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It's Comcastic!

When basketball season ended, we cancelled cable TV, saving about $60 a month. And life continued.

Turns out there is plenty of entertainment for our "television" screen out there for free. Instead of cable TV, we are watching OTA television, Hulu, Netflix on-demand, and ESPN3.

Comcast was nice enough to leave the free over-the-air (OTA) channels on the cable itself so we dont have to mess with an antenna. Using Sage TV software on a Windows 7 PC, we are able to record and watch PBS and the major networks just like we would with cable. Even better actually since these channels are in HD and unscrambled so we can record them with our home theater PC DVR.

ESPN was nice for sports but most of the ESPN content is also available on their online site ESPN3. Some shows are only available during the broadcast but most are available on demand for a week after the actual event.

Netflix on-demand is fantastic. I find that Claire and I spend most of our time with this service.

Hulu is also great but mostly for broadcast shows during the season and for anime that does not have the same restrictive licenses as the major network shows.

Life with high speed Internet but without Comcast is worth living after all.

HTPC update

This change also made me realize that I may have build my last Windows PC.

Our HTPC was pretty long in the tooth. A single processor that was 4+ years old. It has been a solid performer for years but it just could not keep up with the demands of Adobe's CPU hog known as FLASH. Apple is right to criticize the performance of FLASH, which is a dog. Trying to watch the jerky, low-rez version of the World Cup on ESPN3 was the final straw.

For about $300, I bought a new entry-level AMD CPU, motherboard, memory and a nicer case to rebuild our HTPC. Then I spent a half-day putting it together.

• For $100, the Lian Li case is half the size of our old PC. It does not look like a "stereo" but it is small and distinct enough to look decent and still give us flexibility.
• We kept our Hauppage PCI TV capture card for recording HD TV shows with cable or an antenna, and the SageTV software for running a PVR. (Although about the only TV we watch this way now is the news.)
• The CPU is a dual-core and the motherboard has on-board video from ATI. I was worried it would not keep up but it does just fine with HDTV so we got rid of the separate $60 video card I had.
• The most exciting addition was a remote touchpad/keyboard that fits in my hand for about $40. This was my main point of frustration with the HTPC system that I was never able to solve. Who wants a huge keyboard on the coach or wants to get up to use the keyboard across the room?

The new system is half the size, quiet, and performs like a champ.

FLASH video from Hulu and ESPN3 looks great at the highest quality level. No complaints now. (Netflix always looked great because it uses Silverlight not FLASH.)

I considered moving to an Apple system for the HTPC but ruled it out for cost. We would need to spend money on a TV capture method that I already owned and the Apple TV does not provide full browser support for Hulu and ESPN3. So I stuck with Windows.

Is this the last Windows PC I build?

the end of Windows PCs?

The HTPC and my gaming PC both run Windows 7, but the rest of our computers and devices are all from Apple. Two iMacs, two iPhones, and iPad and a few iPods.

My gaming PC is almost 2 years old and still going strong. For about 10 years, I have been building my own Windows PC's to game with. Every year or so, I replace something in the system. Our basement is a testament to those investments: a pile of worthless PC parts in their original boxes. While we have been re-selling our old Mac's on Craiglist for about 50% of what we paid for them, most PC's are worth next to nothing after 2+ years.

But is building PC's fun? Lately I think not. My hobby is playing games not building PC's (or worse, troubleshooting malfunctioning ones). Now that I spend more time playing console games, I really question the value of time spent building PC's to play games.

My next Mac upgrade will likely be more powerful than my game PC, with a better video card and CPU, which also calls into question why I have a separate game PC. Valve now has Steam for the Mac so I can get a number of games on my Mac natively...

So the end may well be in sight. With a 27", 4-core iMac, I will move to Bootcamp - one Mac that runs MacOS or Windows 7, as needed. That will remove a PC box and a monitor from my office and give us back some space while providing an even better experience. Sometimes it is nice to use my Mac to look stuff up while playing a game, but I can probably live without that.

The world keeps changing but the good news (for computers at least) is that the experience for users continues to get better.

Want to improve the quality of your product or service?

The number one, most significant thing you can do to improve your product quality is to reduce variation and create a culture that values variation reduction.

variation reduction

Reducing variation is one of the basic principles behind the Toyota Production System and the root of why Japanese cars had better quality than American ones. Reducing variation (and using statistical methods to look for variation) was a principle Edwards Deming brought to Japan after WW2. Deming worked with Japanese companies to create a culture of quality through reductions in variation and the rest, shall we say, is history.

Reducing variation is a basic idea that has been around for decades and I am kind of amazed at how few people have heard about it much less internalized it in the USA. While it is part of the culture in Japanese manufacturers, it is still a pretty foreign idea everywhere else.

Toyota was already legendary for their quality cars. When they had all those recall problems this past year, what was their response? Reduce variation by cutting the number of designs and the number of design groups even more than they already had. They doubled down on variation reduction.

The benefits of reducing variation are not just for manufacturing.

Do you frequently lose your keys or glasses or the TV remote? That is probably because you set them down randomly, ie a lot of variation. If you get in the habit of always putting them in the same place, you eliminate the variation and you always know where they are.

Lets say you are at a software company that makes several products. Several of them need to do the same task. The most common (but wrong) choice is to have each product write the task themselves. The right answer is to abstract the tasks and write it once in a reusable library that all the products can share. If the products want to customize it, they do that themselves or they change their design and stick to the common solution. This method will make it easier to test for problems, fix problems that exist, and it will create a common experience for users that is easier to use and understand.

Keep it simple, reduce the variation, and your quality with go up. Your productivity will also increase as there are fewer fires to fight and people are not repeating the same work.

Microsoft and Apple

A good example of the impact of variation is in personal computers. As it happens, the two largest personal computer systems in the world took opposite approaches to variation.

Microsoft Windows is unarguably the most popular desktop operating system in the world. 9 of 10 personal computers run Windows. While Windows has been successful, the business model is based on increasing variation. Microsoft only writes the software OS; it relies on thousands of hardware partners to make the actual PC's that we all buy.

A PC is actually a complex system. The CPU, motherboard, memory, video card, hard drive, power supply... all these components are designed and manufactured by different companies. Yet other companies take these parts, assemble them, add Windows and sell it to consumers.

Even though the "PC" is something of an open standard and companies are using the same basic designs, there is a ton of variation in building them. Using a different capacitor or a different factory can be the difference between "it works" and "I keep getting a blue screen". On top of that, many of the companies have different designs altogether.

All of these products ultimately run the Windows operating system and consumers associate their experience with Microsoft. Microsoft is responsible for their quality and the quality of their experience. Microsoft has to test them.

Testing software involves a test matrix. Take all the combinations possible, put them in a matrix, test each case to make sure it works. Even if you only stick to the highest level and list the number of products from each consumer PC company, that matrix is gigantic. Frankly it is a miracle that the PC works at all given its high level of variation. Your average consumer has no idea how much effort goes into making Windows work on so many hardware products.

At the other extreme is Apple.

Apple makes everything itself. It writes the software OS and designs the hardware which it then contracts out to manufacturing. Apple products are all controlled by a single company from start to finish. There are no clones, no partners, just Apple. Right from the start, Apple has reduced the variation people experience with an Apple product.

Apple has further reduced variation to the handful of models that it makes and supports. To reduce variation over time, they make their OS very inexpensive and expect users to upgrade. This allows them to focus only on the current products and spend very little time fixing past mistakes.

Even Apple's design philosophy is based on cutting features, reducing options until you only have the most needed things for a good experience. Critics argue that Apple products are too limited but Apple argues that good design stems from making decisions and limiting variation. (Although they dont use the variation word.)

While Microsoft 's test matrix is incomprehensibly large, Apple's test matrix is manageable.

the consequences

And the results?

The overall Apple experience is consistently better. By focusing on reducing variation in the hardware and the software, Apple has built a reputation for quality at the consumer level. Apple products just work. Fans know that Apple products wont do everything but they are confident that what the products do do, they do well. Measures of brand loyalty, brand recognition, revenue growth and stock price indicate that Apple is doing something people like,.

Despite Herculean efforts, Microsoft has the opposite reputation for many people. Window's PC's are complicated and break easily. You have to update video drivers, or call friends, or hire the Geek Squad. So many people spend time on tech support phone calls, it is a common cultural experience and running joke.

I would argue these two experiences ultimately stem from two different approaches to the principle of variation. Apple cuts variation and delivers higher perceived quality. Microsoft tries to give everyone everything and falls short. In effect, Microsoft chose the biggest hill to climb and then grows that mountain over time with even more choices. Microsoft's model requires them to expend increasing effort just to deliver the base level of quality.

In recent years, even Microsoft has been making an effort to reduce variation because someone recognized how much it costs. Specifically they have been reducing the test matrix by cutting support for previous products (which also have to be in the test matrix). Windows Live Messenger used to support many different versions; now they just support the current version and the previous version. Microsoft has also stopped supporting Windows XP. Even though there are a lot of customers using XP on new hardware, Microsoft needs to reduce its variations and stick to the current version and the previous version, Windows 7 and Vista respectively. It is just a start but still a good sign for consumers.

a variation culture

So think about variation. Once you understand the significance of variation, you will start to see examples of it everywhere in your personal and professional life. Once you see it, you will see it everywhere.

Unfortunately that is just the start. The real impact comes from a culture of variation reduction, whether that is in your household or your company. Deming recognized 50 years ago that quality does not come from individuals, it comes from the culture individuals work in.

If you are the only one in your group that is trying to reduce variation, you will go insane. Your efforts will just feel like extra work to other people and the result will probably be even more tension and frustration.

Culture's that dont appreciate the principle of variation reduction are still trying to get better quality and the result is probably a culture of fire fighting. New problems never stop coming up, people work harder and harder to deal with the symptoms but they never make time for fixing the root cause, variation. The result is overwork, lower productivity, high stress, and frustration. Most cultures get addicted to fighting fires and fail to realize that the best approach to fighting fires is to prevent fires in the first place by reducing variation.

So once you see it in your own life, you need to try to get others to see it too and help create and spread a common understanding and culture about variation. "I am not asking you to do extra. If we do it this way, it is actually easier. There will be less problems and we will have more time to do other things." The principle of variation is a subtle but powerful mindset change that will have significant impact over time.

There have been a number of articles recently about Microsoft and Apple. While both companies are well known brands, most comparisons miss the fact that they are completely different businesses.

This history of IBM, Microsoft, and Apple also tells the tale of the "personal" computer.

Once upon a time computers were room-size mainframes, all computers were used for business and THE business computer company was IBM. IBM was serious business.

In the 1980s tiny startups appeared trying to create “personal” computers, maybe even put a computer on every desk. This was heresy to Big Blue but IBM was powerless to stop it and eventually even they got in the act with the IBM PC. The world of computing profoundly changed.

Fast forward 30 years and everything has changed again.

IBM still makes mainframes computers but their visibility has been greatly diminished as business focus has moved from the back-office to the desktop. IBM eventually gave up on desktop computers altogether and re-invented itself as a "services" or consulting business.

Microsoft has changed too. It has replaced IBM as THE business computer company. Business computing has shifted from mainframes to desktops and Microsoft makes the OS and the productivity software that runs business globally. Once the champion of "personal computers", Microsoft’s focus has changed from the personal computer to “enterprise software”.

And then there is Apple. Apple was the David to IBM's Goliath in the 1980's, pushing hard for personal computers. For decades it quietly made desktop computers that felt more personal, the PC for the rest of us so to speak. In the 1990's, Apple tried to get into serious business and floundered badly. The company almost went out of business but its loyal following kept it alive churning out desktop computers. Then CEO Steve Jobs returned to the company and things started to change. A lot.

It wasn't obvious at the time but it is now. Apple has reinvented the idea of a "personal" computer by taking the idea to the next level. It is not about a computer in every desktop anymore; We have that.

The next stage of personal computing is a computer in every pocket or backpack. Apple has emerged as the company pushing this vision harder and more successfully than anyone else.

It is pretty amazing how much Apple has changed in the last 5-10 years. As proof, look at their income statements and you will see a desktop computer company that has reinvented itself as a portable computer company. Apple built a solid, extendable foundation with MacOS X on the desktop and then they expanded: first laptops, then iPods, then the iPhone and now the iPad.

Apple still makes a tidy profit with desktop computers and they sell more Macs then ever before but after less than 3 years, 40% of their revenue (40%!!) comes from the iPhone alone. Add in iPods and iPads and one can see the future. Apple is now a mobile computing company. With iPhones selling in Wal-Mart? You can expect that trend to continue.

This transformation is also why Apple’s stock price has taken off and Microsoft’s has cratered. Enterprise software is for business and every business has a copy (legal or otherwise) of some version of Office and Windows. Enterprise software is a mature business which is driven by upgrades not new customers.

Almost everyone that can afford a desktop computer already has one but how many people have a pocket computer? If every person buys a smartphone and every other person buys a tablet, Apple stands to make a lot of sales to brand new customers. These are growth businesses not mature businesses and Apple products have emerged as "affordable luxury" items in these markets. Apple's devices are aspirational in segments that represent enormous future sales opportunity. The stock prices reflect that.

