knows that so long as it owns this area, it can always recapture lost ground. I don’t know what Microsoft’s done with its development teams in recent years, but if it could apply the same level of kaizen it had with the Xbox 360 and Office 2007, to its other offerings, maybe many of us would be less unhappy about its dominance of the computing landscape.

As it stands, the saga has yet to play out. That’s the nature of world wars.

http://www.atpm.com/14.08/apple-talk.shtml

Anxious Androids

Some folks are trying to pick a winner between Android and iPhone, but it’s pretty myopic to think the world market isn’t big enough for both. Different segments anyway. Tinkering geeks on the one hand and mainstream hipsters on the other. Maybe a third category for folks-who-don’t-care-either-way. Besides, isn’t it blindingly obvious that GOOG and AAPL are probably even more buddy-buddy than MSFT and INTC ever were, and that they both have the same entity in their crosshairs? While this entertaining bit of indirection is going on, I think the folks who really should be worried are the cell phone manufacturers. It’s funny to see them race each other getting Android kit to market. Not sure they are going to like the post-race party. It’s going to resemble the history of the computer sector, with a two- or three-horse race between OEMs selling basically the same boring hardware and trying to one-up each other with different shades of lipstick and blush. Instead of “value add,” think “slim margins.” You can also throw the word “attrition” into the mix.

New Article: Bedding down with a MacBook Air

I ordered my MacBook Air almost immediately after watching the Macworld Expo keynote in January. I’d been waiting ages for a lightweight computer that would lighten my backpack. I wasn’t happy with any of the super-portable alternatives I’d toyed with before - including trying to work on business documents using only a Treo and a full-sized Bluetooth keyboard.

http://db.tidbits.com/article/9499

iPhone landgrab (updated)

The iPhone landgrab should be happening RFN. Any serious mobile platform developer had better grab the SDK (good luck though; the URL Apple sent me doesn’t work. I suspect servers are overloaded) and start tinkering away so product is ready by June. In particular, all the PalmOS-based folks with great Palm apps had better take time off from the day job to code, if they want to be front of the line so they can make a “first mover” impression on the target market before the signal-to-noise ratio gets out of control (probably already there).

[Update: Looks like Apple's keeping the developer party tight. Well, if every line of source code needs to be vetted, then of course resources are going to be very constrained leading up to June's "iPhone app parade."]

Microsoft About Face?

Microsoft made a “bombshell” announcement:

To enhance connections with third-party products, Microsoft will publish on its Web site documentation for all application programming interfaces (APIs) and communications protocols in its high-volume products that are used by other Microsoft products. Developers do not need to take a license or pay a royalty or other fee to access this information.

Yet here’s the take from the European Commission:

Nonetheless, the Commission notes that today’s announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7257411.stm

Acid tests: Standards-based Web browsers rendering any Web page that Internet Explorer can, ActiveX included; and patents - not just API descriptors - being released into public domain.

New Article: Trade Show

(This article originally appeared in the February 2008 issue of ATPM)

The more things change, the more they stay the same. At Macworld Expo, the event that the rest of the world calls the annual gathering for the Cult of the Mac, Steve Jobs unveils what Apple has been hiding, and the world celebrates by drawing lines in the sand.

We’ve come a long way since January 7th, 1997, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple. Wall Street commemorated the momentous occasion by closing AAPL at $4.375, down from $4.4675 the day before. Obviously, the financial analysts weren’t impressed by this move. Not very many of them were raising price targets like they have been doing in recent years.

Warp to January 15th, 2008. Steve Jobs announces, among other things, the MacBook Air, Time Capsule, iTunes movie rentals, and added iPhone and iPod touch functionality. AAPL closes at $169.04, down from $177.72 at the open. Certain media “pundits” complain about “lackluster” announcements and the absence of iPod growth numbers. PC users slam the MacBook Air, pointing to underpowered specifications.

So what else is new?

OK, so the current price of AAPL probably has more to do with the overall market malaise concerning subprime mortgage issues and recession probabilities than any specific news item from Steve Jobs’s keynote. But increasingly, a new digital divide is becoming apparent: those who have a clue about Apple, and those who wannahave. Long-time Apple watchers will understand when I say that Apple is not conducive to superficial analysis. It’s true that you have to be somewhat of an “Apple follower” to keep track of the company, not so much in the sense of blind-faith that the clueless keep accusing us of, but in the manner of buying and using Apple products over the years, and observing how various personalities and policies influence Apple’s direction at key turning points.

Because Apple is such a hot news item these days, lots of people are writing about the company. It almost seems not to matter that the analysis is wrong, only that hot Apple-related keywords are included so that the publications get reader traffic, and financial analysts get paid for “saying stuff.” To be fair, there are also many good writers and analysts out there, but for this month’s article I wanted to do a little exercise and see if we can’t get away with being a clueless analyst. You can also try this at home with family and friends. Let’s begin:

To start, I’m thinking we should completely dispense with what we honestly think. Since the objective is just to spew out controversy and get read, it’s better to be all negative. It’s easy to be negative. Like Sam Rayburn said, “Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.”

