MacBigot Cached Glances

(This in response to the ZDNet article, ‘Report: Apple prepping 11.6-in. MacBook Air, new iPod touch‘…)

I’ve been on this rampage for a while now (http://macbigot.com/?p=911 – to catch you up, I believe the market wanted smaller not thinner — or, I’d rather have something that is easily carried vs. one that is easily mailed).

For those who have seen HP’s mini 210 HD (10.1″ display at 1366×768), it’s clear the notion of all netbooks being too much compromise and too little value is fading fast. On HP’s build-to-order site, I got mine with the upgraded video card, added bluetooth, and left everything else standard — and now carry a $409 netbook (sporting an Apple sticker) that I wish had come not from HP, but the company known for leading industrial design and refining ideas left to wither due to poor quality. Netbooks would have been a perfect area for Apple to say, “HERE — THIS is what all those other companies would have created if they’d had Jonathan Ives…”

Instead, they created a whole new space in the market (which Microsoft had failed at, though they’d tried) with the iPad — and I think that’s great, for consumers. But for Creators, it would be much more of a tool if it ran Adobe Illustrator, and could connect to FTP sites, and standardized ports, and (you get the idea).

The Air getting ‘downsized’ may be a step in the right direction for people like me — so it would increase my optimism in the platform. But with only one USB port and no ethernet, it might still be seen as an executive toy.

What about those of us ‘in the trenches’? The netbook format has many features stripped already (horsepower, optical drives, screen real estate); Apple should be looking to improve upon that — not simple remove MORE. To me, the whole concept of the Air was a lame attempt at getting maybe two people in the enterprise to notice the Apple brand. Now that we’ve done that (or not), let’s move on…

I’ve always been amazed that the Microsoft marketing people never grasped that Apple was anthropomorphizing (elevating inanimate objects to a level of sentience, action and communication skills) machines as a tool to self-narrate their differences — while Microsoft’s campaign LOWERED PEOPLE to the level of an inanimate machine for a twisted bastardization of the same concept.

Are customers not offended by this debasement? Are they not annoyed that Microsoft sees them as extensions of the machine, instead of their machines being extensions of their customers?

Do I have an irrational hope for rational intellect among tech consumers?

Get a Mac’s Justin Long says campaign may be over (MacWorld.com)

One of today’s questions was about the difference between ‘Coherence’ and ‘Modality’ modes in Parallels; it took me a while to find a video I like that explains this — because some of them were recorded by people who don’t know how to pronounce ‘modality‘, and it was pissing me off. So the following video that I’m providing is longer and covers a bit more territory than just this concept — but I’d rather share correct information than choose a shorter video by people who need a pronunciation dictionary.

For the uninitiated, Parallels is one of three ways to ‘easily’ run a full Windows environment on your Mac (the other VMWare two are and VirtualBox). Imagine you’ve got several applications running on your Mac: Photoshop, Microsoft Word, Firefox, and… Windows. Then, within that Windows environment, you can run several Win32 apps at once… so by Command-Tabbing through Mac applications and Alt-Tabbing through Windows apps, you have full access to both platforms simultaneously without rebooting.

VirtualBox is the only one that is free (though the copy of Windows you will run inside it is not free — you still need to provide that) — and configuration the first time can seem daunting; but carrying a single laptop with access to all the tools you may need in either platform may be worth the effort.

And no, there is currently no easy way to do the reverse (running MacOS in a window on a Microsoft platform). MacOS comes with all the perks of *NIX-style memory management, and Windows does not. So it’s unlikely that there will be a commercial product that attempts to make this a reality. However, there are several projects out there (like Boot Camp) for dual-boot (Windows & MacOS) or even tri-boot (Windows, MacOS, Linux) systems that allow you to choose at startup which personality you would like your computer to have today.

For those who haven’t been paying attention to Microsoft’s business-as-usual approach to design (‘kill all other competitors first, THEN serve the users’ needs…’); here is a prime-time illustration of how their tactics are implemented to unceremoniously render other vendors’ software moot.

