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Apple has almost 100% of the market that counts - people who spend money. See: http://brianshall.com/content/are-android-users-simply-cheap

how come, with its huge market share, with the (well promoted) 10 billionth Android Market app download and the millions and millions of Android users, that there's so little actual *money* for Android app developers? Yes, I know Google doesn't like to share, but still, not even a few pennies for developers?

I mean, there's almost no money in the Android app business.

So developers develop for the platform where they can make money. That's iOS. See: http://scobleizer.com/2011/12/12/viral-coefficients-store-feature-branding-influencers-cool-apps-on-ios-first/

Right after (Schmidt's speech) an entrepreneur walked up to me with his app, which looked like Instagram. He wondered why the press doesn’t cover apps not designed on iOS. I said “come with me.”

We walked around the street at LeWeb. First person I ran into was Ayelet Noff. She is one of Israel’s top community connector types. Runs a blog called “Blonde 2.0.” But that doesn’t really explain her role in the tech scene.

“What kind of phone do you use?” “iPhone.”

Next up? Cathy Brooks, who does the same thing in SF? “iPhone.”

This continued with person after person until we got about 10 people. I think we saw one Android phone, nine iPhones, and no WP7s. This was a crowd of European entrepreneurs and tech passionates.

“Had enough yet?” I asked the entrepreneur.

This matches what I have seen at conference after conference.

It's a self-sustaining cycle. People who have money and are happy to spend it gravitate to the platform that has the coolest apps. The coolest apps get made for the platform from which developers can make the most money. Apple ensures that the developers can write the coolest apps by supporting old hardware for YEARS after obsolescence, and maintaining a system whereby most users upgrade to the latest version of iOS within days of release. What's ICS userbase now - has it made double figures yet? Hell, it's already an OLD version of Android.

Until Android stops being a fragmentation fuckfest, it's always going to be the platform of choice for poor people, hackers, and freeloaders. That's not a market that matters to a business. Therefore, while Apple has a minority share of the overall phone market, it totally dominates the segment of that market that counts. People who have and spend money.

Apple has almost 100% of the market that counts - people who spend money. See: http://brianshall.com/content/are-android-users-simply-cheap

how come, with its huge market share, with the (well promoted) 10 billionth Android Market app download and the millions and millions of Android users, that there's so little actual *money* for Android app developers? Yes, I know Google doesn't like to share, but still, not even a few pennies for developers?

I mean, there's almost no money in the Android app business.

So developers develop for the platform where they can make money. That's iOS. See: http://scobleizer.com/2011/12/12/viral-coefficients-store-feature-branding-influencers-cool-apps-on-ios-first/

Right after (Schmidt's speech) an entrepreneur walked up to me with his app, which looked like Instagram. He wondered why the press doesn’t cover apps not designed on iOS. I said “come with me.”

We walked around the street at LeWeb. First person I ran into was Ayelet Noff. She is one of Israel’s top community connector types. Runs a blog called “Blonde 2.0.” But that doesn’t really explain her role in the tech scene.

“What kind of phone do you use?” “iPhone.”

Next up? Cathy Brooks, who does the same thing in SF? “iPhone.”

This continued with person after person until we got about 10 people. I think we saw one Android phone, nine iPhones, and no WP7s. This was a crowd of European entrepreneurs and tech passionates.

“Had enough yet?” I asked the entrepreneur.

This matches what I have seen at conference after conference.

It's a self-sustaining cycle. People who have money and are happy to spend it gravitate to the platform that has the coolest apps. The coolest apps get made for the platform from which developers can make the most money. Apple ensures that the developers can write the coolest apps by supporting old hardware for YEARS after obsolescence, and maintaining a system whereby most users upgrade to the latest version of iOS within days of release. What's ICS userbase now - has it made double figures yet? Hell, it's already an OLD version of Android.

Until Android stops being a fragmentation fuckfest, it's always going to be the platform of choice for poor people, hackers, and freeloaders. That's not a market that matters to a business. Therefore, while Apple has a minority share of the overall phone market, it totally dominates the segment of that market that counts. People who have and spend money.