So, here’s how I really feel:

• The MacBook Air could be the hottest computing item of 2008. So hot that, in fact, I bought one (really!). I expect long wait times ahead in the next batch. The key thing about an ultraportable is not so much its size but its weight (in my opinion). If I am happy carrying around a small stack of paper (and I often do), then the MacBook Air should be no problem. It’s not for Final Cut Studio. Just lightweight business and daily tasks.
• iTunes movie rentals are the killer application for the Apple TV. This is so obvious I feel embarrassed to even mention it. I expect Apple TV sales to start taking off now, limited primarily by HDTV penetration but the prices of the latter consumer item are coming down and becoming increasingly affordable. Decoupling Apple TV from a Mac is genius. Think how many iPod owners use the device with a PC.
• Time Capsule is a great idea, but I need to be sure its wireless storage mechanism is flawless before I give it five stars. It seems expensive, but actually pricing is very good, considering everything you get with it.
• The iPod touch and the iPhone are set to keep morphing into the silver bullet gunning RIM and Palm. RIM is really going to feel the heat and Palm is already as good as dead.

And since we’re going negative, we need to take these four points and turn them around, even if we don’t actually believe any of the following crap that I just made up:

• The MacBook Air is a dead-on-arrival dud. Its screen is too large and the specs are too wimpy. While Apple has been doing well in the higher-end notebook segments, it is missing a great opportunity in the subnotebook segment. Executives will prefer the ultraportable form factor of a smaller computer with the familiarity of Microsoft Outlook on Windows.
• There is still no compelling story for the Apple TV. It remains an interesting Apple experiment and won’t sell beyond a constrained group of early adopters who buy anything with an Apple label on it. People who can’t wait to watch a movie will go to the cinema. Those who want to watch it at home will buy it on the day of the DVD release, not wait 30 days. Finally, those who are sufficiently savvy to hook up and configure an Apple TV and muck around with digital video formats will just as likely get their fix from BitTorrent and watch the show on their PC.
• Time Capsule is a solution looking for a problem. It is overpriced for what it offers. Other vendors are giving the market much more affordable 802.11n gear, and very few home users need gigabit Ethernet. If they are using “n” then why would they bother with wired LAN? Wireless storage is also reported flaky and unreliable by users.
• Apple’s upcoming SDK and the enhancements mentioned at Macworld for the iPhone and iPod touch are gimmicky. The real market is the enterprise, and executives are extremely happy with their BlackBerry devices. Microsoft will never make it easy for Apple to connect to Exchange, which is the cornerstone of enterprise e-mail.

So, what do you think? Good enough? I hope I sounded fairly professional and critical. It’s so easy to slam things.

Now, to wrap up the negative piece, we need to say something bad about Apple in general. So we need to pick some low-hanging fruit. A cheap shot, if you will. How about sales numbers? It’s always easy to go negative on sales numbers. Much harder to go out on a limb and be bullish. So, just scramble together some more crap and we get the following:

• While the iPod has been a major (even primary) catalyst for Apple earnings growth, it is becoming evident to this analyst/writer/blogger/paid shill that the market is at risk of being saturated and growth acceleration is not likely to sustain. With unimpressive product announcements from Macworld Expo, our/my/my dog’s near-term outlook for Apple is unclear.

Translation: A lot of people have bought iPods (duh!). Saying something is “at risk” is saying nothing (markets are always “at risk” of something), and besides, who really knows what the saturation point is? We are not talking copper sulfate in chemistry class. And as for outlook, we have no idea how these new products will do in the market (duh!).

So, whaddya think? Good enough to sound like we got a clue, when we actually don’t?

http://www.atpm.com/14.02/apple-talk.shtml

New Zeitgeist - the Tech Bubble song

I hardly ever post stuff outside of AAPL on this blog, but… I feel this is highly relevant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I

Hear them Roar

On Jan 25, I wrote, “I am truly intrigued by the Apple zeitgeist today. Something is definitely afoot with all this negativity.”

So since Earnings, cyberspace has been increasingly “volatile” with messages from furious AAPL investors holding tanked stock. They (probably very rightly so) are blaming clueless analysts for being, well, clueless, and yet holding such influential sway.

Well, I hope these AAPL investors will enjoy reading what I wrote, shortly after Macworld, for the upcoming issue of ATPM. Stay tuned on that channel or subscribe by email.

In the meantime, the philosophical question of the day is, does the tail wag the dog? That is to say, did the stock tank first and then negative articles arose? I suspect that while many “pundits” really are clueless, not all seemingly-clueless pundits actually are, despite their written words.