From ZDNet:

In Office SP2, Microsoft manages to reduce interoperability

Microsoft recently released service pack two (SP2) for their flagship office product, Office 2007. … SP2 contains Microsoft’s first native implementation of the file format Open Document Format (ODF), originally created for Sun’s Open Source OpenOffice product. ODF was standardized by the International Standards Organization (ISO) before Microsoft’s rival Office Open XML (OOXML) and is seen as the competitor to Microsoft’s offering for the future of XML based office file formats, so Microsoft implementing it in Office is a big deal.
…
In short, Microsoft managed to reduce interoperability between office productivity software by their implementation of ODF inside SP2.

How can this be ? After all, ODF is an ISO standard. Surely if you implement a standard fully, which Microsoft claims to have done in SP2, then you must have an interoperable product. So long as others also implement the standard as written, then everything should just work together. That’s the way things are supposed to work.

One of the reasons is that standards themselves are often not perfect. Microsoft and their attendant band of astroturf bloggers are already raising a hue and cry over Rob’s findings, claiming the ODF standard itself is at fault, and in some cases calling for his resignation as chair of the ODF Technical Committee for the heinous sin of pointing out this emperor has no clothes.
…
Sure Excel saves formulas in ODF documents, just in a separate namespace where no other application is currently designed to look for them. The result is that anyone trying to open an ODF spreadsheet created in Excel will have it rejected. Excel reading an ODF spreadsheet created by another application does something worse, it will use the last value for the data in the spreadsheet cell that should be governed by the formula. The formulas themselves are silently dropped.

Open Office, on the other hand, behaves correctly when an Excel spreadsheet is thrown at it. Hmmm… and it’s free. No wonder Microsoft feels no guilt in trying to cut its legs off.

OpenOffice.org

That’s all you really need to know.

Except, maybe if you’re a WinBigot you can NOW STOP sending us Mac users giggle-notes in excited glee that our beloved platform is supposedly now ‘just as much at risk’ as the puss-infected poor-excuse-for-an-operating-system you lovingly boot up every day.

More at CNN.com, Symantec.

Instructions for manual removal posted at 411-SpyWare.com/ibotnet.

Install open source (free) antivirus protection on your Mac at ClamXAV.com.

News agencies are reporting that April 1, 2009 is a trigger date for a malware attack — which means ‘bad software on the move’. Experts do not yet know what the intended result of the attack is.

This malicious software takes advantage of a specific weakness in Windows software — one that can be patched; so what has always been true stands: make sure your virus definitions are up-to-date in your antivirus software, and ensure that Windows Updates have been run recently, and you should be fine.

MacOS users are not affected; though if you run Microsoft Windows in a virtual environment on your Mac, or on a dual-boot (both MacOS and Windows) system, your Windows environment should be updated and scanned.

Related Reading:

• No joke in April Fool’s Day computer worm (CNN.com)
• Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner (Microsoft.com)
• Norton Threat Explorer (Symantec.com)
• Trend Micro Housecall – Free Online Virus and Spyware Scan (TrendMicro.com)
• ActiveScan 2.0 – Free online antivirus (PandaSecurity.com)
• Anti Malware Resources (ClamWin.com)
• Protecting yourself from the Conficker Worm (McAfee.com)
• More Comments Regarding Conficker (AvertLabs.com)
• Finding W32/Conficker.worm [PDF] (NAI.com)
• Conficker C Analysis (SRI.com)

Microsoft is apparently planning to open their own retail stores now. From MacWorld.com:

“Microsoft plans to open its own retail stores to “transform the PC and Microsoft buying experience,” the company said Wednesday as it hired an executive to run the retail operation.

