Paul's Profile

Uh, Microsoft already does this. When you buy Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium, you get all the Vista Ultimate parts installed, too - but those Ultimate features are disabled. Give Microsoft your credit card and voila, your Home Basic system is magically upgraded to Ultimate. I don't see the "outrage" over this disabling of features. In fact, the Home Basic box mentions nothing about all the Ultimate features that are right on the install disks, hundreds of megabytes of features that are installed silently right next to all the Home Basic parts, but are hidden and deactivated until you pay up. In fact, the outrage of the 802.11n upgrade is entirely manufactured. If that reality is too bitter for you, it's your loss. It's laughable that anyone thinks Apple is out to make a buck by charging $2.00 for a software download that isn't keyed and can be freely shared, one that even allows multiple installs via its EULA. Totally laughable because most of you $2 whiners probably have already located free copies of the update software anyway. If Apple really wanted to make money, they would've wrapped it with iTunes DRM or something. So go ahead and laugh at SOX, but guess what? Apple still has both the feds and the CA attorney general breathing down their necks over ACCOUNTING issues. A-C-C-O-U-N-T-I-N-G. You have many members of the media doing their best to inflate the options backdating into Enron-like proportions just for the satisfaction of "teaching Jobs some humility." Tell me if it requires a Ph.d to not be as cautious as possible while dozens of governments accountants and lawyers are going through every inch of your books. Or maybe you're the type you likes to deposit your gambling earnings (unreported) into your checking account while the IRS is performing a full audit on you, cause your Blackjack winnings "isn't really income and the IRS would be dumb to think so." So if you're offended by my heavy sarcasm, sorry, but I'm frankly tired of all the incessant, inconsequential whining coming from a small group of high-falutin' Mac users. You think paying $2.00 for a feature that enables hardware capability that was never previously advertised is a rip-off? Fine. Choose to be unhappy and live in your unhappy world. Convince yourself that the hardware in your C2D Mac doesn't have 802.11n capability. Then head over to Amazon and plop down $82 for an pre-N ExpressCard to make you feel like you're not being ripped off http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000FH2W04/interactiveda616-20 Now you have pre-802.11n hardware and you're out $82 now, but even better, no one pulled the wool over your eyes ! SOOOO much better. Frankly, with all this whining, Apple should have shipped all Core2 Duo Macs with just straight 802.11b/g hardware, and if you wanted 802.11n, they should have said you can just go ahead and get yourself a new Mac (which is why owners of Airport Express and Aiport Extreme will have to do, to get the new draft-N capability in their routers). That surely would have been better than having to read vapid editorials like this. BTW, regardless of whether it's lame or not, Apple didn't make anyone buy a Mac saying "Well, it has 802.11n, we'll release an updater later." Apple said, "This Mac does 802.11b/g" and that's that. Like so many Mac rumors, you may have convinced yourself Apple "promised" something, but like so many rumors, projecting your own unrealistic or baseless wishes tends to bite you in the rear big time. It's just sad that some people seem to want to be constantly find ways to make the glass 1/2 empty, and laced with vinegar.

Some quotes from "The Matrix" that I think support the case for Boot Camp. Matrix Quote: "The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it." (Morpheus) Translation: No matter how sexy or superior the Mac is, Windows is so entrenched in the minds of so many, you could not convince them to switch to the Mac even if you gave it them for free. Heck, the vast majority of the world has absolutely no idea what the Mac is except that it's some strange, alternative thing. Matrix Quote: "Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. " (Morpheus) Translation: The only real way to convince someone to switch is to get them real, meaningful face time with the Mac. Matrix Quote: "The pill you took is part of a trace program. It's designed to disrupt your input/output carrier signal so we can pinpoint your location." (Morpheus) Translation: Any switch to the Mac after a life of being enslaved to Windows will be disruptive. But you will be free. Matrix Quote: "This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." (Morpheus) Translation: Boot Camp is our world's equivalent of the device that makes those blue and red pills in the Matrix. The blue pill (Windows) is a comforting safety net, but the red pill (the Mac) promises glory and adventure. Without Boot Camp, the choice is much more difficult. Matrix Quote: "I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid... you're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you." Translation: The Switcher, now liberated, and having achieved his or her full potential because of the power of Mac OS X, acting as a catalyst for the eventual downfall of the Windows hegemony. Conclusion: Boot Camp is a critical element in Apple's ninja action to undermine Windows from within. Apple doesn't need to convert every Window user to win, just enough of the most influential users and Boot Camp makes that possible. Microsoft, like the machines in the Matrix, should be very, very afraid of the power and influence of these new-found Switchers.