In any event, arguing with the market is akin to shaking a fist at the clouds.

Bear Year Aware

Looks like people might really have gotten mega-burned trying to game AAPL this month, expecting that either/both Macworld and Earnings will pop the stock. This year, that didn’t happen.

While it’s impossible to predict stock movements, it’s possible to ascertain probabilities (to a limited extent; just ask LTCM). So while I didn’t make a ton of cash betting AAPL will tank, I at least lucked out enough to not bet on a rally. The challenge now is to game my prognosis, which is increasingly bearish. Everything I am reading points to bearish media sentiment. True believer AAPL permabulls might hold onto the stock (for dear life?) until the storm blows over, but weaker hands could possibly let go as we enter a dreary year. If anything, the market could consider short term rally attempts as merely profit-taking/escape hatch opportunities. I hope not, but I don’t dare argue with stronger market players; this isn’t an RFC. It will be fun if the “amateur collective” builds sufficient steam to overcome Wall Street forces, but as mentioned above, I think batteries are dead in that department and in dire need of trickle recharging (probably until April, is my guess).

It can be frustrating that stocks do not necessarily react (at least in the short- and medium-terms) to business fundamentals. Movements might resemble more of a combination of emotion and back-end “business dynamics” (by the latter, I mean profit opportunities for market makers, hedge funds and other financial sector entities; this is their home court after all). It took me years and many losses to learn that lesson, which is why I have been more of a sentiment analysis trader in recent years (in my opinion, the only logical strategy, considering both fundamental analysis and technical analysis ultimately attempt to ascertain a single factor: upcoming sentiment).

Asia (Shanghai down more than 7%) and Europe look dismal today. We are closing off January in a couple more days. “As goes January, so goes the year.”

My updated thesis is that AAPL will become the proverbial Slope of Hope (primarily driven by permabulls) and the beaten-down Financials are set to climb the Wall of Worry, in light of oversold accumulation and increasing credit liquidity (which, ironically, is what got us to this whole carnage in the first place. Didn’t I already mention the illogic of it all?).

If AAPL rallies soon, wonderful. If not, no surprises.

The new Apple zeitgeist

I am truly intrigued by the Apple zeitgeist today. Something is definitely afoot with all this negativity.

1.4 million missing iPhones

1.4 million is the number of iPhones that some people are wondering about. Apparently, available numbers don’t jive with Jobs’s statement about 4 million sold. I think this can be explained by the “global economy.” 1.4 million can easily be accounted for by what looks to me like numerous grey-market unlocked/hacked iPhones outside the official markets. In some major Asian cities for example, it is possible to see iPhones on subways, buses, sidewalks, malls, and offices. To count the number of unlocked iPhone owners that I personally know, who are not living in the official markets, I need pen and paper, not to mention iPhone owners who are just friends of friends.

Add in Europe, South America, Canada, and all the iPhone unlockers even in the official markets, and 1.4 million doesn’t seem that hard to explain. To underestimate Apple’s global impact and reach is myopic.

[Update: Analyst retraction]

NEC 42″ Curved Screen

I like! Great for trading!

[From AppleInsider photo gallery.]

Obtaining an MBA

More than a few friends have already been asking me about getting an MBA. They couldn’t believe I ordered one so quickly.

I gave them my take: That I reckon the MacBook Air is going to be the hottest computing item of 2008 and may well spur AAPL’s next earnings report.

For the upcoming one on Tuesday though, I could be wrong but I have a strange feeling about it not spiking AAPL this time around. I do hope this sense of paranoia is for nought but I am going to position - on a speculative short-term play - for a sudden discount, considering the general market malaise.

3 Weeks!

I was told the MacBook Air is going to take the whole 3 weeks before Apple even starts shipping it! Darn.

Ahead of Tuesday (again)

So the guys who didn’t get burned enough on Tuesday this week are likely to game Tuesday next week, for AAPL earnings.

Even if earnings blow away mainstream estimates, what’s not certain is the macro tornado swirling all around.

Having a picnic in the middle of a minefield is not… a picnic.

Just bought a MacBook Air (Apple online store)

Boom!

I hope that gets me close to front of the line. I expect these things to have seriously long wait-times in a few more months as the early adopters take them around town and people see them in action.

2 to 3 weeks BTO. I took the 1.8 GHz CPU and 80 Gig hard disk. The SSD was very attractive but, quite a bit much for me (heck, I had to skimp somewhere! Market’s down fer chrissake!)

A Bomb of a Bombshell

Well there you have it folks. Fantastic new superlightweight notebook; fantastic plummet. AAPL is around 163 now (whaddya I tell ya!) in after-market trading. Citi’s results didn’t help.

However, what a keynote! Woot!

New Article: “Think Different.”