The stores will help Microsoft engage more deeply with consumers and learn firsthand about what they want to buy and how, according to a Microsoft press release. Deciding where the stores will be located and what they’ll look like will be the first order of business for David Porter, who will report to work on Monday as corporate vice president of Retail Stores.
…
With the retail strategy, Microsoft said it hopes to articulate and demonstrate its innovation and value proposition. It will pass on lessons it learns from the stores to its retail and OEM (original equipment maker) partners.

The move comes as the company gears up for the release of the Windows 7 PC operating system as well as new releases of Windows Mobile and of the Windows Live online portal. It follows changes Microsoft has made to its marketing efforts as the Windows Vista operating system took on a negative image.”

And far be it for MacWorld to pass up an opportunity to poke Uncle Bill in the ribs a little:

10 ways Microsoft’s retail stores will differ from Apple’s

1. Instead of Apple’s sheer walls of glass, Microsoft’s stores will have … (click through to the article to read the whole thing…)
2. The store will have six different entrances: …
3. Instead of a Genius Bar (as Apple provides) Microsoft will offer …
4. The Windows Genuine Advantage team will run …
5. Store hours are …
6. Stores will be named …
7. Fashioned after Microsoft’s User Account Control (UAC) in Vista, sales personnel will ask you …
8. Xbox 360 section of the store will be organized in a …
9. DreamWorks will design a scary in-store theme park ride called …
10. Store emergency exits will be …

(Windows is just below 90 percent and the rest is Linux distributions.)

InfoWorld.com reports that ‘due to its highly regarded Mac OS X Leopard operating system’ and an ‘unhappy reception for Microsoft’s Windows Vista’… The Mac isn’t just a second-class citizen any more.

It’s a second-class citizen with forward momentum.

Now if only we had a MacOS X netbook hovering around $500, like HP’s 2133 MiniNote (9.8″ diagonal at 1280×800, 120Gb HD, 1Gb RAM). Then it would be a very merry Christmas indeed.

It’s the morning after Election Day. Well, I didn’t wake up happy.

But here it is…

For the last 15 years, I have made my living as a Macintosh aficionado (or MacGeek, if you prefer) living in a world ruled by Windows. In fact, the domain name that this blog squats on comes from having been harassed daily by ‘Windows bigots’ who truly believe that if it didn’t come from Microsoft, it’s not a real computer.

To those of us who have fought those battles, this struggle has often been compared to a religious war, and sometimes — as a cultural divide.

When the protagonists on the MacOS side of the battle were at their most active peak, a group called the ‘MacEvanglists’ (initially organized by Guy Kawasaki) would combat the incorrect information provided, by default, to anyone within the long reach of Microsoft’s arms. You might have called us crusaders for a lost cause. Our logo (shown at the top of this post) was chosen by vote in an internal contest to represent us and our fight (I still wear three of those tshirts!).

But those battles are over — the war for acceptance was eventually won — not because of any particular skirmish; but because over time the establishment realized that we could all get along in this diverse market and be stronger for it. There are Linux servers in almost every basement in corporate America. There are Windows and Mac users living and computing side-by-side at adjoining desks, and browser-based applications mean less of an ongoing need to roll proprietary (single-plaftorm) tools out to staff.

And Microsoft came to realize that no matter how they fought, we were not going away.

Now that the war is over (the ‘real’ IT people still poke me in the ribs about my platform choice), it is a lot easier to exist in this Windows world; even though it wasn’t designed for me and my favorite OS. I still come to work every day to a place that is designed almost completely around Microsoft software. I haven’t quit my job to go work somewhere that has an all-Macintosh network.

Mostly because there is hardly anywhere to go that isn’t designed around Microsoft Windows.

But it’s telling — about why I’m not looking at travel brochures for Canada after yesterday’s election of an almost all-Leftist government. Though I truly believe that our government will be less like what the Founders intended, now that we have elected a Left-leaning President, a Left-leaning Congress, and have a decidedly Left-skewed judicial system — it’s still America.

There is hardly anywhere else to go — that has kept Lefty-thinking at bay.