Robert Scoble: "I know Facebook is killing the web, but I decided to help it kill the web because I need my Klout score"

Really, is Apple going to be the only company in the world that gets human interaction? It's staggering how much they've advanced society on their own and all their profound technical achievements

I guess that you are not aware that Apple purchased the company that made Siri and then immediately stopped the development of the Blackberry and Android versions. They basically did a Microsoft.

Actually, that is not fair - you could say they did an Apple. The question of whether Siri is a revolutionary as the Mac is telling as both of these products were based on groundwork made by other companies. This is not to say that Apple didn't add the pizzazz to them though, but even those pizzazz elements can be found elsewhere (so many of iOS's user interface ideas that people love can be found in other people's work). Apple's great trait is that they can commercialize the ideas of others. Want another example:

Maybe learn painting or drawing or something. Maybe start liking turtles. (remember Apple LOGO??)

Logo was created in 1967 - 15 years before Apple Logo came on the scene. Did you think that Apple invented it?

>> Which one has a richer appstore? Which one has the apps you're looking for?

> Umm, both have the same apps? Seriously, besides a handful of high profile games, what does Apple have that Android doesn't?

For the answer, see here and here.

Let's sort all Android apps into the following categories:

1. Apps from Google.
2. Third-party apps that also exist on iOS.
3. Third-party apps that are exclusive to Android.

From my time spent with the Nexus One early this year, I know that Google's Android apps are pretty good. These include both the core system apps, and the closed-source "Google Experience" apps like the dedicated Gmail client and Google Maps.

There are definitely a fair number of apps in the second category -- those ported to both iOS and Android. Examples: Amazon's Kindle client, Pandora, and a few popular games, such as Angry Birds and Doodle Jump.

But what I find striking is that the apps in the third category -- those exclusive to Android -- are almost entirely unappealing or irrelevant to iOS users.

That's not to say there's nothing in Android, as a system, that appeals to iPhone owners. Built-in turn-by-turn navigation on certain models. A system-wide notification system. Widgets on the homescreen. Over-the-air system updates. Unrestricted background processing for third-party apps, battery-life be damned. But those are things that are built into the system itself, or which otherwise come from Google. What I'm questioning is the strength and depth of Android's third-party developer support.

Which are the apps, from developers other than Google, that I should feel like I'm missing out on because I don't have an Android device? Where are the killer apps for Android?

Turn the table and we could be here all day running down the list of high-quality, interesting apps which are exclusive to iOS.

It's currently running an unknown Android version but according to the Acer executives the tablets will be running Google's tablet version of Android, Honeycomb.

So which is which? The version of Android is unknown to who? If it were unknown to the author, he should have said so. Otherwise news snippets like these add to the notion that there is chaos in Android's ecosystem, which is incorrect.

It is basically the same planetary transmission as used in the Prius, but reversed in a quite novel way.

So you get the advantage of a serial hybrid in most cases and a parallel hybrid in the edge cases.

http://scobleizer.com/2010/10/12/chevy-volts-chief-engineer-says-this-aint-no-hybrid/

I think that it actually makes the design more interesting.

The transmission is no more complicated than the Prius.

And the car is a totally serial hybrid 99% of the time. If you read the information the car will only use the gas engine for some driving force at over 70mph when the battery is depleted. So under special circumstances it switches to being a parallel hybrid.

As the GM Chief engineer says, the Volt can accelerate to top speed using only electric power. The Prius cannot.

http://scobleizer.com/2010/10/12/chevy-volts-chief-engineer-says-this-aint-no-hybrid/

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

Robert Scoble compares the Droid to to Windows 3.1.

The Droid fails AS A PRODUCT when compared to Palm Pre and iPhone

Between this review, the increased cost of dumping a crappy phone, and the general high cost of actually using it for data, I'm going sit on the sidelines a little longer

A battery cover that falls off? A physical keyboard that "peels" off?

