First take two things that seem the same but aren’t…

Love this but not for the reasons you might think. 10 things Linux does better than OS X 

It’s the sheer pointlessness of it, you might as well write a piece on “10 things a van does better than an estate car” or “10 things a biro does better than a pencil”.  Hang on there’s an idea.

iPhone not as popular as expected

Apple’s iPhone hasn’t quite been the sales success many thought and after a strong run up to Christmas post the festivities it’s declined. 

I don’t think the problem is not the device itself, I’ve played with one and was impressed by the form factor and the UI, although I don’t know if some aspects to all that gesturing might begin to be plain annoying after a while.  But the real issues are the lack of an out of the box connector for work based email and….the price.  All up with the 18 month contract we’re talking a penny short of £900, the handset itself being the fat end of £300, which for a country raised on discounted or free handsets is about as popular as Jade Goody.  Prices have already fallen in the US and the 4Gb model has dropped so maybe the UK market reciprocate.

Is there no truth in beauty?

  Apple prove once again that when it comes to form they pretty much are the gold standard and the new ultra thin, and I do mean thin, Macbook Air is the latest ‘object of desire’.  It’ll sell on looks alone.  But like Kate Moss all that thinness comes at a price and I don’t just mean the hole it’ll leave in your credit card, to make it anywhere near useful to most mortals you’ll need a carry a rucksack full of addons.  CD Drive, USB Hub, SD/Flash card reader and if you’re a hoarder an external hardisk, Apple do offer a 64Gb Solid State Drive but at over £600 all but the most devote, not to say flush, Apple fanboys and girls will bother.  Prices start at about the £1200 mark so add a fair chunk to that to get an Air you’d be happy with….with the SDD it’s an eye watering £2020…give or take.

So who is this the Air aimed at?  I don’t think it’s the PC World brigade as Windows laptops can be had for a fraction of the price…OK they aren’t as sexy, there’s an understatement, but they are as functional.  I suspect that this will have a bigger impact of those considering a Macbook or at the price a Macbook Pro and that seems a little self defeating as these people were going to buy a Macbook anyway.

Ah sod it…if I had the money I’d have one. 

OSX on cheap PC hardware?

I’ve used OSX on a few occasions and rather liked it, Karen is an ex Mac engineer and I rather also have a fondness for the Apple esthetic.  As I recently purchased an HP Pavilion for Karen and replaced the old home PC with a Shuttle box destined to be a server at some point I’m not sure the ‘Gadget Police’ would let me sneak a new Mac into the house. 

Another alternative that presents itself is running OSX on the Shuttle and why not after all OSX runs happily enough on Intel powered Macs, so why not Intel powered PCs?  Of course I’m not the first to think of this as many pondered the possibility as soon as Mr Jobs realised Intel wasn’t so bad after all.  Of course it’s not quiet that simple as Apple’s licensing agreement doesn’t allow OSX to be run on hardware they don’t own, they make money on the hardware after all, but that of course hasn’t stopped people trying.   It is of course a hack as the Trusted Platform Module prevents OSX installing without one so unless you’re OK with this idea you’ve hit a brick wall. 

Actually there is an alternative.  If BootCamp allows you to run Windows on a Mac why not an emulator/virtual machine for other way around?  It seems PearPC could offer a solution.

 

Still it seems a lot of effort just to run Garageband!!!

Reports of death are greatly exaggerated

Nothing like a bit of flame bait to get the blogsphere talking, especially if it contains the word Microsoft, and at first glance it’s difficult to see Paul Graham’s piece as anything else.   You might as well claim IBM is dead or Oracle or BT, so you’d be forgiven for thinking ‘dead’ in the Y Generation’s  dictionary actually means ‘trendy’ or ‘ not Web 2.0 bubble approved’.  Despite the provocative headline claiming ‘Microsoft is Dead’ it wasn’t actually not what Paul was saying, surprise, surprise, but that startups and VCs not longer have to include MS in their thinking.  In fact so misconstrued does Paul feel that he’s felt the need to pen/type a second piece to clarify his position. 

