And I'm in Hampstead and have been awake since 6am British Summer Time - so what. This is a place where a lot of clever, tech/science/geek/etc-focused people come to contribute to the Great Debate.
So I'm an idealist;-) Still, I love trawling through the opinions - inane, insane and otherwise wise - on offer.
Yes, good point about party title being a prime indicator of a party's philosophical leanings. I suppose I'm just bemoaning the lack of an electable centre-left party in British politics - at the national level.
One of the more fascinating aspects of my emigration to England has been my total political reorientation. Rather, my beliefs and views haven't changed all that much, but the labels used to describe those beliefs - well, my head is still spinning.
In America, I'm photographer, a writer, I work in publishing, from NYC... pretty much the popular cliché of a member of the Democratic party: TAX-RAISING, LATTE-DRINKING, SUSHI-EATING, VOLVO-DRIVING, HOLLYWOOD-LOVING (without the tax-raising so much - and I drove a Saturn - but goodness I love the sushi and S'bucks). I subscribe to the pillars of liberal belief as per the wiki's description:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal
And so it beggars belief when I read of Blair's government - and now Brown's - introducing such supremely illiberal measures such as identity cards to say nothing of the anti-democratic tinkering with the judiciary and the House of Lords.
This sort of nonsense plus the recently announced and very damaging recent immigration rule changes (http://www.vbsi.org.uk/) leaves me with the option of joining the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives - and I'm leaning Conservative at the moment. I really do wish the Labour party would crumble into dust like a vampire in the sunshine and leave a "true" liberal party to defend that side of the political divide.
It seems that Apple has something clever up their sleeve according to Robert Scoble:
"Speaking of Apple," Mr. Scoble concluded, "they are readying a dizzying amount of new products. I wish I could camp out at an Apple store during the World Wide Developer Conference on August 7th. I wish I could say more, but that'd get me sued by Steve Jobs and I don't need that kind of heck right now."
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2006/08/03.8.sh tml and http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/mclaws- is-right-on-windows-vista-ship-date
Ok, ok... so this isn't really news, but it is still fun to work oneself up into a lather about the latest and greatest from His Steveness.
Now that I live in London I can't really attend these fab Apple confabs. I was there in NYC back in whenever it was when Steve said, "now reach under your seats" and found a lovely new Apple Pro Mouse. Those were heady days, indeed.
As a wannabe photographer (http://homepage.mac.com/nevermore/), I keep hoping for speed boosts to Aperture... though I'm sure it'll scream on the new MacPro's... or is that Mac Pro sans article (as in, don't eat iPod, say hello to iMac)?
And I'd really love to trade in my trusty olde iPod (10GB 2nd Gen - battered from falling into the cross-trainer at the gym, but still very much functional) for something with a wide screen that plays movies.
When I moved to London a couple of years ago I was surprised by the prevelence of widescreen televisions. They're the norm, but I rarely see them being used properly. No windowboxing and nasty comments when you suggest playing 4:3 content at 4:3. Of course, the same thing happens at my mum's in South Carolina! 75% of everything we watch is 4:3 (most TV and certainly all old TV, older films) - why the hell would I ever get a 28" widescreen TV? I was very happy to get a fairly cheap 32" Sony that looks great - and I can live with the quality of the picture when letterboxing 'scope and flat films.
Since I have no special information beyond that which I read in the trades, I'll speculate that Vista development has been... challenging at best. More than likely it's been an evil slog and Bill can neither be proud nor happy about it all. I think he's going to be there to front the release of Vista, claim Total Victory and Mission Accomplished and then get the hell away from the mess and let someone else figure out how to turn Microsoft around. Reminds me of another national leader... hmmm... who... hmmm...
I tend to think that he's a wicked little SOB sooo unworthy of his great wealth, but if Rockerfeller and Carnegie can go down as Great Americans, Gates certainly can. Build some libraries, concert halls, monuments, universities, give it all away and fund a cure for AIDS... as I'm sure he will before he shuffles off to that great Blue Screen of Death in the sky.
... isn't it? Although I use a Mac Mini most of the time, my work PC with Windows 2000 makes some beautiful music with the latest version of iTunes. What's so bad about it? Seems to function precisely as it does in Mac OSX, my iPod syncs beautifully, etc... what makes it so awful?
