Monthly Archives: October 2008

Well the iPhone 3G finally got me

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 I have been resisting the iPhone hype for quite sometime now waiting for the Blackberry Bold to come out here in Slovakia. Even my contract with T-Mobile expired a few month ago and so the carrier has been bombarding me with new service offers and loads of perks. I remained steady and refused a lot of their offers until today.

Today they made me an offer that greatly lowers the price of the 16GB iPhone for me, introduces a lot of nice perks and savings into my plan and adds the necessary data plan that I wanted. So I caved in and took it… I still want a Blackberry as I think it’s a superior device with great battery life, email and multimedia capabilities. On the other hand I am looking forward to playing around with the iPhone and maybe, just maybe, I’ll even like it. 

Blu-Ray and the new Macbooks

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And one additional post in regards to the new MacBooks / MacBook Pros. I’m not sure if people who didn’t follow the announcement noticed this but in the Q&A session Steve Jobs answered a question regarding Blu-Ray  and let me quote him:

"Blu-Ray is a bag of hurt."

What he basically elaborated on is the fact that licensing is a huge issue with the new format and currently it is a chaotic situation. In fact the new Nvidia chipsets support Blu-Ray and therefore it seems it is really not a technical issue. I personally think that Hollywood asked for some crazy fees if Apple would put Blu-Ray drives into their new MacBooks and Jobs just felt it wasn’t worth it yet. The moment the studios become reasonable I think we will see upgrade options for Blu-ray superdrives.

The Mac-Convert effect

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My girlfriend is a professional translator and interpreter (if anyone needs one – I can supply a contact) and she uses a 2005 (!!) Acer Travelmate 3012 WTMI as her main computer. Now I know what the common opinion is regarding Acers product lines but I must say it served her quite well. It has a nice build, decent performance (2005 context) and is quite small/light (12"). The problem is obvious – it’s old and needs to be replaced by something a bit more – well current. As I am a recent convert to the Mac platform and Apple just released a new portfolio of great notebooks I’m thinking a beautiful new MacBook would be the best choice for her.

We all know this situation – me a tech guy, recently jumped the Windows ship and am happily swimming in the Mac sea – am trying to persuade my girlfriend that this new 1300 $  MacBook is a perfect solution to her problems. Smell bias? Normally I would say she absolutely does not care about tech – she just needs to get her work done – but these new Macbooks have really penetrated the ignorance aura of a completely un-techie person. This means two important things:

  1. I think I can get her to buy it:)
  2. Apple did hit a cord with the non-ethusiast consumer with the new Macbooks

As I mentioned in the earlier post – the decision made by Apple not to go to the low-cost notebook market seems to have a decent chance of paying of. The new Macbooks are really polished, beautiful looking and powerful which does not only justify the higher price but also gives you the feeling your main tool for work is not some grey box but a work of art made by people that enjoy their work.

It will be perfect for her. Or is that just the Mac-Convert effect?

Anyway I still have to get all her stuff running under OS X – especially dictionaries. Anyone got experience?

 

Tech in a recession

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Although technically we are not yet in a real recession (definitely not here in Slovakia) the global media has been spinning the story of the crisis on the financial markets in this direction. What this means is that most common folks are already freaked out and are probably lowering their spending. This results into less revenue for companies and adds to all the recession worries.

In large companies the expected lower revenues often lead to cuts in jobs and and lowering investments and the earlier a company cuts back, prepares for the worst – the higher is the chance for it to weather this storm. Suns CEO Jonathan Schwartz posted and interesting post on his blog where he cites an email he sent out to the upper management. He makes the case that the current situation actually plays into the hands of Sun as a lot of companies will try to leverage technology and automation to compensate for head count cuts and to increase efficiency. When is the best time for a company like Sun to approach customers and offer assistance with making processes leaner and more efficient using tech solutions?

I see a lot of people in corporate IT hanging down their heads, complaining about the lowering of head count, reducing investment while opportunities slip by. I think Schwartz has a point and it is not only tech companies like Sun that can leverage the current situation. Even internal IT departments, CIOs, should approach their business and offer help. More often then not assistance like this can make a big difference while making the IT department much more valuable.  In a crisis situation like this I think the most important thing is to keep your head up high and be proactive – it is "opportunity" season!

New MacBooks and MacBook Pros selling out?

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The Apple Blog has posted a short info that the MacBooks and MacBook Pros are being sold out in major flagship stores around the world (San Francisco, Toronto, Manchester) which I cannot verify at the moment. If true it would confirm Apple in its strategy not to enter the low cost notebook market and instead rather bring pro features to consumer markets. It is very easy to credit Jobs with such a move as he is known to have made some drastic moves within Apple (You did notice Apple makes phones now right?) but I am thinking this could have been driven by others as well. With Tim Cook and Jony Ive getting some spotlight time at the notebook event and just seeing how passionate Ive was about his new babies I really think investors are dumb to be scared of Jobs leaving the company. He did build a culture within the company that some say is molded around him but you cannot deny the passion Apples employees have for their products. And if Ive, Cook, Schiller and others are a sign of things to come – Apple has nothing to fear.

Smart move Apple, if only I hadn’t bought the February 2008 MacBook Pro :)