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If you have seen Apple’s recent crop of ads to counter Microsoft’s Laptop Hunter Ads, you will find two themes: Apple Genius’ are amazing at technical support, and Windows computers just don’t operate without crashing and constantly catch viruses. Of course these are just marketing gimmicks, just like the Laptop Hunter ads were also, but I think it’s fair to take a few minutes to talk about something we often forget, reality.

Watered Down Geniuses

When you walk up to the Apple Genius Bar, the cool cats in the brightly colored shirts give off quite the air of style and chic, but does that translate to great technical support? Before I relay some of my own personal experiences, how about a reality check. On average, Apple Geniuses make about $25,000 a year, that translates to about $12 an hour. Now this is just mean, but if you stand behind a bar for 40 hours a week for $12 an hour, how smart are you really? The reality is that the average age that I see is around maybe 20?

A great place to start is reading “A day in the life of an Apple Genius” from Maclife. There are some great tid bits in this article like:

• Probably 70% of the stuff we see is physically damaged by the customer
• People should not use extensive mods to their OS, it always causes problems

The basic rundown is this. A Candidate gets screened by a round of troubleshooting questions. If he answers most of those correctly, he gets a two week training session in Cupertino that results in three certifications. The source for Maclife’s article admits the tests aren’t particularly hard. After testing, the candidate gets some real world retail training. That’s where they learn the ticketing system and such. In these two weeks they are well versed in AppleCare policies, entering information into the support database as well as general Apple policies. Finally the genius does a couple weeks training in a real store and bam, they stamp genius on his or her head and he may stand at the alter in an Apple Store. Excuse my cynicism here, but 6 weeks does not a genius make. Malcolm Gladwell posited in Outliers, that it took 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything. Apparently it only takes 240 hours to become an expert at all things Apple, and that’s assuming that they were absorbing for a solid 8 hours per day over these 6 weeks.

I want to be clear, I am not saying that you shouldn’t go to a Genius Bar to get your Mac Fixed, I just did. But I will say that had I not did 10 minutes of due diligence on Google before going in, my repair would have cost me $1,000 vs. free. The Genius was not aware that there was an issue with nVidia chips that was nearing class-action status and because of this Apple had extended the warranty on machines with the issue to two years. Seems like something you would hope they knew, right?

The time before I went to get an Airport Extreme card installed in my Mac Pro, only to have them accidentally disable Bluetooth in the process.

The point is, don’t expect them to be all knowing and never make mistakes, they are Apple’s Geek Squad, no different.

For a more amusing read, check out the MacLife article’s source’s blog, Ungenius.

Viruses Smiruses

I encourage you to first think back and tell me the last time you or someone you know got a virus on their PC. I know it does happen, but I also know it is much less common than the general perception is. I can’t remember catching one myself since “I love you” in 2000. It was a nasty bugger, but it was proliferated across the network because at the time people pretty much opened anything that came in an email attachment without ever looking at it. I like to think people are a bit smarter now.

Also software is better. Despite the hordes of Apple and Linux aficionados that will quote the countless thousands you will have to spend to hopefully be protected, I have been using AVG Free edition from Download.com for years. I would say that more often I hear of virus hoaxes than actual viruses.

Probably the only companies happier than Apple that Viruses DO exist, are anti-virus software makers themselves. It’s become a tremendously profitable industry spawning not only software sales but ridiculously expensive subscriptions. I personally have no problem installing Windows XP, Vista or 7 on a new machine and connecting it to the internet with no Virus protection software. 99% of not being affected by viruses is using your computer responsibly.

The point is that the Apple commercials are hyperbole, Viruses and OS Crashes are nowhere near as common as they would like you to think. As a parting note, Apple’s DO get viruses too. You can only expect them to rise with popularity. The most common, and true, argument is that Windows machines have more viruses because 90% of people use Windows computers, if you are trying to cause damage, you go after the larger target. OS X won’t find safety in it’s small numbers forever.

Now That’s Good TV

It is. The commercials are absolutely brilliant from a marketing perspective and have done wonders to create FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) about Windows Vista, PCs and pretty much anything that isn’t Mac. The laptop hunter commercials are great too, and now Apple is attaching those as well. Enjoy the commercials, but I sincerely hope that you don’t use them to make purchasing decisions.

Twitter is alight these days with discussions about the European Union and the fines they seem to dole out so nonchalantly. I regularly talk about how much I am frustrated with them because they effect my job so heavily. But like any good blogger, I decided to do a little reading and post some facts about the EU in order to add some validity to my position.

