Recently in Apple Category

So, there was a dust-up about hacking a MacBook Pro via AirPort. Some people were "oh hell yeah it's f-ing on apple is p0wn3d!" and some where more skeptical. John Gruber has been on the case since day 0, trying to get at the heart of the matter, swiming upstream against the hysteria. Today he unleashed an extremely comprehensive essay. The first place I saw linking to it was Infinite Loop, who itself was all about the hysteria. I checked the
forums and it seems that a good portion of the fine readers at Ars can't really wrap their heads around "unequivocal."

It's quite depressing.

Note to forum trolls at Ars...don't try and take on Gruber. You are out of your league. Way, way out of your league. And by "out of your league" I mean "not only are you not even playing the same sport, you aren't even on the same planet."

Tim O'Reilly ponders on Radar if Ubuntu is a threat to OS X market share, citing recent high-profile alpha nerd switches of Mark Pilgrim and Cory Doctorow (but lets not forget Tim Bray). He also ponders about Ubuntu vs. RedHat.

The short answer is that Ubuntu will not capture any signifigant part of the OS X market. The linux part is a bit complicated because there is Fedora and RedHat Enterprise Linux. Ubuntu could certainly take a chunk of Fedora users, but Fedora is more of a test bed for RHEL. RHEL could suffer with fewer people running Fedora, as their bug reports could potentially go down. Ubuntu vs RHEL isn't even really a match-up people should be thinking/worrying about.

But back to the OS X issue. First off, too much is made of high profile alpha nerds coming to OS X. Sure, Mark was a lifelong mac user, but like most nerds he didn't have just one computer. He was always running the latest and greatest of Windows (and Linux?). Alpha nerds, or at least the ones I know about, are never really happy with their computer. There are always bugs and annoyances that they are poking at, or rather are poking at them. They tend to use whatever they hate the least at the time and have their feet dangling in the water of any number of pools.

What I think Apple has lost most are users that have loud megaphones to voice gripes, which is a double-edged sword. There will be fewer C|Net and Register stories about Mark Pilgrim tearing apart a new app or feature but at the same time there will be less pressure on Apple to fix things that these users uncover. So, yes...in a very indirect way these defections could lead to a hit in market share is Apple doesn't keep their quality high. But it would be quite impossible to calculate exactly how much impact these users have on product quality and how much product quality has on current and future market share. Unless you simply want to say that we now stand at Current Market-share - 3, with more coming and going everyday.

If Tim is right and I'm wrong, which is the more likely story, the good news is that the canary in the coal mine dies so that the miners might live. But I think in this case the canary just flew away because it didn't like the miners anymore and not because of the toxic fumes in the mine. At the same time I'm sure Mark would say it is the toxic fumes of DRM that helped kill his relationship with Apple.

So, with the exception of the last few posts, I've kind of run out of blog steam. So I decided a change in venue was the solution. Tonight's post is brought to you by Woodstock's, their free wireless, and Sierra Nevada Best Bitter.

I've posted most of my political rants to a small group of unfortunate blokes via e-mail. There is also the fact that on the political front I'm getting outrage fatigue. I look around and wonder where all the conservatives went. Although, even as the idea that "Bush isn't a conservative" gains steam, he is entering lame duck territory. This means one of two things are going to happen over the next two years; a) a Republican is favored to win the 2008 election and a new cult of personality forms around him/her or b) a Democrat wins and the cult dissolves and suddenly we have half a country full of 'limited powers for the federal government' conservatives. The first option would suck and the second would be funny if not for the fact that nobody will see how stupid willfully blind the conservative base has been for the duration of the Bush 43 administration.

Anyway... The Diggnation Google Hate-a-thon for 2006 continues, although a split in the dynamic duo is forming. Alex is still strongly in the "Google is out of ideas" camp, while Kevin is starting to loose his grip on the hate. I'm almost done with The Search which goes into great detail about what Google plans for the future. Kevin and Alex would do well to read it. They are a bit too focused on what Google keeps pushing out of their lab doors. Let it go guys...there are much bigger things to worry about.

Speaking of things to worry about, Apple is facing an anti-trust suit. Isn't an Apple monopoly a contradiction in terms?

Mr Slattery called himself an iTunes customer who "was also forced to purchase an Apple iPod" if he wanted to take his music with him to listen to.

I guess he missed the "Burn to CD" feature in iTunes. All jackassery aside...a monopoly? Really? So soon? Yes, yes...almost a billion tracks have been sold by Apple via iTunes. Big. Freaking. Deal. Seriously, that is but a pittance off the offline music market. Did Apple engage in illegal business practices by killing Real's attempt to get a DRM formatted song onto the iPod? Apple would not doubt argue that Real was the one breaking the law, given the sorry state of reverse engineering laws in this country and probably win on that front. If Real thought they had a shot at defending themselves against the DMCA they would probably still be selling tracks for the iPod today. Which reminds me, if you do think that technology laws are completely broken, do join or donate to EFF because they help fight this nonsense...even if their site search is powered by evil.

Flickr, where I post all my photos online, has introduced Community Guidelines. I read them and I did like the fact that it started off with stuff they want people in the community to do and put that don'ts second. The bit about not being creepy is classic.

Don't be that guy. You know the guy.

Awesome. I wish all community-based sites had something like this, written with the same puckishness and plain language. Yeah, I'm looking at you digg.com, dailykos.com, and all the other community sites where I turn off comments (if I can) by default because the people who post comments on your sites are inane, mean, and generally just a waste of bits.

So, Bill Gates has come out and said that Microsoft is going to compete against the iPod.

