Automator in OS X Leopard

Automator in Leopard is a visual scripting environment for the mac that allows you to see the api’s already exposed by the programs that you have installed and manipulate them by building a workflow and editing the settings of the workflow in sequential dialog boxes.  Your scripts can be saved so that they’re available from a right click menu when you select items in the finder that you want to manipulate.  Very easy to use and quite powerful.  You can do the same things in windows if you know vb scripting pretty well, but I don’t know of any tool from Microsoft that makes it this easy.

God and Mac at ACU?

At ACU, students navigate college life via iPhone – iPod/iPhone – Macworld UK. explains how the IT department at Abilene Christian University has developed web applications for use on the iPhone to benefit the students and the faculty in the education process.  What they’ve done is neat, but it appears that they’ve only scratched the surface so far.

Delicious Library

One of my favorite applications for the Mac is preparing for a major update. Delicious Library 2.0 will be incorporating new features along with improved performance to make a great thing even better. In addition to tracking your books, music, games, and movies by scanning barcodes; the new version will add the ability to scan your iTunes library for items to add to the Delicious Library. It’s also going to add tracking for electronics, toys, and tools (once again from the Amazon database). Very cool.

Welcome to the Club

Mark Cuban has seen the light. I’m interested to see what ideas they come up with for improving the fan experience using WiFi in the AAC.

What’s it all mean (MacBook Air edition)

I don’t think I’ve ever so many people completely miss the point of an Apple product in quite some time.  You must remember that Steve Jobs doesn’t hate Microsoft because of how they have achieved their success.  He hates them because of what they created.  Jobs spent a lot of time in the wilderness observing what Microsoft did and how they did it.  What he learned from them is to form alliances when you need to learn something to enter a new market and that protecting the core of your ecosystem is critical to building long term dominance in the industry.  Apple will never release a major product that doesn’t support one of those objectives and strives to hit both at the same time.

The MacBook Air is exactly the kind of product that epitomizes the overlap of those objectives.  Partnerships with IBM and Motorola in the PowerPC alliance failed to produce a viable alternative to the x86 processor family.  Therefore Apple has partnered with Intel to gain access to their engineering talent and unique manufacturing processes to further Apple’s product goals.  So how does partnering with the dominant processor manufacturer protect Apple’s ecosystem?  Glad you asked.

The howls of protest that you hear from the punditry are largely because they weren’t a part of Apple’s development focus group for the product.  They’d written about their beloved 12″ PowerBook and their 2400 before that.  They made up their little wish lists of must have features and nice to have features and had a grand time speculating on how wonderful life would be if Apple would only listen to them.  The problem for them is that Apple’s focus group consists of one and only one person.  Steven P. Jobs.

Steve Jobs believes very strongly in the centrality of the personal computer.   Apple’s other products exist to work in concert with the computer.  They support each other, but not directly.  It’s not a coincidence that the MacBook Air, AppleTV 2.0, and the Time Capsule were announced at the same time.  They’re intended to support each other through the desktop computer.  Through the Mac.

Why is there no disk drive in the AppleTV now entering its second generation?   Why is there no hard wired ethernet port on the MacBook Air despite the fact that the Intel chipset used almost certainly supports it?  Apple is deliberately following the Microsoft strategy of making a good product that stands alone into an outstanding one when it integrates with other Apple products.

Microsoft does this mostly with software.  Their OS is only okay if you compare it against other choices (Solaris, Linux, BSD, OS-X, etc.).  It’s when you start adding the complimentary products that it really takes off.  Windows with SQL Server with Exchange with Visual Studio with …  They build on each other logically and extend the influence of the platform exponentially. That’s what Apple wants.

Why does Apple go to the trouble of making servers and storage solutions for networks?  It’s probably profitable for them, but they’re not focussed on the business market which is the largest buyer of these products.  They’re investing in the future of the home market which is much larger than small business and enterprise combined.  It’s also far more important to Steve Jobs from a personal standpoint, but that’s another column.

Microsoft has released a Windows Home Server (WHS) OS in combination with several hardware vendors to offer a complete solution for the home. It’s a fairly naked attempt to copy what Apple has been quietly doing for some time. Digital media take up a lot of space and keeping it organized is a nightmare.  Many of us don’t bother trying to weed out old or duplicate files for fear of deleting something important; we simply buy a new computer with a larger drive and copy everything over. Here’s how it works for Apple.