So What is the EU as it relates to Antitrust Laws?

In a word, scary. Imagine if you will, an organization that accounts for $18.4 Trillion, or 30% of the Gross World Product. It is comprised of 27 member states, mostly in Europe, and maintains common policies on trade, agriculture, and regional development. It also seems that it’s reach exceeds it’s member states’ borders significantly. The laws and fines they regulate apply to any company that operates within their bounds.

The mind boggling part is that not only is there little to no recourse for US companies, but there is really no accountability for the European Union and they don’t seem to fine based on the business being done within their borders but the value of the overall company in question. The amazing part is the countless billions that they assess in fines are not in any way used to help the markets that they are protecting competitiveness within, but kept and used to fund it’s own projects.

The Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes, is considered to be in one of the most powerful positions in the world, notable for the ability to affect the commercial interests of trans-national corporations. In 2001 the Commission for the first time prevented a merger between two companies based in the United States (GE and Honeywell) which had already been approved by their national authority. Another high profile case against Microsoft, resulted in the Commission fining Microsoft over $1 Billion following nine years of legal action.

Microsoft: The Big Target

Since 2000, the European Union has raised 42 lawsuits against Microsoft, but it’s not just about the money. Originally Microsoft was being sued because Novell said that we were blocking competitors out of the market using anti-competitive practices. The complaint was based on Microsoft requiring computer manufacturers to pay a royalty for the operating system even if the machine shipped without it. Microsoft settled in 1994 ending some of these licensing agreements.

In 1998, Sun Microsystems got involved complaining that Microsoft did not properly disclose interfaces in Windows NT. Somehow the European Union also reached out to look into how streaming media technologies were included in Microsoft Windows.

In case you are keeping score, we are in trouble at this point for trying to uphold licensing agreements that hinged on discounts provided to manufacturers for agreeing to only sell Microsoft’s product (a common practice), not completely documenting the inner workings of proprietary software, and allowing the customer to stream video over the internet with our operating system, but wait, there’s more!

To please the EU, Microsoft shipped Windows XP N, a version of Windows without Windows Media Player included. Of course the customer could still download it voluntarily, but somehow making us take it out and requiring the end user to go find, download and install (or potentially purchase) software to stream media (which nobody really did with Media Player at this time) is a better solution. You will see this pattern over and over, screw Microsoft, screw the customer, and help the competition.

At the same time, Microsoft released the source code, but not the technical specifications to Windows Server 2003 SP1 to members of it’s Work Group Server Protocol Program.

But Wait, There’s More

In 2005, the EU announced that Microsoft had not complied with the ruling by not completely disclosing all the details of it’s server products. The EU threatened to fine Microsoft roughly 3.2 million US dollars per day until it felt they had completely complied with the ruling.

In 2006, the EU fined Microsoft another half a billion dollars ($2.39M per day from 12/16/05 – 05/20/06) and threatened to increase the fine to $4.8M per day if Microsoft did not comply by July 31st, 2006.

In 2007 Microsoft lost their appeal against the EU case and nearly $800M in fines were levied. Along with this were requirements on interoperability information and bundling of Media Player. Adding insult to injury, Microsoft was forced to pay 80% of the EU’s legal fees.

Luckily it was rejected, but the EU also attempted to require that an independent monitoring trustee have unlimited access to Microsoft’s internal company organization in the future.

In 2007 Microsoft announced intent to comply and did not appeal the decision further. In 2008, the EU fined Microsoft an additional 1.44 Billion dollars for failure to comply with the March 2004 decision, representing the single largest penalty ever imposed in the 50 years of the EU Competition Policy.

The 2008 Microsoft Annual Report stated:

The European Commission closely scrutinizes the design of high-volume Microsoft products and the terms on which we make certain technologies used in these products, such as file formats, programming interfaces, and protocols, available to other companies. In 2004, the Commission ordered us to create new versions of Windows that do not include certain multimedia technologies and to provide our competitors with specifications for how to implement certain proprietary Windows communications protocols in their own products. The Commission’s impact on product design may limit our ability to innovate in Windows or other products in the future, diminish the developer appeal of the Windows platform, and increase our product development costs. The availability of licenses related to protocols and file formats may enable competitors to develop software products that better mimic the functionality of our own products which could result in decreased sales of our products.

I can personally attest to the validity of this statement. Shake the monopoly war stick if you want, but show me another company that is required to so publicly document the inner workings of proprietary products at the detriment of their value and at the same time struggle against these kinds of technical handcuffs while still staying relevant and innovative in such an incredibly competitive marketplace. Who is protecting the investors in Microsoft?