"I don't think what's out on the market today is the final answer," Gates said, speaking to a group of minority students. "Between us and our partners, you can expect some pretty hot products coming out over the next few years."

I think that's great, with a large exception which I will get to. Microsoft will not phone this one in. If they have a team as talented as the XBox team working on this they will give Apple stiff competition. That's good for us consumers because it means that innovation should be driven by the competition between the two.

That being said, one major caveat is DRM and consequently, interoperability. I don't want to worry too much about the technical details on a product that doesn't even exist yet, but one could safely assume that any hardware from Microsoft will focus on playing DRM WMA files. Will Microsoft rely on "partners" (read: future Microsoft targets) for music and/or video content? Would they be so bold as to license FairPlay from Apple and leverage the fact that almost 1 billion FairPlay protected tracks are already out there? Would Apple and Microsoft be willing to do a cross-licensing deal where Apple would support WMA+DRM and Microsoft would support AAC+DRM?

Now, here I am thinking how cool that would be for "the consumer" while all my EFF friends (current and former) are screaming at me that DRM is, almost by definition, consumer unfriendly. I understand and I may be a bit of a defeatist here, but DRM is not going away...especially if it stays close to the usability of FairPlay. We will never be able to attack both sides of the DRM equation (the consumer who wants content and the producer who doesn't want the content floating around "unprotected") unless the producer side goes too far in their restrictions and they clearly haven't. Yet.

Of course, it's a moot point because the chance of an Apple/Microsoft cross-licensing deal is about as good as me having a post-30 growth spurt and making it to the NBA. Neither side will want to give away the lock-in card. Microsoft will talk a lot about choice, probably in terms of services that provide content. But it's a bit like Henry Ford saying that you could have a Model-A in any color you wanted because every service they talk about is selling you WMA files. Apple doesn't even talk about choice because they are the market leaders and don't have to.

While we're in the realm of things that will never happen, what if Microsoft and Apple got together and standardized on input/output? Imagine being able to use all your accessories on either piece of hardware. Apple and Microsoft would have enough sway over the market to make this the de facto standard and then maybe vehicle manufactures could do better integration without having to worry about being tied to one company. One can dream...one can dream.

But enough speculation about formats and specs. Lets turn to what the "conventional wisdom" will likely be.

"It's Microsoft, of course they will crush Apple. Again."

There is no doubting that Microsoft is every bit the 800lb gorilla that everyone makes them out to be. They came extremely late to the console game, took their lumps, and have made a very strong showing with the 2nd version of the XBox. So, yes, they can "do" hardware. But for this to be a complete comparison one must put Apple/iPod in the place of Sony/PS2. The problem there is that Apple doesn't seem to be as stupid as Sony and they will fight to protect their own status as the 800lb music selling gorilla.

"Microsoft will not fail like Creative/Dell/et al."

Perhaps. Nobody can know for sure though and there certainly is a long line of "iPod killers" heading to the dustbin of history. Some, myself included, would argue that the iPod killers fail because they only take into account the hardware for the player and they don't understand that part of the iPod's success is rooted in Apple's digital hub strategy. Microsoft at least has a digital hub strategy.

All we have now is talk from Microsoft. In the "old days" we would call this FUD and see it as an attempt by Microsoft to undermine Apple's sales. Apple has such a dominating lead right now that I doubt this announcement even really registers with consumers looking at buying a music/video device, be it an iPod or anything else. Nobody is going to wait for Microsoft on this. And by "nobody" I mean "any statistically significant segment of a potential market" and not "Warren S. Taylor."

Even after it comes out Microsoft will have their work cut out for them, but if anyone can make a run at it, it's Microsoft.

Lately Kat and I (mostly Kat) have been doing projects to improve the "look and feel" of our home. This includes lots of painting. Recently the living room got the full treatment: walls, ceiling, trim, moulding, and doors. We moved everything out to make the painting easier. We (and by "we" I mean "me') also put in new light switches and outlets. I hate working with electricity and wiring, mostly because I never studied that chapter in physics class.

Anyway, we put everything back and Kat's iPod dock is hooked up to the stereo, but the sound is horrible and there is a hum. "Oh crap," I thought to myself. I screwed up the wiring! We're all doomed! But then I calmed down and decided to apply some science. How did I know it was the wiring, besides having no confidence in my own ability to do it right? How did I know it wasn't the dock itself, which was Kat's suggestion? I didn't. So a battery of test, blind and double blind were developed and forgotten about. Instead I called up Scott and asked if he could bring over his dock to test a "known good" and sure enough his dock sounded great and didn't have that creepy hum.

Scott: Well, that's good news.
Me: Yeah, I don't have to try and figure out where I went wrong in the wiring.
Scott: No, we get to take it apart now.
Me: I better get my camera.

Pre-disection

Inside The Dock

Top-down View

In the interest of full disclosure I should point out that I was too much of a pansy to pry it open. Scott handled that.

Get it though iTunes. Via TUAW.

Jack Shafer at Slate thinks Apple is getting too much good press. What's funny is that the world "beleaguered" doesn't show up once in his article. This of course is the world that "the press" hung around Apple's neck in every pre-iPod article. Remember when Michael Dell said that Apple should shut it's doors and give the money back to the shareholders? Yeah, I remember those days. I'm not bitter.

Mr Shafer even closes the story with a veiled plea to not get flamed, because he doesn't hate the player, just the game.

I'm eager to hear from all of you dear pod people, but before you e-mail me at slate.pressbox@gmail.com, please note that the target of this article is not your beloved Apple gadgets but press coverage.

I'm not having much luck finding all the sympathy stories for when Apple was getting crazy bad press. There is, of course, a podcast of the story. Good lord...