I remember installing QuickTime and some of the preferences are a wee bit clunky, but no more so than **chuckle** Windows Media Player **shudder**.
This is a manufacturer / content-provider solution for a problem, a market need that does not exist! The only benefit this product offers consumers is increased resolution on HDTVs. Can anyone really tell the difference on the billions of crap televisions out there? And what's the market penetration of HDTV sets? I wonder... People really seem happy with the great res of current DVDs and certainly love the 5.1 surround sound. Until there's a critical mass of HD display devices, who really cares about "better" pictures?
I'd love higher video resolutions on physical media, but it seems to me that both of these product offerings are really only about getting DRM into the marketplace - and NOTHING MORE. Blech. I'll pass for now, thanks.
Alan Kohler's piece in The Age just seems to be an unfocused piece of non-analysis. What was the point of all this? A warning against the siren call of the little white box? A broad survey of the digital media playback marketplace?
Oh, I see... after a paean to Apple's iPod (well, he seems like a happy customer), he goes all gloom and doom as he thinks the mobile phone operators will be chomping on the iPod for their din din. Right.
Of course that's real perspective on the way the market is going, but Kohler doesn't provide and facts, figures, reasoned arguments, etc... And someone needs to submit this to the Apple Deathwatch folks from TFA: "It is quite a thrilling time to be alive. We will witness the creation and destruction of a market dominance in the time it used to take to work up a business plan." Sure, um, ok.
Please, lets try not to promote, sloppy, lazy journalism and opinion pieces... Kohler's sub should have sent this story back.
... I remember helping her with a campaign that tried to position "MSN me!" as a catchphrase to replace "IM me!"
Since I'm on a lovely Mac and use iChat, I usually suggest someone "IM" or "instant message" me - even when I'm using the MSN client. And no, I don't suggest people "iChat" me;-)
Perhaps it was just the spin the article's author took, but I was shocked at Chris Gorog's poor attitude. It's Microsoft, no it's the device players, no it's... it's... as Yoda said, "That is why you fail.";-)
Methinks it isn't the smartest business move to badmouth your "partners". I get the sense that he's just providing cover for the anticipated acquisition - or trying to provide a rationale for a prospective buyer. E.g., "no, really - it's not us, it's MS et al. Once they get their stuff together, Napster'll be worth billions. Buy me now BEFORE we really succeed - cause we will - someday - eventually - in the end - it is unavoidable - it is our DESTINY!!"
I dream of a day when Microsoft and its "partners" come up with a POSITIVE reason to use their products.
This is far OT, but as I'm responding to a post far OT, I hope you'll indulge me. My favourite line in any of his novels is AS I LAY DYING's one-line chapter: "My mother is a fish."
Funny, tragic, brilliant and memorable. Well, we laughed about it a great deal in High School Lit class!
From the main page at Gridnetworks: "SLASHDOT ALERT!: A recent mention of GridNetworks, Inc. on Slashdot (via Robert Cringely's "Rules of the Road" article Saturday Morning), is affecting GridNetwork's overall performance at the present time. This "Slashdot Effect" should subside in the next eight-twelve hours. This effect has caused a high volume of player downloads and very quick expansion of our demo grid, so you may experience a significant slowdown in video performance during the period of unanticipated grid expansion. If you experience unsatisfactory performance today, we hope you'll visit us again in the coming week."
So much for those unexpected spikes in bandwidth that a company like Gridnetworks should be able to handle.
Oh, and props need to go out to Gridnetworks for one of the more amusing netbusinesspeak verbal cluster-fucks I've seen in quite a long while. From their "solutions" page: The monetization of media via the Internet requires the involvement of many specialties. Original content creators, distributors, aggregators, site designers and integrators, hardware and software vendors, hosting and bandwidth providers, user support specialists...the list goes on. For most, Internet content distribution has remained an expensive and complex proposition -- relatively few companies have married all of these moving parts to create a predictable, efficient 'content monitization engine.'
The GridNetworks PowerGrid Platform(TM) was designed to address many key shortcomings of Internet content distribution and provide a means by which everyone in the value chain can easily participate in the success of each venture. PowerGrid is truly an end to end solution that is versatile at every level and every component."