While Apple, Microsoft and IBM are often compared and have a shared history, they are different creatures today. IBM was mainframes and became services. Microsoft was personal desktop PC's and became enterprise software on the desktop. Apple continues its journey as the "personal computer for the rest of us" as an emerging mobile computing company.

And the story continues. How will things look in another twenty years?

Microsoft Bing is in the news again the past week.

Microsoft looks to expand Bing

By NICK WINGFIELD And JESSICA E. VASCELLARO

JUNE 10, 2010

"When you're the number two, you have to think outside of the box," Mr. Mehdi said.

I am a Microsoft shareholder. Microsoft definitely needs new businesses. Our stock price is being punished because of our lack of growth but...

Is paying customers to use our product really "thinking outside the box"? It would be more precise to say that is thinking "outside the business."

Building a search product that is different and has a different focus from Google is smart. It differentiates us but the cost of the massive investment and the goofy advertising is questionable.

We need profitable businesses that can grow. We dont need vanity business that continue to suck resources year after year. Our CEO calls those "strategic bets" but I call them expenses. If there is no return on the investment, there is no business and that is why our stock has steadily lost value over the past 10 years. We tend to invest without returns.

If Bing+Yahoo is 30% of the search market and you cannot turn a profit with a third of the market, something is wrong with your business. Either the business itself is a bad one or you are lousy at execution. Losing money on every sale and trying to make it up in volume is not a recipe for profit growth. I am hoping for the best but Microsoft's consumer-focused products dont have the best track record so far.

If I asked you what "BPOS" stood for, what would you answer?

Two years ago, my wife and I each had one of those Motoroloa “r” phones – the SLVR and the RAZR. They were ok. They were phones.

Last spring as March Madness wound down, I was trying to brainstorm an iPhone app I could do.

One idea that interested me was around the calendar for basketball games. It is a bit of a manual-pain to track the games.

Of course, I never did anything about the idea but Google now has. You can import the game schedule for sports teams into a Google Calendar. Painless and helpful.

Unfortunately it does not say whether the game is televised or what channel it is on but this is a big help all the same.

I have waited all year for Apple to announce iMac's using Intel's core i7 processors...

A few months ago, I couldnt wait any longer so I bought a 24" iMac core2duo.

This past week Apple announced their 27" iMac with the 4-core Intel processors.

First I was blown away and then I fell into a quandary...

For years I have had a PC for games and a Mac for everything else.

For a long time, I had a laptop with an external monitor (also used for my PC).

Now I have an iMac with an external monitor and I am finding that I dont really like the arrangement. (That mac has the same CPU as my windows desktop - 2.66GHz dual core - but an inferior video card.)

With these new iMacs, I find that they are more powerful than my current PC (same video card with a better CPU).

Do I actually need a PC at all anymore?

Can I just have the single 27" iMac on my desk and forget about dual monitor setups? My game PC is only a year old but I am very tempted.

For $2K from Apple I get a 27" LED monitor, a 4 core CPU and the same ATI 4850 video card plus I get half my desk back....

The only real downside I see is that I have to reboot my iMac when I want to play a Windows game. I have gotten used to keeping my windows and apps open for weeks without a reboot. That will be an adjustment.

It is also possible that bootcamp will be a pain. With my PC it is easy to throw in a new drive and install an new OS, such as win7 or XP.

Another wrinkle with an iMac is that I have been interested in switching to a solid state hard drive because of their outstanding speed. iMac's only have room for a single drive which makes it a little harder since SSDs are small.

Let's see if it is still on my mind when the new Macs actually become available.

Oh Apple, you have let me down. Not just once but twice this past month...

First of all, I am out jogging, or at least walking, with my 20GB iPod. And then it dies. Totally dead. Wont respond when I plug it into a charger. Dead. Dead. Dead.

As is FINALLY, it's dead. I bought this iPod almost 5 years ago. I have wanted a new one but I spent $300 on this one and I just couldnt justify buying a new one when this one still worked.

So I am thrilled. It finally died and I finally get a new one. Except Angela fixed it. (I know, astonishing in more ways than one.) I'm at work and I get a text: "I fixed it!" I was so bummed.

Then it happened again.

Our iPhones are two years old this November. I am ready for a new iPhone but I cannot justify the $200 price tag when our first generation iPhones work just fine.

I am sitting at my desk with Claire in my lap. She is playing with my iPhone and the next thing I know, it is dead. Not as dead as my iPod was but still dead. My phone would try to boot and then die. I could not get it to respond.

So we call insurance to see how our policy covers it and we take it into the Apple store's Genius Bar. The resident "genius" reformats the OS in memory and 20 minutes later my phone is working again. Even after I explained to the guy that if he couldnt fix it, I could get a new iPhone. No heart there at all.

So you have let me down Apple. I am dying to purchase new Apple gear but the quality of your old gear has me trapped.

Windows 7 should be available any day now. Before it is completely old news, I wanted to share my experience.

I have been using Windows 7 since the beta so that has been several months now. With one exception, win7 has been great and I wholeheartedly recommend it for Windows users.

I have two PC's:

Game PC

My game PC is less than a year old with a killer video card. I do one thing with it: play PC games.

When I first started using 32-bit Vista, I had problems. Some games, like The Witcher, did not work properly. So I installed Windows NT on a 2nd drive and booted into NT if a game needed it.

I have been using 64bit win7 now for several months and I have not found any games that have problems with it. I havent had to boot into NT for a long time.

the 64bit question

Why 64-bit? The 32- vs 64-bit question is one of Windows 7's biggest problems. The nerds I work with dont see a problem but good luck finding an explanation of why you should pick one or the other.

Intel has made 64 bit CPU's for a long time but Apple and Microsoft have taken very different paths towards 64-bit software. Apple has basically hidden the issue from users and the Apple experience is seamless. Microsoft asks us, the uneducated users, to choose. If you are someone that wants to know what your choices are, the 64-bit question is a confusing one.

Bottom line: if you have or want to use more than 3 GB of memory, you need to go 64 bit.

32-bit windows can only use 3GB of memory. Even if you have more installed, it wont use it. This has to do with the design of Windows itself. There are some confusing software work-arounds but that is only going to confuse normal users more.

The caveat with going 64-bit is that you will need device drivers that are specifically 64-bit. As most Windows users already know, anytime someone mentions "device driver", you have cause to be concerned.

I was certainly concerned but at least in my limited testing, I have had no driver problems. In this regard, 64-bit Windows 7 is much more stable as a release candidate than 32-bit Windows Vista was years after release.

HTPC

My other use case is our home theater PC which we use like a TIVO to record and play TV using sageTV software. More and more, we also use it to stream Netflix children's content in a browser.

This is an old PC, single core with 1GB of memory and a new ATI video card for HD content.

Vista was lousy with slow PC's and 1GB of memory. Win7 is much better.

However I am having a serious problem with 32-bit win7 -- it has some kind of codec problem with my TV software. For whatever reason, I am unable to watch over-the-air HDTV with sageTV and win7. It worked fine for cable TV content and vista worked fine for OTA content but win7 has a problem.

This OTA issue does not seem to be a problem that everyone has (lucky me) but I have blown several hours on it and for now I have no solution. Since this PC is only for watching TV, this win7 issue is a major one. I keep hoping for a patch but for now I am just not watching TV. When something I want to record comes on, I will have to find a solution or replace win7 with NT.

The other big problem I had with this system was file permissions. Win7 "improved" its file security. Evidence of this is that when I reinstalled Win7 on my existing drive, I was no longer able access any of the content. I no longer had permission to access my TV shows and such.

I found a little help content on the Internet but basically gave up, wiped my drive, and started all over. A big time waster that presages problems ahead. Being able to do a clean install was an important solution for serious Windows problems. Not being able to access your data after that gives me real concern.

conclusion

So my advice to you: If you have normal needs, get Windows 7 and get 64-bit.

Not everything Apple does is great for customers. For instance, MobileMe.

The salesman talked me into trying MobileMe 4 years ago when I bought my first Mac. I have been paying for this service for years and as far as I know I have done nothing with it. At least nothing important. I had it host a few photos a few years ago and I used a dotmac email address, mostly for Apple things like their own spam and my iTunes account.

This year I started to get the renew notices and I decided to cancel. Unfotunately, I was not proactive but I knew that my credit card had expired so I felt safe from their charges...

Until I got a credit card bill. They had charged me and I got the bill a month after the charge.

It took me another month to decide once and for all that I dont use this service for anything and to create a new iTunes/iPhone account. (The whole account business and Apple's DRM is still confusing to me.)

Today I finally put time into cancelling the service and getting a partial refund.

I checked my credit card bill - no phone number.

I got an email invoice which says: "Questions? Call - - http://www.apple.com/support/mobileme/ww" -- Nice phone number, Apple.

I log into the account and check the online help only to find that they dont do partial refunds:

If you don’t see the Cancel Account button, it’s been more than 45 days since you were charged for the subscription and you can no longer cancel it. To prevent your subscription from automatically renewing at the end of the year, make sure you’ve deselected the Renew checkbox in the Account Options pane.

You only get 45 days to cancel the service? Since I didnt even know I had been charged for almost a month, I didnt even get that much time.

So now I am stuck. I paid $100. Again. Wasted.

I can blame myself for not being more proactive about this. I can blame Apple for a) autorenew by default and mostly (b) not allowing partial refunds. Even 2 months in, I should be able to get about $80 back... Argh.

I wonder how much money companies make from services that customers pay for but never actually use...

Some times I think the "big brain" reputation at Google is overblown. Other times I am just in awe with how they are able to take a fresh look at something and deliver a product. It is incredibly hard to deliver software. Big problems tend to take big teams; big teams tend to take huge effort to organize and direct. Even little ideas can be overwhelmingly difficult to implement at big companies.

These days I work in the real-time collaboration space. This is a huge area of work and technological growth. RTC is basically about communication or sharing information and that is a big tent. Phones, email, text IM, p2p file transfer, video conferencing, etc etc.

A while back, I heard about Google's efforts on GrandCentral. This week I am a bit in awe of their latest announcement, Waves.

Their demo says it all. Forget the tools you have now and rethink the problem. If you were to design a tool for information sharing and collaboration today, what would it look like?

The telephone is about a century old. Email is 40 years old. We are used to these tools but I think all of us with information jobs struggle to get our jobs done more productively. Although it may feel at times like your job is managing email it is not; your job is getting something done and email is just one tool to help. It was time for someone to ask the big question and deliver something different.

Even though Google does not have proven experience in this area, I think they have some advantages over other companies.

If they think of their product as "information", they are free to rethink large areas and still stay within their corporate mission.

Since they make money on advertising, they can fund new ideas without having to worry about revenue models nor are they hampered by existing business units.

Their corporate DNA involves client-server applications, usually through a browser. This design lends itself particularly well to some problems. For some types of services, it just makes more sense to keep data centralized on a server and access it from anywhere while it is much harder to solve the same problem with a different paradigm like trying to synch data on separate desktop computers.

Then we get to the Innovator's Dilemma. Since Google does not already make applications with many customers, they dont have work with groups of people who are already doing something similar. They dont have to convince those groups to try something new; they dont have to force those groups to try something new or support the new idea; they dont have to work around those groups or protect their new vision from being quashed by a powerful group. There is less organizational resistance to innovation.

Another thing they dont have to do is deal with customers. Having customers is a good thing because it generally means revenue and cash flow to support development. However customers and customer requests often have a randomizing affect. It can be hard to stay focused on a pure vision when you have powerful customers pulling you this way and that way.

Yes, I am looking forward to seeing what they do with Waves. Maybe it will be a flop, but I am always excited to see people focus on the core issues and try something new.

Ohhhh Microsoft....

Well I told you about my Xbox LIVE gamertag problems. (Why is LIVE in all caps anyway?)

Well I used the webpage form and two days later I got a polite email.

It seems my account problem requires a lot of security questions so the web form will not work. I need to call the 1-800 number instead.

1-800-4MYXBOX

As you might expect, the person that answers is a female computer and you spend a while going through the phone tree options to find your problem.

"OK. I can help you with that." Except she never could. Here is a tip: "Operator" will get you a person although that is no guarantee that they can help you either.

Unfortunately the person I got was rather hard to understand. She did ask a lot of questions, my address 3 years ago, my phone #, my email, etc. All the info I would have used to create my account when I got it in 2006.

our customer surveys indicate that this point in the call is an optimal up-sell opportunity

At least she was polite and she did help explain my problem. The only weirdness was at the end when she asked if I was planning to upgrade to a Gold membership, ie pay money.

I got the impression tech support was suddenly an up-sell opportunity. Yeah, good luck with that. As someone who is not happy about wasting time with tech support in the first place, I was not feeling inclined to pay Microsoft anything for my trouble...

how did it feel to be terminated?

So what was my problem?

"If an Xbox LIVE account has not been used for a long period of time, the passport account is deleted. If you want to keep your old gamertag, you will need to create a new account by talking with my supervisor."

Deleted? Really? Did she say DELETED? I didnt log in for 9 months and they deleted my email account? What, to save a few bytes of space?