The Mac Mini is your entry level model.  It gets you some storage, wifi, bluetooth, and the all important CD/DVD drive.  It partners with your AppleTV and a third party tuner solution to give you a direct competitor to WHS.  Need more power?  Replace the computer with an iMac or even a Mac Pro in another room.  Need more power?  Apple has a complete solution for the next level of home media management.  Storage area networks.  With an 80 gB iPod, you don’t worry about which songs to load; you load them all.  with an Apple SAN in your home, you don’t worry about which compression scheme to use for your media or how to organize your disks.  You just load and go.  Their server products are too noisy and power hungry for this application right now, but when the time is right the product will be also.

The MacBook Air (you only thought I’d forgotten about it) is the first product that really shows the plan.  MacBook Air was never intended for business users.  It’s for use in a connected home and wifi enabled world.  It’s a Mac Mini that you can take with you anywhere.  It’s not supposed to be expandable.  Used as an extension of the other Apple products in your network, it gives you an exponentially greater experience than used by itself.  At least, that’s how I believe Apple sees it.

Apple Updates iPod Line – Planet Rejoices

Actually, these updates are very well thought out and the timing is impeccable.  Refreshing the colors on the unchanged Shuffle line is a good plan for the product that is clearly a fashion item.  The new Nano line seems to be a great improvement in functionality and I think the new shape will be a hit once people get used to it.  The ‘iPod Classic’ has nice bumps in storage and battery life, and the ‘iPod Touch’ is a new product that should sell like hotcakes this year.

People who already have a cellphone that they like or who can’t use the iPhone because of contract/coverage/business requirements but would like the non-phone features can get one with tons of storage and still have the wifi browsing experience.  Very very cool.

Dropping the 4gb iPhone and lowering the price on the 8gb model are great examples of what sets the Apple of 2007 apart from the company in the past.  They’re not afraid to admit that they misjudged a market condition and modify their strategy to achieve a long term business goal.  This is a significant change from past company policy and should be recognized and applauded by investors.  Curiously to me, there was a selloff this afternoon and the analysis I’ve read is that it reflects fears that senior management was sacrificing too much profit.  I think that the analysts are missing the point which is that Apple has just sucked all the oxygen out of the room for any competing music player and any competing ’smartphone’ product.

The aggressive improvements in capacity and feature set should keep the iPod line flying off the shelves, and the price drop on the iPhone should lead to a huge increase in sales.  More iPhones in the hands of consumers will cement the leadership role of the company heading into the spring quarter.  The new wifi downloads and Starbucks cross promotion will lead to increases in incremental revenue and even more visibility.  For the iPhone, it’s a game of market share right now.  Apple is taking a short term reduction in profit to ensure the long term strength of the line.  I think they’ve made the right call.

In the interests of fairness, I will disclose that I have a significant position in Apple stock that I ain’t parting with anytime soon.

Microsoft at Rest

A friend and I were chatting today about Apple’s computers and he made the following statement which I thought worthy of response: “These machines are just mouth-watering, and the prices are highly competitive. If I didn’t have my Mini, I’d be getting one of their new 24-inchers. They’re just everything that anyone could want in a computer. With Parallels and the new Fusion from VMWare, there’s just no downside. If Bill Gates is getting a good night’s sleep, he’s on drugs.”

And respond I did:

Microsoft hasn’t been competitive to the average user for a long time.

Office has offered everything that the normal joe user would want since ‘97 if not ‘95 and all the extra features that have caused it to run more slowly and be more confusing have not made it a more attractive product. I don’t know anyone who has upgraded in years for any reason other than file compatibility.

Windows enjoys the dominance of the desktop because they won the war 15 years ago. Linux desktops and Mac OS X consistently score as well or better in usability and likeability and Microsoft has been reduced to lumping OEM sales into their Vista pronouncements to mask the fact that upgrade sales are virtually nonexistent. They’ve also been forced to allow major vendors to continue selling XP after their original target cutoff.

Bill’s not losing any sleep for three reasons:

First is that developers like working with their tools. Microsoft started as a language company and they make a toolset that has an incredibly broad reach along with all the products that you need to develop applications for any level from cell phone to enterprise.

Secondly, they’ve become the IBM of this era of computing. They’re the safe choice in every arena that they compete and it’s easy for support personnel to leverage knowledge of one aspect of their offerings into another. If you’re already running Windows networking, it’s easy to add Exchange. If you’re using Exchange, it’s easy to add SQL Server and reporting… Nobody gets fired for buying MS right now.