I'd very much like to see a discussion of eBooks and eBook technology in the sphere of higher education publishing. I've worked on several types of eBooks that are distributed as a billion little PDF files to discourage piracy or now as "protected" FlashPaper content - all with hooks in them to other types of rich content.
Since textbooks - in the US anyway - are big business, what do you think of DRM for textbooks? Any companies out there you see doing this "right"?
Let's say I publish books and am looking to release e-book versions of my wit and wisdom. My top concern is that they shouldn't be mass-distributable, so I chuck the book down into 15 or 20 sections. In what format should the e-book be released for top security and flexibility? PDF? A bit clumsy these days, Acrobat a bit of a nightmare, not all my files are in Quark. What about Flashpaper? Yes, I know Adobe owns it now... it's easier to export, my reader can still print it and more secure as it more difficult to hijack from an embedded web page. Isn't it? Now where the devil does Unipage get me that those two options don't? Flash and Acrobat allow functionality within their respective wrappers... and are "secure". Any opinions on which of those two is most secure?
I've splashed out cash for a broadband connection since 1998. At the time, I was living in Montclair, NJ and Comcast's cable modem was the way to go. Since then, I've lived in New York and now in London and I've never been without a fast connection to the internet.
In that time, I'm amazed at how many services or features on the modern OS X Tiger Mac are network-reliant. All those cute Widgets pull in data from the net and really cease to function without internet connectivity.
This was illustrated for me vividly when my parents moved from a well-served community in Florida to rural South Carolina. They live near a lovely little town with miles of scenic cotton fields (Elloree is the town - tres cute), but there's only one internet provider in town. They have some crazy expensive 'business' DSL for the little patch of a town, but only a wireless microwave scheme for the rest of the surrounding area: http://www.ntinet.com/
So, they're on dial-up which is an insanely slow 33.6-ish and now she isn't really able to log on and use, say, iChat or Skype or even see my latest photographs ( http://homepage.mac.com/nevermore/ ).
My mum never thought she needed broadband before, but now longs for the day we can stay in touch quickly, easily and (fairly) cheaply. Broadband at $50 monthly isn't sooooo much, is it?
Sure, they're inviting. Rows and rows of fab-looking Macs hooked up to the Internet; heaps of sexy creative women (usually with their cute boyfriends, alas); sales people on the floor who are friendly but never pushy. I like the clean - but not austere - look of the place. It encourages me to fill the space as I will... much like the white of a blank page or canvas.
Then again, perhaps they're a wee bit too neat-freak white, eh?
I'd like to know more about the lessons Steve learned from his time merchandising kids movies with Pixar and Disney, being on The Gap's board and the influence of Millard Drexler. The iPod ecosystem seems like an old-fashioned consumer goods story - accessories, add-ons, merchandising (I'm thinking of Star Wars et al), etc and having friendly, inviting stores in which to buy the goods. How far along would they be without those Apple Stores?
It seems to me the New Apple's ability to actually capitalise on a successful product is chiefly due to killer merchandising plus an expanding retailing empire. And a bit of good luck!
I'm sure this will be a case study in a business textbook one day...
Sorry, I really just should have put those two words out there from the beginning and not fallen into the Steve vs Bill slugfest. The author of TFA set up a nasty false dichotomy that (I think) is some sort of reaction against the recent press Jobs is getting via the iPod and Disney / Pixar.
It is never style over charity... or some sort of strange either / or situation.
Ah, and I think Michael Dell has more to do with the commodification of the Windows PC than Gates. I might want to thank Dell for the success of Intel's processor and rock-bottom prices. Really though, I have the market to thank for low prices - certainly NOT Bill Gates. Or Steve Jobs for that matter!
Although you will find me more often than not at Boulengerie Jade here in Hampstead with a scone and a cup of strong coffee.
There's nothing at all wrong with charity. Good for Bill. But I really don't see much to admire about the man. Not a whole lot to admire about lots of business people save their skills, acumen and personal integrity. And the fun stuff they make;-)
... my friends and family as well. Um... don't understand the vituperative comment. When I used to attend MacWorld in NYC, I was amazed at the heaps of creatives that had similar stories to mine. I've been a computer nut since I was six (I'm 33 now) and had my share of goofy / fun / useful machines - a TRS-80 Color Computer for some text adventure games (learned to type), Atari 800 and Bank Street Writer, but I'll never forget my first exposure to a Mac.