When I thought about this I was really surprised. They kept my gamertag information but deleted my email account which I need to access my gamertag. How does that make any sense?

I use Yahoo email about once a year and they have kept that account for me for a decade... I had 4 Microsoft passport accounts and 3 of them have been deleted in the past year. Yeah, I am definitely not wanting to upgrade to an Xbox LIVE gold account.

software catch-22

The weird thing is that my Xbox360 remembers my gamertag info and all the games I have played but it no longer has an email address. Knowing Microsoft I am sure each part of my "account" is stored in a different system and managed by different departments, each with their own goals and priorities but still. I am beginning to see why they needed a fancy automated phone computer to separate themselves from unhappy customers.

But hey, no problem. All they need to do is add a new email account to my gamertag info and I am back in business. Let's talk to the supervisor.

meet the super

He is polite but REALLY hard to understand. He gets my Xbox serial numbers and then tells me that "one of our engineers will investigate your request and get back to you."

What? Cant you just take my new email address?

"No sir, we have to investigate." Oh brother, how long with that take?

"5 to 10 business days."

5... to... 10... business days!? DAYS!! OFMG.

But wait a minute, why did I even have to talk to you? That first person could have told me the same thing and saved me 5 minutes on the phone waiting for you to tell me that you couldnt help me.

tech-support quest recap

Well kids, let's recap our Xbox LIVE experience:

I buy the game, cant play it without an account. I cant get my old account working. I turn on my old Xbox and cant get that working. Fill out the tech support website form. 2 days for an answer that says call the phone number. Call the phone number and after 20 minutes of alternate waiting and interrogation, I get to wait another two weeks to hear back, something. Who even knows what this "investigation" involves and the supervisor did not actually confirm they could assign my gamertag to a new email address.

A little swearing to myself. Another cost benefit soliloquy: is saving this gamertag account really worth all this fuss or should I start over tonight? Just shake your head and walk away.

Thank you for enjoying another episode of Tech Support Quest. Come again.

Last year I took the plunge and installed Windows Vista. One of the first things that happened when I started my Vista system was a warning message:

No virus protection software detected.

Hmm. That's kind of an odd message from an OS. But it happened again when I switched to Windows 7 beta.

No virus protection software detected. Please follow this link to install anti-virus software.

The other day I started to think about this message. Is there any other product that tells you to purchase yet another product as soon as you buy it?

I tried to think of an analogy. Maybe you buy a car which does not include seat belts. You turn it on and the first thing that happens is an annoying chime that wont go away until you wear seat belts, which you have to purchase elsewhere.

When you think about it, it is weird thing. If I need anti-virus software in my OS, why doesn't the OS come with it? If my OS does not include anti-virus software, why does it belabor the point and repeatedly tell me that I need it and dont have it?

Maybe you can think of examples of this kind of situation but I couldn't. But maybe I couldn't think of any examples because it is a bad customer experience. My immediate reactions were confusion, worry, and then a feeling that I bought lunch and only got half the sandwich.

These warning messages were another reminder to me of why I like my Mac's. Apple has done a great job of providing a computer with darn near everything you need right from the start, especially if you buy iLife.

I bought Dawn of War 2 on steam. I want to play a game...

At Microsoft, this is what we would call a scenario: User wants to play a PC game using his Xbox Live account. Even though we focus on scenarios, it would appear that we are not very good at them sometimes.

Well I have to tell you that I HATE the new iTunes player. They took away the main feature I use and its driving me bonkers.

I always used the file-list view. The one that had three columns: genre - artist - album. I would pick a genre or two and hit random. Now I cannot figure out how to do that.

Instead of the three columns I am forced to look at the pretty genre "covers". An excuse to use CoreAnimation while sacrificing functionality. @#$%@!

I cant believe that I am the only person that is annoyed by this but I am annoyed. This is the first time I have been really unhappy with an Apple product and not sure of any alternatives. This is the first time the iTunes monopoly has bugged me. Not a good sign.

I guess I have complained enough about my Windows PC's that it was time for some Mac problems.

I bought a new 20" iMac. Yay!

But when I got it home, I ran into a lot of problems.

The new Mac does not include any cables. While this may save Apple a few bucks, it is proving to a big issue.

When I tried to connect my firewire cable from my old mac to my new mac, I found that the new mac has a different connector. My trusty FireWire cable wont work. Hmm.

Happily I saw that the Migration Assistant (v1.2.3) includes a nice button for 'Use Network'. However it never actually finds my old mac (Migration Assistant v1.0.6). Perhaps there is a version conflict with Migration Assistant but there is no mention of it at Apple.com.

So no firewire connection and no network connection = no data transfer. Crap.

Then I tried to hook up my external monitor to my new mac. I was excited because these macs come with DisplayPort connectors which I have on my fancy new HP LP2475w monitor.

Hmm, the iMac uses a MINI DisplayPort adapter - apparently something ONLY Apple makes. Apple does not include an adapter in the box; Apple does not actually sell a DisplayPort cable; Nor does Apple sell a Mini-to-regular-DisplayPort adapter. ?!?!

For $30 you can purchase a mini-DisplayPort to DVI adapter but it appears that you cannot actually use the DisplayPort plug with DisplayPort!!! OMG. If Apple had just included a normal DisplayPort adapter (there is PLENTY of room for it), I would be able to get a cable from Newegg but now Im screwed. I have to spend $30 AND I have to use DVI instead of DisplayPort.

I sure hope I missed something but these issues have already wasted a lot of my time. While I still feel Apple makes the best personal computers, there are a still problems in paradise.

It is endlessly fascinating to analyze different companies and look at how different cultures lead to different business results. It is also interesting to see how strategies that work in one period of a company then fail to work at other periods. No where do you see these issues better than when you watch startups grow. One can draw a lot of parallels between how people grow up and how companies mature.

Although companies are the result of combining thousands of people together into a single aggregate personality, all companies do have their own personality. And like children, they can start off with a lot of potential but fail to mature in certain areas so that they become unbalanced or immature. Over time those problems become more and more obvious and damaging. This phenomenon is most visible when looking at startups that are still run by their founders.

Founders are the guys with the vision and the grit to start a company but they rarely have the wisdom and maturity to take their companies to the next level. But they also have the passion and fire that keeps them from getting fired or from quitting or from accepting people that disagree with them. While these founder-led companies can be profitable, they are often not very nice places to work, unless you like being screamed at, have things thrown at you in meetings or getting fired for questioning the sacred cows.

Apple fired Steve Jobs and he presumably did some growing up in the interim. The Google boys hired an experienced executive right from the start. Yahoo continues to flounder while the Microsoft duo continued to hang in there. Gates has finally stepped away but Balmer, like Ellison, seems to have no desire to move on and let someone else step in.

For several years now, I have really enjoyed reading MicrosoftExtremeMakeover for his insights into Microsoft. I was very sorry to read that he is quitting because there is still obviously a lot of room for improvement which is unlikely to happen without voices for cultural change.

2007 was the year of digital music. 2008 is going to be the year of digital video.

At last week's Mac World Expo, we saw Apple and Fox take up this cause and turn attention on the living room. Again.

The battle for a device the unites the living room and offers multiple forms of media has been raging for years with no clear victor and not even much enthusiasm from consumers.

The goal is a single device that would offer multiple services and SIMPLIFY the user experience for a reasonable price.

To date, no one company has come close to this goal. Instead there is a whole roster of devices for watching TV, movies, downloads and music and and even larger list of ways to connect them to your TV and stereo. There is a lack of consumer understanding, too much complexity and prices are too high.

But companies keep trying, hoping to hit a home run. Will we see an iPhone of the living room in 2008? A device that breaks through past barriers and offers a totally new user experience?

CableTV

The most natural unifying device is your cable box. Most people already pay for cable TV (or satellite) and the box connects to their TV and stereo.

But the cable companies have been unable to offer a compelling product for years and years. Much like cell phone companies, they seem more interested in maintaining the monopoly of their closed networks than they are in offering new services.

Along these lines, cable has the problem of cost. In my area, getting an HD DVR from my cable company costs a mint: $70/mo for the basic digital cable channels, $9/mo for the HD digital DVR, and $9/mo for the HD channels. In other words, cable charges almost $1,000 a year to watch their TV and music channels, WITH commercials. Ouch! Downloaded movies are an extra cost and you can forget about the surfing the internet, youTube videos or watching a DVD or high-definition DVD. You will need an additional device for those features.

Tivo & other STB's

Another long-time set-top-box is Tivo. Tivo was the first big product to introduce the DVR functionality. The DVR raised the bar for living functionality but it pretty much languished until it was featured prominently in the script of HBO's Sex in the City.

Tivo is a great product but their problem was telling: consumers did not know what a DVR was. It is the kind of feature that you dont understand until you see it. Anyone that has one loves it but it is hard to make sales unless consumers know they want it.

Tivo has been around for years but has struggled financially. Recently they added download support from AmazonUnbox but at its heart the Tivo is basically a cable or satellite TV STB not a universal living room device.

Recently Slingbox and Netflix/LG are entering this space as well but they all face the same challenge Tivo does: They have to offer a service that consumers understand enough to want and at a price that is low enough for consumers to see value.

video game players

Video game companies are a natural fit for a unifying a device. Millions of households already have one. It is already connected to the TV and the stereo. All they have to do is add the cool new features and you have the universal device, right?

Xbox360

Microsoft made the first play for this position with the Xbox360 but the 360 solution is lacking.

On the hardware front, the cables they provide are not long enough to connect the TV and the stereo in households like mine; this requires the purchase of an additional cable which adds to cost and complexity. There is no HDMI cable option. No wireless ethernet. The device is loud, known for quality problems such as overheating, and does not have the sleek look many would like in their living room. The hard-drive is very small, very expensive and not something a user can upgrade themselves -- you HAVE to purchase one from Microsoft. DVD is included but an HD-DVD player is extra and there is no Blue-Ray option.

On the service side, Microsoft charges extra for online access (in addition to whatever you pay for the internet connection itself). There is no internet browser, and downloaded movies are an extra fee. If you have a Windows PC, you can serve music from it but not if you have a Mac or Linux PC.

PS3

The PS3 on the other hand is one of the best platforms out there. Although it too falls short, it addresses almost all of the short-comings the Xbox360 has, and represents a solid platform that could be improved with better software.

The PS3 has HDMI connections for your stereo and TV. It is solid hardware with no quality problems and looks nice enough for public display. It also has Blue-Ray for watching HD or DVD movies and it offers free wireless ethernet access. You get a decent HDD in the system and there are clear instructions for replacing it with your own, 3rd party drive. It will even let you install another O/S if you like that sort of thing.

The PS3 has media center features right out of the box with a (lousy) web browser and support for UPnP access to movies and music (although that feature does not work terribly well yet for remote content).

Similar to Tivo, the biggest headwind for Sony, if not all players, may be consumer mindset. During the Mac World Expo, a user of a mac website posted a question about whether he should buy a PS3 or an AppleTV device. Rather than get an evaluation of the pros and cons, he was flamed and his question was attacked with passion and vitriol. To those users the "PS3 and AppleTV are NOT THE SAME!!!"; they are "APPLES AND ORANGES!"; "the AppleTV is for watching low quality video; the PS3 is for high quality video and games."

The unexpected and harsh reaction suggests to me that many consumers are not ready for a unifying device. In their minds, you are EITHER a video device OR a game machine. You cannot be both. These consumers want a device that does one thing and are not able to grok a device that does all those things.

I see the PS3 as a mutli-media device that offers the game functionality for free but that is clearly not how many people see it.

closing

It appears that in addition to all the hardware, software and legal challenges out there, there is an additional struggle for the living room in consumer's minds. Before we can see demand for such a device, consumers need to understand that it could exist and they need to want it. As a result, we may be stuck with specialized devices for years to come.

The iPhone update announced at MacWorld is out...

and all I want to do is watch my icons jiggle....

I am disappointed that SMS still does not handle images and there were no game announcements. But the new gmap triangulation thing works surprisingly well, at least when standing still. Havent tried it driving the car yet.

I particularly enjoyed the rumor that Microsoft was backing HD-DVD to perpetuate FUD in the next-gen DVD format wars. I have no idea what Microsoft is contributing to HD-DVD's since they dont design or manufacture hardware, but they apparently paid movie studios big money to support HD=DVD over Blue-Ray. Their alleged goal was to keep things unsettled long enough that they can bypass discs altogether with direct downloads.

A fun rumor but not one that passes Occam's razor or even reasonableness.

Direct downloads have a LONG way to go for video. The USA is not even in the top 10 nations in regards to broadband penetration of households. I think we are at about 19% of all households. Many of those folks, like myself, have DSL with its lowly 1.5 Mbps speeds. Trying to download a 5GB movie is an exercise in patience at best.

No, it makes much more sense to think about video games.

If you could purchase a video game player that played hi-definition movies or you could purchase a player that did not -- which one would you buy? Obviously, Microsoft needed a next-gen movie player in the Xbox if they were to keep feature parity with Sony's PS3. Since Sony owns the Blue-Ray standard, it also stands to reason that Microsoft needed a different standard for the Xbox 360. Hence, HD-DVD.