Fellow ‘Softie Steve Clayton has blogged already about this and I have a few ideas of my own although some do concur with Steve’s.

I agree about Google, they are a tough competitor and lead the way with search no question.  Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do.

The server vs client app question has been around the block more than once, I was at Lotus when IBM spend a huge amount of money developing and pushing Network Computing with eSuite (anyone remember that?) but no one was convinced and many still aren’t.  Steve mentioned security and connectivity as two reasons for server side apps not cutting it and I’d like to add two more, trust and privacy. 

Broadband isn’t broad enough for many applications or reliable or ubiquitous enough.  One day…maybe…and for the foreseeable future the ability to do stuff disconnected from the Internet is a given, nay a blessing.

Jeff Ventura agrees with Paul Graham’s assertion that Apple, particularly OSX, has been key in ‘the downfall’ and this is where I think both are flat wrong.  You’d have to be a fan of Columbian Marching Powder to think that OSX’s 4% marketshare vs Windows 96% marks some kind victory for Cupertino, in fact many of the Apple Acolytes don’t want OSX to become more popular because it’ll make it a target for hackers (oh yes it will) and nothing destroys the cache of being a member of a tight knit community than going mainstream.  Also Apple’s turn around is due to the iPod not OSX and the truth that dare not speak it’s name is that Windows is the most popular OS to plug an iPod into not OSX.

iRack

Starts off as an Apple parody and throws it together with American foreign policy.  Very funny.

Reasoned debate…yeah right!

With Vista now released and OSX ‘Leopard’ in the Apple pipe the usual background hum of OSX vs Windows Internet debate is beginning to climb a few decibels, debate is actually stretching things a bit because if you’re looking for reasoned and considered discourse this is furthest point from there as you’re likely to get in IT.  As a small example take a look at Graceful Flavor; Jeff Ventura posts a piece about another blogger Paul Thurrott commenting that Vista will ship as many copies in one month than ‘Leopard’ will do in a year.  Paul’s piece can be either be seen as stating the bleedin’ obvious or as a deliberate attempt to flame bait the Apple faithful, but regardless of intent the end result is pretty predictable with the Cupertino Zealots pouring the kind of vitriol on Paul normally reserved for murders and S-Club Seven fans. Jeff I’m sure knew this would happen as whether he intended to or not he is one of the rallying points for Apple users spoiling to kick anyone who says anything positive about Microsoft or negative about Apple.

Now I’m not trying to defend Paul or Microsoft for that matter, I’m sure Paul can take care of himself and Microsoft certainly can but it gets me wondering if we can ever get to position where there is a sensible discourse about the relative merits of Vista and OSX.  Some at least are trying so despite the provocative moniker of PCMacSmackdown the two sides at least keep it friendly and for my money is currently the best on going discussion about PCs and Macs.

As a endnote I should say that I work for Microsoft and I like Apple products.

Why Charlie Brooker hates Macs

I quote this verbatim as it’s funny as well as being insightful.

