Digital Mutterings

I took the plunge this week and bought a Apple Macintosh. Now back in the late 1980's I used to work for a Authorized Apple retailer, so I remember the old Mac, Mac+, Mac SE, and so on, but this is the first one I have actually owned. Having not used a Mac in about 20 some years things have changed, not to mention i'm used to the way windows does things, so needless to say this is taking some getting used to.

There are several reasons I bought the Mac, first was the price was right, but more to the point I have been thinking about buying one for some time now, and I wanted to experience OS X. To be clear this is not going to be a Mac vs. Windows thing, to be honest Windows 7 is the best version that Microsoft has ever done, and by the way Vista was not that bad. I plan on doing most of my work on the Mac, and use my PC for gaming.

As I said earlier this is going to take some getting used to, but I think it will be worth it. I'll keep you posted.

Since my last Firefox dilemma appears to be popular, hears another story of woe. When Windows 7 went RTM, I immediately went, and installed the 64 bit version on my system, but even before that I was having a problem with the Windows 7 RC 64 bit desktop wanting to crash constantly. After  uninstalling different software I had on my system to no avail,  I removed Firefox and it stopped. Now I can only speak to the 64 bit version of Windows 7, but for some reason it, and Firefox did not want to play nice with each other. This problem persisted across several builds of both software.

Now here's the weird part, when I went and installed the retail copy of Windows 7 I had purchased, I decided to install Firefox, and to my surprise I have had zero problems. I don’t know if something in Windows changed between RTM, and retail release, or if something was changed in Firefox, but the two seem to be getting along  nicely now. I have also heard of some other software having a similar effect so the best advice I can give, is to try removing different software until you uncover the culprit, but I would start with Firefox first.

Lately I have been toying with the idea of building a “Hackintosh”, for those not in the know a “Hackintosh” is a PC that in not manufactured by Apple but, can run OS X. This of course got me wondering, if Apple would be better off selling OS X to run on third party computers not unlike Windows?

The two main reasons that people build a Hackintosh is to save money, and because it can be done. Now don’t get me wrong Apple builds really great hardware, but it is a bit pricey, and in today's economy every little bit helps.

Now at this point with people starting to run OS X on non Apple hardware the genie is out of the bottle, it still takes some doing to get it done but it continues to get easier.  If Apple were to release OS X much like Microsoft does Windows, I don’t think that it would be a huge change for them, since Apple already develops, and sells different apps for the Macintosh. The downside for them would be a negative impact on their own hardware sales, which would be a good reason not to do it.

Now if Apple were to say release OS X, and say charge like $50.00 for it, they could put a big hurt on Microsoft. Microsoft would have to respond by lowering the price of Windows, I also think the number of OS X users would just explode.

So will Apple do the unthinkable? I don’t think so, not as long as Steve Jobs is running the show at Apple. Steve wants to control your PC experience on both the hardware, and software side, I think as a way of quality control, at least in his mind anyway. But if he did do it, I think it would be a game changer.

Over the past week I have been watching the on going saga of the Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone. Apple at first rejected the app, then approved it, now it’s been pulled from the store, because the developer did not fully disable the BASIC interpreter, which I find to be a silly reason. Apple seems to be all over the place in regards to what’s acceptable in the app store, and what’s not, and changes the rules on the fly.

It’s no secret that Steve Jobs is a control freak, which can be a double edged sword, but I think now it’s starting to become, or already is a ongoing problem for developers. Now if I were a developer I would have to consider if trying to guess what the app store folks are thinking is more trouble than it’s worth. I also think, especially in the case of the Google Voice app rejection, it’s also hurting the customer. In the Google case Apple says that Google’s app duplicates already existing features, which in my opinion is a crock, there are a number of apps in the store that do that. The developers are between a rock, and a hard place, in that the Apple app store is the Smartphone version of Wal-Mart, and you have to play by their rules.

Now all this got me to thinking, what if the developers were to just stop, stop creating new apps, and stop updating existing ones, and tell Apple, until you come up with some guidelines that are written in stone, and make sense, do not expect to see any submissions from us. Now of course this will really tick Steve off, but I think the developers would be in the better position of the two, unless Steve just decided to close, or suspend the app store. The bottom line is that Apple needs to come up with a happy medium where, they can exercise some type of quality control, and yet let the customers decide if a app sinks, or swims by voting with their dollars, and the developers don’t have to have ESP to figure out what Apple is thinking at any giving moment. The current situation not only ends up hurting the customers, but also opens the door for someone with a more open platform to come in and try to steal the show, and some developers may decide to move to other platforms, which not only hurts Apple but also the consumer.

On a side note, it was nice to see Steve Jobs back in the saddle at the recent iPod event on 9/9/09.

Like most other industries in this economy, the PC market is taking a hit; sales are down across the board with some companies taking less of a loss than others. I think there a several factors a play here, one being of course the economy, I also think another factor is Windows 7, and one that I have not heard anybody comment on is games. I'm not going to go into detail as far as the current economy goes, I think everybody knows it's bad.

Any time you get close to a new Windows release, PC sales take a bit of a dive with people holding off purchasing a new system so they can get the new OS preinstalled, which saves them from having to purchase the upgrade, and installing it, also it's easier to get manufacturer support for a pre-installed OS. The release of Windows 7 will occur in the late fall (Oct. 22 2009) So sales will pick up for the back to school season, as these systems will qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 7 if It's not already installed. Having worked for a large electronics retailer while in college I can tell you that students are only part of the picture, it seems that everybody comes in to buy a new PC in the fall.

    Having been around PC's longer than I care to mention, I can tell you that in the past that games were a driving force in faster and more powerful hardware sales. It's actually a vicious circle, as new games come out they require faster hardware to run them, or to run them with all the eye candy turned on. I can remember planning hardware purchases around game releases, so I could take full advantage when the game it came out. The only problem now is that PC gaming is not nearly as big as it used to be, with consoles taking a large part of the market share, so allot of folks including myself are not upgrading hardware as often as in the past.

    With all the above factors in play it's not surprising that hardware sales are in slump. I don't see the PC game market improving anytime soon, you'll have the occasional title that gets a lot of buzz, but I think for the long term, consoles will be the gaming platform of choice for most people. Almost everyone I talk to uses their PC for getting online/work/e-mail, and those things don't require allot of computing power to get them done, so I think allot of people like myself are hanging on to older hardware longer because it works. I have had my current system for about 3 to 4 years, and it's still plenty fast.