Tag Archives: Apple

Microsoft Tries to Change History

In a YouTube video posted by “WindowsPhone”, Microsoft claims that the mobile phone industry has hit a wall, and that each new smartphone that is released is only slightly better than the one before it. While this is being said, they show tons of smartphones including the iPhone.

I think it’s important to be truthful here and say that if not for the iPhone being released 3 years ago, Microsoft never would have even started Windows Phone 7 Series. They would have just made insignificant improvements on their Windows Mobile platform just as they had done for the previous six years. So I have two main issues with this video.

To claim that the iPhone is just a slightly better smartphone than the one that came before it is simply one of the most preposterous things I’ve ever heard. Even if you don’t like Apple or their products you still can’t deny the effect the iPhone had on the entire industry. It was at a virtual standstill until the iPhone came along.

Second, to claim that Windows Phone 7 Series is the mobile OS that breaks through the wall that Microsoft claims exists in the mobile industry is really only true when you compare it to Windows Mobile. What the video should have said is “At Microsoft, we hit a wall with our mobile phone strategy.”

iPhone OS and Android are clearly setting the pace in today’s world. But 9 months from now when the first Windows Phone 7 Series hits the market (provided there are no delays) we’ll see just how much of an impact it makes.

Watch the video here.

My Mom is On Board

What would life be like without a cellular phone? Just consider that for a moment. You can’t make a call whenever you want. You can’t send a text message to anyone, or receive one. You can’t send or receive any email, either.

Now consider that this extends in to your home and office. You have no computer.

Think about that. You do not have a computer of any kind at home or at work. That means you have never sent or received a single email. You’ve only browsed the web once or twice from a friend’s house when you’ve been visiting. But browsing the Internet is pretty simple. All you have to do is click on things and read or watch. But you’ve never received a photo of your son, daughter or granddaughter who live on the opposite coast that was taken five minutes ago. You missed your granddaughter’s first steps because you didn’t get the email that went out to everyone else that had the link to the YouTube video. And because you live 35 miles from the nearest bookstore, you couldn’t browse the latest releases without conquering the snow and sleet.

But let’s get back to having a computer. You don’t. So you have no idea how to use one.

There are lots of examples of people who might fit this description. My mother is a mail carrier in a rural area. She’s never needed a computer. She’s never even really wanted one. She lives in a rural area and said that because of her location, $80 per month would be her monthly internet access bill (after paying $299 for equipment).

I asked her “would $30 per month for unlimited traffic be an amount you’re comfortable with?” She said yes. She didn’t believe me and assured me that she had called all around to phone companies and satellite companies and cable companies and that $80 per month was the cheapest that she could get.

So I put myself in her position and ignored everything I know about computers and imagined that someone put an iPad in front of me. They tell me that “Safari” means the Internet, but that’s all. I can see everything else (Mail, Contacts, Clock, Maps, Calendar, etc.) makes perfect sense. I’m told that all I have to do is reach out and touch the thing I want to do. That doesn’t seem likely, but I do it anyway. Suddenly the web appears. I see something I’m interested in so I reach out and touch it. All of this without any wires or keyboards.

Something is strange – I’m online and there was no hassle. I’m instantly productive on the Internet. How can this be? I don’t even know how to use a computer. But somehow it’s just working.

There’s no other machine and operating system in the world that offers anything even close to this kind of promise. And I will finally be able to email photos and video to my mother.

Oh My!

I preface this by saying that I did what most of my friends did. I followed the direct link to Apple’s web site to download what was supposedly the final version of the iPhone 2.0 firmware and I did the manual install. I did NOT do it the sanctioned way of going through iTunes. I therefore may have either a corrupted or out-dated version.

What’s up with the downloaded apps not starting up? I downloaded about 6 free apps and installed them, and for the first couple of days they worked. But for the last two days, they don’t launch. None of them. They try to, but after no more than five seconds, it gracefully returns to my home screen with no error message. Strangely, all of the standard iPhone applications work as they should.

So I write this with two things in mind.

1. If I’m on 5A347, am I on the wrong version?

2. If 5A237 is the final version of iPhone 2.0, Apple – what’s up with these apps not starting anymore?

The Art of Choice

I saw a story on Digg that was a spoof on an iPhone commercial. The guy talked about spending $600 for the first model, then having the price get lowered by $200 in  almost no time (no mention of the $100 store credit that Apple gave all those customers, by the way). Then shelling out another $199 for the new iPhone 3G with a more expensive data plan. I didn’t personally get a new phone, but I know of a couple of people that did.

A comment on that Digg post by a guy named Jim read as follows:

“I’ll re-state what many other clear-minded people here have stated before: You don’t HAVE to buy the phone. Don’t like the prices? Go find another phone/carrier.

I can’t afford a Mercedes, but you don’t see me bitching to them about it in some shitty blog. Get over it.”

