Category: Science & Technology

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Enterprise Halo Effect

Apple Moves Closer to Snow Leopard Release:

“If Apple can pull off this effort, the company will be able to further capitalize on its hot iPhone mobile platform to make inroads against  Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows Mobile in enterprise environments.”

(Via eWeek.)

Apple might actually have an executable enterprise strategy here instead of trying to boil the ocean by offering me-too software to established enterprise competitors. Mobile Access Server is an important sign of where Apple might be going with the iPhone platform. Apple is incrementally trying to attack large enterprise akin to the so-called halo effect of the iPhone on Mac sales in the consumer market. Is this Apple setting the stage for Apple to back the iPhone platform in the enterprise? It sounds interesting since they would be replicating Microsoft’s success against mainframe/Unix. Microsoft used Office to weaponize Windows against Unix environments. I think the hardware analog here is Office/iPhone Windows/Xserve.

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Worth Every Penny

Mac vs. PC: What You Don’t Get for $699 – BusinessWeek:

“PC makers in the Windows camp have done everything possible to make their products progressively worse by cutting corners to save pennies per unit and boost sales volume. There’s good reason Apple is seeing healthy profits while grabbing market share. It refuses to budge on quality and so charges a higher price. Rather than running ads that seem clever at first but really aren’t, the Windows guys ought to take the hint and just build better computers.”

(Via BusinessWeek.)

How a $699 really costs $1500 but all you really get is $699 worth of computer.

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Why I am a Mac user

Microsoft’s ‘Apple tax’ needs a refund | Mac | MacUser | Macworld:

“Kay would have you believe that everything can be reduced to quantitative measurements, and that’s emblematic of the way Microsoft operates. But there are plenty of important qualitative differences as well. The report bandies about the term ‘cool’ like a four-letter word, but it mistakes the trappings of ‘cool’ for its substance. True coolness is never really about appearance and only those who just don’t get it claim that it is. Apple’s computers are fantastically designed and aesthetically attractive, but that’s not what makes them cool—what makes them cool is what they allow their users to do. And for many, that’s worth a few extra bucks.”

(Via Macworld.)

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Paying for the Name

Microsoft’s latest ad attacks Mac aesthetics, computing power — RoughlyDrafted Magazine:

“The strangest point of this ad is that Giampaolo didn’t get the portability, battery life, and power he was looking for, he just ended up with a cheap-appearing machine that obscured its real technical limitations under a flashy layer of misleading, specification-oriented marketing, the very thing he thought he was avoiding with HP: buying a brand rather than a computer. And that’s exactly what Microsoft wants people to do: buy its brand rather than a computer that does what they want it to do.”

(Via Roughly Drafted.)

Great summary on why Microsoft can’t even sell itself. It has to sell others. I wonder how Dell or Lenovo feel about this ad.

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Built It and They Came

Netbooks killing off sickly Windows PC sales” RoughlyDrafted Magazine:

“That has hit Microsoft particularly hard, resulting in an 11% drop in profits over its year ago quarter and plans to cut 5,000 jobs over the next year and a half. On the other hand, Apple posted its best quarterly results ever, with 9% growth in its Mac sales over the previous year.”

(Via RoughlyDrafted Magazine.)

This what happens when you have to focus on making great products in order to survive. Making commodities is a long term user for enhanced profits.

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My Webhosting Service Killed Some Spammers

Major Source of Online Scams and Spams Knocked Offline – Security Fix:

“Two hours later, I heard from Benny Ng, director of marketing for Hurricane Electric, the Fremont, Calif., company that was the other major Internet provider for McColo.
Hurricane Electric took a much stronger public stance: ‘We shut them down,’ Ng said.”

(Via Security Fix.)

Hurricane Electric is a great service provider. Plenty of power. No frills. The dark side I guess is this is a spammer’s dream.

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MacDailyNews – Apple surpasses goal of 10 million iPhones sold in 2008; outsells RIM in September quarter

MacDailyNews – Apple surpasses goal of 10 million iPhones sold in 2008; outsells RIM in September quarter:

“‘I can’t believe the hype being given to iPhone… I just have to wonder who will want one of these things (other than the religious faithful)… So please mark this post and come back in two years to see the results of my prediction: I predict they will not sell anywhere near the 10M Jobs predicts for 2008.’ – Richard Sprague, Microsoft Senior Marketing Director, January 18, 2007”

(Via MacDailyNews.)

Absolute comedy.