[lit-ideas] Re: Could an academic discipline do this?

Andreas,
Why are you sounding so curmudgeonly? A defender of doing things a certain
way because that's the way they have always be done? I always thought you
were a cutting-edge kind of guy.

I wonder if that isn't the problem. I hear the same irritated tone from all
sorts of Windows users, who use to enjoy the feeling that they were not only
state-of-the-art but part of a thousand-year reich as well. Then comes this
crazy year. DELL is reeling. Vista turned out to be crap. And who is getting
all the news, that upstart who was supposed to have been disposed of a
decade ago. They're the top technology story of the year. Their shares are
up 135%.

So it's time to tread the sour grapes, to trot out that old, "The OS wars
are over" line. You sound like a guy with a broke-down Chevy sounding off to
a Lexus owner about how a car is just a car, and nobody sensible needs those
ergonomically designed leather seats or the other bells and whistles.

And, sure, let's agree, the future is everything on the Web. I just bought
myself a sweet little Mac OS plug-in called Scanning Sync, so iCal and
Google Calendar now connect seamlessly. That little bridge, plus the
integration already built in to Leopard, iLife and iWork makes doing most of
what I do dead easy, on Web or off. My .mac account already lets me do most
of what the "It will be so great on the Web..." types keep predicting "real
soon now."

So what's left to worry about? It is a pain to have to run Windows XP under
parallels to use social network analysis software written by academics in
the DOS dark ages. If rumors that the next Mac OS upgrade will include the
ability to run Windows .exe files natively turns out to be true, that
problem will go away.

Meanwhile, guess what? It isn't functionality that drives my Apple passion.
It's genuinely thoughtful design, bits like the magnetic power plug on the
MacBook I am using at the moment. If my grandson grabs hold of the cord, off
it pops. No danger of the computer being pulled off the table onto his head.
Or the new stacks on the Leopard desktop that keep the dock uncluttered
while giving me instant access to the applications I use. The physical
shells of the equipment I use are tactilly as well as visually elegant. I am
one happy camper.

That, my friend, is great marketing.

John



On Dec 30, 2007 9:15 AM, Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > Apple's share of U.S. PC market jumps to 6.1 percent
>
> 6%? Wow... that's so... little. With such massive and relentless
> advertising, they only have 6%?
>
> But so what? The OS wars are over. It doesn't matter if someone is using
> Mac
> or Windows or whatever.
>
> What matters? Where is the battleground for development, innovation, and
> marketshare in computering? It's in search engines and the ability to do
> emarketing. The players include Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Apple isn't
> anywhere in that. Apple has done zero on the web. Steve Jobs is using
> 1980s
> advertising methods to sell consumer toys.
>
> As for iPods: want to use an iPod? First you have to download and install
> iTunes. What is that? Apple's music player. It completely takes over your
> computer's music. It restructures your files. No more "just click an MP3
> and
> it plays." Oh, no. Now you have to spend endless weeks on tinkering around
> with iTunes. Whatever you do, it offers to sell you more songs from Apple.
> What does that have to do with an iPod? Zero. It's just lock-in marketing.
>
> iPods are for people who have nothing better to do than waste days and
> days
> in tinkering around with their songs. It's not "simplicity" to use an
> iPod.
> Any MP3 player on the market (and there are dozens) has the same icons as
> all stereos and radios for the last 40 years: play. pause. stop. fast
> forward. rewind. But iPods? Oh, no. It has to be different.
>
> You simply just can't copy a song onto a iPod and play it. Apple won't let
> you do that. With MP3 players, you just drag and drop the songs and hit
> play. But Apple obligates a complex process, for no reason at all, and you
> can't bypass their cute interface.
>
> yrs,
> andreas
> www.andreas.com
>
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-- 
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/

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