$2.5 Billion Dollars Later

Currently the EU is investigating potential fines against Microsoft for it’s Microsoft Office Open XML file format as well as for bundling Internet Explorer with the Windows Operating system. My last blog post about browser fairness is a good read if you are curious about the impacts that could have on Microsoft.

The questions I pose are, should an organization have this much power over what results in the products, services and developments of companies in today’s marketplace? Is there some argument to be made for Corporate Darwinism? I often ask my friends and colleagues, “Who is in charge of the Monopoly Gauge?” meaning who decides when we are no longer big enough to have to comply with these rules? It’s the logical question since other very powerful companies like Apple, Sun, Oracle and many more gain significant advantages by the restrictions placed on Microsoft by the European Union.

Although some of my friends at AMD will shift uncomfortably in their chair when I say this, it looks like Intel is next on exclusive list of US companies fined billions of dollars by the European Union. I for one am a capitalist and a Darwinist. I believe that with a few exceptions (life sustaining services for example) this country and it’s businesses were built on competition, and if companies can’t create products and services compelling enough to compete, no government organization should create what is in effect “big business affirmative action.”

If you read the likes of Gizmodo, EnGadget, MacRumors, etc., the new Microsoft commercial is leaving a serious wake. People on both sides are in a tizzy and it’s pretty entertaining.

Laptop Hunters #1 – Lauren

I thought I would put out the flames for a minute and look at this in a very pragmatic way. I am in an interesting place because I actually think for the most part, Apple laptops are a pretty fair price for what you get. The problem comes in when you evaluate what you get against what you need. If we were to build a scenario for this particular young woman, her usage needs might look something like this:

• Use Microsoft Office for Word, Excel and Outlook.
• Browse the Web
• Use an IM Client
• iTunes/Zune to manage a MP3 player
• Manage some photos

Wow, when you take out gaming, editing video and high end graphics work, the needs of your average computer user look pretty pathetic. So based on this particular user, let’s do a reasonable comparison of the PC that Lauren chose against the standard $999 Macbook.

*90% of users do not have gigabit Ethernet or N capable wireless networks.
**The display is really scenario dependant, I called the 17” a win because the user was wanting that, but I wouldn’t consider the 13” a disadvantage to most users.

Now for a second, let’s compare the MacOS/Vista debate. The fact is that more than 90% of the world runs Windows. It’s pretty hard to make a reasonable no fan boy argument that it doesn’t work or isn’t usable. The world runs on Windows, it’s just a reality. Vista SP1 is perfectly stable and reliable, I run it on several machines every day (along with 3 Macs so don’t go there.) So taking that at face value, in this case you are paying $300 more for a machine that is likely slower giving the anemic RAM and can hold half as much data.

For our core user, it breaks down like this:

• She can use Office on both although the Windows version is much more feature rich. To be fair Office is more expensive than iWork, but you get much more and it’s an industry standard. Big win for PC here.
• On either platform she has the option of Safari or Firefox, but IE is Windows only. Odds are she isn’t using anything that requires IE. Wash in most cases.
• IM client wise it’s a wash, with the exception if iChat, all the clients are cross platform. Keep in mind that it’s an 90% Windows world so most of your friends aren’t using iChat anyway. Wash in most cases.
• If you are using an iPod (which you probably are but should really check out the Zune, I just traded my 160GB iPod Classic for my second Zune!) then it really doesn’t matter. If you want subscription based music you better go PC. Wash in most cases.
• Managing photos has lots of options, lots of people will use Photoshop elements, Google Picasa, etc. Windows Live Gallery is a fantastic product and iPhoto is amazing. I would give the technical win in this category to Mac because iPhoto is so good, but in reality the scenario is just as valid on Windows Live Gallery. Wash in most cases.

So what does this all mean? It sounds like it all hinges on how important her Office needs are. If she is your average user making some simple spreadsheets and Word documents, then you can’t go wrong either way. If you need advanced Office work you might want to go PC. I am betting for Lauren it’s a Wash there too. Given that, we still have $300 bucks sitting out there.

Now I will recap a conversation I had with my dad this week. He is considering getting a laptop to replace his aging PC. Want to know what his budget is? He wants to spend around $500. That’s where things get more complicated. $1,000 is NOT the average personal computer budget anymore. Wal Mart sells perfectly “capable” laptops for $389. You can get net books for a few hundred dollars. I hate to bring up the word recession, but if there was a time where price mattered it’s now. It’s time the Apple Fan boys quit saying “but it has an aluminum case!” because nobody really cares.