By all accounts, users dont see much visual difference between HD-DVD and Blue-Ray, but that blue laser does push the technology envelope much further ahead than HD-DVD does. Indeed, the HD-DVD's main selling point appears to be that the players and the discs are cheaper.

The install base numbers I have seen are misleading because they do not include PS3's when they compare the number of HD-DVD and Blue-Ray players. Fortunately movie sales numbers shows the reality: there are a lot more BR folks out there buying movies.

With the recent announcements by Warner and other studios, it appears that the studios at least are starting to see the blue light. Im hopeful that HD-DVD will die in 2008 and all studios will be releasing content on Blue-Ray.

This situation might suck for Xbox owners but the HD-DVD drive is not included in the Xbox anyway. (And Microsoft customers are used to be abandoned -- just ask the Plays4Sure folks.) Hopefully the next 360 will include a blue-ray player too and the prices can start coming down.

Gavin has an interesting post/prediction about the iPhone.

Read it with my followup comment here....

Another audacious philanthropic idea that could benefit billions of the world's poorest people squashed by corporate greed. Intel and Microsoft wont make any money on these children (Windows XP + MS Office for $3) but they clearly cannot let someone else potentially damage their future market. Gosh no, that would look bad on some VP's annual performance review. Better to help children to WinTel than to help them help themselves.

Thanks Intel!
Thanks Microsoft!

WinTel will argue that geting any PC's to the poor is a good thing but that misses the point (and the amazing design) of the XO. People here can barely keep their WinTel PC's running properly; how is some kid in Rwanda gonna keep his Dell working after it has been dropped in the mud a few times? Or after it has been zombie-fied by a virus.

Learn more and use your own money to donate an XO.

One Laptop Per Child

Ive been wondering what my daughter's first computer should be; based on the techie feedback on this XO machine, I think I have found it.

words:

A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions

How a Computer for the Poor Got Stomped by Tech Giants

By STEVE STECKLOW and JAMES BANDLER

November 24, 2007

Wall Street Journal

read it

podcast:

TWiT 124: Nerdgasm

December 3rd, 2007

Hosts: Leo Laporte, John C. Dvorak, Steve Stecklow, and Cory Doctorow

Intel and Microsoft undermine One Laptop Per Child and Verizon Wireless opens its network...

Is the gPhone really close at hand?

Google is starting to remind me of Toyota. They seem to have their own Google Production System; a system and mindset that lets them produce one interesting product after another.

I saw this with Toyota and the Detroit auto companies in the 1990's. Toyota kept increasing quality (and profits), even with American workers, because of their mindset and systemic approach. Competitors would look at the factories and have no clue why Toyota was winning ("looks the same to me!?") or even how to fight them.

It seems like Google and Apple are having the same effect with tech products today. They both clearly have a system which produces consistent results while their competitors are left shaking their heads and struggling to understand how to keep up.

Anything Google and Apple can do to demolish the cell phone industry will be a win for consumers. (And this kind of creative destruction is fun to watch :)

Can a Google Phone Connect With Carriers?

By AMOL SHARMA

October 30, 2007

read it

Google Inc. is close to unveiling its long-planned strategy to shake up the wireless market, people familiar with the matter say. The Web giant's ambitious goal: to make applications and services as accessible on cellphones as they are on the Internet.

In a move likely to kick off an intense debate about the future shape of the cellphone industry, Google wants to make it easier for cellphone customers to get a variety of extra services on their phones -- from maps to social-networking features to video-sharing. To get its way, however, the search giant will have to overcome resistance from wireless carriers and deal with potentially thorny security and privacy issues.

Google is trying to loosen the grip wireless carriers have over the software and services consumers can access on cellphones. Carriers have considerable clout, especially in the U.S., where they control distribution of phones to consumers through their retail stores.

Microsoft's arrogance is the stuff of legend. With the money-printing machines that are MS Office and Windows, one can argue that that arrogance is warranted (as much as arrogance ever is). But the story is different when talking about chronic money losers like MSN and Xbox. (Just as Extreme)

Even within Microsoft, the arrogance meter varies. Despite the financial numbers, the Xbox division pushes the meter into the red. Even more so for Bungie, an independent island within an independent island. If MSFT has made any money at all on the Xbox platform, Bungie apparently feels it is due to them. They certainly have an argument but Halo is a big fish in a small pond. While the Halo franchise sold 13M units, this represents a fraction of Mario Brothers and less than half of The Sims.

Believe

As much as I liked the pre-acquisition Bungie, the Xbox Bungie is a little hard to take sometimes. Maybe I am just too old to see their brilliance but the Halo3 marketing machine had more than a little backlash. (Dude! Any online FPS console magic has been around on the PC for years and years and years. Yes, even before the brilliance of Xbox Live.)

So it is not without a little enjoyment that after the launch week hype, I saw the articles about 640p.

Since I have an Xbox 360, and I suffered through the story of Halo2, I do plan to play the game (when the price comes down). The screen shots do look fantastic so I am looking forward to seeing the game in action on my plasma TV. Although I am a bit concerned that reviewers are saying the story is weak and one should buy the game for multi-player (which is both free and better on a PC anyway so not very interesting to me), I am looking forward to seeing for myself.

While it is fun to watch the rich and famous get tweeked a bit, the interesting story here is not really about the game; it is about the hardware.

the next generation

We are currently experiencing the "next generation" of game hardware. The PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube are out. The PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii are all in (along with the DS and PSP).

Microsoft took a half-step on the technology and brought the Xbox 360 platform to market a full year ahead of Sony. Nintendo took no step at all and brought out the Wii (formerly known as "Revolution") - a product that was as reviled by gamers as it was beloved by non-gamers. Since non-gamers outnumber gamers by 10:1 or more, Nintendo has defied expectations with hit of massive proportions on its hands now.

Sony however endeavored to take a full step forward on the technology and delivered both a blueray movie machine with a radical new architecture. (The Xbox is basically a Windows PC.) Sadly, Sony has little to show for that effort up to this point. They have fewer games, have sold fewer units, and have not shown us much that says "See! This is NEXT gen."

But maybe it is still early.

Nintendo is off on its own but Sony and MSFT are both contending for the "hard core" market by claiming to have next generation hardware. You know, stuff that looks amazing on an HDTV.

By all accounts Bioshock and Halo3 look terrific on the Xbox. (Even though Bioshock looks better on a PC. With the Xbox struggling to hit the bare minimum HD resolution of 720p, I already play everything on my PC at 1080p.)

The whole 640p vs 720p issue is not about whether you can see the other 80p -- it is a question of whether the Xbox hardware has the ooph to continue to improve. It is less than half-way through a normal console cycle. With the Xbox360's infamous quality problems (and $1.5B write off to shareholders), is the Xbox reaching its peak while the PS3 is just getting started?

If THE game for the Xbox 360, made by THE Microsoft developer who took over two years and bazillions of dollars could not get the game to look good AND run well at 720p (which is the lowest screen resolution for "HD"), what does that say for the hardware? What does it say for 1080p games?

skin deep

As Nintendo has argued, its not always about the graphics. Games that are fun will still sell (although not necessarily to the same people). But that is Nintendo's whole strategy. They went after non-gamers with "cute" in order to enlarge the market; MSFT and Sony both went after each other for "better looking". MSFT has fought the Wii marketing angle as much as Sony has so how can they argue their system is "next gen" while also arguing that appearances dont matter? (Im not sure how, but they are doing just that.)

So my eyes are now on Xmas and 2008 to see what Sony can deliver because so far the answer has been "not much". I have yet to see a PS3 game that is unmatched by the Xbox but maybe, just maybe... Metal Gear Solid 4? GTA4? Killzone2? (A related question is whether Wii owners will become dissatisfied with their system as they begin to see how different the same games are on the other platforms.)

Unfortunately, part of the problem is the way the game market is structured. To maximize revenue, developers have to hit the commonality that lets them port the game to all platforms. Thus we can only expect to see games that push the platform to its fullest (like Halo3) from the platform manufacturers themselves (like Bungie/Microsoft). Given the high costs of developing a next gen game, the market itself might end up changing due to the financial pressure.

forget the Covenant, dropping the bomb on the Borg

But then the other shoe dropped. Just a week after the Halo3 launch we got another titillation. It seems Bungie is tired of being an island within Microsoft. Now they want to be an island all by themselves. Instead of cutting in line at the cafeteria, they want to go off campus for lunch and pay full price.

That announcement was as big and surprising as the day I heard they sold out to Microsoft to begin with. Bungie is not Valve, but I do respect them and look forward to seeing what they can build on their own - with less money but also fewer Powerpoint presentations to MBA's who dont game anyway.

With a blueray player, less fan noise, and no hardware problems, I am sticking with my PS3 - I cant wait to see what games the new Bungie will make for it.

Well the secret is finally out: Amazon has an MP3 music store. And the store totally rocks!

What a lot of people do no know is that for the past six months I have been working at Amazon on the MP3 music store. Amazon made a real effort to keep the MP3 store a secret so I never really told anyone or updated my LinkedIn bio. But now it is time to come out of the music closet.

My interview experience at Amazon was kind of amusing because they could (would) not tell me what the job was or what the product was. It's a "secret". I took a leap of faith and am pleased to say that I hit the hot tub not the rocks.

The music team is a very small one within Amazon and that has been terrific. It really has been like working at a (good) startup, which I totally enjoy. Not only is the team small enough that we all know each other well but everyone is a rockstar at what they do and the feeling of teamwork is palpable. My job has been in operations so I get to exercise my old process improvement muscles again, which has been a pleasant trip back to my TPS 1990's. Although the work load has been pretty intense, it turns out that I am pretty intense so it worked out. (If I never emailed you back - now you know why.)

When we finally did launch and the rave reviews (here & here & here) started to come in... It was a terrific feeling to see the payoff for our hard work. A lot of people work hard but few get to read about their products in the newspaper. After reading about other people's products for years, it felt really good to be reading about a product I contributed to. This is not the first product I have shipped by any means but it is by far the biggest one. Even though I was not in a development role this time, launch week was a good one.

It is also neat to be a part of history. Amazon MP3 is going to hasten the music industry onto a new place. As I have written before, the music monopoly is going to have to change or die and Amazon is a big part of that ecosystem.

This job has also allowed me to learn about the Amazon culture. I have been a happy Amazon customer for years but unlike our Seattle neighbors Microsoft and Real, I never knew much about Amazon's culture. We dont have a Mini or Extreme but there is definitely a strong culture here that warrants a few posts of its own in the future.

I have already written that I think the signficance of the iPhone will be its impact on the nascent hand-held personal computer market.

But there is another huge change out there, a dark cloud looming over cell phone industry.

what have you done for me lately?

Like the cable companies, the phone and cellular phone industries began life as soul-crushing monopolies and "monopoly" is still how these industries think about busines. They provide a service most people need, they lock you into a contract and then bleed you to death with excessive monthly charges.

But monopolies invariably lose touch with their customers as they (rather transparently) put their own needs ahead of their customer's needs. Over time customers come to resent them even if they continue to pay. (Know anyone that loves their phone or cable company?) All of which creates an opportunity for competition.

Along comes that series of tubes we know of as the Internet, ready to ruffle yet another business model.

With an Internet connection for data transfers and VOIP software, suddenly one doesn't need a phone company anymore. So why pay $80, $120, $200 a month for one? We have all seen this technology in action - the question now is when someone will be able to deploy it in a way that provides a genuine alternative to cellular phone companies.

Vaitkadamas is starting to see that competition potential in a Google+Apple play.

Apple - the phone company

Apple has released the iPhone. Apple will gain experience in the cellular industry. They will build a brand for their telephones. When their exclusive contract with ATT will ends, will they flip the switch? Not a big stretch of the imagination since we already know Apple hates traditional cell phone products and the industry.

An iPhone with wifi+VOIP and GPS would make a nice platform for... Google.

Google air

Over the past month or two there have been a steady stream of comments from/about Google and "spectrum". Google has talked about buying spectrum and they have talked about having "open spectrum" to provide free wifi connections in all major cities. They have also unveiled plans for a Google phone.

When you have a consumer electronic company like Apple making hot phones and you have the big giant heads of google buying radio frequency spectrum... things that make you go "hmmm, this could be good for me".

The Google phone itself is worth a special mention. It would be a cell phone that shows ads but would also be free to users. A free cell phone would free up a nice chunk of monthly income to buy stuff - on your cell phone. Others disagree, but I see a big demand for this phone and I think the value proposition would be a win-win for consumers.

Especially interesting is the opportunity for location-based advertising on a cell phone using Google Maps. (Have you seen how nice Gmaps works on an iPhone?) Some complain that more advertising in our lives is a bad thing but the basic mission of marketing is a beneficial one: match customer needs with providers.

The GPS+Gmap solution could be a fantastic new service.

