Apple released their iPad today and lead with this claim:

There are more than enough bloggers looking to give their opinions on the topic, so I will avoid that morass.  I want to reserve final judgment until I play with it, but I did come away feeling like this scene from History of the World was more appropriate.

The rumor mills and speculation are running at fever pitch.  I really should have predicted that 2010 would be the year of the tablet.  With bloggers falling all over themselves trying to get the scoop on the Apple table, it seems that the bloggers are trying to call a tablet from Microsoft to be announced tonight, though Mary Jo says “I don’t think so.”  With all that in mind, I was trying to figure out how to explain the world of tech in which we live.

Any unannounced, but speculated on, Apple product lives at the intersection of Impossible, Inspiring and In-Demand.  People may scoff at the notion of “in-demand” being applied to a table, but Bing tells me that there are 22.5 million results for Apple Tablet.

Mini-MSFT is back, with a post about Microsoft turning The Corner.  It’s interesting to contrast his point of view with that of MG Siegler over at ParisLemon.  Given my own perception of  Valley bias on the part of Siegler (he is one of the new voices of Techcrunch after all), it’s great to see that we’re making progress which is being met with receptivity and not suspicion.  Further, everyone is focused on the most important beneficiaries – customers.

I have to admit, since returning to the company a little over a year ago, I have had this sense that things are looking up.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s no shortage of frustrations for me, but that’s to be expected when you come from a tiny company where you were the founder and CEO to a large company where you a cog in a wheel.

With the new fiscal year, I have a new role and a new team, and I plan on making liberal use of my training and experiences in constrained resource environments to do some things that will harken back to the mojo days of the late 90s and IE/Netscape goodness. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple, I used to love you.  I love my Macbook.  I am on record as saying that the iPod Touch is the finest piece of technology that I have ever owned.  It has changed my life.  You make great products.  Why do you have to lie to me and the rest of the population?  I used to think the smarmy ads were a novelty, but now they just annoy me.  You used to be creative, and now you are just an outright liar.

Look, if you really have to resort to such tactics to sell your product, you may have to rethink your offering.  When netbooks roared into the scene, you mocked and dismissed them.  That’s fine.  Retain your superior price point and premium products.  However, don’t effing lie.  Your Macbooks have small screens too.  Your memory prices are insane.  Stop lying.

Most importantly, your computers crash.  It doesn’t have as widely a known name like blue screen of death, but it’s just the same.  Any Mac owner has seen the kernel panic screen.  This screen comes without any warning, and you are completely hosed.  Further, it comes at unpredictable times.  Stop lying about your reliability.  I haven’t seen a blue screen of death in a very long time.  Not once in the year I was running Vista, and not once since I have started running Windows 7.  I regularly see kernel panics on my personal Macbooks.  And stop with the “no viruses’” thing.  That’s like bankrupt bank claiming that they are awesome because they never got robbed by Jesse James.  Unfortunately, he went where the money was.  So you must be making the claim that no one uses your computers (thus making them an unappealing target for viruses).  Well done.

Word of advice to Apple.  Please get back to showing me why your products are awesome.  You iPhone ads are great for specifically that purpose.  These “I’m a Mac” ads are completely disingenuous and it’s time to move on.

Everyone seems to be all over this netbook meme that’s been floating around for a while.  When I first played with a netbook, it was an Asus 9” Eee PC.  I have to admit, I didn’t get it at first.  The machine that I was given to borrow over a few days was running Windows XP.  It had a very small keyboard.  Do I have large hands?  No.  (You know what they say about guys with small hands right?  They still can’t type on netbooks.)  I just found the keyboard very difficult to acclimate to for even basic tasks.

I returned the netbook, and a couple of months later was treated to another loaner.  This time it was the Lenovo S10.  Ahhhh, now we’re talking.  The keyboard was still very frustrating, and while “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” turned out something closer to “tje qujkfs bokraskdj fokse sfdl; sdlkt” I did eventually get used to the keyboard (we’re talking a few hours of use) and can now touch type on it no problem.

My issue with the netbook was that it’s effing slow.  Don’t listen to what anyone tells you.  It’s slow. The Atom processor is slow.  The memory (even with 2GB) didn’t feel sufficient.  The graphics were painful, and when loading web pages, which have a habit of stressing your graphics if there are any flash pieces or AJAX-y stuff going on, things seemed to bog down.  This was all on XP.

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