Ivory Tower - November 2006
By Ted Bade
I think the newest set of Apple commercials is having a good effect for Apple. Why is this? Because people keep telling me about them. No, not my Macintosh friends, my non-Mac friends (or should we call them future Mac owners?)
I have been a pro-Macintosh player for a long, long time. Everyone that knows me knows this. As a general rule, all my non-Mac friends make a habit of letting me know when things aren’t going well in Macintosh-land. I am sure most Macintosh users are familiar with the routine.
But recently, more and more of the people in this group have been coming to me with tales of woe about the latest virus attack/crash/ or other Window’s based horror stories and often the tale is connected to a laugh about one of the new Apple commercials. “That PC guy is funny, but it reminds me of my PC.” I believe that the common home computer user likes these commercials because they hit home. There are too many #@#$@ types of malicious applications for Windows. Also there are a lot of empty promises from real software companies. Many pieces of software for the PC say it will do this or that, but it never really works or at least not exactly as one would expect. How come you Macintosh people never seem to get pissed off at your computers?
I fancy that I see a shrouded look of hope in their eyes. Is it possible that any of what these commercials imply could be true? Should one even dare to hope? They hope, yet, having been burned so many times in the past, they are afraid to trust. All we can do is truthfully answer their questions. Often evangelism is too strong and will scare people away. In other cases, this is exactly what is needed.
Often real life examples are the best. Recently, when talking about doing my finances on the computer with a friend the question came up about keeping paper registers. My PC friend said she would never keep digital only records because she was afraid of loosing data. She then asked me, “How many times have you lost data because of crash?” I had to answer truthfully, I curled my thumb and forefinger, and held it up to her, zero. That is kind of scary to a person that was currently recovering from a virus disaster and had done so several other times in the past. But it is absolutely true.
However, I don’t think everything is perfect in Apple-land. There are a number of things in Mac OS X that could be improved. Right now, I am really annoyed with the latest version of iPhoto. Slowly, but surely Apple is turning this application into troublesome bloatware.
In the older version, I could use the slide show function to review the images in a album or those that I just imported. With the latest version, if I do this, a slide show file is created. I didn’t want to save it, I was just using it to review some images. Which means I now have to do the extra step of deleting the created slide show file.
Speaking of slideshows, in this new version there doesn’t seem to be a way to set the generic slideshow default. Yes, there is a button that says save, but it apparently saves only for the slide show one is creating, not as a generic thing. I don’t want the Ken Burn’s effect when I am reviewing images. Why? Because I want to see the whole picture. Having it slide back and forth across the screen is a nice effect for kiosks, but when one wants to see an image, detail is lost. So every time I want to review some images with a slide show, not only do I have to delete the slideshow file after I am done, but I have to remember to turn off the Ken Burn’s effect before I start.
While I am ranting about iPhoto, another blatant lack in this program is portability of my albums. I have a desktop machine. I use the desktop machine to work with my photos. When I want top bring my photos to show friends, I use my PowerBook, not my desktop machine. I think this is pretty typical for a Mac user. One would think that Apple would make it very easy for me to do this. But alas, they don’t.
Since I don’t want all my photos on the PowerBook, I only move those albums I want to show this time. If I move the images from one machine to the other, the organization of the images is lost, which is annoying, since I spent hours arranging them. If I copy the album over (to keep the organization), I have to include copying duplicates, since iPhoto won’t put the photo that is already on the PowerBook into the transferred album. I even tried to copy the album to a CD, so I could use the CD on another Mac. Somehow the organization of the images was lost. It was like I dropped a physical album on the ground, randomly picked up the photos that fell out, and placed them back into the album in no particular order.
How long is it going to take Apple to realize that some, perhaps even many, of their customers have multiple Macs: a desktop and a portable? I don’t want to share my photos over a network. I want to pick my album up from my workroom and bring it with me to show my friends, which includes their organization.
This is beginning to sound more and more like the what I would expect from Microsoft and not from Apple. Sure it is minor stuff, but it is the annoying minor stuff that always gets in the way. I doubt there is anything better on the Windows side. I just wish Apple would become more Apple-ish than more Microsoft-ish!
Macs in more places - Apple announced that it is working a deal with Circuit City and Best Buy to carry Macs and Macintosh-related software. That’s pretty cool. The more places that sell Macs, the more likely people will buy them!
Keep your eyes open for Mac products if you visit these stores, and definitely support them if it is convenient for you to do so. I it important to let these stores know there is a market for Apple’s products.
Apple financial results - Wow! - Apple released its 4th quarter financial information in mid-October. It was an excellent quarter for Apple. Sales of Macs and iPods both were way up. Sales of Macs rose considerably moving Apple’s market share up to 6.1% of the US market. Apple hasn’t seen this position in a long while.