So keep your eyes open. Unlike Microsoft, Apple and Google have consistently sided with the customer to provide new features at lower costs, even if it hurts other traditional industries.

a long time coming

On the other hand, both cable TV and cell phones are in a bad spot. Instead of innovating, they choose to use legal methods and lobbying to cling to their historical position of power. They provide a generic commodity product with very little value-add yet they charge huge fees - and they are in an increasingly indefensible position. Cable will need to fight off attacks for on-demand entertainment via Internet TV (ipTV) while the cell phone carriers will need to justify their own existence against ubiquitous wi-fi and VOIP.

Change or die. Its a fundamental principle of capitalism.

I never owned an Xbox but I am big fan of Bungie from back when they did Mac games (Marathon, Myth). I wanted to try Halo so I played the improved version on a PC. This was all a long time ago but I remember that the graphics looked good and I had a lot of fun with the game. (I also remember a LOT of hallways with shiny aliens in them.)

With Halo3 on the horizon, I decided it was time to give Halo2 a try and continue the story.

I am almost finished slogging my way through Halo2. I say slogging because I am not playing Halo2 on a PC with improved graphics. No, when Microsoft decided to make Halo2 Vista-only, I decided to play the game (for free) on my Xbox 360. I borrowed a copy and put up with the ancient Xbox graphics. (This sure aint no Half-Life2.)

I also say slogging because the game is not that exciting. The vehicles are fun and I enjoy the story but it appears that the main innovation is that you can hold two guns instead of one. Hmmm. Oh yeah, there are some new guns too.

At this point, the only reason I am playing this game at all is the story (and the Arbiter) and I find myself a bit annoyed when they keep making me do missions in between the cut-scenes. (My faith was shaken a bit when they introduced some Little Shop of Horrors Seymour alien plant thing that has power over life and death. Gravemind?)

But if you do like the gameplay, Halo2 still delivers. Like other Bungie titles (and totally unlike Gears of War), this game has a good story and is LONGER than John Holmes. Every time I expect the final cut scene (please!), I get to (have to) play another mission.

All of this is a roundabout way of asking what Microsoft is doing with its Game for Windows initiative?

Making Halo2 require Vista was funny when I first heard it two years ago. Seriously, I burst out laughing. Then I thought it was a web-joke. Alas, the rumor was true and the idea was just as stupid then as it is now.

GFW = Good for Windows (not for Customers)

The Halo2-Vista decision was one of those MBA bright ideas that give MBA's a bad name (and that seem to dominate the Borg-mind in Redmond recently). It was a cheap marketing idea to force customers to buy something they did not want, Vista, to get something they did want, Halo2. But buying an OS is not like buying another program - its a major effort. Who is going buy a new OS and put up with the hassles of installing it just to play a three year old game? Halo2 is older than the Xbox360!

Moreover, Halo2 is not the kind of game one would upgrade their PC hardware to play - it is not even clear that Cysis or Fallout3 will be able to do that. Microsoft's magic appears to be wearing thin when it comes to Vista and DX10. It is still very unclear if games that bet on DX10 will be able to sell enough copies and recoup their investment. (That install base issue we hear so much about on consoles is now relevant to PCs.)

When the GFW initiative was launched a year ago, I had high hopes. Consoles seem to be taking over and if anyone could breath some life into PC games, it was the platform owner - Microsoft. This weekend I went to Circuit City to purchase the new Civ4 expansion on sale and it was depressing. The shelves were so sad that I thought it was 1982 and I was in a bread line in the Soviet Union. When they werent totally empty they were stocked with mixed up, old crap games. (No Civ4 in sight btw - gonna get it with Steam now.)

And mixed in with the PC games only your half-blind great-great-grandmother would buy? A set of large white "Microsoft Games for Windows" banners. Nice to see the marketing collateral made it. Im sure customers will get the message.

I fear for the future of PC games in retail. PC games are fast becoming a "hard-core" ghetto where one has to buy their games online from Amazon or via Steam. Casual games are nice and all but I am starting to have serious doubts whether I will be playing Fallout3 on a PC - or on a PS3. And that is saying a lot.

It would appear that good things happen when people leave Microsoft. Gabe Newell left the Empire to create Valve and Valve is just consistently 110% awesome.

Their latest work of awesomeness is Steam and Steam continues to improve. The two things I wanted to write about today are Macs & community.

Windows games on a mac

Although Valve had nothing to do with it, playing Steam on my MacbookPro is just 10 kinds of krazy fantastic. At least it would be if it worked.

Thanks to the power of virtual machines and Parallels version 3.0, I can install Steam and download Windows games and play them all within the MacOS. Could this be the end of my Windows PC, whose sole, money-pit-pupose in life is to play PC games? Could this really be the end of that giant box on my desk and it's noisy fans?

Like an excited kid, I bought Parallels and installed it, followed by good old XP (and the 85 "critical updates"). Then I installed Steam and it worked just like it should. I logged in with my account, it told me what games I own. I picked a few demo's because they are smaller than the games and started to test.

The first demo did not work. I tried another. No dice. So I consult Google - Google knows all. Parallels does not ship with DirectX support on. So I select that and reboot my virtual PC. (Oddly, my virtual PC Windows boots faster than my actual Windows PC.)

Try the first demo. Same results - no picture, bizarre crackly sounds, need to reboot the virtual machine because it sucks all my CPU cycles.

Try the second demo, Darwinia. This vector-graphics game sort of runs but it only supports 800x600 and runs (lurches) along at about 5 fps. *big sigh* Consult Google again.

And again, Google knows all: "That shit dont work!" They told us Parallels supported games. They posted a youtube video playing Quake. But most games dont seem to work at all. Apparently down in the fine print, they said DirectX 8 would work - too bad we are all on DX9 if not DX10.

Sadly, my ultimate solution does not work today but I still have hope that a year from now, I will be able to run all the PC games I want on my silent, awesome MacOS machine.

Community

The other news from Valve is the open beta of Steam Community. I have not tried this myself but I got the gist from the 1UpShow. SC is Xbox Live for PC's - and it is free. Free to users and more functionality than XBL.

Ouch.

Im not predicting a big success for Microsoft on this one. And I think it is another example of fine engineering held back by inbred-marketing decisions. Why offer a service for free when we can charge for a lesser service? Why indeed.

XBL has a captive audience on the Xbox 360 but the PC is going to be tough competition. And if Sony is smart, they will hire the team from Xfire (who will be put out of business by SC) and create their own PS3-PC system that unites their strong PC MMO community with their console community. This would be especially useful when they release some cross-platform MMO's like The Agency.

a tree falling in the retail-woods

The bigger story here is the story for retail. PC gaming is dying in retail and Steam just keeps hammering nails into that coffin.

More often than not, if you go to the PC game section of a big-box retailer, it feels more like Deadwood Gulch than Las Vegas. Sad old, games all mixed up. As a long-time PC game, its depressing to see.

More importantly, retailers exhibit a lot of influence on games; both on what games get made and what games sell. Retailers demand a premium price for shelf space and only want to stock units that move and make money. (Hello Madden 40) Moreover, they charge a large premium for stocking a game, upwards of 20% of retail price. If you thought to get rich writing a game, think again: publishers and retailers get almost all the money for a game.

But if the retail experience stinks, why go? The Steam platform is a solid distribution platform and it continues to catch on. With 13M registered users and a growing list of old and new titles, not to mention unlimited "shelf space", it has an opportunity to dominate the PC game industry.

Online distribution could be better for game makers too. It allows little companies to put out "indie" games that would never make it to retail (Darwinia, DefCon). And that 20% for the retailer goes somewhere else - it could go to the game companies or even to lower priced games.

At the moment, new Steam games have the same price as retail. Instead of the physical CD, the cheesy box, and the mentally deficient manual, Steam buyers get convenience.

The obvious convenience is instant gratification and no trip to the store. But I would argue that the most important convenience is not having that CD. Why? Because if you dont have a CD, you dont have insane ^%$@*&! garbage like StarForce copy protection. You have a killer PC, a massive hard drive, buy you have to find the physical CD and put in your computer to play a game? Copy protection schemes treat paying customers like myself like criminals and I CAN NOT STAND IT.

Steam makes all that kruft disappear. That's right, Steam provides DRM that actually provides a positive customer experience. It ties games to you, your personal account and your credit card. You can play any game you own on any PC you have. If you delete the game, you can always install it again later. It is a simple thing but this is how PC games (and all digital media) were meant to be played.

The only downside I can think of here is also an upside to game makers. Without a CD, there is no game to buy or sell used. This eliminates the eBay/Amazon Marketplace purchases of used games. That will cost consumers but it will mean more sales to game companies (who would do well to lower prices in return). Although I personally purchase a lot of used games (why pay more?), I would gladly live with this to be rid of StarForce.

Hey! Ho! The green's got to go!

My only complaint with Steam so far is their UI design. Guys, army green is, umm, lame-ass. Do us all a favor and hire a happy-friendly UI designer. I know it rains a lot up here in Seattle but that's no reason to depress everyone.

So long-live Steam! Now if only I could play Civ4 on my Mac...

There are a lot of Apple-haters out there who are going to lose money shorting Apple stock.

Yesterday I got a chance to play with an iPhone (Thanks Gavin!). The pre-iPhone hype was off the charts but I will be damned if the little thing doesn't deliver. Simply put, the iPhone is amazing.

All jokes about the Newton aside, the iPhone will go down in history as a seminal moment in technology development. A 'computer in every home' is nice but I think the iPhone is going to be the first truly personal computer, one in every pocket.

Apple is on quite a role. They are better than anyone else at combining beautiful industrial design, cutting edge electronics, and user-friendly software. A lot of companies can do one of those three things well but Apple is just about the only company that consistently does all three. The Mac, the MacOS X, the iPod, iTunes, and now this. Wow. It is so rare to see a company live up to the marketing hype.

the first smart phone ever

A lot of hay has been made of the $600 price but the iPhone really replaces several of the gadgets you already have and pay for: a cell phone, an iPod, a PDA, and a Blackberry. And unlike most Swiss Army contraptions, it is actually better than every one of them.

The iPhone is a standard telephone. (Few cell phone carriers seem to care about phone call quality anymore.) It is an iPod with a totally new and much better interface. (And the old interface was already better than anyone else's.) It is also the best full-color PDA, with a calendar and text messaging and such, that I have ever seen.

As Steve Jobs said, it is the first "smart" phone that really seems smart. Once you get a quick demo, using the thing is just intuitive. The way a personal computer ought to be.

a truly personal computer

Having said all this, I think the most significant thing abut the iPhone is something no one is talking about. This really is not a phone to me so much as the first really great portable computer. This thing is the first truly personal computer, something that fits in your pocket and does everything you need: phone calls, text messages, surfing the web, watching video, listening to music, calendar and contact management, and games.

The iPhone is an example of a whole new world of devices. Portable computers with touchable screens and the power of a desktop computer.

A natural extension will be a tablet PC that really works. Instead of trying to make a Microsoft Windows PC smaller, Apple will be able to go from the other direction: making an iPhone larger. Using their touch technology and the always awesome MacOS, I see a future of small computers finally at hand.

Take the modular (and stable) UNIX kernal of the MacOS, add their touch-technology along with Apple's incredible flair for software interface design and the iPhone is going to morph into a huge software platform. (Once they open the doors to 3rd party developers.) Forget about the battle for our living rooms with all those junky "media PC's" - the next generation of personal computers are going to resemble the iPhone not an Xbox 360 or PS3.

Man of the year 2007 - the iPhone

But that is all the future - 12 to 24 months out. For the next 6 months, the iPhone is going to be THE gadget of the year the way the Razor was a hit for Motorola but more so. Once you see the darn thing in action, you will want one. You will need one. The iPhone has the eye-candy and animations that make guys eyes light up instantly. The word of mouth effect is going to create huge peer pressure for the Jones'.

Apple will keep the prices high until next year and the iPhone will be both insanely profitable for Apple and the new status symbol for those with money. If Apple is able to add in email capability for corporate Exchange servers, watch out RIM. Blackberry's are going to feel the heat. Only the truly hard-core are going to want to keep their Windows Mobile POS's.

2007. The year of the iPhone.

The most common business model discussed in business school is the venerable "razor and razor blade" model. The basic idea is that you sell the razor cheaply (or even give it away) in order to make a profit on the blades. While a customer buys one razor, they buy blades forever which creates a nice, continuous revenue stream. Moreover the razor also locks you into the products of a single company because the blades only work with a specific kind of razor.

This business model has been around for decades and is an interesting way to look at the products that we all buy. What has struck me recently is the companies that are defying the razor-blade model. I am particularly intrigued by Apple's twist on the model for the emerging digital media industry.

Well, I have been quietly contemplating replacing my Windows game PC with a new Apple desktop. This new video card might tip the scale for me. MacOSX and Windows, d ual video card support and quiet? Hallelujah!

ATI Radeon X2800XT with CrossFire rumored for Apple's next Mac Pro

By Prince McLean

Published: 12:10 PM EST

read it

The centerpiece of ATI's next-generation graphics card line may make its first appearance as part of an upgrade to Apple Inc.'s Mac Pro line of professional desktop computers, according to an online report.

The mammoth red beast, measuring some 12.4-inch in length, is about 3-inches larger than the industry-leading GeForce 8800 card from NVIDIA. It's said to include a four-pronged heat pipe with vapour chamber technology to provide amble but quiet cooling.