Third is inertia. For a given level of technology there has to be a major change to the ecosystem to force a significant change. Linux has become a major change factor to the mainframe systems and even IBM is selling linux instead of system 390. The emergence of the PC was the disruptive element that essentially killed minicomputers (IBM AS400 being the last holdout of that era that I know of) because of the distributed aspect of computation. Until something changes to disrupt the PC as the dominant platform inertia will continue to plod along.

Microsoft recognizes this and that’s why they have been so active in the phone market. So does Apple and that’s why they’ve taken the plunge into phones as well. This is the battleground of the next generation of computing technology. Whose OS are you carrying around in your pocket and who gets to define how you interact with the rest of the world.

On the iPhone

The more I think about this product, the more I’m amazed by the audacity of what Apple is trying to accomplish.  I’m also astounded at the shortsightedness of the many critics.  Use your head for a few moments and your bound to realize that Apple takes a very strategic view toward future product secrecy and the release of as much as they’ve revealed is purely a tactical consideration in light of the fact that the FCC certification process is public.  In other words, the phone they showed on stage is only part of the phone you’ll be buying in June (or whenever the software is really ready).

Criticism #1: It’s not really revolutionary for the phone interface.  Two words – voice dialing.  Apple have announced a wired stereo headset with built in mic for the product.  I’m willing to bet the farm that they’ll also have a Bluetooth solution and that the whole thing will use voice dialing as the primary mode of interaction with the address book.  My most recent phone prior to buying a Palm Treo 650 was a Motorola V600 which had built in voice dialing that worked quite well.  It was fully integrated with the Bluetooth headsets and was so easy to use that I would probably not have gone to the Palm if Cingular had better phone service in my neighborhood.

I’m also willing to bet (perhaps something more modest than the whole farm on this one) that they’ve got a voice interface for adding appointments to the calendar.  The tie in is so obvious it’s barely worth talking about, but imagine your on a call while driving and you need to check your schedule to coordinate with your caller.  You could use a keyword to confirm to the phone that you’re talking to it instead of the caller and the phone could read back, for example, all your business appointments for the rest of the week.  Apple has done a lot of work with all those technologies for years.  When I was doing tech support for them ten years ago the OS supported full control by voice alone, and Apple has had technology for text to speech for years that was used to support disabled users.  I’m not saying that this one is a slam dunk, but I’m betting it’s not too far into the future.

Criticism #2: Predictive text is cute, but how about a full size keyboard.  Two words – okay, one word – Bluetooth.  Thumb typing on my Treo is okay for entering very short messages but it’s not a long term solution.  There have been portable Palm keyboards available for years with a docking interface.  Bluetooth is slowly taking over the peripheral market, and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to find that Apple offers a very compact bluetooth keyboard perfect for travel available at roughly the same time as the iPhone.  Microsoft makes a very nice full size keyboard suitable for office use.

Criticism #3: iPhone doesn’t have video out so I can play my content on my car/desktop/video projector/concert hall.  Simply put, this isn’t a core feature that everyone needs.  The external doc for the iPod with video accomplishes the task well and should work for this device as well.  I suspect that there will be no shortage of cable based solutions for the road warriors.

Criticism #4: Battery life is too short for coast to coast/overseas flights/two months camping in the outback.  Charging cables are already available for airline use and so are portable batteries that can interface through a USB charging cable.  Radio Shack has them for road warriors.  Five hours should be plenty for the average user who has access to home charging, car charging, etc.  Who knows how many cycles the battery is good for, but the odds are that it will last longer than the phone your using now.

Criticism #5:  Why can’t I load any software on it that I want?  This one I have some sympathy for, both as a software developer and an avid user of third party applications.  I don’t have a direct answer, so the best I can do is rely on the history of the company.  They’ve tended to restrict certain things to homegrown solutions only and tended to be pretty flexible beyond that.  I suspect that they will be more amenable to third party applications as the iPhone proves itself to be more of a general computing device and less of a pure smart phone.  Ultimately, this one is a monetary decision and a control issue.  As we’ve seen in the kerfluffle with Cisco, only one of those matters to Apple.  I think that they’ll be more open once they’ve proven that they can do so without losing control over the interface.

My response to #5 is more speculative than predictive I’ll admit, but I think it’s valid nonetheless.  In the interest of honesty, I’ll also note that I do own Apple stock and have for several years.  I believe that this product can be a game changer if Apple can keep from screwing it up.  If they can manage to play well with Cingular (AT&T) and if the interest in the iPhone is as great as I think it will be, this will really change the marketplace.  I’d hate to be the president of Palm right now.