Just to start things off this month, I feel obliged to remind everyone that, yes, the Zune is still being sold in stores. Anyway, it’s only been a year or so, and we can’t expect it to die off so quickly. After all, Windows CE is still around, having transmogrified into various mutations including the most recent Windows Mobile (append year of beta testing) manifestation. The Zune is assuredly being kicked in the ass by the iPod but, as with other blattodea, is probably still going to be around for a while longer.

Now, I know, I know, it is entirely unfair to compare the Zune with the iPod. After all, Microsoft is not targeting the same demographics with the Zune. While the iPod was designed for, well, everyone, it appears the Zune was made for Microsoft staffers. OK, so not all of them use the Zune, but internal market-share numbers at Microsoft are very impressive. I can almost guarantee that the iPod holds only a niche position within that sliver of a slice of a segment of the world market, and that’s even including the iPods in the disposal bins around campus. So stop comparing apples and orangutans. These are totally separate market segments.

Now, another comparison people like to make is between Vista and Leopard. Doh! Hello, people? When will you learn? Comparing what is essentially Windows NT 2006 with what is essentially Mac OS X 10.5 is just ridiculous. As I mentioned before, the whole point of Leopard is to make computing faster, easier, more productive, and safer for humanity. Vista, on the other hand, is Microsoft helping to pass on that message to the market. It’s all done very subtly. There won’t be a “Go buy a Mac” sticker on the Vista box, but it’s pretty much saying that without being overtly direct. With its big footprint on the computing industry, Microsoft simply cannot be seen in “collusion” with Apple to expand OS X market share. Forget antitrust regulations—the Microsoft shareholders would riot. No, no, no. The company is already doing everything possible to ensure that Apple continues to be a resounding success:

• Making sure anyone who wants to run Vista has to consider buying a whole new computer.
• Making sure anyone who is willing to buy a whole new computer for Vista has to think long and hard about which “edition” of Vista he wants to install.
• Making sure anyone who has actually bought a new computer, actually installed Vista, and is actually running it, wonder what the difference is between it and XP.
• And, of course, making very sure that anyone who is actually using Vista on a brand spanking new computer can fully enjoy his favorite kinds of malware, which is the uncontested cornerstone of the Windows experience.

And it’s not just Microsoft that’s doing this. The PC vendors are also in on the game, everyone working extremely hard to increase Macintosh market share quarter after quarter. I have my hunches (e.g., all these CEOs have huge AAPL positions or something) but, really, I don’t know why they are doing it. It just boggles my mind. But whatever the reason is, “good on ’em!”

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about.

A few months ago, at the day job, I got assigned a ThinkPad X60 (now produced by Lenovo). I noticed an annoying Message Center alert among various other annoying Task Tray icons. After trying to ignore the little bugger for about three restarts (i.e., on the first day I used this brand new PC), I finally clicked on it.

Because I really have a lot of spare time and zero new messages in my proper e-mail inbox, I was happy to see two mysterious messages I had to read. (Not!)

One of them cheerily suggested that I “Learn how to achieve all-day computing.”

“Do more, save more, and spend more time unplugged with ThinkPad batteries,” it said.

I wanted to just delete it without reading, but being guilty of RTFM non-compliance in recent years, I decided to check out whatever hot tips Lenovo (or whoever had canned these messages) offered, especially since I wasn’t completely familiar with this particular PC’s shade of monochrome (to be fair, there was a fingerprint authentication doodad that I was itching to configure).

So I clicked on the friendly “Learn more…” hyperlink.

Bam! My Web browser launched (thankfully, Firefox was already installed) and loaded up…an E-commerce page on Lenovo’s server where I could purchase a “ThinkPad 56W Ultraportable AC Adapter” (part number 02K6880) or a “ThinkPad 72W Slim AC/DC Combo Adapter” (part number 73P4485).

Scrolling down the page, I noticed there were almost a dozen other screens that I could click on, ostensibly for more great power products I could buy to “Learn how to achieve all-day computing.”

I finally understood: Lenovo’s idea of “all-day computing” was to spend all day mucking around with this crap, and then spend “all night computing” just to catch up on real work. If that’s not putting your PC and Windows to work, I don’t know what is. More bang for the buck, right? Why turn off your computer and spend time with your family and enjoy life, when you can burn the midnight oil with Vista? Isn’t there some kind of metric that says the more you use something the less it actually costs for you? I guess that’s what the PC guys mean when they talk about Total Cost of Ownership. With the Mac, you just do whatever you have to do and turn it off. No opportunity to muck around and waste cycles. Evil!

The most intriguing thing about the “total PC user experience” fiasco is wondering exactly who masterminded it. I am sure the PC vendors (a.k.a. Original Equipment Manufacturers in industry-speak) learn somewhat from Microsoft’s example, but inquiring minds want to know if there’s a secret “black ops” team in Redmond that designs these horrendous hurdles for Windows users to jump. Or maybe there’s no team at all, and the OEMs just naturally and instinctively mimic the “industry leader.”