While there appear to be several versions of the ATI card that will slowly make their way to market -- including a 9-inch retail variant and slightly down-clocked dual-chip offering -- the model destine for Apple is expected to debut first and introduce CrossFire support to the Mac.

There have been companies trying to sell downloadable movies for years now but by and large they have been small and mostly ignored. It looks like that is going to change in 2007.

Last year Apple made a deal with Disney to sell movies over iTunes. Apparently Jobs wanted to set a download price of $10 but was forced to go with a split pricing scheme ($15 for new movies; $10 for old ones) due to pressure from movie companies.

In particular, Wal-Mart pushed back on the whole idea of movie downloads, which is important because Wal-Mart alone accounts for 40% of the $17B DVD business. Wal-Mart charges $20 for a DVD and supposedly pays movie industry $17 for each title. To combat Apple, Wal-Mart asked the movie suppliers to drop their price for physical DVD's to $14 or less so that Wal-Mart could match Apples $15 price - which seems a little odd since downloading a movie really should cost less than a physical disk, which needs to be manufactured and shipped.

But that was six months ago.

Revolutions of the past involved angry mobs of people running amok. Revolutions of today tend to be quiet affairs spurred on by technology changes. In fact, revolutions today tend to be so quiet, they go on without notice or understanding by most people.

The Internet revolution is one such quiet storm. We saw the first wave in the late 1990's with a lot of hype about "new economies" and jokes about how Bill Gates "missed the Internet." Here in 2007, we are at the start of a second wave which is much larger and more tangible.

There is a growing digital media revolution which will have a tremendous impact on the system and many of the companies that we have grown up with for decades. Despite its significance, few people seem to notice or stop to think about the changes as they gradually appear. This post is an attempt to outline that system and the forces of change.

Apple has always had terrific computer hardware but any compueter game fan knows that hardware is not enough. Games are all about software - the games! For a game player, Apple's failure to get software is legendary and long-standing.

Sure there was a bright period in the 1990's with the powermacs. Major companies like Blizzard (Warcraft), Westwood Studios (Command & Conquer) and Bungie (Marathon, Myth) supported the mac platform but most games that came to the mac were ports of PC games.

Porting was not an inconsequential step. Developers had to recompile their code from Intel to PowerPC architecture, possibly change artwork, and do at least some code rewrite. Consequently, ported games arrived months (if not a year) after the PC version but more importantly, few companies felt the financial return was there to do a port at all. Despite comments by John Cormack (Doom, Quake) and others that OpenGL rocked, most game developers just wanted to move onto the next new game.

The Mac gamer lived in this alternate game reality; always late to the party if they were even invited. And things only got worse.

With Ultima Online and the MMO revolution, Apple gamers were left out completely. UO is why I invested in a Windows95 PC and I never looked back. Apple made great computers but if the tool doesnt do the job, you get a new tool.

Everyone is talking about wireless devices these days. All those wires are indeed a pain but recently I have been having problems of the wireless variety.

• Our VOIP phone drops calls - is it the wireless handset or the VOIP system?
• Recently our wireless network is having frequent problems reaching from the office to the living room so our HTPC drops off the network. So much for streaming radio...
• With my new Apple laptop, I got this cool new remote control for iTunes. Unfortunately it talks to my laptop - and my wife's iMac on the other desk. Turning them BOTH on or off.

But my biggest problem has been with my wireless keyboard.

There is an amusing segment in the Jan 5, 2007 episode of the 1Up Show where they discuss the idea of games that "anyone" can play. They discuss the issue that controllers are just too complicated for most people so some people in the industry are moving towards a 1-button controller.

A 1-button controller? The reason I found this amusing is because we already have that; it is called the Apple Mouse.

The 1-button mouse is the object of much derision but Apple's idea (I think) was that 1 click is all you need and adding more buttons just confuses people. I personally use a multi-button mouse with my Apple computers but hey, they are right that you cannot get much simpler than 1 button.

A tangent from another topic in this podcast also relates to Apple.

As I have been job searching, someone asked me what my "dream job" would be if I worked at Google. To answer them, I found myself thinking again about web-applications and software as a service (SAAS).

small is the new big

For many years, companies like Microsoft have been building productivity software, like Word and Excel, bigger and bigger. Microsoft and Adobe and others have been adding more and more features to make ever larger, more complex products.

At first this was a welcome development as the products really lacked the features people wanted but over time the products have become mature. Fewer and fewer people use the new features and one could argue that the emphasis has become providing a recurring revenue stream less than providing customer value.

The recent efforts to create web-only versions of office software is a trend in the opposite direction. Instead of building massive applications, folks are trying to isolate the key features necessary and build very small, web-friendly versions.

This is a twist on the familiar 80/20 rule where the goal is to capture 80% of the value with only 20% of the functionality. For a number of reasons, I think this is an awesome thing and one that will only become more and more important.

Well the iPhone is here and it doesn't disappoint - the thing is totally WACK! Channeling Monty Python, the phone is something completely different from anything I have seen before.

I have not read any reviews yet so I dont know how well it actually works but the phone includes one feature of special interest to me.

Just a few months ago I was complaining about how bad phone mail is. With all our high technology and this fancy display on my phone, there is no visual interface for phone messages. No display that shows me how many messages I have, the date of each message or the phone number. Nothing. All you get is "phone mail" - where you have to listen to a computer voice and tackle each message, one at a time.

Cell phones need an email analog for phone messages. This kind of web interface already exists for those of us using VOIP but I have never seen anything that basic in a cell phone.

Until now.

Visual Voicemail
An industry first, Visual Voicemail allows you to go directly to any of your messages without listening to the prior messages. So you can quickly select the messages that are most important to you.

Is this article really saying that giant Microsoft is actively copying little old 5% Apple in order to be more successful? :)

IT is always fun to watch the giants at play and speculate, dare I say gossip, about them. This is a good article on one of those giants, Microsoft, and changes within their organization. It points out Microsoft's historical view of the world as a platform rather than a product and points out the Xbox division's increasing influence.

What the article does not mention:

Why did Microsoft agree to pay the music companies a fee for every Zune sold?

While the amount paid is still unclear, many feel this is a lousy precedent. One amusing conspracy theory is that Microsoft did it just so that Apple would also have to do it when their contract is up, thus financially sabotaging them. Much more likely I think is that the record companies demanded Microsoft pay them so they did. It's only money after all (which they have) and they needed a deal.

Java never lived up to its promise of freeing software from Microsoft's Windows monopoly. On the other hand, Microsoft has not been able to defeat the forces of open-source software (or Java).

Converting Java to the open-source community is a big deal but it is also just one more event in a struggle with a very unclear outcome.

Sun Makes Java a Free, Open-Source Platform

Computer Maker's Shift Aims to Widen the Appeal Of Programming Language

By CHRISTOPHER LAWTON and DON CLARK

November 13, 2006

Wall Street Journal

Sun Microsystems Inc. has decided to make its Java software available on an open-source basis, part of the company's effort to keep current with a technology trend that has changed how programs are written and distributed.

The computer maker, significantly, plans to use a licensing scheme that open-source proponents favor. The move by Sun, of Santa Clara, Calif., could make it easier for Java to be distributed along with the Linux operating system and other popular open-source products.

Java is a programming language widely used in electronics, including for smart cards and cellphones. But the software has been eclipsed for many applications by open-source products, many of which are available free. By offering similar terms, Sun hopes to broaden Java's appeal and lower the cost of using it.

"The fact that we are changing the license and making this a free and open-source technology platform really allows us to look at the current billion installed base and say how do we get to the next billion," said Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's chief executive.

Many of my posts are motivated by something that irritates me but this time, so it is a pleasure to share the occasional rave experience.

I recently purchased a new Apple 15" MacBook Pro (aka Powerbook).

I loved my previous 12" PowerBook. I bought it for graduate school and used if for 2 years. It was hands down the best personal computer that I have ever used. My only real complaint with it was the brightness of the screen. But Apple switched to Intel hardware and I was attracted to the idea of running Windows programs on my Mac (no more problems with that one Windows program I have to run), so I bought one.

And it sat in the box for a few days because I was dreading the setup experience. I build a lot of computers so I was very familiar with the process. I knew that I would have to back up all my old files, move them to the new machine, unpack them, and then reinstall all the applications again, one at a time. This is time-consuming and tedious process that takes hours and I always worry about the things I might forget.

But I should have known better. My fears were all based on my Windows experience. The Apple experience was simply amazing.

Vista is finally starting to ship and already people are discussing what the next version of Windows will offer. It is an intriguing question.

In this month's issue of Fine Homebuilding, they mention a free and easy to use CAD program for home stuff. The program is called Sketchup.

Check it out!

If you want to understand a company, you need to understand the culture. This is true for any company, Enron, GE, Apple or Microsoft.

You need to understand the company leaders because they set the tone for the organization. You need to understand the day to day behavior of the troops. You need to notice the things the company tries to do as well as the things they are unaware that they do.

There are several books on Microsoft's culture related to interviewing and their pursuit of the smartest people with puzzle interviews but I have yet to see a good book on the management culture and behaviors it engenders.

This article gives one a taste of Microsoft's culture, which is changing, albeit very slowly.

Years ago, my first MP3 player was from Creative. It was small and light and had a radio but the software was crappy which made adding songs a pain.

Then I bought an iPod. The iTunes platform was far easier to use, especially for managing songs and podcasts plus the iPod had room for all my songs, not just 40 or so. It has been a few years now and Im still quite happy with the iPod/iTunes system. I have even started to use the iTunes store for music shopping as it makes listening to songs very easy (although I still purchase physical CD's from Amazon).

Recently Zune has been released by Microsoft and Real Networks has released their own player. I dont think I will be switching platforms anytime soon.

As someone who loves to talk about organizational systems and cultures, Google is a really interesting company. I might go so far as to say Google is a sociological experiment in trying to create a company of self-managed developers. An entrepreneurial company without management overhead. Something that most people would say cannot sustain existance.

It seems impossible but in my brief exposure to Google, I have to admit that I was impressed. They are something different.

But they are also successful and growing. Growth has killed a lot of golden geese at other companies. Can Google maintain their culture and continue to grow? This is a really interesting article about Google's hiring process, one that is every bit as eccentric as Microsoft's.

This announcement makes a lot of sense but it totally caught me off guard. Most big companies struggle to release innovations and struggle even harder to release products that match the original idea. Microsoft has stuggled to get Vista and Office out the door but their other divisions have pushed out a lot of product in the past 12 months, from the Xbox360 to Zune.

With all the fuss about Zune recently, I have been thinking about iPods and what I hope Apple will do in the future.

People have laughed at the idea that anyone would replace their $400 copies of Microsoft Office with software that runs in a browser and requires internet access to work at all. Then again, the world is full of people with limited vision.

The next version of Microsoft Office is quite nice but Google Office and Open Office keep lumbering on. The question isn't whether Google Office is better than Microsoft's but rather whether the free alternatives are good enough. For years now, people really havent had a choice so we dont know what people want. Moreover the server-based Google Office has some nice file sharing features that Microsoft just cannot match in terms of ease of use.

Google is onto something here and their products can only get better over time. SAAS is the future (or at least part of it :).

Microsoft is a unique company in many ways.

If any other company put out a product with severe flaws that could be exploited by criminals, it would be punished by the market. Microsoft however is in a unique position where flaws in its products generate new businesses, even entire new industries. Rather than go out of business or get replaced by other products, Microsoft's weaknesses just generate even more revenue.

Such is the case with Security in Windows and this article is a sign of things to come with Vista. As Microsoft attempts to improve its own products, it now faces push-back from those companies that sprung up to fill holes in Window's leaky boat. A better Windows is better for consumers but it means less money for them.

Will Microsoft choose to fix its products or to honor its collaborators? A lot of ironic and awkward situations will arise as Microsoft tries to change the status quo.

For the past year, I have been hearing reports about a) the insane number of people watching YouTube and b) the insane cost of running YouTube (specifically the cost of bandwidth).

About a week ago, I started to see articles about a possible purchase of YouTube by Google.

Yesterday, the articles confirming the purchase began (including a video of the two slacker founders on YT).

Now there is a wave of articles by and about the people who didn't buy YouTube telling everyone who will listen why it was stupid to purchase YouTube.

Hmmm...

"Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach" by Amit Singh

Although I havent written any actual code in years, it turns out there is still a little geek inside me. I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. Who rubs his hands greedily a the prospect of reading about an operating system? I need help...

My motivation was largely nostalgia and curiosity. I have been a MacOS user for about 2 years now and I can say without reservation that it is the best personal computer experience in existence. Today's MacOS offers a fantastic user experience which only promises to get better wit next years update.

Having said all that, the MacOS world includes a ton of jargon that I was unfamiliar with. Cocoa, Carbon, Aqua, Darwin, Quartz, etc and so on. As a user, I dont need to know what this stuff is but I was curious. Hence my interest in the book.

And I wasnt disappointed.

A year ago, one of my classes did a project on Xbox. A lot of the talk at that time was about Apple and about turning the iPod into a game player. Which never happened.