According to Apple, http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/oct/18results.html they shipped a record 1,610,000 Macs and 8,729,000 iPods which represents a 30% growth in Mac sales and 35% in iPod sales over the same quarter last year. This is making it a really great year for Apple and for the Macintosh.
These figures must have also pleased investors, since the stock price rose significantly after this announcement. According to one report I saw on the Mac News Network site, http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/10/19/ml.on.apples.q4/, research firm Merrill Lynch said that Apple beat their estimates for sales and profit. I believe they outdid other estimates as well. Some people even called this a “blow out” quarter for Apple! Which means that investors are finding Apple to be a good investment. It has been fun watching Apple’s stock price rise this past month.
Apple being strong financially is a good things for all Macintosh fans, since it means they will continue to innovate and create those wonderful computers we all love. Let’s hope they continue with this trend and more and more people come to enjoy our platform!
Apple scored as “most reliable” computer - A study finds that Apple and another computer company called Lenovo, are the most reliable computers, according to an article found on the TechWhack news site http://news.techwhack.com/4552/apple-and-lenovo/.
Well being considered the most reliable computer is probably good for something. ;-). Never-the-less it is nice to hear positive comments about Apple and Macs. Keep up the good work Apple.
(By the way, in case you are not familiar with Lenovo, this is the name of the company that took over IBM’s PC division. )
Have your IT friends read this article - The world of computers is constantly changing, or as engineers like to say, in flux. No company more so than Apple fits the description of constantly changing. Because of this and many businesses fear of change, many “myths” have been created related to Apple and the Macintosh.
Every so often, someone publishes an article explaining how the myths are not really true. These articles are great ones to share with everyone, especially those people responsible for buying computers for a business.
I recently bumped into such an article on the Mac News World site, http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/PwnRHOVCcL6vZf/An-Apple-for-the-Enterprise.xhtml. It’s a must-read and must-share article. I won’t say more about it. Read the article yourself!
Is there a serious quality control issue? - We are all glad to hear that Apple is selling more Macs and even more happy to welcome the influx of new Macintosh users to our family. However, as Apple ramps up production, there are signs of a serious lack of quality control.
Most Macintosh portable users are probably aware of the recent bad news about batteries. Briefly, due to some manufacturing problem, the batteries could overheat and burn up the laptop and in some violent cases, many things around them! While this isn’t specifically a Macintosh problem, it is part of the problem. The batteries were manufactured by SONY Corporation and were used in a variety of portable computers including Apple. In late October a SONY executive made a formal apology about the incident.
Recently we have been hearing of some serious problems with the new MacBooks. There seems to be a variety of little, yet annoying problems with these first generation Apple Intel laptops. The biggest problem is one that has its own name, “Random shutdown syndrome” or RSS. Apparently, some MacBooks shutdown randomly, sometimes several times a day. I would find this very annoying as I am sure any Mac portable user would.
While these problems are more annoying to longtime Macintosh owners, than newer PC converts, it doesn’t help Apple’s reputation at all. Think about it, if I was a convert from a Windows environment and I listened to all the ads and noise that Macintosh users make about how dependable the Macintosh is, then got one only to find it is little better than the PC I replaced, I wouldn’t be shouting my joy to all my other PC friends.
Many people are wondering why this is happening. Is it lack of quality control? This would mean that the design of the computers is sound, but because of poor manufacturing practices they fail? If true, it would suggest that the factories that Apple is using to manufacture their computers are not reliable. Can anything be done about this?
Don’t take this wrong, but it seems to me that most US manufacturing has taken a turn for the worse over the past couple of decades. It seems that the penny pinchers have cut almost every ounce of quality from manufactured products in their attempt to maximize profit. As one that is opposed to slave or near slave labor, I often wonder about the quality of products manufactured under these conditions. How can a person who is forced to do something for little or no compensation, consistently create a satisfactory product? Is it worth saving a few dollars to cause humans to be treated as less than human? I don’t think so.
Ultimately, we will all pay the big price for our lack of concern in these matters. Products will fail just when they are needed the most and the only the top executives that made all the profit will be happy with the situation. We will be forced to buy and re-buy products as they fail faster and faster.
If anyone from Apple is listening, take heed. You won’t gain marketshare, if you pull people into your market with a myth. For they will discover the myth and quickly the flow of new Mac users will cease.
In any case, as I am finishing up this article, Apple has released a firmware update for the MacBooks that is supposed to resolve the random shutdown syndrome. We shall see what really happens.
Until next month... Keep on doing that Macintosh thing!