Come on Motorola! I think you're better than that!

Come, now, it was only one other performer (Ben Folds, if you're curious, doing a sweet solo gig).

The irony of course is, that I don't even care about any of the bands they had. But it was the lack of the invite, and the cavalier attitude University Relations had about it that upset me.

I'll grant you that MSR interns sound like they get a pretty different summer than the rest of us, but on the flip side you also work in much nicer buildings

Building 99 is pretty damn awesome.

I am somewhat surprised you didn't do the Intern Summer Celebration thing, though - they flew interns in from other campuses for that one.

Don't get me wrong. I liked my time at MSR. Cool people. Interesting problems. Foosball. It was great a experience all the way, and I would recommend it to anyone without reservation. I can't stress that more. It's the double standard that University Relations has that I can't stand. The only conclusion you can draw is that they consider Research interns second class. MSR is great, but MSUR can suck it.

That was my only negative experience with them.

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

0x000000 Security. Very snarky and somewhat crazy security blogger. Usually interesting.
Phoronix. Linux + hardware + games = Nothing not to love unless you are lame.
Anandtech. Hardware. Glorious hardware. Make sure to put on the adult diapers before visting.
HowtoForge. How to do stuff. Usually in Linux.
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. More fun than a barrel of iMacs.
Signal to Noise. The official 37signals blog. They are pompus, they can be pricks at times, but they usually have interesting things to say.
Scobleizer. Robert Scoble. His job is talking to people using social networking tools who own companies that make social networking tools. At some point there will be a business plan. Just not today.

Here's another inside peek, and a spam for my employer:

http://scobleizer.com/2008/03/13/a-real-business-leader/

It's about Rackspace's new datacenter in San Antonio.

~W

This is to be expected when too much of the talent moves on to more interesting places to work, like Google, Yahoo, or IBM. It becomes increasingly difficult to do acceptable work when the number of staff who understand the core parts of the problems approaches zero.

These articles are still timely: About Microsoft brain drain from 22 months ago, Similar, from 19 months ago, or yet another, from 10 months ago. Or google "Microsoft brain drain" and browse through the 134,000 results: you'll see a long histor of MS being accused of kneecapping competitors by targetted headhunting of key staff, but that toward the end of the Vista development cycle, there have been a growing number of questions about whether the exodus of talent from Redmond would leave MS with enough brains to deliver on their promises.

I have to agree 100%. Combined with virtualization, it's only a matter of time (and not much at that IMHO). Here are some examples of companies that don't have a server, much less an IT department (read the comments for more). http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/16/the-serverless-internet-company/

Here's his wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scoble

"Scoble is best known for his popular blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technical evangelist at Microsoft."

According to a blog on the NYTimes:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/facebook-robert-scoble-and-free-love/

"Mr. Scoble was kicked off of Facebook because he used a preview version of a Plaxo service that logged onto his Facebook account to download the names and e-mail addresses of his friends."

In the man's own words from his blog:
http://scobleizer.com/2008/01/03/ive-been-kicked-off-of-facebook/

"My account has been "disabled" for breaking Facebook's Terms of Use. I was running a script that got them to keep me from accessing my account."

I didn't know who he was until looking him up, either. The summary could have been a lot clearer.

If you're going to shill for Silverlight (which you clearly are, given your Scoble-soundbite title and your previous post here), at least be honest about it. This reads like one of those "evaluation guides" that sales put out for lazy journalists: "An XYZ app should be judged on features A, B, and C; by coincidence, our new XYZalizer product does A, B and C..."

I fully sympathize with your desire for a better way, but not at the cost of throwing away the Web and replacing it with the $VENDOR Network, which is what Silverlight (and others) are trying to do. Microsoft will not support an open Web. Not yet. They can't; they're institutionally addicted to monopoly rents, and monopoly rents require platform lock-in, whether that platform be Win32 or Silverlight or anything else.