When I went to uni joined the paper and was introduced to the MacSE/80 and my God what a world opened up for me. Writing, printing, typography - cut my teeth on QuarkXPress and the first version of Photoshop. Later I went to film school and eventually couldn't afford the processing, etc... I was in heaven years later when I beta tested FinalCutPro. Made a decent amount of money with it before selling all my equipment and leaving for England.
These days, it's iChat that keeps me in touch with a mum a thousand miles away, the iTunes music store podcasts that keep me hooked into 93.9FM WNYC and the rest of NPRs programming on my iPod. I post my creative snapshots and personal photos for friends and famliy on my.Mac website (http://homepage.mac.com/nevermore). Hey, and that iPod. Wonderful refinement. Sold my Creative Nomad and never looked back! The world is a grim enough place. Let's hear it for someone who contributes to the fun, innovative, enlightening, enabling side of things.
Again, what the devil has Gates done for anyone, really? He makes a so-so operating system. So what. His business software can be somewhat useful although it helps just to turn off all the damn Office toolbars. Um... so... what else is there that's actually useful?
So, kudos to the Gates's charity work. Really.
But the business side of Bill Gates is loathesome.
As a creative sort of chap, I've always thought Jobs' heady mix of insanity, cunning and insight to be quite refreshing. Bill Gates is a nasty cold fish who seemingly knows nothing about humanity save that which he can buy.
Jobs makes things that are not just useful to me - they've helped bring out my artistic talents over the years - they've enabled me to create.
What has Bill Gates done for me and my world? Nothing, actually. He perpetuated some highly dysfunctional ways to interact with machines and generally works at dominating the distribution of information.
So he uses he obscene wealth (and it is obscene - and a bit of a fluke combined with Sam Walton-like business sense) for good. Well, that's great and I expect nothing less. Maybe he'll be considered another Andrew Carnegie someday, but I see very little to be interested by or admiring of about the man.
The things that Jobs and Co dream up bring pleasure and fun into my life.
Well, this piece comes at just the right time for me. I was an extremely creative kid from a small country town in NJ on the border of PA, eventually went to film school in NYC. My early 20's were dominated by my folks' divorce and my (relative) poverty.
Without available funds and lacking the courage to just go for it, I sluffed along in a series of interesting/curious jobs from working an a booker for a dance band orchestra to a medical education agency to events co-ordinator for Barnes and Noble and lucked into a (fairly) highly paid management gig at a publishing company.
I was miserable and all of 30. And I had a bit of a mid-life crisis.
I ditched my mad girlfriend, sold my worldly possessions (pretty much everything but my books and DVDs), begged my boss to give me a secret holiday extension (beyond the usual 2 weeks) and went to Italy for a month. In that time I rediscovered my love of photography, I found that I have a knack - I have a passion - for writing.
I came back, fell in love with an English girl and decided to pick up sticks and move across the pond. THAT was fraught with problems as well. I begged, cajoled and pleaded to get a transfer with my company. During that time, to save money, I actually lived in my office for four months to be able to afford the trips to London every 5 weeks or so. I was finally hired by the UK branch of the company, but at a greatly reduced salary and an entry-level position.
When I finally arrived here, I found that the job wasn't all that I hoped it would be and now I'm poor again and considering my future. I'm pretty much an indentured servant. I want to live here, but need to put in four years at a job that's killing me.
The real question is what to do with the future. Something that uses my love of photography and writing... but what?
This is a very long-winded and quickly typed post, but I just wanted to express my pleasure at Graham's article and it's relevance to my life.
