Apple Grrl

I was underwhelmed by the MacBook Air. I think it is geared to the business traveler who doesn’t need an actual optical hard drive or any serious storage space because they will only us it to write letters and such. I don’t want a laptop I have to buy a separate hard drive for to store photos, movies, files, etc on. I think they should have kept this in development until someone made a ultra slim hard drive to put in it. Because the MacBook Air with a massive slim hard drive of 160GB or more PLUS the Ram and Flash is has already would have truly been stunning. I’m guessing some gadget heads will buy the air out of a need to have the latest thing right out of the starting gate. I keep seeing comments around the net from people who don’t get that it only has a flash drive and RAM who think the 500GB is plenty of space for a computer, but trust me, it isn’t that kind of memory, folks.

As for the rest of it? The iTunes movie subscriptions and the improvements on the AppleTV and such? That was better than the MacBook Air, frankly. I still wish the AppleTV was also a true DVR, but this is a step in the right direction. Too bad Time Warner countered the innovation with an announcement of a crippling price hike based on bandwidth. Sometimes the entertainment and technology sector can’t win for shooting itself in the foot all the time.

I was also concerned with Apple’s recent Bad Apple legal tactics against bloggers and other fans, and had high hopes they would do something to rectify the situation a bit, but this reaction to a fan tells me I shouldn’t hold my breathe. I had a press pass to this even this year, and no way to go. Now I’m a bit glad I didn’t try harder to find the money for airfare. I would have enjoyed seeing my friends in California, but I would have been disappointed with the overall Keynote. I probably would have had fun wandering around after though - maybe next year.

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Apple released the Apple Gift Guide this week. I can’t believe it is almost Christmas! The link below will get you free shipping on items ordered from the Gift Guide. Enjoy!

Apple Store Gift Guide - Free Shipping on all Gift Guide items.

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Just in case you missed me waxing poetic about Leopard in this post, I have more Leopard-y goodness to share. Leopard fixed my speakers. That’s right. This MacBook has had sound quality issues since day one, and no amount of firmware updates or software upgrades fixed how quiet the speakers were. Since I installed Leopard, the sound has been perfect. Amazing. I can hear without my stupid headphones now! Wheeeeee! I’ll consider that a much needed bonus, Apple!

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I got a bit busy this week, as I mentioned over on Smoke Rings. That means I missed some excellent Apple news for you. By way of apology for tripping over my own deadlines this week, here is a quick recap of some of the highlights:

• MacWorld has opened registration for the the big MacWorld 2008 event and exhibition. Even better, for a limited time you can enter the code below at this site and get into the exhibit hall portion of the show for free. Yes, FREE. I wish I still lived in Santa Barbara - I’d so be there! (Use Priority Code: 08-E-VF01 to get the Exhibit Hall passes for free until October 5th.)
• This is a nice look at the man behind the beautiful designs of the iMac, iPod and iPhone, Jonathan Ive.
• The drummer from the Ramones, unable to resurrect his career legitimately, has decided to make some money by suing Apple and a host of others over use of his music. Git.
• This site tells you how to stream movies to your iPhone from iTunes. Awesome.
• Apple asks its workers to cancel holiday plans between Turkey Day and Xmas this year. The plan seems to be to release the new line of slim MacBooks,, and that coupled with new iPod options and other innovations may make this holiday season quite busy for Apple.
• Steve Jobs was subpoenaed by the SEC in the back dating case.

Have a great rest of your weekend! Can’t wait to see what Apple news and rumor abounds in the coming week.

You can also read my work today at Profy (NovelMaker, Mog vs LastFM), The Writer’s Well, and Smoke Rings. Enjoy!

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MacWorld has written a very fair side by side cost comparison of PCs and Macs. I highly recommend checking it out. They have remained objective in acknowledging places where Apple falls short (such as business priced models with service access in mind) and they have managed to avoid the fanboy trap of using Apple ad tag lines to defend what they like. I thought it was a balanced analysis.

1. There is plenty of software available for the Mac, both from established software houses and from individuals. Surprisingly, there are more products in some product categories than there are for Windows. For example, every time I turn around, I stumble across another project management tool for the Mac. There are more browsers for the Mac than there are for Windows.

I don’t think Windows users realize just how many Windows software product categories Microsoft has come to own, eliminating all or most of the viable competition. Though it’s true that in some categories there are only two or three Mac offerings, all in all there is a very solid, rich spread of software makers creating Mac applications. As a longtime software reviewer, I’ve been surprised by the quality of these applications.