I think Mark Pilgrim said it best, and far more entertainingly: "Seriously? Seriously? Do I really have to explain why this is a bad idea? Again? To a bunch of technological virgins who haven't been fucked yet?"

(Incidentally, we did a quick evaluation of Silverlight a few months back, and once you stripped away the layers of PR I really couldn't see what the excitement was about. All the demo apps were some variation of "Oh look, it's a another video player. Just what the world was waiting for." Completely uninspiring. And we're a .NET shop; gawd only knows what everyone else thought.)

"Many of the author's points dont make any sense in comparison to MS and Vista. SP1 isn't due out (as of now) till Q1 2008... OSX's update is already out... don't see the similarity. "

Um, you do realize that Microsoft has been releasing Vista fixes for months now via Windows Update, right? Fixes don't have to come as SPs or .0.1 updates.

But you're right, I don't see the similarity either. Vista has to work probably 3 orders of magnitude more configurations than OSX does, yet Leopard is still very buggy, even with 10.5.1, BTW.
And make no mistake: The author's complaints are not an isolated case.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/update-leopard-problems-apple,review-1028.html
http://www.robhyndman.com/2007/11/14/ive-been-attacked-by-a-leopard/
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/16/caught-in-apple-restart-hell/
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/17/the-brand-promise-of-apple/
http://www.digg.com/apple/MacBook_MacBook_Pro_owners_suffer_keyboard_freezing_with_Leopard

And check out the Apple discussion forums (though Apple has seen fit to lock many of the threads that complain about Leopard's problems, so check out MacinTouch and AppleInsider.com forums too).

Apple's "Vista is crap" ad campaign and using BSOD icons for Windows network shares in Leopard makes this all the more embarrassing for Apple. And comedian Baratunde Thurston has publicly called out Apple on its unjustified smugness (even before Leopard was released).
Baratunde Thurston: I Hate the Smugness of Apple

"Many of the author's points dont make any sense in comparison to MS and Vista. SP1 isn't due out (as of now) till Q1 2008... OSX's update is already out... don't see the similarity. "

Um, you do realize that Microsoft has been releasing Vista fixes for months now via Windows Update, right? Fixes don't have to come as SPs or .0.1 updates.

But you're right, I don't see the similarity either. Vista has to work probably 3 orders of magnitude more configurations than OSX does, yet Leopard is still very buggy, even with 10.5.1, BTW.
And make no mistake: The author's complaints are not an isolated case.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/update-leopard-problems-apple,review-1028.html
http://www.robhyndman.com/2007/11/14/ive-been-attacked-by-a-leopard/
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/16/caught-in-apple-restart-hell/
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/17/the-brand-promise-of-apple/
http://www.digg.com/apple/MacBook_MacBook_Pro_owners_suffer_keyboard_freezing_with_Leopard

And check out the Apple discussion forums (though Apple has seen fit to lock many of the threads that complain about Leopard's problems, so check out MacinTouch and AppleInsider.com forums too).

Apple's "Vista is crap" ad campaign and using BSOD icons for Windows network shares in Leopard makes this all the more embarrassing for Apple. And comedian Baratunde Thurston has publicly called out Apple on its unjustified smugness (even before Leopard was released).
Baratunde Thurston: I Hate the Smugness of Apple

Oh really? Linux has its own "let's create your experience". It's called Richard Stallman.

http://man.he.net/man1/su
"Why GNU su does not support the wheel group (by Richard Stallman)"

But if you want true authoritarian control with a "total branding experience"... look no further than the unmutable, unchangable Vista startup sound. "A spiritual side of the branding experience."!

http://scobleizer.com/2006/08/24/the-startup-sound-in-vista/

Forget all the uses in hospitals, connections to massive amps that can deafen people, radio broadcasts, libraries and every other sane place on the planet. Vista wanted to unmute your audio channels and play this sound every time it starts up.