UPDATE: My dad did buy a new PC, he decided to go with a desktop. He got an LX series Gateway desktop, 2.66Ghz Quad Core Intel, 8GB Ram, 640GB HD, Vista Premium 64, 1GB GT120 nVidia video, TV Tuner, 15-n-1 card reader, Remote..$779. That’s $179 more than the cheapest Mac you can buy.

The whole argument is silly. We bloggers, blog commenters, and flamers are all pretty tech savvy users. Of course we are going to want more from our computer than a $500 machine offers. We all pitched in to get my mother a $500 Dell for Christmas a couple years ago. She still loves it, uses it every day and it works just fine. Interesting…

(FYI, I wrote this on a PC sitting right beside an equally powerful iMac that I use most of the time. Why? Because I would die without Windows Live Writer. I would consider that proof that it’s the scenario that matters, not the machine.)

While getting my morning feed fix, I ran across this article by Charles Cooper called “Judging Wintel on the eve of a new era.” The article is opining that the rise of very low cost net books using low cost Windows licenses and cheap Intel Atom processors is going to spell doom for Microsoft and possibly Intel by cannibalizing full size Windows and high power CPU licenses. Well let me make this clear to you, if there is going to be a revolution, the revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by CNN, CNET and Fox News. The revolution will not be sponsored by AMD and Linux. The revolution will not take place.

Why do you ask? Do I have some magic crystal ball telling me the future of computing in the world? Do I not believe in cloud computing? Well, the answer is no and not totally.

The Great Net book Takeover

I have a net book, last night you might have read I installed Windows 7 on my net book. I think it’s the coolest gadget to come across in the $350 price range in ages and it’s amazing that all that can be had for what an iPod cost two years ago. I would give anyone who asks the same advice, “Sure, if you have the money to blow, buy one!” But there are a few things I wouldn’t do. I would never tell someone looking for their one and only computer to buy a net book. I have the larger of the net book class, the MSI Wind. It has a 10.1” Screen, upgraded to 1.5GB of ram and a 120GB hard drive. What’s not to like?

• I could never get any real work done at 1024×600 resolution on a 10” screen. No Photoshop, no real Excel, even many websites feel cramped.
• Although you can touch type on the keyboard on the Wind, you can’t do it comfortably and surely not for any extended period of time.
• As cool as it is, it’s cheap. It feels cheap. It cost $350. The case is fragile and it’s not exactly very well made.

That is not to say of course that it doesn’t have its appeal. It’s fantastically small, quite usable and ultra portable. My wife has one also and it now does duty as her personal laptop. That being said, her personal laptop use is pretty much Internet browsing, chat and email. Things technically she could do on an iPod Touch or similar device. I would see those devices becoming a bit larger and being more of a threat to net books than net books are to laptop and desktop computers.

A Computer in Every Home

This was Microsoft’s mission statement for a long time. I think even Bill Gates would tell you today that it was a bit short sighted. Microsoft wants many computers in every home and they are pulling it off. My mother and father have two. My oldest sister’s home has at least three. My younger sister’s home has two. My home has, well 8 or 9 but who’s counting. Windows Media center is making huge ground and could be powering your television sooner than you think. Home servers are becoming more and more common. In the next five years a common house hold could feasibly include a desktop, a laptop, a media center and a home server. Add several Xbox 360 or similar type media center extenders into the mix and your car, Sync is Microsoft too, and now you are talking about 7 operating systems in a normal family setting. A technology heavy family could tip a dozen easily.

Atom, Shmatom

Of course now there is a place for the Atom processor. Net books are a perfect fit and as it increases in energy efficiency, phones and portable devices like net tablets, portable game systems and media players will be next. All of these uses will do nothing to the lust for speed and power in processors. 3D graphics, touch interfaces, voice recognition, text to speech, video compression and decompression, games.. all of these things will consume more power than the latest CPUs can produce, and always will.

Despite the ‘it’s fast enough’ thoughts you may be having, it can and will always get faster. Industries much more power hungry than the average home user will require more and more power and it will make it’s way to the consumer and software companies will take advantage of it. You may have no idea what power hungry application will be essential to your daily life in 10 years, it might not even be on your radar.

So get out your plastic, buy your shiny new net book and enjoy it. But don’t put your card away thinking it will be the last computer you will ever need. You will probably find it’s the last computer you think of using. What’s your opinion. Is the net book a primary computer or an add on? Does it replace a notebook or is it an accessory. Is cloud computing an every day reality or a buzz word?

