Claim chowder(*), of sorts, in the face of WIndows 7

When Apple announced the switch to Intel, I speculated that Apple would benefit from the purchase of Macs by Windows users. I was wrong about some details (like the ability to run Windows apps under OS X), but things did develop along those lines.

Apple changed the game a bit (in my favor) with the announcement of Boot Camp, and I refined my prediction a bit, speculating that Windows users would, to some degree, be inclined to buy Mac, even for the purpose of running Windows, and that even a small percentage of "switchers" would be a huge gain for Apple.

A few years later, I claim vindication, with both anecdotes and facts:

* The "Windows apps on Mac" problem has been addressed, to some extent, by Parallels and VMWare Fusion, which do not require booting into Windows (to the exclusion of OS X) to run Windows apps.

* I have many acquaintances who have switched to the Mac, in spite of distinct aversion to the Mac before OS X and the Intel switch.

* There are a lot of PCs at my current employer that are Macs running Windows all the time, including, I'm amused to note, machines on the desks of our IT support staff. OK, they're running Windows, but they are (high margin) sales for Apple.

* Apple is enjoying greater market share,

Windows 7 may convince Windows users to stay with Windows, but that does not exclude them from buying Macs to run Windows 7, and there are still good reasons to buy a Mac even to run Windows 7: it's elegant, high-performance hardware for your needs, and, should the need or desire arise, there is no need to buy new hardware to run OS/X.

Yes, you could buy cheaper hardware to run Windows 7, and many (most?) will, but it has been demonstrated that Apple does have a price advantage at a certain (high) level of feature specifications, and, not accidentally, high margins.

It doesn't have to be a lot; as I said way back, a small number of Windows user, even if they choose to remain Windows users, is a big percentage boost to Apple's hardware share, and to their bottom line.

(*) Apologies/tip-of-the-hat to John Gruber at Daring Fireball

The iPhone can't multi-task... yet.

There seems to be a theme developing that the iPhone is at risk from Android because it "can't" run background processes.

Case in point.

C'mon; it's OS X under there. It's not that Apple couldn't support background processes, it's that they chose not to, probably for reasons related to power consumption and stability.

I see one of two likely developments:

* Android phones demonstrate longevity or reliability problems when loaded with apps running in the background, and Apple's decision looks brilliant.

* Android does OK, and Apple wakens the background capability that's always been there and they've been fine-tuning all along, and the Android advantage is nullified.

I can't accept the possibility that Apple can't support multi-tasking in an OS that's already good at it.

I have always laughed at the notion of an "ideal" laptop, because a portable, battery-powered platform is ultimately an exercise in compromises. Performance, longevity, screen size, capacity, and features are always at odds with cost, compactness and weight. The same tradeoffs apply to phones. Apple and its competitors are working under the same restrictions, and the best any of them can do is advance one set or more features at the expense of one or more limitations. Apple is demonstrably good at this game, and any time they appear to be beat on one feature axis, one should look at where the tradeoff has been made.

The Droid has not been tested in the wild yet. I'm waiting until we have a real head-to-head comparison, and Apple's response.

Pound the Quality

John Gruber nails it, as he usually does.

How Should Mac Apps be Distributed?

John Gruber has a thoughtful piece on Daring Fireball (easily my favorite blog), reflecting on another "thoughtful piece" by Alexander Limi; the topic is how Mac apps are installed on the Mac and how the process might be improved.

I have two thoughts on the matter, which touch on topics raised by John but which I had formed before reading his piece. (You'll have to take my word on that.)

1) The Mac should have an interface dedicated to finding and launching applications, probably accessed from the Apple menu. The interface should take guidance from the iPhone home screen(s), displaying all of the applications accessible to the user (regardless of where they are installed), organized to the user's preferences. (Maybe a third-party app opportunity. Hmmm.) It could be layered on top of the existing scheme, so none of the flexibility of the existing model would be lost.

2) How about a Mac app store? For those well-behaved Mac apps that don't require an installer, this is a no-brainer, and I suspect many of the factors that dictate an installer (contributions to the Frameworks, Application Support, or other common destinations) could be accommodated fairly easily. This would eliminate most of the room for user error cited in the two blogs.

Might be a good use of that new datacenter Apple is reportedly building...

"Let's aim for Mars"

I can't say it better than Buzz Aldrin, but I can add this:

I am a member of the "Sputnik" generation: I was in elementary school during the Mercury and Gemini programs, and Neil and Buzz walked on the moon before I was a sophomore in high school. I dreamed that I could aspire to be on the first manned mission to Mars.

Now I wonder if this will happen in my lifetime; or ever. This is a damned shame, and may mean that we're squandering mankind's best chance for an almost infinite legacy, as opposed to following the dinosaurs into oblivion.

Some people bemoan the cost, and I have thoughts on that I will share at another time; for now, please just pay heed to Buzz's aspirational message.

So much for the stimulus

From here, via here:



[Pardon me if the image isn't posted; MarsEdit and Flickr appear to be having a disagreement. Visit one of the linked blogs to see the chart.]

Brief explanation: The chart shows what the Obama administration expected unemployment to be without the stimulus, what the expected it to be (lower) if the stimulus passed, and what it actually became (higher) in reality.

This administration is a disaster.

Microsoft can catch up?

In this interview, Steve Ballmer suggests that Microsoft can catch up to Google in search if it only persists, as it did with Windows:

A. No. No, Windows 95 was a basically mostly interesting and successful concept that came to full fruition, right? This is not Windows 95. It’s more, I don’t know —

Q. Windows 3.1?

A. 3.0 maybe even, right? It’s more, hey, we’ve had some early tries, kind of like you might call Windows 1, and I think there was something called Windows 2 in there, and Windows 386 in the late ’80s, but it’s far more like Windows 3. People say, aha, I see the vision. It pays off but it won’t fully pay off the vision in its first incarnation.

But it’s like Windows — the most important thing I just said in all of that is it’s important like Windows is important. It’s important like something that we really care about, we really think about, we’re going to stay persistent with, we’re going to invest in.

If you stop and think about it, Windows 95 came 12 years after we started working on Windows. We’ve been working on search five years. I’m not saying it should necessarily take 12 years, but in a sense what we’re trying to do is accelerate the pace, and see if we can’t get there.

This is bogus to the point of being laughable. Google (the company) dominates search. In the 80's and 90's, PC operating systems were dominated by... Microsoft.

There is a common perception that with Windows 95, Microsoft finally "caught up" to Apple and Mac OS; Ballmer seems to be referring to this.

But the reality is that the Mac was never ahead of Microsoft's OS in terms of market share. The IBM PC, running Microsoft's DOS, blew past the Apple II in 1982-1983, well before Apple rolled out the Mac. PC's outsold Mac's all along; I remember all too well, as a Mac developer (by choice, when I could) working for Lotus during those years. MS-DOS had dominance when Windows 3.x was finally able to start displacing it; that's why these were Lotus' "golden years", as a seller of MS-DOS software.

So if Windows 95 represented Microsoft "catching up" to Apple, I'm left to conclude that Ballmer is asserting what a few of us know all along in the 80's: the Mac OS was superior to Windows.

Thought for the Day

From the Notebook of Lazarus Long:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded--here and there, now and then--are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”

- Robert A. Heinlein