I hate Macs

Charlie Brooker
Monday February 5, 2007
The Guardian

Unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed, and your head encased in a block of concrete, with a blindfold tied round it, in the dark – unless you have been doing that, you surely can’t have failed to notice the current Apple Macintosh campaign starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, which has taken over magazines, newspapers and the internet in a series of brutal coordinated attacks aimed at causing massive loss of resistance. While I don’t have anything against shameless promotion per se (after all, within these very brackets I’m promoting my own BBC4 show, which starts tonight at 10pm), there is something infuriating about this particular blitz. In the ads, Webb plays a Mac while Mitchell adopts the mantle of a PC. We know this because they say so right at the start of the ad.“Hello, I’m a Mac,” says Webb. “And I’m a PC,” adds Mitchell. They then perform a small comic vignette aimed at highlighting the differences between the two computers. So in one, the PC has a “nasty virus” that makes him sneeze like a plague victim; in another, he keeps freezing up and having to reboot. This is a subtle way of saying PCs are unreliable. Mitchell, incidentally, is wearing a nerdy, conservative suit throughout, while Webb is dressed in laid-back contemporary casual wear. This is a subtle way of saying Macs are cool. The ads are adapted from a near-identical American campaign – the only difference is the use of Mitchell and Webb. They are a logical choice in one sense (everyone likes them), but a curious choice in another, since they are best known for the television series Peep Show – probably the best sitcom of the past five years – in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, “PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers.” In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign. I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui. PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because “they are just better”. Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul – that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn’t really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are. Aside from crowing about sartorial differences, the adverts also make a big deal about PCs being associated with “work stuff” (Boo! Offices! Boo!), as opposed to Macs, which are apparently better at “fun stuff”. How insecure is that? And how inaccurate? Better at “fun stuff”, my arse. The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac. Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal “adventure” in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993. That same year, the first shoot-’em-up game, Doom, was released on the PC. This tells you all you will ever need to know about the Mac’s relationship with “fun”. Ultimately the campaign’s biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow “define themselves” with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that “says something” about your personality, don’t bother. You don’t have a personality. A mental illness, maybe – but not a personality. Of course, that hasn’t stopped me slagging off Mac owners, with a series of sweeping generalisations, for the past 900 words, but that is what the ads do to PCs. Besides, that’s what we PC owners are like – unreliable, idiosyncratic and gleefully unfair. And if you’ll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming.

iPhone? Just ask Cisco

As almost everyone else will mention it I might as well too, the Apple iPhone is on its way and boy are the Apple Acolytes tumescent with joy.  It still might not be called the iPhone as Mr Jobs forgot to tell everyone he’d not actually got permission from Cisco to use the name.  But let’s be crystal clear here…the device is still a while away so it may change and also there is nothing particularly new here, it has all been done before.  Apple seem however to have done a cracking job of bringing it all together though.

So what can we conclude, speculate or ask so far?It looks good as only Apple seem to be able to do.
I’m intrigued by the UI.
That screen better be scratch resistant.
Don’t forget to carry around wipes to keep crap off the screen as it will attract dirt like a magnet.
No UK release for the time being.
It’s not a business device so everyone claiming the demise of Blackberry, Windows Mobile or Nokia/Symbian can calm down.
Will anyone create 3^rd party add-ons to allow integration with Outlook or Notes?
An IM client to attach to MSN, AOL and Yahoo would be nice too.
2Meg camera only.  Why?
Is 4Gb enough for music, photos, video etc etc?
Will it eat into iPod sales?  Nano especially.
As its GSM only it’ll upset the CDMA crowd in the US but in Europe this is not a problem.
No GPS.  Missed a trick here…Sat Nav on this device should have been a no brainer although someone would have had to written the application from scratch.
Price is critical but any notion of what it might be is pure speculation.It’ll also be interesting to see how the operators in the UK approach this device, SIM free is one thing, but will Apple be willing to give the operators the cut they’ll ask for if it’s sold as part of a contract?

“Can I have a Macbook please?”

The home PC is well past retirement age, the venerable machine is now over 5 years old and I suppose it’s testament to how good modern hardware is that it keeps going.  Like any pensioner it gave up playing games sometime ago and has been used for Karen’s OU work, her NLP stuff, browsing the web and keeping K’s Mini Pod updated and recharged, it’s even managed to edit and print the odd photo recently.  But a little while ago it begun to eat components and went through two sound cards, a video card and even a NIC, even some of the USB sockets only work when they are in the mood.  One theory is that the motherboard has a fault, probably a 5v rail which has on occasion spiked doing away with said PCI cards and USB sockets, fortunately this hasn’t happened for a while now.  The other consideration is that the thing is huge and I’m not sure anyone would dare make a case that big now not even a full size tower for fear people using them as prefab housing.

As I have a machine provided by work Karen, who also happens to be a lapsed Mac engineer, gets final vote so when asked what do we should do K unsurprisingly suggested a Macbook.  I have some experience of Macs and I’ve always rather liked OSX having used it with Lotus Notes and Office for Mac in the past and the range of Dual Core 2 Macbooks are now at a price point that drops them into PC territory, and lets not forget at 4% market share Apple have to do something if there ever to be considered more than a nice to have.

But why oh why do the black Macbooks have a £100 premium over the white ones?