Science - Technology: April 2009 Archives

Apple Moves Closer to Snow Leopard Release:

"If Apple can pull off this effort, the company will be able to further capitalize on its hot iPhone mobile platform to make inroads against  Research In Motion's BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows Mobile in enterprise environments."

(Via eWeek.)

Apple might actually have an executable enterprise strategy here instead of trying to boil the ocean by offering me-too software to established enterprise competitors.

Mobile Access Server an important sign of where Apple might be going with the iPhone platform. Apple is incrementally trying to attack large enterprise akin to the so-called halo effect of the iPhone on Mac sales in the consumer market. Is this Apple setting the stage for Apple to back the iPhone platform in the enterprise? It sounds interesting since they would be replicating Microsoft's success against mainframe/Unix. Microsoft used Office to weaponize Windows against Unix environments. I think the hardware analog here is Office/iPhone Windows/Xserve.

Mac vs. PC: What You Don't Get for $699 - BusinessWeek:

"PC makers in the Windows camp have done everything possible to make their products progressively worse by cutting corners to save pennies per unit and boost sales volume. There's good reason Apple is seeing healthy profits while grabbing market share. It refuses to budge on quality and so charges a higher price. Rather than running ads that seem clever at first but really aren't, the Windows guys ought to take the hint and just build better computers."

(Via BusinessWeek.)

How a $699 really costs $1500 but all you really get is $699 worth of computer.

The Macalope » Blog Archive » No, no, no:

"Just to be clear, this is not a rational argument they’re trying to make, so don’t treat it like one. Don’t waste your time refuting horse shit. When someone calls you a name, you don’t say ‘Am not!’ You say ‘Yeah? That’s not what your mother said while I was…’ Etc.

Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight."

(Via The Macalope.)

Microsoft's 'Apple tax' needs a refund | Mac | MacUser | Macworld:

"Kay would have you believe that everything can be reduced to quantitative measurements, and that’s emblematic of the way Microsoft operates. But there are plenty of important qualitative differences as well. The report bandies about the term ‘cool’ like a four-letter word, but it mistakes the trappings of 'cool' for its substance. True coolness is never really about appearance and only those who just don't get it claim that it is. Apple’s computers are fantastically designed and aesthetically attractive, but that's not what makes them cool—what makes them cool is what they allow their users to do. And for many, that's worth a few extra bucks."

(Via Macworld.)

Microsoft’s latest ad attacks Mac aesthetics, computing power — RoughlyDrafted Magazine:

"The strangest point of this ad is that Giampaolo didn’t get the portability, battery life, and power he was looking for, he just ended up with a cheap-appearing machine that obscured its real technical limitations under a flashy layer of misleading, specification-oriented marketing, the very thing he thought he was avoiding with HP: buying a brand rather than a computer. And that’s exactly what Microsoft wants people to do: buy its brand rather than a computer that does what they want it to do."

(Via Roughly Drafted.)

Great summary on why Microsoft can't even sell itself. It has to sell others. I wonder how Dell or Lenovo feel about this ad.