A few of my Mac centric friends saw my blog post on Windows 7 and said that Aero Peek ripped off Apple’s Expose. Let’s make this clear, I have 3 Macs running OS X Leopard, I use them all of them time, and I think that makes me pretty credible to judge Mac OS X features. I have also been playing with Windows 7 for several days and have it installed on two computers that I use every day. I have some screenshots to display how Aero Peek and Expose’ look, and I’ll narrate how they work in case you aren’t using them.

Apple OS X Expose’

When you are using your Mac and have a bunch of applications open, a keyboard shortcut or hot corner will tile them out on your desktop like this

Ironically I don’t really use this feature much. I prefer to use Spaces to thumbnail all four of my virtual desktops and then select the desktop I want to use, organizing applications by sets instead of selecting from all available windows like this. Expose is also somewhat of an island in the sense that if you don’t choose to create a hot corner for it or remember the shortcut, you might not ever even notice it is there and use it. In my experience many users do not actually take the time to learn shortcuts so not having this hot corner enabled by default limits its exposure.

So what is Expose’ really? I would say that it is a beefy alt-tab for PC or cmd-tab for Mac. Ironically cmd-tab was not available on OS 9 and many claim that Apple stole it from Microsoft Windows, but that’s a debate for another day

Microsoft Aero Peek

Windows 7 brings us Aero Peek. Aero peek is integrated into the taskbar and adds several features to the mix. First and foremost when you hover over a running application’s icon in the taskbar, Aero Peek turns all other open windows transparent to draw focus to what you are highlighting like this

What’s powerful about this is that there are no shortcuts or hot-corners to assign, every application supports it and it’s default functionality. When you hover over any icon in the taskbar a thumbnail of that application is shown, no need to hit a hot key and see what it looks like, if you hover the thumbnail, all other windows fade to clear and that window retains clear focus at it’s actual size and placement.

That doesn’t sound or look like a copy to me. It’s a variation on ways to find open windows for sure, but these are concepts here, I think you have to go much further up the implementation stack before you call it copying.

Is it a copy?

In my opinion it’s not only not a copy, it doesn’t even serve the same fundamental purpose. Apple Expose’ is designed to show you all open windows and let you choose the one that you want to have focus. Aero Peek is meant to show you which window would have focus if you click it. Since you have already highlighted the window that is being shown, and the taskbar thumbnails are telling you textually which application or document it refers to, you aren’t using Aero Peek to select, you are using the taskbar thumbnails to select and then Aero Peek is showing you what the current selection is.

Sometimes OS X will show you a thumbnail in the dock, sometimes not. Windows 7’s task bar always shows thumbnails when you hover. So the Windows 7 taskbar is the tool you are using to select your application window.

For the record, Vista’s task bar had application thumbnails also. The thumbnails were not capable of showing a set of documents and windows related to that application however. If you compare the thumbnail view on the Windows 7 taskbar it’s actually quite superior for a few reasons:

• Windows 7’s taskbar displays all windows related to the icon you are hovering over grouped together. Expose’ has no concept of relation when you have several windows open so you see every window for every application in a big pile.
• Hovering over different application gives you a full size preview of the window you are hovering over no matter how many windows you currently have open. Expose’ thumbnails become less and less useful the more you have open because they get smaller and smaller.
• Right-clicking pinned applications give jump lists that allow you to launch the application in specific states or with specific documents already loaded. (Recent Items for example)

I think it’s interesting that Microsoft Windows had the taskbar long before OS X had the dock. When OS X released the dock, it was seen as being revolutionary, nothing else like it in the business. Microsoft comes along years later and makes some tweaks and refinements to it’s taskbar which basically boil down to taking the names off of the taskbar buttons and integrating the quick launch menu with running applications, and now people are blaming Microsoft for stealing the dock. I can’t figure it out to be honest, is the taskbar in Windows 7 so drastically different than the taskbar in Windows Vista that it’s turned to stealing from Apple?

Hopefully after looking at these you can see that the functionality is useful, well implemented and unique. The who copied who rhetoric is tired and old, if you want to get nasty about it, look at all the things one could make an argument that Apple stole from Microsoft.

• Is iWork a copy of Office?
• iTunes is a media player, did it rip of Windows Media Player?
• Is Front Row a poor copy of Windows Media Center?
• Cmd-Tab is the same as Alt-Tab in functionality and implementation.

I think that these things are the result of evolution of personal computing, not a board room full of developers saying “ooh, that’s awesome, we need to steal that.”

The best quote I have ever read was on a forum once, it said:

The only thing Microsoft ever stole from Apple was the personal computer market…

Ouch.