Late this afternoon, my daughter and I hauled down to Tysons Corner Center in McLean, Va., shopping for jackets at L.L. Bean. Next shop is Apple Store numero uno, being the first of the retail […]
Category: Apple
Toidy Bowl Packing
They say that kids do the darnest things or that kids growing up with newfangled technology take to it differently than do adults. These two pictures are evidence of both.
Looks like a toilet boil, doesn’t it? Turns out this Styrofoam wonder is from a first-generation, flat-panel iMac box. Flip the toidy boil over and it fits over the iMac’s lamp-like base. I must have no imagination, because I had unpacked a couple iMacs without seeing the resemblance, flipped over, of course.
A Switcher Recants
Earlier this year, I blogged about my troubled switch back and forth between PCs and Macs, eventually moving to the Mac for good. Not so. A good buddy bought the PowerBook I purchased back in March, and I put that money into buying a Sony S150, which is a Windows notebook that I’ll blog about sometime soon.
The switch came for many reasons. For one, my boss expressed concerns about a difference in the quality of analyst my reports. I attributed the problem to my working on a Mac fulltime and becoming too distanced from the Windows world; of course, I used a Windows machine everyday, too, but the Mac proved a distraction. I saw the same problem back when I worked as a reporter covering Microsoft. The problem: I like my Mac and didn’t want to switch.
When Less Means Spending More
Over the weekend, I picked up a new computer for my wife. She had used a Dell Dimension PC for about a year and half and could have continued doing so. But she’s not as computer savvy as my fourth grader or me. Increasingly concerned about viruses and spyware, I had long considered moving her off a Windows XP PC and onto a Mac. Since I’m giving up my main domain and she was losing her e-mail address, I reasoned now was the right time for the Mac. She would get a new computer and .Mac e-mail address.
Ideally, a $799 eMac should have suited her needs. With a 1GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 256MB of RAM, 40GB hard drive, and DVD/CD-RW combo drive, the computer packed plenty more power than she needed for her main activities of doing e-mail and surfing the Web. For $200 more, I could have set her up with a faster processor, 20GB more storage, and a DVD burner. What’s not to like?
Must Be: Familiar, Approachable, Extending and Better Enough
My prevailing thinking on why high-tech products succeed or fail boils down to four criteria. Editor’s Note 2/8/2014: I expanded the number to eight and wrote book about them: The Principles of Disruptive Design.
A product must:
- Build on the familiar
- Do what it’s supposed to do really well
- Allow people to do something they wished they could do
- When displacing something else, offer significantly better experience
Bad Apples
Yesterday, while on business in the vicinity of my local Apple Store, I stopped in and purchased a wireless mouse and keyboard. Only tonight, when I took the mouse out, I found that the seal […]
iPod Zombies of New York?
My buddy Jim Dalrymple told me about the so-called iPod zombies of New York. He’d read a post somewhere about how so many New Yorkers used iPods that the streets had become a sea of white […]
A Switcher Confesses
Last week, I bought Apple’s 15-inch PowerBook, marking my most-recent switch back to the Mac. The decision, nearly five years to the day after buying my first PowerBook, marked the final chapter in my back-and-forth switch between Macs and Windows. I’m a Mac user now, although Windows will remain vitally important for work.
My struggle ensued, in part, because of Microsoft’s success at creating, for non-Windows users, barriers to entry—to the Internet and key software categories. I also wobbled back and forth because of concerns using a Mac would hurt my work, first as a reporter and later an analyst covering Microsoft.
RIAA Taketh, and Pepsi Giveth Away
The Pepsi ad promoting the big iTunes Music Store 100-million song giveaway debuts tomorrow during the Super Bowl. The spot [Editor: original link replaced] features 16 kids busted by music industry copyright cops for illegally downloading or trading tunes. The ad’s music bed is “I Fought the Law”, which artist I don’t recognize.
Plenty of rip-roaring versions are out there, from Bryan Adams, The Clash, Dead Kennedys, Stray Cats, and others. Oh, and the Bobby Fuller Four broke into the Top 10 with the song during the mid 1960s.
Microsoft vs Mac Marketing
I want to take a look at just one of the ways Apple, with its puny computer marketshare, out-markets Microsoft. It’s all in the presentation.
Gander at these two websites: Apple’s iLife `04 and Microsoft’s Plus! Digital Media Edition. Each site hawks the respective company’s digital media suite. But, Apple does a much better job making its product enticing. [Update: 10/2009: Links removed because the original websites are gone.]
Mac’s Movie Preview Screensaver
When Macs are really cooler than PCs, they’re “Duh, that was so obvious”. My nine-year-old and I cruised through our local CompUSA this afternoon, and, as is customary, we bopped into the Mac section. She stopped at an iMac that was running the “Peter Pan” preview. When she reached to turn up the volume, the preview disappeared, leaving her with the Mac OS X desktop.
Stupid me, I started looking for QuickTime, figuring th preview had been playing in the open application. Smart daughter reasoned, “Maybe it was the screensaver, dad”.
Windows gives Macs the Boot
My daughter attends an elementary school in Montgomery County, Md., where Windows PCs are booting (pardon the bad computer jargon pun) Macs out the door. Her school is due for an upgrade next year.
Montgomery County is supposed to have one of the better school systems in the Washington, D.C. area, because of the tax base of cities like Bethesda, Chevy Chase, or Rockville. Wherever the school system spends its money, computers haven’t been a priority. My daughter’s school runs aged beige (that means pre-1998) Macs and first-generation (that means 1998) iMacs; a few 1999 version G3 towers are around, too. It’s my understanding that many of the computers were purchased through a Macs for schools program—one of those deals where folks turned in receipts to a local supermarket. So, much for the tax base.