So no, even though we may joke about finding a few acres up above the Canadian border — we are all likely to stay, and find a way to be productive citizens in this new environment.

Among the MacEvanglists, we often called Microsoft, ‘Big Brother’.

We referred to our choice of platform as ‘reason-based’ and Windows users’ choice as ‘following the crowd’ or ‘just doing what’s popular’.

We endured mocking, belittling, and blatantly unfair treatment from the IT service industry, the media, manufacturers, and Wall Street.

Lies and marginalization by Windows salespeople, ‘bigoted’ IT professionals, and armchair tech experts is just another day at the office.

Even now, Windows proponents arm themselves with numbers, white papers, and millions of marketing dollars to squash the impact of competing technologies (like software, programming languages, operating systems, and online services).

We became comfortable comparing the plight of our favorite operating system to the experience of a minority culture (see the MacEvangelist logo, above). Many of my friends smirked at my struggle in this — because, they hint, it’s good for a middle-aged white guy with a face for radio to ‘not have it so easy all the time’.

After a decade and a half, I no longer fear my plight. Hegemony continues to annoy and frustrate me — but cannot crush my will to continue being the stalwart Mac user. Every time a Windows user reboots, I tell my children, “See, those people think that daily reboots are normal, but since we only have to do it four or five times a year, we know that there is a better way to live than that…”

Maybe I’m more prepared to survive this troubling time than I’d thought.

But I don’t think that The New Hegemony is OK just because it comes with such a dazzling smile.

(We’ll post a transcript of this well-produced compilation to highlight those names just as soon as it can be thrown together.)

(The following in response to a TUAW article on the disappearance of our beloved FireWire interface from the new notebooks announced the other day by Steve Jobs…)

I waited — for years — before buying my first Mac laptop, because although I really liked all the things I could co with SCSI, I understood the benefits of having a truly *intelligent* interface like FireWire; and so when the Pismo hit the streets, I finally put my life in hock and had one mailed to me.

(Never mind the fact that within a couple of years, the first all-white iBook had better specs, and cost more than a thousand dollars less… those monthly payments on my Apple Loan over the next four years didn’t hurt a bit.)

Target disk mode is indeed one of the most ‘Apple-like’ advantages of FireWire; but it is also what made shopping for a camcorder such a joy for Mac users — and is still the best reason for iMovie (which, by the way, we are still angry at Apple for since they actually REDUCED functionality in since previous versions in an obvious attempt to get users to upgrade to Final Cut Express).

What major Apple feature will be next to go?

- QuickTime? No, they already did that when the company started to charge $30 just for the capability to cut/copy/paste and export segments of video (which we used to be able to do with the free version).

- iMovie? No, but they have cut out the bulk of it’s editing tools that older versions included — likely in the hope that you will upgrade (not free) to Final Cut Express?

- Online services? No, they already did that when they told Apple customers that they could have a free .Mac email address for life, and then began charging $100/year for it.

- Modems? No, they already took that away with the last generation of MacBook/Pro/Air.

- Ethernet? No, that’s already gone from the Air; and probably won’t be present if Apple ever gets around to a subnotebook.

It’s nice that the new laptops are USB-bootable; but I haven’t seen Apple release a special version of the MacOS that is optimized for use this way (which isn’t a big deal, except that I know I will be out of license compliance every time I build one). So this isn’t advertised/recommended aggressively on their web site.

Now that there is no compelling reason to do video editting on a Mac laptop (that WAS iMovie until they castrated it, and then it WAS FireWire until they removed it), my next mobile workstation may turn out to run on Linux.

Damn — I’ll even have to change my domain. Again. Grrr.

One of my favorite bloggers (blonde sagacity) had posted a link to show off her beautiful new baby, and I followed her Flickr stream to this one of her twin brothers, over for a visit. “Ebony aaaand iiiiivory — compute together in haaaaarmony; side by side…”