That’s just one of many points he makes. Never fear, Windoze fans, you win out in several categories, but overall the Macs have a good showing here.

Related Articles By Me: Laptop Dilemma: Mac or PC?

Tags: Mac vs PC, MacWorld, Compare Windows and Mac, Jobs vs Gates

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Apple doesn’t chase after the business market the way Microsuck does. That’s been a fact for many years. The reason why is the big question. Fanboyz and Fangrrlz will spout “because Apple doesn’t need to” and other company jargon until the cows come home as a reason (which is why people sometimes see Apple users as a cult, not a user base), but is that the real reason?

You can rattle off a list of things that Apple does not do that makes its products and services a poor fit for corporate IT, and this list has not changed for years. To the extent that Apple products have actually infiltrated big businesses, it’s been through small groups of enthusiasts—the canonical example being the art department that somehow manages to get themselves Macs, despite a company-wide standardization on Windows. We’re seeing some of the same phenomenon today with the iPhone: employees purchasing iPhones because they’re cool, despite corporate IT’s prohibition against them.

Some see this as the seeds of an uprising. Here’s Gruber’s take:

Self-important IT experts will continue to insist that the iPhone “must” or “needs to” support “business software systems”, but in the meantime, their employees will be buying iPhones on their own. [...] Like many successful revolutions, this one might come from the bottom.

Ars Technica thinks that the main reason Apple doesn’t market to enterprise is that it would require an entirely different marketing strategy than the one it has so successfully employed for years. Marketing to business means selling to an IT department, and Apple markets products directly to end users. I agree - it really is that simple.

Because Apple markets to the people who will actually use the products they sell, and not to the IT geeks who would have to maintain them, Apple users really are happier with their purchase and overall experience. IT departments are shunning the iPhone, for example, because it doesn’t have the traditional clunky interface or support hard to use business software like Exchange. Well, no shit sherlock. and customers are buying them because of that - they don’t want a clunky interface, or to be tied down to hard to use corporate products, not because that hard to use product is better, but because the IT department is familiar with it and doesn’t want to change.

This is why Apple does not compete in the enterprise market in the traditional sense. This is why no other company created the iPhone. This is why most desktop PCs are pieces of crap. When you don’t focus on the user, the user gets shafted.

Truer words were never spoken. Read the rest of the Ars Technica / FatBits analysis, it’s worth it.

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Tags: Apple, Enterprise

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I made two recent Mac purchases, and I love them both.

The first recent purchase was Mojotones by VoodooErgonomics. I’ve been using a product called Xingtones. Xingtones has been great, I have no problem with Xingtones, but I have to say Mojotones came along and blew it away. They are both $20, so well within most budgets. They both make excellent sounding ring tones. they are both easy to use, though I have to give Mojotones the edge here for being a little more pleasant to look at and overall a slightly simpler interface.

So if they are both equally good products for creating your own ring tones? What really put Mojotones in first place? Four little words: Full Song Ring Tones. also, it is fully integrated with iTunes. Unless the song is locked by the artist, you can make any song in your iTunes folder into 30 clip on repeat or a full song. I love it! Plus, it is one click action and it works with any phone. Xingtone only works with one phone number at a time.

The other little gem I bought this week is the Griffin iMic. For under $40, I can now transfer all of my vinyl and cassettes to my MacBook. How sweet it is! It is a completely plug and play device. If you find the set up as it comes in the box is too noisy on your records and you don’t want to run them through garage band for clean up, they also sell a $20 grounding cable for your turntable that eliminates the problem. The hissing noise just sounds like an old school record to me, so I don’t need the second cable. I’m having a blast with this. It’s too bad I have to work to afford these toys, otherwise I’d be playing with the thing all weekend.

I’d write more gushing words about the iMic, but I have to go play some more old school punk records now. I’m currently on 7 Seconds. See you on the flip side!

Tags: iMic, iTunes, Xingtone, Mojotones

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More and more airlines are offering internet access in fights now that laptops, PDA and smart phones like the iPhone are becoming the norm. The latest to jump on the mile high wifi bandwagon is American Airlines.

Business and leisure passengers on American flights would be able to e-mail and surf the Web from laptops and handheld devices while in flight aboard 767-200 aircraft primarily on transcontinental routes, according to a statement from Itasca, Ill.-based AirCell.

Who else reported to be jumping on the mile high wifi phenomenon? Deutsche Lufthansa, Southwest Airlines and Qantas. Jet Blue led the mile high wifi charge a year and a half ago when it applied for and won it’s wifi license, and has been offering wifi on select flights already.

Tags: mile high wifi, airline broadband, in fight internet

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