If you fancy taking a peek at my photography portfolio: http://homepage.mac.com/nevermore/ - I can send you journalistic blather about my life here in England if you wish, too;-)
This will be a day long remembered.
on
Disney Buys Pixar
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Although people might bemoan the takeover of one of the brightest purveyors of mainstream American filmmaking by the almighty Mouse, I can' help but think this is a good thing for all involved. Pixar has reached the pinnacle of their influence in the industry through a series of (mostly) brilliant hit films. I'm sure Jobs and Lassiter think the only way for their company to grow is to grow outward - take over the Mouse and whip it into shape. Jobs performed miracles with Apple. I really hope he and John LAssiter can bring intelligent and fun pop moviemaking back to Disney. And I would think this puts his other venture, Apple, into very sure waters in the content distribution marketplace. With whom does Disney partner now? I'm damn curious to see how it all shakes out!
Slashdot Mirror
And I'm in Hampstead and have been awake since 6am British Summer Time - so what. This is a place where a lot of clever, tech/science/geek/etc-focused people come to contribute to the Great Debate.
So I'm an idealist ;-) Still, I love trawling through the opinions - inane, insane and otherwise wise - on offer.
Yes, good point about party title being a prime indicator of a party's philosophical leanings. I suppose I'm just bemoaning the lack of an electable centre-left party in British politics - at the national level.
One of the more fascinating aspects of my emigration to England has been my total political reorientation. Rather, my beliefs and views haven't changed all that much, but the labels used to describe those beliefs - well, my head is still spinning.
In America, I'm photographer, a writer, I work in publishing, from NYC ... pretty much the popular cliché of a member of the Democratic party: TAX-RAISING, LATTE-DRINKING, SUSHI-EATING, VOLVO-DRIVING, HOLLYWOOD-LOVING (without the tax-raising so much - and I drove a Saturn - but goodness I love the sushi and S'bucks). I subscribe to the pillars of liberal belief as per the wiki's description:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal
And so it beggars belief when I read of Blair's government - and now Brown's - introducing such supremely illiberal measures such as identity cards to say nothing of the anti-democratic tinkering with the judiciary and the House of Lords.
This sort of nonsense plus the recently announced and very damaging recent immigration rule changes (http://www.vbsi.org.uk/) leaves me with the option of joining the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives - and I'm leaning Conservative at the moment. I really do wish the Labour party would crumble into dust like a vampire in the sunshine and leave a "true" liberal party to defend that side of the political divide.
Any thoughts?
It seems that Apple has something clever up their sleeve according to Robert Scoble: "Speaking of Apple," Mr. Scoble concluded, "they are readying a dizzying amount of new products. I wish I could camp out at an Apple store during the World Wide Developer Conference on August 7th. I wish I could say more, but that'd get me sued by Steve Jobs and I don't need that kind of heck right now." http://www.macobserver.com/article/2006/08/03.8.sh tml and http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/mclaws- is-right-on-windows-vista-ship-date
Ok, ok ... so this isn't really news, but it is still fun to work oneself up into a lather about the latest and greatest from His Steveness.
Now that I live in London I can't really attend these fab Apple confabs. I was there in NYC back in whenever it was when Steve said, "now reach under your seats" and found a lovely new Apple Pro Mouse. Those were heady days, indeed.
As a wannabe photographer (http://homepage.mac.com/nevermore/), I keep hoping for speed boosts to Aperture ... though I'm sure it'll scream on the new MacPro's ... or is that Mac Pro sans article (as in, don't eat iPod, say hello to iMac)?
And I'd really love to trade in my trusty olde iPod (10GB 2nd Gen - battered from falling into the cross-trainer at the gym, but still very much functional) for something with a wide screen that plays movies.
When I moved to London a couple of years ago I was surprised by the prevelence of widescreen televisions. They're the norm, but I rarely see them being used properly. No windowboxing and nasty comments when you suggest playing 4:3 content at 4:3. Of course, the same thing happens at my mum's in South Carolina! 75% of everything we watch is 4:3 (most TV and certainly all old TV, older films) - why the hell would I ever get a 28" widescreen TV? I was very happy to get a fairly cheap 32" Sony that looks great - and I can live with the quality of the picture when letterboxing 'scope and flat films.
Since I have no special information beyond that which I read in the trades, I'll speculate that Vista development has been ... challenging at best. More than likely it's been an evil slog and Bill can neither be proud nor happy about it all. I think he's going to be there to front the release of Vista, claim Total Victory and Mission Accomplished and then get the hell away from the mess and let someone else figure out how to turn Microsoft around. Reminds me of another national leader ... hmmm ... who ... hmmm ...