Contrast all this with the Apple experience and you can see why I say the entire industry is in collusion to ensure that only Apple will prevail. The high-level strategy is working, too. Reports are in that Mac OS X has taken over half of the Japanese OS market. But it’s not a completely fair pilot test because Microsoft skewed results by increasing already-outrageous Vista prices. Unless it intends to do this in other markets to ensure Apple’s success, the Redmond AppleCare master plan might be a bit slower to execute in, say, North America and Europe.

But mark my words. The entire PC industry, spearheaded by Microsoft, is very seriously “thinking different.” So different that I have no idea what it is doing. I just know that people are buying a whole lotta Macs and telling their friends to do the same.

So the next time you add an Apple product to your shopping cart, don’t forget to thank the Windows guys for pointing the way.

[At the time of writing this article, the new Zunes had apparently just shipped.]

(This article originally appeared in the December 2007 issue of ATPM)

http://www.atpm.com/13.12/apple-talk.shtml

New Article: “Lucky Stars.”

This just in: LG is launching an updated Chocolate model. Hmmmm, yum yum. Now, help me out with this: Didn’t LG also launch a phone with Prada? What’s with all these fancy music phones? Surely nobody expects any of them to seriously compete with the Apple iPhone? LG and many of the other phone manufacturers (in fact, *all* of the other phone manufacturers) can thank their “lucky goldstars” that the iPhone is only competing on the super-high-end market… for the time being. So there’s still (a bit of) time for them to *try* and defuse the iPhone timebomb before it explodes in their shellshocked faces. Here’s a clue: Start redeploying anyone on your team who doesn’t understand what the big deal with the iPhone is.

Allegedly over a million iPhones have been sold just in the past few *days* in Great America. The European landing is going to happen soon. It won’t be June 6th as that’s already passed but you can be sure the iPhone is going to storm that continent.

For Asia Pacific, however, I reckon there’s still going to be a very large segment of consumers who will be very happy with non-iPhones. I am not talking about people who would buy LG Prada phones, or fork out more than $10,000 USD for a Vertu (I kid you not; 18 karat gold). I am talking about a lot of people in this region who could care less if the phone synced with their computer’s address book, looked up a street map, or played the latest episode of Desperate Housewives. These are akin to the many tens, nay, hundreds of thousands of people who are still buying non-Apple MP3 players, even in the face of the sleek, hip, and highly affordable clip-on iPod Shuffle.

I’m pretty confident that in about two and a half years, the mobile phone market is going to start resembling that of the music player (media player, really), with Apple on top and everyone below (count the Zune among the wannabes; hope you still remember the Zune).

But, breaking away from all the hype around Apple’s new communications product, the even bigger and far more important question is to what operating system are these 2010 iPhone users going to sync.

(This article originally appeared July 2007 on Network World Asia)

http://www.networksasia.net/article.php?id_article=1517

New Article: Data Crunch

…to make a long story even longer, my Mac suddenly stopped working and one of the apps complained I had zero free disk space left. A quick look at the Get Info box for my internal HD confirmed this and got me puzzling how in heck this could have happened.

http://www.networksasia.net/article.php?id_article=1297

New Article: Massively Useful

Microsoft has been getting the PC industry (that is, the personal computer industry) very excited about its new Vista thang. Redmond has been insanely successful at stirring up awareness (“I waited half a decade for this?!”) and it’s great to see yet another home run after the Zune (you forgot about Zune again?!).

What I don’t get though is how Microsoft benefits from more Apple users. But whatever it’s all about, those Redmond boys are just working like madmen to increase iPod and Macintosh market share. Crazy guys, ya just gotta love ’em. I suspect it might have something to do with that nasty anti-trust case that says Microsoft is not allowed to directly fund Apple marketing efforts, so this might be the next best way it can be done. Sure is some thinking outside the box. Now I finally understand why the Zune is an iPod killer because it’s an iPod killer app!

Anyway, because of all this, and despite me often making fun of Microsoft, I figured I should give them a break and support their efforts, and so went out and got a brand spankin’ new 17″ MacBook Pro.

OK, technically I didn’t go out at all. I clickity-clicked my Kensington Expert Mouse and ordered from the Apple Store. I must have toyed with the configuration a hundred times over the past two years, restraining myself and saving up cash, while Apple kept patiently blasting Wall Street estimates.

Prior to my new 17″, I had been chugging along with a 12″ 1 GHz iBook G4 and was aching to see how quickly iMovie HD would import my most recent HDV camcorder videos. But, first things first, I made a little QuickTime slideshow (iPhoto was fast!) and Pandoed it to my buddies. Two of them decided to get a new Mac also.

Next up: Parallels.