They caved in, but although you can turn the sound on or off, you can't set it to a different audio file. This creates a strange dichotomy in the configuration dialog, where there's a big scrollable list of all the sounds your computer might make, and you can set or clear each one. Then there's a random checkbox labelled "Play the Vista startup sound".

Of course, Apple does the same, but they put the sound in the BIOS. You need to download a shim to mute your sound when you shut down, and unmute your sound when you start up.

I look forward to missing the next iteration of absurd statements of control applied onto users by software makers.

Just a few days ago Robert Scoble wrote about how Bungie was the one bright spot in the sea of Microsoft:

Microsoft needs a new story. If I were on the management team I'd be looking hard at the Bungie team, the folks who brought us Halo 3.

Bungie splitting off makes a lot of sense, but I doubt it is the start of a trend at Microsoft. I used to work at MGS, and with Bungie -- they had a longer leash than any other group that I knew about at the company, and they fought constantly to keep it that way.

"Mac users will continue to see the Internet as it was intended"

What's Wrong With Apple's Font Rendering?
Welcome to the blurry, but fast, browser...
Apple and Microsoft have always disagreed in how to display fonts on computer displays...

Dude, thanks for spending the time at Techfest and for spending far more time editing the videos together. I know this was a huge amount of time and I really appreciate it.

It always pisses me off when people say that Microsoft hasn't commercialized its research. We've worked closely with our product gorups to transfer a ton of stuff over. What we haven't done is get in people's faces about it.

In Vista: the 3-D interface, the Sidebar, Superfetch, speech recognition. The network map autodetection. Ink parsing. IPv6 support. The IE7 phishing detector. The new HP photo format. MSR made significant contributions to all of these. In Office 2007, we helped with the new Ribbon UI, made improvmenets to search relevance in Sharepoint, improved chart labeling in Excel, and improved the spell checker. For the XBox we contributed graphics library for photorealistic functions, TrueSkill, geolocation for XBox live, the AI for Forza. Data mining algorithms in SQL Server came from MSR. We contributed to the spam filters in Hotmail, Exchange and Outlook. Several of the tools in Visual Studio Team Server came from MSR, as did the static driver verifier in the Vista DDK. There's MSR technology everywhere.

There are dozens and dozens of other examples. The Tablet PC came out of MSR. The first-generation Windows Media audio codec came out of MSR too. Our interactive TV work started in MSR.

So fine, if you want to beat us up for not blowing our own horn, I'll take that hit. But to say that we don't commercialize our research is just wrong.

Comment by Kevin Schofield -- March 20, 2007 @ 10:29 pm

http://scobleizer.com/2007/03/20/one-thing-microso ft-does-way-better-than-google-research/#comment-3 00607

Yup, forgot that XBox Live was using F#. Thanks for the catch.

I also forgot the news of this week -- the announcement of "Response Point" which was incubated in MSR. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/mar0 7/03-19MSResponsePointPR.mspx

As to Alex's question: there are several that we can identify now. Keeping in mind that most truly "groundbreaking" technologies take 10+ years before they're recognized as such, I'm sure that there are more that we haven't identified as such yet.

But some examples:
- the foundations of image based rendering, by Hughes Hoppe
- hardware support for graphics processing (aka "Talisman") by Jim Kajiya, Turner Whitted et al
- ClearType (read the papers and the patent application before you judge; there's much more to this than is generally admitted) by John Platt
- source code analysis, modeling and verification, by Jim Larus, Sriram Rajamani, and several others
- public area wireless networks by Victor Bahl
- support vector machines for spam filtering, by John Platt and David Heckerman
- applying spam filtering algorithms to designing an HIV vaccine, by Heckerman and Jojic
- functional programming language work by Luca Cardelli and Simon Peyton-Jones
- performance optimizing a program by re-arranging its code and data segments based upon empirical observation, but Amitabh Srivastava et al.
- 3-D information visualization papers by George Robertson
- Mary Czerwinski's papers on understanding differences in spatial abilities between men and women
- Cerwins

Dude, thanks for spending the time at Techfest and for spending far more time editing the videos together. I know this was a huge amount of time and I really appreciate it.