A few months ago, my HTPC was sick and I was lamenting the lack of a solution from Apple.

Today it appears that both situations may have changed.

Hmmm, that's interesting...

I hadnt been paying attention but since E3 it has become clear that Microsoft is investing some serious effort into improving the Windows platform for gamers. And I am rather excited about it.

For 25 years, PC gaming has been one of my real pleasures in life. Sadly, the retail world of PC gaming has been in a steady decline for some years. I used to look forward to going to CompUSA or Best Buy to pick up a new game for the weekend - not anymore. Most stores have abysmal displays and selection. I buy everything online now and the supply of good games has been slowing. (Turn-based games have all but disappeared.)

But maybe (hopefully) things are about to turn around.

Today I see a Digg that Parallel's has sold 100,000 copies of their Windows Virtualization program. Not an hour later, I get an email from Amazon recommending this program to me.

How amusing. According to the media, no one would want to run Windows on the Mac. It is a solution to a non-existant problem. Only weirdo hackers would want such a program and Apple refuses to offer the solution itself because there is no demand.

100,000 copies? That's a lot of hackers... And I havent even bought my copy yet. :)

Google has 88 articles so far on the Homeland Security bulletin today that urges Windows users to patch their operating system. Homeland Security?

People use a lot of heuristics (rules) to help them make decisions about which product to buy.

One of the main indicators is price. "If it costs twice as much, it must be better."

Another indicator is market position. "If its the #1 seller, it must be the best one."

Apparently, when it comes to Windows virus protection both of these rules will lead you to the worst products.

Another thing to keep in mind is that malware (malicious software) is not designed to ruin your computer or erase your hard drive. Malware today is largely for business uses. This software is designed to hijack your computer and use it for illegal purposes, like denial of service attacks or click-fraud. This is why so many people are infected and are unaware of it. (Unless they use a Mac of course.) For more on this, the comments on Digg are quite interesting.

We all know that Windows and PC software provides a poor user experience. Just for kicks I thought I would document my recent experience with a game that wasnt playing right. (Remember: this is a game. My goal here is to have fun.)

This slashdot article today was really interesting and made me wonder why I hadnt heard of this stuff before. A quick Googlesearch showed that Tom's Hardware posted an article about this .kkreiger stuff way back in 2004! Im even playing Oblivion and had no idea it was using an L-system to make it look so awesome.

Beyond games, the idea of releasing anything in 100 KILObytes got me thinking about bloatware in general. A few students in Germany can reduce a game's resource requirements by a factor of 200, but the geniuses in Redmond need 10x more, not less, CPU speed and disk space for each new version of their OS and application software? What's that about?

The idea of writing "good" code by making it smaller, faster and more efficient seems to be completely lost in the land of Windows. (Although it is interesting to see that the idea is not lost in the land of MacOS/UNIX - sadly I cannot find the article I just read about the serious speedup in the next MacOS release due to rewriting OS code for efficiency.)

Microsoft wants you to run those old PC's as thin clients?

Wow, this just struck me as ironic since running a thin client (specifically java applications on a UNIX box) has been championed as a Windows killer for years. Of course it never killed Windows :) but it is still odd to hear Microsoft even use the term "thin client" let alone offer a product.

Then again, there is a need. Given the immense bloat of Microsoft products, older PC hardware just cannot run the new versions. (Although LINUX and java run just fine :)

Given the very limited number of tasks most people do on their PC's, the increasing power of hardware and the increasingly networked nature of work, thin clients are a great idea whose time is yet to come (again). Basing them on Windows however is more than a little questionable...

There are so many websites out there, I sometimes wonder how any of them can make money. But in this case, I hope they are successful at pushing some cost cuts through the real estate industry. That industry is long overdue for some consumer-friendly changes, especially in fees and the structure of the MLS system.

There is no doubt that the game business continues to grow in size and scope. There is some doubt about how Apple and Microsoft respond to this fact.

Microsoft seems to think of "games" as being Xbox games and demonstrates little interest in PC games. Which is ironic since it has the #1 platform for PC games and since it encourages development of Xbox games on PC's with technologies like SNA - which they claimed made it easy to port games between PC and Xbox. But where is Halo2 or Halo3 for the PC?

Also disappointing is Apple. Apple pretty much gave up on the game business back in the 1990's but now that Apple is moving to Intel hardware, they have (had?) and opportunity to close the game gap. And they seem to be doing nothing, which means games for Apple's will continue to be children's games and a few mediocre ports that arrive a year or two after the PC version. What a waste...

Google proved that there is a lot of money to be made from improving the effectiveness (and measurability of) Internet advertising. Ever the imitator, Microsoft has now embarked on a "fundamental shift in strategy" to claim some of those dollars for itself.

I posted about "mashups" back in March but this article, which is actually from last December, gives a better description. This is a technology to watch and I thank my friend Gavin for turning me onto it. Check out Gavin's mashup demo/labor of love :)

As mapping tech catches on, the second article shows that the big boys continue to innovate and improve their map services. 59 millions visitors to map sites in February?! Wow.

Expect the next wave to be mapping on cellphones complete with GPS coordinates.

First came IBM, then came Apple. Will Microsoft be next? Next to do what?

Become fabulously successful and wealthy, to be admired and revered around the world, to become bloated, arrogant, and introverted, and to crash and burn before making real changes.

Brands are very useful.

A brand is a name. That name creates a container in your brain that gives you a place to store associations, like "good" or "bad". Over time, these associations add up and help us make decisions. You hear the brand name and you immediately know how you feel about it, no need to think. Whether you like branding for business or not, this type of pattern recognition system is how our brain works.

Take "purplevision" for instance. When you hear the word "purplevision", what do you think? Things like "brilliant", "a masterpiece", "we are all going to die from global warming and its our own darn fault" probably came to mind, right? Such is the power of branding.

Leave it to Microsoft to use and abuse branding. Over and over again.

Hmmm, let's see. Web-based email, word processor and now spreadsheet. What will they think of next?

Google Advances Software Challenge With Spreadsheet

By KEVIN J. DELANEY

June 6, 2006

Google Inc. plans today to release a Web-based spreadsheet application allowing users to collaborate online, in a further foray into Microsoft Corp.'s traditional turf.

The introduction of Google Spreadsheets follows Google's March purchase of a company offering a Web-based word processor named Writely. The two free Web-based Google services overlap with Microsoft's core Excel spreadsheet and Word word-processing software. Google's offerings highlight a nascent challenge to traditional software applications by a variety of Web-based services.

Microsoft General Manager Alan Yates said the Google offering is one of a field of similar products competitive with the Redmond, Wash., company's Office and Works suites of productivity applications. "There's nothing new here really," Mr. Yates said.

Apple announced their new MacBooks today so I was glancing at their website and...

Switch is gone!!

All year, I have had a link from my blog to Apple's switch campaign. Surely my readers had a material impact on those 1M computers Apple sold in 1995. And now Switch is gone, replaced by "Get a Mac".

Take your eyes off the ball for 1 second and the whole darn internet moves on ya. At least the new commercials are funny.

Have you seen these Apple PC ads? What a hoot.

I am particularly impressed with how they took such a complicated device and created such a simple and amusing advertising campaign. Then again, we are talking about Apple, THE computer for the rest of us.

In computers, everything old is new again eventually.

The idea of "dumb terminals" running software on a central server is an old idea but these days it has a new name and a new implementation and a lot of potential. The model is being called "software as a service" (which I now see described as SAAS) and you can expect to hear more about it.

SAAS is going to stick around because it provides a real value to normal users and small businesses.

Gavin's mind-blowing (and irritating :) knowledge of all things tech has inspired me to read more blogs and listen to more podcasts. One of the podcasts I have been listening to is This Week in Tech.

Two weeks ago, TWiT did an hour and a half on Apple's 30th Anniversary. While this was a long show, I enjoyed it. My first computer was an Apple IIe so I participated in part of that history but I had never heard Woz speak nor had I heard much of the history of the early company. (And you know I like history as a way to gain perspective/context.) I also found it interesting to hear that some of Apple's signature characteristics date all the way back to their first computers: to get broad appeal it has to be easy to use, it has look great, and no loud fans please.

The most recent episode of Twit however was a loser, as least regarding Apple. They discussed Apple's announcement of Boot-Camp (as we all have been) but their discussion left me most unsatisfied. I have been having trouble putting my finger on why it bothered me but here are some thoughts:

Huge news this week: Apple announces a dual-boot technology for their new Intel-based macs that lets users run either MacOS or Windows. (Congratulations Gavin - you predicted it all along :)

market share but which market?

A few months back, some of us were discussing Apple's potential market share gains in the next few years. Could it reach 20%?

At the time, I thought 10% would be a more realistic goal. After all, this is a single company/manufacturer and we are talking hardware not software. 10% of such a huge pie is a terrific business. But now I am rethinking my earlier position in light of todays articles about BootCamp.

I've been working on my blog design. A lot. The colors, the fonts, the spacing and layout... Designing a website is a lot of work but when you are finished, it is rewarding. You have something attractive to look at. A feeling of accomplishment.

Firefox on Mac vs Windows - you decide

At least until you switch platforms.

I do all my development now on my trusty Powerbook. When I switched over to my old WindowsXP machine, I just about croaked. My blog looks totally different! In fact, it looks awful!

The fonts are all thin and wiry looking. The spacing is different. Even the colors are slightly different. Sheesh! It is hard enough hand-writing CSS and now I have to worry about this too?

Since few people have a mac and a PC, I added a side-by-side snapshot so you can compare yourself. Maybe some people prefer the Windows version?

While I have been sitting around thinking about this idea and ever so slowly writing about it, other folks are writing about the same thing :) Although I think this short article in Technology Review sees the tip of the iceberg, it misses full threat.

Pardon me if I am skeptical of Microsoft's tests of disruptive technologies that threaten its cash cows. It will be a few years but the day when "the computer is the network" will come eventually. Software as a service is inevitable because it is so useful.

Public attention on virus' for the MacOS are sure to please some people at Microsoft and possibly at security software vendors like Symantec and McAfee. Im sure there are a lot of folks who are sick to death of hearing Windows singled out for security problems and feel it is unfair to laud UNIX-based systems like the MacOS.

Computer security is an interesting topic. I will try to write a bit more about this soon but for now, here is the article.

'Worms' Turn on Apple Macs, Bigger Target as Sales Boom

By NICK WINGFIELD

February 27, 2006

Users of Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh computers have long enjoyed the technology equivalent of a safe neighborhood, where the viruses and security nuisances that bedevil far more common Windows PCs are practically nonexistent. Now, as the Mac is seeing some of its best sales in years, bad guys appear to be casing the joint.

In the past two weeks, information-security companies like Symantec Inc., Sophos PLC and McAfee Inc. have identified several security issues related to the latest version of Apple's Mac operating system, called OS X. Among the concerns: two "worms," programs written by unknown hackers that were designed to spread themselves to other Macs through Apple's iChat instant-messaging software and Bluetooth wireless-communications capability.

And in a reminder that Macs, like Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software, also contain potentially worrisome security holes, a German graduate student last week discovered a vulnerability in OS X that could let a hacker install potentially damaging code on a Mac through the systems' Safari Web browser.

The two worms were innocuous compared with the most invasive and destructive programs that plague Windows computers; security experts referred to them as "proof of concept" programs. The worms didn't appear to inflict any meaningful harm on Macs -- they required users to go through several steps on their computers before being infected. Yet the appearance of the worms tripped alarm bells among some Mac users and security firms because they were part of a very small handful of malicious Mac programs, known in the tech world as "malware." Security experts believe it is only a matter of time before more-virulent forms of malware for Macs appear.

Security researchers say they have recorded between 100,000 and 200,000 viruses -- a term often used interchangeably with worms to describe malicious programs that spread by copying themselves -- for Windows and previous Microsoft operating systems. For Mac OS X, the number can be counted on one hand.

Three articles on google, the company that seems to be anywhere and everywhere. Thinking about it today I was reminded that in the mid-90's, Microsoft was the software company taking over every market, putting fear into the hearts of managers everywhere. Ten years later, Google seems wears that crown, even causing Microsoft to blink.

Of course, entering a business isnt the same thing as succeeding in a business.

GBuy enters the online payment market.

PayPal Prepares For a Challenge From Google

By MYLENE MANGALINDAN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

February 6, 2006

When Jeff Jordan learned last May that Web-search leader Google Inc. was building its own Internet-payment service, he reacted swiftly.

Mr. Jordan, who is president of eBay Inc.'s PayPal online-payments unit, immediately asked employees to unearth information about the Google service. Soon, PayPal employees were monitoring blogs, news reports and other data for information about Google's progress in payments. PayPal staffers even gleaned details about Google's plans during regular calls to customers who were eager to dish about how Google had reached out to them.

"It's a very legitimate competitive threat," says Mr. Jordan, 47 years old. "It's hard not to pay attention to what Google is doing."

While Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt confirmed in press accounts that the company was building a payment service, Mr. Schmidt also denied it would directly compete with PayPal. Mr. Schmidt said Google didn't intend to offer a "person-to-person, stored-value payments system," which many people consider a description of PayPal's service.