Being able to safely quarantine Windows in its little private hell within OS X, at native speeds, just rocks. Parallels is pretty much everything SoftWindows and Virtual PC wanted to be. I even wrote an article about it. In comparison with Boot Camp, if you’re not doing 3D games, Parallels lets you be more productive by running another system concurrently with OS X. The latest version supports seamless drag-and-drop between the Windows and OS X desktops and so, for most things, Parallels is probably the better approach. I’ve not yet tried VMWare’s offering but have already paid for and am happy with Parallels. Things can only get better from here, and I look forward to further innovations in virtualization for OS X.

Speaking of the letter “X,” this new laptop makes for my tenth Macintosh. I started with a Mac SE in college, used a MacPlus in one of my first jobs, then bought a Mac IIsi, a Mac 6100 AV, a PowerBook 180c, a PowerBook 520c, used a IIcx at another job, bought myself the original iMac when it came out (replacing the puck mouse within a week), a PowerBook G3 “Pismo,” a second-hand iBook G3, and then the iBook G4. That’s approximately ten Macs I’ve bought in two decades, or a Mac every couple of years. Crazy? Not as crazy as putting up with Windows nightmares. If time is money, my Macs have already paid for themselves in the time I’ve saved from agonizing over Windows. God knows I already suffer enough with the Windows machines I am often forced to use and, bless Clarus, that I came back in from the cold.

A Mac running OS X is a massively useful machine. You really can’t say the same for any other computer out there because none of them have been designed to be so seamlessly easy to use for such a wide variety of tasks. Just iLife alone can streamline management of our personal digital content in enormously simpler ways compared to even the best Google applications on Windows (e.g., Picasa). But it’s obviously not just the software. Because Apple is playing with a full deck of cards (the complete hardware/software solution) it can be intelligently mindful of the past and the future, so much so that even an aging G3 Mac is able to run enough OS X to deliver basic computing needs, while more recent Macs can look forward to the quantum leap that will soon be Leopard.

The iPod is also massively useful. Often pigeon-holed into the “MP3 player” category by clueless analysts the iPod plays more than just songs and videos. You can store data on it as a portable hard disk, listen to podcasts (as a source of a completely new channel of information), play games, view your calendar and contacts, and expand its functionality with a huge array of third-party add-on attachments. I actually hardly use my iPod for MP3s; I mostly use it for listening to and watching news podcasts on a daily basis and sharing family photos and movies at gatherings.

As much as I want Linux to succeed (in the spirit of true competition driving innovation and cross-pollination between Apple and open source efforts), it’s just not there yet. Desktop Linux is getting better every year for end-users, but if you just need something done, in a matter of minutes, not hours, it is very likely that booting up OS X will save the day so you can get on with living your life. Mucking around on the computer to troubleshoot something, or because of inefficient workflow caused by nascent design, can insidiously burn up our free time.

So am I more productive with my new Intel Mac? Well, where I previously had to put up with Windows PCs for certain business tasks, I am now able to completely do away with physical Windows machines (and tempting though it may be, I won’t likely go as far as throwing them out the window). This saves me a lot of time and physical space. Forget the KVM switch; I now just instantiate a Windows VM whenever I absolutely, positively have to put up with Windows for a certain task. In fact, it’s great to be using OS X while Windows boots in a hidden window. And, whenever that dog-slow gordian knot of programming decides to spin wheels for unfathomable reasons, I just leave it in the background to work out its frustrations while I keep on being productive with a real operating system. The other big bonus is that I can copy the entire VM file onto a backup drive or network volume and enjoy the peace of mind that I can reload my entire VM environment if I ever need to “undo” something, or if the VM ever crashed or got nuked by a virus. As for gaming, because Boot Camp is still the best optimized solution when it comes to raw graphics performance, my Mac can deliver the hit I need to satiate a gaming itch.

I could go on and on about how useful my new Mac is (such as watching DVDs in bed on the widescreen LCD; having enough screen estate to do a decent iMovie editing job; reading or editing PDF, text or Web pages in full page view or even 2-up mode) but all I really want to say is that I am truly looking forward to the iPhone being so massively useful that it will finally deliver the convergence vision the whole telecommunications industry has been yapping about for ten years.

What we need are digital tools that enhance our lives instead of detract from them. That, perhaps, is the core difference between Apple and the wannabes.

(This article originally appeared in the March 2007 issue of ATPM)

http://www.atpm.com/13.03/apple-talk.shtml

New Article: Safari

The death of Apple Computer, Inc. could not have come at a more opportune time, although the skeptics who “predicted” it in the 1990s still had to eat crow for the past ten years, and the “death” we saw at Macworld Expo San Francisco made us about as upset as if Microsoft or Dell had gone under. Or, better yet, seeing a brand stinking (I mean spanking) new Zune being crushed by a speeding Tesla Roadster.