It always pisses me off when people say that Microsoft hasn't commercialized its research. We've worked closely with our product gorups to transfer a ton of stuff over. What we haven't done is get in people's faces about it.

In Vista: the 3-D interface, the Sidebar, Superfetch, speech recognition. The network map autodetection. Ink parsing. IPv6 support. The IE7 phishing detector. The new HP photo format. MSR made significant contributions to all of these. In Office 2007, we helped with the new Ribbon UI, made improvmenets to search relevance in Sharepoint, improved chart labeling in Excel, and improved the spell checker. For the XBox we contributed graphics library for photorealistic functions, TrueSkill, geolocation for XBox live, the AI for Forza. Data mining algorithms in SQL Server came from MSR. We contributed to the spam filters in Hotmail, Exchange and Outlook. Several of the tools in Visual Studio Team Server came from MSR, as did the static driver verifier in the Vista DDK. There's MSR technology everywhere.

There are dozens and dozens of other examples. The Tablet PC came out of MSR. The first-generation Windows Media audio codec came out of MSR too. Our interactive TV work started in MSR.

So fine, if you want to beat us up for not blowing our own horn, I'll take that hit. But to say that we don't commercialize our research is just wrong.

Comment by Kevin Schofield -- March 20, 2007 @ 10:29 pm

http://scobleizer.com/2007/03/20/one-thing-microso ft-does-way-better-than-google-research/#comment-3 00607

Yup, forgot that XBox Live was using F#. Thanks for the catch.

I also forgot the news of this week -- the announcement of "Response Point" which was incubated in MSR. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/mar0 7/03-19MSResponsePointPR.mspx

As to Alex's question: there are several that we can identify now. Keeping in mind that most truly "groundbreaking" technologies take 10+ years before they're recognized as such, I'm sure that there are more that we haven't identified as such yet.

But some examples:
- the foundations of image based rendering, by Hughes Hoppe
- hardware support for graphics processing (aka "Talisman") by Jim Kajiya, Turner Whitted et al
- ClearType (read the papers and the patent application before you judge; there's much more to this than is generally admitted) by John Platt
- source code analysis, modeling and verification, by Jim Larus, Sriram Rajamani, and several others
- public area wireless networks by Victor Bahl
- support vector machines for spam filtering, by John Platt and David Heckerman
- applying spam filtering algorithms to designing an HIV vaccine, by Heckerman and Jojic
- functional programming language work by Luca Cardelli and Simon Peyton-Jones
- performance optimizing a program by re-arranging its code and data segments based upon empirical observation, but Amitabh Srivastava et al.
- 3-D information visualization papers by George Robertson
- Mary Czerwinski's papers on understanding differences in spatial abilities between men and women
- Cerwins

Here's another: http://scobleizer.com/2007/05/10/microsoft-has-a-b etter-switchboard-than-google/

Look at a recent well-known switcher Robert Scobble:

http://scobleizer.com/2007/04/05/i-love-my-new-mac /

Even though more people than ever admit the disaster that is Windows, the mind-set that goes along with it persists:

(1) Get new Computer, (2) Load it up with every third-party cat-poop application you can lay your hands on, as long as you can find at least one other person using it, (3) Try and figure out what went wrong.

Successful Apple users, and to a greater extent successful Linux users are much more in touch with what their actual needs are. Whether driven by the need to save money, or an understanding from years of trial and error that a few really good tools are better than hundreds of half-assed ones.

Long ago the case that Windows was faster, more secure, less expensive to use, and so on, began to be seen for what it was, pure marketing message, short on substance. But what lingers, and is still largely true is the message that there are "tons" of applications available for Windows. Many of these take the form of "Install and forget" because for many users, just the idea that they have some new software gadget gives them shivers of delight, and yet a month or a week later the fact that their system is unreliable, slower than they remembered it being on the first day of use, and constantly reminding them that there is yet some New! can't-live-without utility only a click or two away, never causes them to question both the bloat that is Windows itself or the bloat that they have added to it in such a short time.