I also agree that the ROKR is a total downer. Yet, in the end, the effect is that it makes the nano look all that much sexier. As Apple probably get little or nothing out of iTunes in ROKR, I'm sure Apple isn't unhappy about the fact that the nano is getting all the accolades. Secondly, the outdated design of the ROKR may serve a longer term objective. Everyone knows what happens to old phones: they get offered for free with a service contract. I would not be surprised if a year from now, the ROKR is selling for $99 with a service contract, and sometime after that, Cingular is handing them out free left and right. Apple may have sold 22 million iPods to date, but in terms of adoption, that number don't mean squat compared to the TVs, VCR, and DVD players. Clearly there are huge numbers of people out there who have never touched an iPod, never heard of iTunes, and don't understand the Apple reference in "Forest Gump." But I bet those people have a cell phone. That's the real purpose of the ROKR. Get tens of millions of credit cards on file by putting iTunes in a device that will be given away for free before long. 1.8 million songs sold per day may be impressive until the day hundreds of millions of people own an iTunes-enabled (free) phone...

I think it's a common myth that the Mac interface was heavily derivative of the Xerox SmallTalk interface. In fact, the Mac team was already hard at work when Apple was allowed to visit Xerox PARC in exchange for about a $1 million in stock. The PARC visit led to a quickening of the user interface concepts, but Apple went on to innovate several important features that did not exist in SmallTalk, such as overlapping windows and drag-and-drop. Yes, SmallTalk did not even have drag-and-drop. You can read about it from Bruce Horn himself, who worked at Xerox PARC and later became a key architect of the original Macintosh. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=On_Xerox,_Apple_and_Progress.txt&sortOrder=Sort by Date&detail=medium&search=xerox "Steve did see Smalltalk when he visited PARC. He saw the Smalltalk integrated programming environment, with the mouse selecting text, pop-up menus, windows, and so on. The Lisa group at Apple built a system based on their own ideas combined with what they could remember from the Smalltalk demo, and the Mac folks built yet another system. There is a significant difference between using the Mac and Smalltalk." So let's take a look at features that originated at Apple which Xerox did not have. *Drag and drop: try computing without this feature *Resource forks: double-clicking on a file automatically opens up the associated application on the Mac. Remove ".xls" or ".doc" extensions from the filename, and even XP has no idea what to do with the file. *Click-to-rename files and hard disk: try renaming documents by having to go through a wizard or using the command line instead of simply clicking on the file *Overlapping windows: SmallTalk didn't have this fundamental interface feature, either. *Pull-down menus: the Lisa group actually innovated this, which was quickly adopted by the Mac group. But no such thing in SmallTalk. *Control panels: the Mac innovated the concept of applying changes to your system configuration via Control Panels. Non-existent in SmallTalk. I think it's quite clear that without these totally Mac innovations, using a computer would be far more difficult than it is today. Xerox PARC had great ideas like cut-and-paste, but to say that we are all using Xeroxes today is a bit simplistic and frankly, simply wrong. We're no more using Xeroxes today than a Van Gogh painting is a derivative of a Michelangelo. Just because oil paint is common to both doesn't mean one is an iterated copy of the other.

Another major inconsistency with windows on Windows is the disparity between MDI and non-MDI application. MDI (multiple document interface) apps like Photoshop and Excel put their document windows and floating palettes inside an app window. This is very annoying in that when you resize a document window, you often have to resize the apps window, too. It's twice the work. Yet MDI apps mix freely with non-MDI apps like Word. When you open up each Word document, each opens in its own window complete with toolbars and menus. Try this very harrowing and annoying example on Windows. Open up Word, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Then open up 3 documents for each app. Now try to switch back between the various document windows. Now try figuring out which palette belongs to which app. Now minimize a few document windows in both Photoshop and Illustrator, switch to another app and then try to find and open one of the minimized windows. If maximized, try to quickly switch to one of the other document windows for that app. Now try the same thing on the Mac. It's a world of difference.

I actually find the Windows GUI, on average, to be much more inconsistent than the Mac GUI, although the latter does have its inexplicable quirks (like the Mail toolbar in Tiger). I understand the point of the article in this series, i.e. there are things the Mac could learn from Windows. However, the GUI is not one of those thing in general. Sure, there are sporadic elements here and there, but for the most part, Windows has a highly inconsistent GUI. In addition, sometimes [b]consistency doesn't necessarily produce the most sensible design[/b]. Take the maximize example. Maximize on Windows opens a window to fill the entire screen, however large. But maximize on the Mac makes the window large enough to fit the content, but no more than necessary. Certainly, the Windows approach to maximize is more consistent. But try maximizing a MSN Messenger window on the Mac vs. maximizing it on Windows and tell me which makes more sense. On Windows, the Messenger window fills the entire screen. But really, do you want really want your Messenger window to stretch out across 1280, 1440, or 1600 pixels of space, when there is only a thin column of contacts? The Mac approach to maximize insures that the Messenger window doesn't needlessly fill the screen with a window that is mostly devoid of content, but only extends the window vertically as much as possible. Which method more sensible and more productive? Instead, the Mac would be better off fixing the things that annoy Mac users, without having to necessarily look to Windows for examples. Mac users know the things that annoy them, but Mac users would be better off if Apple found its own way of addressing those annoyances. Just take a look at the situation in the Linux world, where you end up with desktops like KDE and Gnome which go out of their way to slavishly duplicate the Windows experience feature for feature. In the end, you get a very trashy, frustrating, and highly inconsistent hard-to-use interface. The problem with Windows consistency is that often, the reason for that consistency sits on a shaky foundation, and when duplicated across the entire GUI, creates a disharmonious, counter-productive, and counter-intuitive interface.