I tend to think that he's a wicked little SOB sooo unworthy of his great wealth, but if Rockerfeller and Carnegie can go down as Great Americans, Gates certainly can. Build some libraries, concert halls, monuments, universities, give it all away and fund a cure for AIDS ... as I'm sure he will before he shuffles off to that great Blue Screen of Death in the sky.
... isn't it? Although I use a Mac Mini most of the time, my work PC with Windows 2000 makes some beautiful music with the latest version of iTunes. What's so bad about it? Seems to function precisely as it does in Mac OSX, my iPod syncs beautifully, etc ... what makes it so awful?
I remember installing QuickTime and some of the preferences are a wee bit clunky, but no more so than **chuckle** Windows Media Player **shudder**.
This is a manufacturer / content-provider solution for a problem, a market need that does not exist! The only benefit this product offers consumers is increased resolution on HDTVs. Can anyone really tell the difference on the billions of crap televisions out there? And what's the market penetration of HDTV sets? I wonder ... People really seem happy with the great res of current DVDs and certainly love the 5.1 surround sound. Until there's a critical mass of HD display devices, who really cares about "better" pictures?
I'd love higher video resolutions on physical media, but it seems to me that both of these product offerings are really only about getting DRM into the marketplace - and NOTHING MORE. Blech. I'll pass for now, thanks.
Alan Kohler's piece in The Age just seems to be an unfocused piece of non-analysis. What was the point of all this? A warning against the siren call of the little white box? A broad survey of the digital media playback marketplace?
Oh, I see ... after a paean to Apple's iPod (well, he seems like a happy customer), he goes all gloom and doom as he thinks the mobile phone operators will be chomping on the iPod for their din din. Right.
Of course that's real perspective on the way the market is going, but Kohler doesn't provide and facts, figures, reasoned arguments, etc ... And someone needs to submit this to the Apple Deathwatch folks from TFA: "It is quite a thrilling time to be alive. We will witness the creation and destruction of a market dominance in the time it used to take to work up a business plan." Sure, um, ok.
Please, lets try not to promote, sloppy, lazy journalism and opinion pieces ... Kohler's sub should have sent this story back.
... I remember helping her with a campaign that tried to position "MSN me!" as a catchphrase to replace "IM me!" Since I'm on a lovely Mac and use iChat, I usually suggest someone "IM" or "instant message" me - even when I'm using the MSN client. And no, I don't suggest people "iChat" me ;-)
Perhaps it was just the spin the article's author took, but I was shocked at Chris Gorog's poor attitude. It's Microsoft, no it's the device players, no it's ... it's ... as Yoda said, "That is why you fail." ;-)
Methinks it isn't the smartest business move to badmouth your "partners". I get the sense that he's just providing cover for the anticipated acquisition - or trying to provide a rationale for a prospective buyer. E.g., "no, really - it's not us, it's MS et al. Once they get their stuff together, Napster'll be worth billions. Buy me now BEFORE we really succeed - cause we will - someday - eventually - in the end - it is unavoidable - it is our DESTINY!!"
I dream of a day when Microsoft and its "partners" come up with a POSITIVE reason to use their products.
Funny, tragic, brilliant and memorable. Well, we laughed about it a great deal in High School Lit class!
So much for those unexpected spikes in bandwidth that a company like Gridnetworks should be able to handle.
Oh, and props need to go out to Gridnetworks for one of the more amusing netbusinesspeak verbal cluster-fucks I've seen in quite a long while. From their "solutions" page: The monetization of media via the Internet requires the involvement of many specialties. Original content creators, distributors, aggregators, site designers and integrators, hardware and software vendors, hosting and bandwidth providers, user support specialists...the list goes on. For most, Internet content distribution has remained an expensive and complex proposition -- relatively few companies have married all of these moving parts to create a predictable, efficient 'content monitization engine.' The GridNetworks PowerGrid Platform(TM) was designed to address many key shortcomings of Internet content distribution and provide a means by which everyone in the value chain can easily participate in the success of each venture. PowerGrid is truly an end to end solution that is versatile at every level and every component."
Versatile until mentioned on Slashdot. I see.