I couldn’t agree with this person more. Nobody is forcing anyone to stand in lines for hours. Nobody is forcing anyone to spend another $199 plus service charges. People are CHOOSING to do so. By the hundreds of thousands.

NBC's Shows on Zune

I just read the article below, stating that Zune owners will be able to purchase NBC television shows for … wait for it … $1.99 per episode. Hmm. If I recall correctly, wasn’t that the same price they were on iTunes before Jeff Zucker decided to walk away?

If Microsoft is merely breaking even or taking a loss on these shows (to give NBC more money), I have to say that going from a business model that offers you tens of millions of customers to a business model that offers you (in comparison) closer to zero than tens of millions seems like a terrible decision to me. But I’ve blogged about Jeff Zucker’s terrible instincts and business sense before.

Zune is a device that hasn’t really made much of a (if any) dent in the iPod market. So to me this “partnership” between NBC and Microsoft is like the blind leading the blind.

First Impressions

I bought the family pack of Leopard this evening and only had to wait on line about 25 minutes. There were about 200 people ahead of me, but somehow they were able to move those people through the store very quickly. Interesting thing to note was that when I had made my way up through 75% of the line, I looked back and the back of the line was at the same point at which I started. This blog entry is called “First Impressions”, and with that in mind, I will keep this very short and say three things.

1. I had hoped that doing an upgrade on my Mac Pro from Tiger to Leopard would be sweet. When I was a Windows user, I had upgraded time and time again, through virtually all versions of Windows, and each time the system was extremely sluggish and very disappointing in performance. I therefore formed the opinion that no one with any kind of technical know-how should EVER do an upgrade of their operating system. It’s just too big of a deal. I was of the frame of mind that whenever you were going to install a new OS, you needed to reformat your drive and start from scratch.

Apple wasn’t able to sway me from that opinion. While my Mac Pro performs acceptably, it most certainly doesn’t perform like a quad-core 3.0 GHz system with 5 gigs of RAM. I will therefore be doing a reformat and reinstall on this box as soon as I have the time. Meanwhile, I will enjoy the GREAT features of Leopard, such as Spaces (discussed in item 3).

 

2. A fresh install of Leopard is quite literally amazing. My MacBook Pro (which I think is the first-generation 15″ unit with 2 gigs of RAM) performs (I swear) BETTER under Leopard than it did under Tiger. And that’s something I absolutely NEVER could have said about any Windows OS upgrade. My MacBook Pro is extremely responsive and I’m just loving the experience. This is a far cry from when I first tried out two other major releases this year: Vista and Office 2007. I spent so much time trying to figure out how to do things I already knew how to do that I became very sour on those products and just stopped using them.

3. Spaces is just freakin’ awesome. This concept of having multiple desktops that you can switch between is by no means new to either Mac OS or Windows, but in Mac OS the implementation is just SWEET. The performance is amazing, the user experience is nothing short of what you’d expect from Apple, and I’ve already found Spaces super-useful even though I’ve only had it installed for a couple of hours. I plan to get in to Time Machine when I get a new external hard drive. I’ll also blog about various other Leopard findings. But I feel it is important to make one final point.

I first installed Vista Beta 2 when I was a devout Microsoft Fan Boy and I was both disappointed and surprised at what the public was to come to expect as the next “major release” of Windows.  Similarly, I installed Leopard as a devout Apple Fan Boy almost two years later and contrary to my Vista experience,  Leopard feels like an extension of all the goodness, reliability, and strength that I already had at my disposal in Tiger – not a replacement of things merely for the purpose of change.

More to come! 

October 26th: Leopard

I was delighted to finally read that the official release date for Mac OS X Leopard is Friday October 26th. The Engadget story mentions the pricing: $129 for a single license, $199 for a 5-license family pack. It then goes on (in a bit of sarcasm) and mentions how there is no upgrade pricing. Well let’s just think about that for a second.

While I too would love to get it cheaper, I think it’s important to note here that the $129 full retail price (for the version that has everything – the only version they sell) is $30 cheaper than the upgrade for Windows Vista Home Premium. I might also add that the Home Premium edition doesn’t even have all the features that Leopard does. If you want to come closer to Leopard, you’d need the Ultimate edition, whose upgrade price is a whopping $249. Almost twice as much as a full license to Leopard.

While people can (and will) always complain about pricing (even as I have done in the past regarding an Apple product), I just have to say that $129 is a pittance for a product like OS X. It’s a price that makes it an option for millions and millions of people. The family pack, which allows me to install it on up to five machines in my home is a steal at $199.

I’ve gotten free versions of Windows for the past seven or eight years because of the MSDN subscriptions that I’ve had, so I never had to look at pricing. It wasn’t until I had to buy a friend a copy of Windows Ultimate from the company store that I found out how much it was and I just couldn’t believe it. A retail price of $399.95. I was floored. That wasn’t for a family pack, mind you. That was just ONE license.