Should we hope that there is soon an equal amount of cruft available for Apple computers and Linux computers as well? Or should we rather hope that Windows users finally grow up and start using computers as adults, as tools, not toys.

Somehow I think that change is still a ways off.

the memory footprint on that thing is far, far beyond ridiculous at this point, not to mention noticibly larger than even IE7's memory requirements.

The Times Online is wrong. Scoble never said Microsoft Sucks. But don't worry Slashdot Editors -- the truth was only revealed/explained two or three days ago. I'm sure you'll catch up sometime in April and retract the inaccurate statement.

http://scobleizer.com/2007/03/16/microsoft-tells-m vps-were-in-it-to-win-really/

I'm not sure if your comment was meant as a jab at Bill Hilf, or if your just literally meant that it seems incongruous to find Bill Hilf and Bill Gates in the same roof. I'll assume the latter - I agree it seems odd.

The cynical side of me thinks that this is purely a political gesture, and that Microsoft is giving him a "window seat" with little influence inside of microsoft.

However, Microsoft attempted the same thing with Robert Scoble. Most people wrote him off as a shill, but he (IMHO) brought about real, substantive change in how Microsoft communicated with the outside world, and that they are now a more "transparent" company, especially with the development community.

Maybe he's a "double agent". I'm hoping that, even if Microsoft is being disingenuous, that Bill Hilf is able to undermine this attitude from within the inside?

Something about your version of selective compassion doesn't sit well with me. I guess I just figured that compassion was a part of humanity shown towards everyone, not just the people we know (or are well known). You know, something that encourages one to show a little shred of respect towards a (possibly) dead man, even if he does work for Microsoft.

Don Dodge had this to about Jim on Robert Scoble's blog:

I have known Jim Gray for almost 20 years. We worked together in the database group at Digital Equipment Corp, and now we both work at Microsoft. He is a good friend, and one of the three smartest people I have ever worked with. The other two are Ray Ozzie and Paul Butterworth.

Jim is a legendary computer scientist, especially in the database world. As brilliant as he is, he is charming, friendly, and has no ego. An amazing guy.

Do you know enough about him to show him that respect now?

It's not a matter of dealing. We're all doing that. We're just not all as cold inside as you.

Scoble has video of the Intel 45 nm fab. Really great tour and interviews with senior technical fellows from Intel:

Discussion here:

http://scobleizer.com/2006/08/17/why-did-boeings-w ifi-service-die/

Boeing didn't kill its existing wifi because of cost to implement -- it was already implemented. Ongoing costs of basic service weren't justified when so few passengers were willing to pay for the service to begin with.

You know they will. Well at least this guy will be, and the rest of the "niners" won't be far behind.

It is fast, stable and uses about 1/3rd of the memory FF does.

Scoble pulls the battery life comment out of his ass, is too lazy or stupid to look it up on Apple's website, then says this (see comment #84): "Darryl: I will buy one. I'm sure it'll be a huge success no matter what anyway. Steve Jobs got EVERYONE to talk about it. There isn't a single person I've met that doesn't already have an opinion on it."

Once and always a Microsoft apologist, our Robert Scoble, but one who wants an iPhone anyway.

Like I said, a tool.

Google OS for laptops or desktops? You are smoking good crack.

Great point. It's unfortunate, but global corporations need to abide by their host country's rules, or they need to pull out. Case in point is Microsoft, who has been forced to hand over information to the Chinese government and ban Chinese Bloggers. In the end though, both sides lose ... Microsoft may end up leaving China altogether, and other companies may follow suit in China and elsewhere.

http://scobleizer.com/2006/08/24/the-startup-sound -in-vista/

They have changed the behavior. In the build of Vista I'm using, it's possible to turn off the startup sound but not to change it. According to a few sources (e.g. here), they were also considering making it impossible to turn off without a registry hack; I'm not sure how it's going to be in the final release.