Since textbooks - in the US anyway - are big business, what do you think of DRM for textbooks? Any companies out there you see doing this "right"?
Let's say I publish books and am looking to release e-book versions of my wit and wisdom. My top concern is that they shouldn't be mass-distributable, so I chuck the book down into 15 or 20 sections. In what format should the e-book be released for top security and flexibility? PDF? A bit clumsy these days, Acrobat a bit of a nightmare, not all my files are in Quark. What about Flashpaper? Yes, I know Adobe owns it now ... it's easier to export, my reader can still print it and more secure as it more difficult to hijack from an embedded web page. Isn't it? Now where the devil does Unipage get me that those two options don't? Flash and Acrobat allow functionality within their respective wrappers ... and are "secure". Any opinions on which of those two is most secure?
In that time, I'm amazed at how many services or features on the modern OS X Tiger Mac are network-reliant. All those cute Widgets pull in data from the net and really cease to function without internet connectivity.
This was illustrated for me vividly when my parents moved from a well-served community in Florida to rural South Carolina. They live near a lovely little town with miles of scenic cotton fields (Elloree is the town - tres cute), but there's only one internet provider in town. They have some crazy expensive 'business' DSL for the little patch of a town, but only a wireless microwave scheme for the rest of the surrounding area: http://www.ntinet.com/
So, they're on dial-up which is an insanely slow 33.6-ish and now she isn't really able to log on and use, say, iChat or Skype or even see my latest photographs ( http://homepage.mac.com/nevermore/ ).
My mum never thought she needed broadband before, but now longs for the day we can stay in touch quickly, easily and (fairly) cheaply. Broadband at $50 monthly isn't sooooo much, is it?
I wonder when the dating / personals section will become a "profit centre" for the likes of Craigslist and the Gumtree.
Sure, they're inviting. Rows and rows of fab-looking Macs hooked up to the Internet; heaps of sexy creative women (usually with their cute boyfriends, alas); sales people on the floor who are friendly but never pushy. I like the clean - but not austere - look of the place. It encourages me to fill the space as I will ... much like the white of a blank page or canvas.
Then again, perhaps they're a wee bit too neat-freak white, eh?
I'd like to know more about the lessons Steve learned from his time merchandising kids movies with Pixar and Disney, being on The Gap's board and the influence of Millard Drexler. The iPod ecosystem seems like an old-fashioned consumer goods story - accessories, add-ons, merchandising (I'm thinking of Star Wars et al), etc and having friendly, inviting stores in which to buy the goods. How far along would they be without those Apple Stores?
It seems to me the New Apple's ability to actually capitalise on a successful product is chiefly due to killer merchandising plus an expanding retailing empire. And a bit of good luck!
I'm sure this will be a case study in a business textbook one day ...
Sorry, I really just should have put those two words out there from the beginning and not fallen into the Steve vs Bill slugfest. The author of TFA set up a nasty false dichotomy that (I think) is some sort of reaction against the recent press Jobs is getting via the iPod and Disney / Pixar.
It is never style over charity ... or some sort of strange either / or situation.
Ah, and I think Michael Dell has more to do with the commodification of the Windows PC than Gates. I might want to thank Dell for the success of Intel's processor and rock-bottom prices. Really though, I have the market to thank for low prices - certainly NOT Bill Gates. Or Steve Jobs for that matter!
Although you will find me more often than not at Boulengerie Jade here in Hampstead with a scone and a cup of strong coffee.
There's nothing at all wrong with charity. Good for Bill. But I really don't see much to admire about the man. Not a whole lot to admire about lots of business people save their skills, acumen and personal integrity. And the fun stuff they make ;-)
... my friends and family as well. Um ... don't understand the vituperative comment. When I used to attend MacWorld in NYC, I was amazed at the heaps of creatives that had similar stories to mine. I've been a computer nut since I was six (I'm 33 now) and had my share of goofy / fun / useful machines - a TRS-80 Color Computer for some text adventure games (learned to type), Atari 800 and Bank Street Writer, but I'll never forget my first exposure to a Mac.