I think the problem with the whole "software vs. hardware" strategy is the interplay between software sales and hardware sales these days. Sure, software is more profitable in terms of percentage, but you have to sell much more software to equal hardware revenue. What's better? Making a 60% profit on $1 billion in sales, or 20% profit on $10 billion in sales? That's the kind of dilemma Apple is in these days, and why the whole shrinkwrap OS X for PCs is a lot more difficult to execute successfully than pundits would have you think. Everyone points to how much money Microsoft is able to print because of its software business, but Microsoft always had instant software revenue guranteed when it licensed DOS to IBM. Apple doesn't have that luxury because OS X for generic PCs would have to INSTANTLY sell tens of millions of units to keep the BUSINESS growing. What are the chances that this is going to happen? The chances are small and the risk is very high that you'll end up undermining your business for years until software revenue catches up. Sure, a lot of people by Macs because of industrial design, but that won't prevent a drain on hardware sales. There are a lot of people who would prefer the industrial design of an Alienware rig running OS X to that of an Intel PowerMac. There's no way Apple will produce a 9 lb. "laptop", but there are plenty of people who will go with a Dell XPS gaming notebook that has a top-of-the-line vid card running OS X instead of buying a PowerBook. Apple can't actually compete with the specialty PC makers because and the problem with OS X for Generic PCs is that Apple would suddenly have competition from a hundred companies like Alienware. People will still buy Macs from Apple, but just like the early cloning experience showed, hardware sales will fall through the floor. So Apple has a $499 Mini? There will be a dozen competitors selling $299 Mini-like machines running OS X, and these are areas that Apple doesn't want to compete in. This is why OS X for Generic PC will never happen - it's far too late in the game for Apple to become like Microsoft. Apple's strategy is focused on the hardware/software synergy. Once you realize that it's the artificial hardware/sofrware dichotomy imposed on the tech world that is the root cause of crappy hardware and even crappier software, you realize that the Apple Way is becoming the Holy Grail of the entire industry. Is it any wonder why Windows Media PCs are still so crappy after years and billions of dollars of development? And somehow Apple should replicate that strategy by releasing its software to vendors who are largely without vision nor have an understanding of consumer values?

You know, it will be especially funny, knowing that Microsoft seems to be making Vista into an answer for Tiger, because when Vista sees the light of day, Apple will be releasing Leopard. June 2006 at the WWDC seems like the most likely time Steve Jobs will let the world get a peek at Leopard, and if history tells us anything, I'm sure he's waiting until then to pull out the big guns, blazing away, on an unsuspecting Vista. The problem with Microsoft "innovation" today is that they are always looking backwards for ideas. The strategy has been to allow other companies to take the risk in introducing something new, copy the hell out of it and then put them out of business with monopoly power. The problem is that such a strategy only works if your competitor stops innovating. But if your competition continues to relentlessly improve their products and come up with entirely new one, then the copying-after-the-fact business model ends up leaving one mired in soon-to-be-obsoleted technologies. Just look at how futile Microsoft has been trying to copy Google with MSN Search while Google has been introducing innovative things like satellite maps. Or look at how unsuccessful Microsoft has been trying to duplicate iTMS, where it's still trying to work the bugs out of creating a simple, seemless buying experience for digital songs while Apple has already "been there, done that" and moving into the unexplored but potentially lucrative frontier of podcasts. And how long will it be before Microsoft's legion of programmers can get together to add podcasting support in Windows Media Player? I can probably tell you that by the time Microsoft gets around to copying that, Apple will have moved to the next frontier. And that's Microsoft's problem. Apple is moving so fast that they simply can't copy fast enough. Just look at how the intense effort to finish Vista is sucking away from all their other copying efforts. When was the last upgrade to MovieMaker? When was the last non-security patch WMP update? Is Microsoft still trying to convince us that using the XP file system is the best way to manage our photo collections as opposed to a dedicated database-oriented app like iPhoto? Microsoft still has no answer to GarageBand. The copying-as-business-model strategy is falling apart at the seems. So here is Microsoft, copying the hell out of Tiger. The marketing execs are probably all snickering over themselves in glee at the prospect of "beating Tiger" when Vista makes its debut in Decmeber 2006. So it shouldn't surprise anyone if Apple manages to completely blindside Microsoft with Leopard, and the results will be like watching a semi running into a Yugo at 60 mph. That's what the real story will be. "Leopard Leaps Over Vista" and not "Vista Offers Answer to Tiger."