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

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

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