You do remember the Zune, don’t you? You know, that “iPod Killa” thang that was being “launched” back in the fourth calendar quarter of 2006. Maybe it really did some killing after all, although it sure wasn’t the iPod.

You want a real iPod Killer? I’ll tell you what a real iPod Killer looks like: it looks just like that hot, shiny, new, super-fantastic Apple iPhone, that’s what it looks like! My 5G iPod sure wouldn’t mind being killed by that, and I certainly look forward to it. The only bad news to this whole thing? 2007 is gonna be one long year, folks. (Is it June yet?)

I’m not going to talk about the technical details of the iPhone here. We’ve got plenty of coverage all over cyberspace on that. What I do want to look at is how the entire consumer electronics and telecommunications product industries totally missed the mark. By a wide margin. Apparently, it really did have to fall onto Apple’s shoulders to be the company to bring this kind of product to market. The iPhone is simply the sexiest, most advanced, most usable, and most powerful handheld communications and computing device ever created.

Even as I write this, I’m still bemused that it is Apple, and not Nokia, Motorola, or (let’s not forget) Palm or RIM, coming out with this product. But then, I remember how clueless the industry can be.

Many years ago, when the original iMac first came out, I overheard someone who was ostensibly an “industry expert” remark that he was not impressed by “multicolored computers” and that he expected the iMac “fad” to disappear, pronto. (He wasn’t talking to me. I was just sitting nearby and wouldn’t have said anything anyway, considering I owned one of those early iMacs.) When the iMac turned out to be a sustained success (much to the surprise and chagrin of these industry “experts”), PC vendors jumped on what they thought was the bandwagon of aesthetically-pleasing-computer-enclosures to put out surprisingly superficial decorative casing.

And that’s where the problem lies.

Because these “experts” are not able to perceive the true innovating factor of breakthrough products, they can only guess at what they should be seeing, and therefore guess wrong. They superficially see only a colorful computer and conclude the secret sauce must be aesthetic appeal. Then when the new products launch they can’t figure out why the iMacs are selling and theirs are not.

Exhibit B: the iPod. With the iPod, these blindsided industry insiders again can’t figure out what the big deal is. So it’s a handheld device that plays MP3 files and syncs with the personal computer. And no built-in radio reception. They figure they have an exact duplicate, or better, and ignore the new kid on the block. When the iPod became an “overnight” sensation, they looked at the design again, which, by then, had morphed into a colorful bouquet, and began offering music players with focus on form (but sorely still lacking in innovative function).

We see this same thing happen with the MacBook rip-offs. White, thin(ish) PC laptops that run Windows XP Home. Or widescreen 17″PC laptops that have a silvery look. Or powerful desktop replacements with completely useless psychedelic lighting that glow like a pile of radioactive waste. To make these things “cuter,” vendors add extra toppings to the OS in an attempt to cover up some of the Microsoft UI and stick their own branding into the box. Totally off base.

This lack of perception, this inability to discern the true value of a successful product (that is, raison d’être of the category breakthrough, the reason people buy the thing) is not limited to aping Apple products. Some of you might recall Sony’s attempt to Clie the Palm PDA, which only turned out to be a “Cliche.” If any of you have ever used those Clie devices, you’ll remember many of them were loaded with Sony’s “value-added” nightmare-ware, which substituted the Palm OS applications menu with a funky jog-dial-scrolling carousel. And they thought that would be an improvement. Let’s not get into the whole Memory Stick issue, which should be in the same chapter as DIVX (the disc sales strategy, not the codec) in a “stupid marketing strategies” textbook.

I can think of many other such examples, including the most obvious one: Windows copying the Macintosh user interface.

Now, in 2006 we had the Zune trying to copy not just the iPod but the entire iPod ecosystem. Unfortunately, the ecosystem reaches far beyond what the Zune team can ever deliver. This ain’t the Xbox—which, essentially, took the very successful gaming franchise that had always existed for Windows and replicated it onto a self-contained Microsoft-branded PC. The iPod is a totally different animal and actually ties back to the Apple brand as the producer of machines (Macs) that create “cool” stuff. Macs, after all, have been associated for eons with such things as desktop publishing, video editing, and fashion design, so it should be no surprise that the iPod is a truly “hip” device. Trying to Astroturf Zune marketing just won’t work because there is no way Microsoft, as a brand, is “hip.”

(I don’t see Intel trying to be hip, and Intel shouldn’t bother anyway. It is doing very well reinventing itself recently as the quiet and professional producer of powerful engines. Even the logo had a makeover around the time of the Apple partnership. The new Intel of the 2000s is more of a “strong and silent type,” as compared to the “bunnyman” brand of the 1990s.)