Most consumers think of Google as "search" but if you follow the money, their real business is advertising. And business is good.

In Latest Deal, Google Steps Further Into World of Old Media

Internet Giant Expands Role As an Advertising Broker; Automating Radio Sales Next Target May Be Television

By KEVIN J. DELANEY Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

January 18, 2006

Google Inc. has brought in billions of dollars in revenue by brokering advertisements that appear on Web sites. Now it is taking its ad machine beyond the Internet in an ambitious quest to place ads in traditional media such as newspapers and radio.

The move could open enormous new markets to the search company. But it could also test the limits of Google's automated ad-placement technology that brought it more than $3 billion in online ad revenue in 2004.

The Mountain View, Calif., company yesterday announced the latest prong of its offline-ad efforts, the acquisition of closely held dMarc Broadcasting Inc. of Newport Beach, Calif. DMarc runs an online system for advertisers to buy radio airtime. It then automatically slots the advertisers' commercials into radio stations' computers for broadcast. The deal calls for Google to pay $102 million in cash and up to an additional more than $1.1 billion over three years if dMarc meets certain targets.

Google and others are trying to shake up the balance of power in PC hardware. This is an old issue that seems to be getting new attention as the market (and companies) continues to mature.

Pressuring Microsoft, PC Makers Team Up With Its Software Rivals

Dell Is in Talks With Google To Use Search Services; Winning Loyalty at Set-Up 'A Magic Time for End Users'

By ROBERT A. GUTH and KEVIN J. DELANEY Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

February 7, 2006

It takes only about five minutes to set up a new personal computer by clicking through a series of introductory screens. In that time, however, many consumers choose software and services they will often use for the life of their machine. Historically, Microsoft Corp. held great sway over this "first-boot sequence" as well as other software preinstalled in the factory.

Now PC makers including Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. are beginning to take more control over this crucial real estate. They increasingly are trying to sell this space to service providers and software makers, such as Google Inc. After a year of sometimes tense negotiations with Google and PC makers, Microsoft has ceded ground on some key technical details.

In what would be the most significant example of this shift, Google is in serious negotiations to get its software installed on millions of Dell PCs before they are shipped to users, according to people familiar with the matter. Under the deal being discussed, Google, of Mountain View, Calif., could pay Dell fees approaching $1 billion over three years, these people estimate. The terms might change and the discussions could fail. Any agreement would be the latest in a series of similar deals with computer manufacturers the giant Internet search company has signed.

Microsoft gets regular praise from IT professionals for making it easier to build and maintain networks of thousands of PC's while Apple continues to garner praise for building computers for you and me, ie regular consumers.

The iMac Gets a Brain Transplant

We Test New Apple Desktop To Gauge Impact of Intel Chip; Will All Your Software Work?

January 18, 2006

Just a couple of months ago, in this column, we proclaimed that Apple Computer's iMac G5, then the company's flagship Macintosh desktop computer for consumers, was the best consumer desktop PC on the market. In fact, we called it the "gold standard" of desktop PCs and said no desktop from the major makers of Windows-based computers could match it.

Last week, in a surprise move, Apple gave the iMac a brain transplant. It chose the iMac as the first Macintosh model to be converted to work on the same Intel processors used by makers of Windows PCs, rather than the PowerPC processors from IBM that have powered Macs for many years. This was serious surgery to perform on the company's star product and launched the planned transition to Intel much sooner than originally expected.

...

Our verdict: The brain transplant was a success. The two machines behaved almost identically in our tests. Compatibility is excellent. The new model easily handled all the major consumer software we threw at it. We never noticed the translator software, called Rosetta, and any slowdowns it imposed were so slight as to be indiscernible.

But, even now, this is a terrific computer. It's still the best consumer desktop on the market. It still runs crisply, still is free of viruses and spyware, still has the best operating system and the best built-in software of any desktop we've tested. Given how smoothly the new machine works, and how likely it is to get even better, we would prefer it today over the iMac G5, which Apple is still selling for the same price until inventories are gone. The G5 is still a fine machine, but the Intel model has a brighter future, and, based on our tests, it seems ready to go today.

During my first job after college, I realized that I had a fascination with systems thinking and organizational development. Since then I have worked in companies of different sizes, from a few dozen employees to many thousands, and I have formed a few opinions about company size and behavior.

As companies grow beyond the point where everyone knows everyone else (around 100 people), the amount of work between people increases dramatically. (Picture a lot of dots connected by lines, and as the # of dots grow so does the sum total length of the lines.) This phenomenon is just common sense. As you have more people, you have to spend more time organizing people and opportunities for inefficiency increase.

For a lot of employees, this is the "bloat" of big companies. The middle managers, the people that dont seem to do much, the meetings, the people that do something no one knows about, the slow reaction time, the Dilbert comparisons.

Today a friend of mine told me about this totally awesome new thing, Yahoo! Widgets.

Im always up for something totally awesome and new so I asked him what it was? He turned on his WindowsXP laptop and showed me...

Hmmm, this looks awful familiar... This totally awesome and "new" feature has been on my Mac for some time now and it was available as a Mac program before Apple folded (stole?) it into the MacOS.

Another reminder of how separate the worlds of Windows and MacOS are. Once again I wonder why more intelligent, educated people dont try both systems and pick the best or use both.

Someone recently asked me, if I thought Apple would get 20% market share by 2010. I started to think about this question and then I started to think about why Apple doesnt already have 20% of the personal computer market. Having used both a Mac and the market-dominating leader, it is very clear to me that Apple designs the best computer for consumers.

This got me to thinking about the purchase decisions we all make in life.

You need to get a new cell phone. Your current phone is from Nokia. The software and user interface/experience from each phone manufacturer is different. You go to the store to look at phones. Do you say, "this new Motorola phone looks interesting, why dont i try it and see how it compares with my Nokia?" Or do you say, "I know how to use a Nokia, I better stick with that."

You need a new car. You currently drive a Ford. Each car manufacturer produces cars that drive slightly differently and have slightly different interior designs. Do you say, "I know Fords. I better stick with that." Or do you say, "I know Fords but I would like to try a Toyota and a VW and see for myself which one i like better?"

For most consumer experiences, I think people are willing if not eager to try the alternatives and pick the one they like best. When we talk about personal computers for consumers however, my experience is that people are exactly the opposite.

An interesting commentary from Walter Mossberg where he implies that one reason computers are hard to use is because they are not designed for consumers in the first place. Although I had not thought about it this way before, he makes a lot of sense.

Computer Makers Cater to Big Business, Slight the Rest of Us

By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

December 29, 2005

If you guessed that the industry cares most about customers who use all it has to offer and are most willing to try new things, you guessed wrong. The computer industry cares little about consumers and very small businesses. It is focused on serving the IT departments of large corporations and organizations.

This is true even though, by some estimates, twice as many computers are in the hands of individuals and very small organizations than are in the control of corporate IT departments.

This focus on the corporate world can have real, and sometimes negative, consequences for consumers and small businesses. For example, some of the big security problems in Microsoft's software in recent years came because the company included features used only by corporate IT staffs in the products it sold to everyone. One was a communications feature, meant for network administrators, which sleazy operators misused to bombard people with ads. Why was that on my PC in the first place?

Only one major computer company focuses mainly on the non-IT part of the computing world: Apple Computer. This is partly because Apple failed to make inroads in corporations, but it's also because it prefers to aim its products at actual users, not intermediary buyers.

Some of you wonder why reviewers like me, writing for the non-IT part of the world, have consistently praised Apple products in recent years. One reason is that they are good. Another is that they have been unaffected (so far) by the plague of viruses and spyware that makes Windows users miserable. But an underlying reason is the focus on individual users.

In my view, the world would be better off if the biggest computer companies started catering more to the non-IT part of the market, where most computers live.

This isnt really worth blogging but im so pissed off i might as well share the pain. And it's good to note that even people who know a lot about computers still live with frustration and spend (waste?) a lot of time keeping them running.

Let me start by noting that I have had this PC for 2 years and it has been rock solid. Although almost all of that time I was using Windows 2000, not XP. I should also note that I switched to a Powerbook laptop a year ago so the only thing I do with this PC now is relax and play games.

After my problems over Xmas, I verified that my hard drive was damaged. (Of course to do that, I had to use a DOS utility that must be run from a FLOPPY DISK after booting the computer from a FLOPPY DISK.) To keep my computer running, and the games gaming, while i returned the SATA drive, I installed a backup hard drive. This was a previous drive with a regular ATA interface that Windows Setup understands.

I installed XP and things were working fine. I started playing Everquest2 again and was told by some friends to install this nifty map tool, EQ2Map, but alas, it needed the .NET framework which is only available as a download/patch from Microsoft.

Warm

You cannot download patches anymore without activating your copy of Windows. This worried me a bit since I dont know what "activating means," I was only using this hard-drive temporarily and feared that I would use up my "activations" and would not be able to install XP again when my SATA drive returned. But I bit the bullet and activated my copy of XP and I even registered it with Microsoft.

I always do manual patches (with that annoying alarm every time i log in telling me to do automatic patches) but i decided to give the tech a test and tried "automatic patches". It downloaded 29 or so required "security patches", installed them and told me to restart the computer, which I did not knowing it would be the last time my PC would start.

Saturday night. I finally have a few hours to myself to relax so i start playing my favorite game: Day of Defeat: Source. The game starts to hiccup with brief pauses. Then it freezes altogether. @#$%!

Dont panic just reboot...

First i get one error: Missing or Corrupt File: Windows\System32\Config\System

That's not good. So i reboot again, furiously pressing the obvious F8 key and then using the last known safe configuration. (After all, isnt that the firs thing you would think of doing?)

Now i get this error: Missing or Corrupt File: Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe

Time to panic! Im in the middle of playing a game and the next minute my PC is a toaster! What is a mortal person supposed to do?

I google some advice: "This is a registry problem. Do this [insert inscrutable 10 step process]" - I have no idea how the Registry works, I dont have the time or interest to learn nor do i want to start deleting system files without knowing the consequences.

I google some more advice: "Use the recovery console."

OK, I can try that. I insert the XP CD and reboot, which takes forever. Why is all this old driver crap in here from Windows NT/98? Has anyone upgraded/updated this install program in YEARS? Installing Linux is a breeze compared to this. I bought this copy of XP Pro over the summer but looking at the install program, i expect Mathew Broderick to call me up on his 300 baud modem and ask "do you want to play a game?"

Finally i get to the recovery console and i get informed that Windows cannot find any hard drives. Ohhh Krikey!! This install program does not recognize SATA drives without a special driver from a FLOPPY disk? You mean a USB dongle? You mean the Windows XP CD? No, a @#$% FLOPPY DISK!

I ask again:

What is a mortal person to do?

Has anyone updated this install program in YEARS?

I had forgotten about this SATA problem and how much it pissed me off when i built this PC over the summer. I had to buy a 15 year old floppy disk just so my brand new copy of Windows XP could recognize my 1 year old SATA drive. What a @$#% joke.

One of the lessons they drum into us in business school is that you have provide a positive customer experience because customers have choices and no one willingly pays to be frustrated. The amazing thing about the success of Windows is how BAD the customer experience is. The Windows customer experience shows no respect at all for my time and believe me, i have spent a LOT of time on this stuff. I hate to admit how many countless hours i have spent trying to get my Windows PC's running and stay running -- and it doesn't have to be that way.

What makes it worse is that the only thing i even use this PC for now is entertainment/games. I have paid a lot of money for this game PC and fixing Windows is not what i call entertainment. Is this some diabolical plot to boost Xbox sales by making PC's unusable? Did it really not occur to anyone that setup/installation was a critical part of the customer experience or that you would want to support standard hardware features like USB or SATA? How can a company with so many smart people produce a product that is so frustrating to use?

So much for my Saturday night. I was looking forward to relaxing and now I will be working to get my game PC running again. Who knows how much of my Christmas vacation that will take.

Funny thing is, i havent had any of these issues with my Mac. Installation is a breeze, patches are a breeze, and it has only crashed 2 or 3 times in the past year. If Apple supported any games, Im not sure that I would even bother fixing my PC.

Two articles this month highlight changes in the computer industry, particularly changes that represent a threat to Microsoft.

At $486/oz gold still has the lead but for how long?

Google worth $400/share? I must confess, i really like Google the company but i thought the stock was overpriced at the IPO and crazy at $150... So much for my credibility.

One of the fascinating things about software today is the transition from product innovation to business model innovation. Google and open-source are the two main examples of this change.

Google does search which is just another product and not a particularly new product. But their ability to monetize search, giving away the product and making revenue with advertising, is new and rather amazing.

It is also rather annoying to the king of traditional software, Microsoft. This week Microsoft announced so-called online services, another "innovation through imitation" product.

Very few companies are ever able to succeed with two products that compete for the same customers. In this case web-applications represent a destructive technology for traditional software applications like MS Office. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft handles this tough situation of trying to maintain their dominance while also being ready with competing products.

I am very pleased to see someone in the mass media who openly acknowledges that Apple makes the best personal computer in the world.