When I went to uni joined the paper and was introduced to the MacSE/80 and my God what a world opened up for me. Writing, printing, typography - cut my teeth on QuarkXPress and the first version of Photoshop. Later I went to film school and eventually couldn't afford the processing, etc ... I was in heaven years later when I beta tested FinalCutPro. Made a decent amount of money with it before selling all my equipment and leaving for England.
These days, it's iChat that keeps me in touch with a mum a thousand miles away, the iTunes music store podcasts that keep me hooked into 93.9FM WNYC and the rest of NPRs programming on my iPod. I post my creative snapshots and personal photos for friends and famliy on my .Mac website (http://homepage.mac.com/nevermore). Hey, and that iPod. Wonderful refinement. Sold my Creative Nomad and never looked back! The world is a grim enough place. Let's hear it for someone who contributes to the fun, innovative, enlightening, enabling side of things.
Again, what the devil has Gates done for anyone, really? He makes a so-so operating system. So what. His business software can be somewhat useful although it helps just to turn off all the damn Office toolbars. Um ... so ... what else is there that's actually useful?
So, kudos to the Gates's charity work. Really.
But the business side of Bill Gates is loathesome.
As a creative sort of chap, I've always thought Jobs' heady mix of insanity, cunning and insight to be quite refreshing. Bill Gates is a nasty cold fish who seemingly knows nothing about humanity save that which he can buy.
Jobs makes things that are not just useful to me - they've helped bring out my artistic talents over the years - they've enabled me to create.
What has Bill Gates done for me and my world? Nothing, actually. He perpetuated some highly dysfunctional ways to interact with machines and generally works at dominating the distribution of information.
So he uses he obscene wealth (and it is obscene - and a bit of a fluke combined with Sam Walton-like business sense) for good. Well, that's great and I expect nothing less. Maybe he'll be considered another Andrew Carnegie someday, but I see very little to be interested by or admiring of about the man.
The things that Jobs and Co dream up bring pleasure and fun into my life.
Well, this piece comes at just the right time for me. I was an extremely creative kid from a small country town in NJ on the border of PA, eventually went to film school in NYC. My early 20's were dominated by my folks' divorce and my (relative) poverty.
Without available funds and lacking the courage to just go for it, I sluffed along in a series of interesting/curious jobs from working an a booker for a dance band orchestra to a medical education agency to events co-ordinator for Barnes and Noble and lucked into a (fairly) highly paid management gig at a publishing company.
I was miserable and all of 30. And I had a bit of a mid-life crisis.
I ditched my mad girlfriend, sold my worldly possessions (pretty much everything but my books and DVDs), begged my boss to give me a secret holiday extension (beyond the usual 2 weeks) and went to Italy for a month. In that time I rediscovered my love of photography, I found that I have a knack - I have a passion - for writing.
I came back, fell in love with an English girl and decided to pick up sticks and move across the pond. THAT was fraught with problems as well. I begged, cajoled and pleaded to get a transfer with my company. During that time, to save money, I actually lived in my office for four months to be able to afford the trips to London every 5 weeks or so. I was finally hired by the UK branch of the company, but at a greatly reduced salary and an entry-level position.
When I finally arrived here, I found that the job wasn't all that I hoped it would be and now I'm poor again and considering my future. I'm pretty much an indentured servant. I want to live here, but need to put in four years at a job that's killing me.
The real question is what to do with the future. Something that uses my love of photography and writing ... but what?
This is a very long-winded and quickly typed post, but I just wanted to express my pleasure at Graham's article and it's relevance to my life.
If you fancy taking a peek at my photography portfolio: http://homepage.mac.com/nevermore/ - I can send you journalistic blather about my life here in England if you wish, too ;-)
Although people might bemoan the takeover of one of the brightest purveyors of mainstream American filmmaking by the almighty Mouse, I can' help but think this is a good thing for all involved. Pixar has reached the pinnacle of their influence in the industry through a series of (mostly) brilliant hit films. I'm sure Jobs and Lassiter think the only way for their company to grow is to grow outward - take over the Mouse and whip it into shape. Jobs performed miracles with Apple. I really hope he and John LAssiter can bring intelligent and fun pop moviemaking back to Disney. And I would think this puts his other venture, Apple, into very sure waters in the content distribution marketplace. With whom does Disney partner now? I'm damn curious to see how it all shakes out!