So, having seen examples of what I’m calling “clueless counterfeiting” throughout the history of the industry, I’m thinking the trend is just going to continue, with cell phone and PDA manufacturers trying to rip whatever they can off the iPhone “time-bomb” before it blows them clear out of the water. Macworld Expo basically gave the whole world a framework for the new smartphone. (Personally, I think we need a new “superphone” category.) With the iPhone, the so-called iPod “halo effect” just went supernova, and I think Macintosh uptake is going to accelerate even more when the new device hits general availability.

Apple’s been paving the road map of the future and it’s about darn time the company (and the folks behind it) got the recognition and reward it deserves. Many things we take for granted in computers today were Apple innovations. It’s really exciting to see the company’s influence expand and renovate a wider landscape of things we use on a daily basis. HDTVs and maybe even wristwatches are going to be next.

January 9th, 2007 marked the event horizon of a new era of ultra-usability. I’ve written earlier that the Mac has finally won the computing wars. Now I’m convinced the consumer electronics, home entertainment, and telecommunications industries are also in for the mother of all battles.

Because Apple Computer is dead.

Long live Apple, Inc.

Author’s Note: this article was written shortly after Apple’s announcement. As it went to press, knock-offs such as the Prada Phone from LG have already started to appear. It is important to keep in mind that the Apple iPhone may ultimately feature additional unrevealed functionality.

(This article originally appeared in the February 2007 issue of ATPM)

http://www.atpm.com/13.02/apple-talk.shtml

New Article: Entering a Parallels Universe

Crude solutions had existed for years, but by powering its operating system with an Intel chip, Apple for the first time merged the realms of the dominant Windows-based PC and the Mac. In an Escher-esque manner of speaking, the Mac became a PC even as the PC was subsumed by the Mac.

http://db.tidbits.com/article/8793

New Article: Infinitely Improbable

It’s showtime.

Apple’s “blockbuster” announcement was more like a “bunker buster” attack on crazed wannabes, including Microsoft (and its Zune also-to-run) and other delusional entrants in the digital media wars. With the iTV product now confirmed on the Q1 ’07 horizon, I just can’t see anyone in the entire IT landscape able to put more than a cosmetic scratch on the all-terrain armored battle platform that is Apple’s iTunes/Mac ecosystem. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, this mega-machine has been crushing opposition quarter after quarter, causing tremendous turmoil in all the companies we love to loathe. Even a yesteryear titan like Intel has been bent to the will of Jobs, embroiled in petty price wars that ultimately benefit only Apple and its consumers.

It is becoming infinitely improbable that Apple isn’t on track to completely dominate the new digital playground. In this new age of the Web 2.0, Google, Skype, and YouTube, the real game changer is that disruptive “little” company in Cupertino. What Apple’s done in recent years is basically run circles around the 800-pound gorillas (who are looking more like chimps these days).

Speaking of monkey business, did any of you catch those photos of the Zune? You gotta hand it to the Redmond boys to make something look super sexy. Against Microsoft’s “killa” product, the new 8 GB black iPod nano is mighty hot. My level of amazement at Microsoft’s appalling execution is at record levels. It almost feels like the company is deliberately fencing cheap looking products (at expensive prices) just to humor the market. (“Lookit! Hahahaha!”) Either its marketing geniuses have come up with some outta-da-world brilliant marketing strategy, or they just are as clueless as ever (or perhaps I should say, just as clueless as Sony).

“What’s changed?” Barring legalities, I think that Microsoft was “successful” for some 15 years because the market was (mostly) just as clueless. But stars collide, empires crumble, markets evolve, and people who have tasted the superior usability of the iPod are starting to realize that maybe there are better products out there if only they just tried them out. While the decision to go with Intel paved the way, it is really Boot Camp and Parallels that are enabling a new paradigm of computing experience. The chasm is being crossed by the masses.

And what of the larger Apple ecosystem? iTV will be mind-bogglingly huge. iTV is not so much about an entertainment console that many of us are going to put in our living rooms as it is about the whole concept of Apple in almost every aspect of our lives, and I’m not even counting the potential ramifications of the rumored iPhone.

Apple will, essentially, be what Microsoft tried to be. Like Steve Jobs said, Apple is now in our dens, living rooms, cars, and pockets. But Apple is also online (.Mac), on our streets (retail stores), in our offices (Xserve), and on our desks (Macs). It is with Apple that we spend our work time and our free time. Our collective digital identities are going to be enmeshed into the fabric of the upcoming duopoly that is Apple/Google. Have we chosen a brighter future compared to the alternative universe ruled by Microsoft/Intel? Only the Time Machine will tell.

I do know one thing, though. While I can no longer joke about “Longhorn” being a cow, someone recently told me “Vista” means “chicken” in Latvia.

I think Leopards eat chickens too.

(This article originally appeared in the October 2006 issue of ATPM)

http://www.atpm.com/12.10/segments.shtml

New Article: Spotlight

I laugh every time I read about a new “iPod killer” thingamajig in the news.

http://www.atpm.com/12.08/segments2.shtml