Fifth Decade

I first tried a Mac in, oh, about 1986. I hated it. Tiny little box with a screen in it, and the salesman sat me in front of it and tried to persuade me of its (expensive) merits by opening practically the only software they had for it - a Paint program. I wasn’t impressed. I wanted something to run a spreadsheet, not draw dumb pictures. From that moment on I thought all Macs were pretentious pieces of garbage for rich idiots who wanted to draw pictures all day long. How times change.

Almost two decades later, and I hadn’t looked at a Mac but I had slagged them off a few times on computer forums and so on. That was when my PC worked of course, didn’t have the anti-virus scanner working, wasn’t updating its virus definition files, or showing me the Blue Screen Of Death.

Now, one of the guys I hung out with worked for IBM. We used to go for a beer a couple of Fridays a month with some other computer guys to chew the fat. My friend’s girlfriend was very much into Macs, but she was studying a graphics course so I just thought, “Of course she’s got a Mac. She wants to make pretty pictures!”

But it wasn’t quite like that - her course was half graphics, half accounting. Huh? Accounting? On a Mac? That was a new idea I couldn’t get my head around to begin with.

After a while, my friend admitted he played around on his girlfriend’s Mac - because he could just get on and do his home stuff without worrying about things not working or needing new drivers or having conflicts or crashing. He said that both he and his girlfriend had completely different user accounts, with everything completely separate. He had his files and programs, she had hers. He ran Unix applications in the Terminal, she ran graphics files on the old Mac OS, called OS9.

Now remember, this guy worked on PCs all day long to keep them in working order. And yet he kept on going on about how reliable and user friendly the Mac was. Sure, he had a PC too, it was provided for him by his work. But when he went out and ordered a Mac mini - with his own money - I started to rethink things very carefully.

If everything was like he said, maybe I should buy one of these little wonders too. He assured me they were completely different now, and even Microsoft Office worked on it. They even had IBM chips inside, and connected to all the same things PCs could.

So I bought a Mac mini. It was the best decision I ever made buying a computer. Since then I’ve gone on to buy nine Macs in total for myself, my family, and my office. What I’m trying to say is, I’ve got a lot of experience from a PC user’s point of view about choosing a Mac - but I’m not you, so this is a guide, not a recommendation.

Mac mini
The first Mac for many people, and certainly the one with the lowest ticket price, is the Mac mini. Like all Macs, they look great but in addition it’s just so small. It fits anywhere, and runs very quietly. Compared to my previous PC, it’s silent. Perfect for the lounge. And it has been trouble free.

Mac minis do not come with a separate graphics card so share some of the standard system RAM. This means the largest screen they can power would be a 23″ Apple Display, although I have heard they could power a Dell or other model 24″ screen. The latest Mac minis are pretty nice right now, particularly the Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz model.

iMac
The new aluminium iMacs have a glossy screen which many people cannot bear, others seem not to worry about it. Personally I hate reflections on the screen and had a look at the new iMac in a variety of lighting situations at a number of locations (three Apple resellers and the Bluewater Apple Retail store) before excluding it for being too glossy. Not for nothing do the TV ads show the new glossy screened iMac from side on only! Any other view would put many people right off.

Talking of TV though, getting rid of screen reflections has been like hunting for the Holy Grail for most manufacturers for decades - there have even been products developed to counteract the reflections, so why the fashion has returned as an “advantage” is quite beyond me.

If you find the shiny screen doesn’t irritate the hell out of you, which iMac should you get? I bought a Refurbished 24″ white iMac (last model) from the Apple Online store and got a sizable discount, but these seem to be in short supply right now. It does have a large screen, but the size is very useful and not too big for a normal desk, especially since the computer is in the screen and there’s no beige box to have to work out how to hide.

The screen on the older iMac is non-reflective, and the size allows me to work on a full page on one side of the screen, and have my reference pages open on the right and just drag and drop pictures, charts, and even lumps of text straight from one to the other, not even needing to use cut and paste. Just seeing the two pages next to each other is a huge advantage.

When it comes to the new aluminium iMacs, there is a significant difference in quality between the 20″ and the 24″ models. Mainly, the 24″ model uses better components than the 20″ model, whose screen is actually of lower spec than its white plastic predecessor! Of course, with the glossy screen the reflections are larger the bigger the area they can reflect from…

Power Mac / Mac Pro
Unfortunately there isn’t a mid range Mac without an in-built screen, so if you don’t like the new iMac and can’t get an old iMac you have to go for either the Mac mini or a Mac Pro which is, err, B I G !!!

We use the current Mac Pro’s almost identical predecessor, a G5 PPC 2.0 GHz double processor powered Power Mac, in the office as a file and database server and it is very under-utilised, seldom using more than 30% of processor capacity.

It’s massive though. Not for on top of a desk. Solid sculpture, beautiful design. The metal case is thick, solid, sculpted anodised metal that weighs a ton. From an engineering point of view, it’s art. It feels nice to touch. Inside it’s as beautiful as outside, and very well designed and put together. Putting in new RAM is dead easy. In the new ones, even changing a Hard Disk drive is easy. We have two Hard Disks in ours, set up in a RAID configuration so that if one disk fails, the other is a mirror image with no data is lost.

When the new Mac Operating System, OS X 10.5 Leopard has had all the bugs ironed out, we’ll probably use its new Time Machine backup system for data security and change the RAID configuration to allow for faster read/write speeds to boost performance even more.

Laptops
Not everyone wants a desktop Mac though, and Mac laptops have become more and more popular this year, taking 17% of the laptop market and making Apple into the third biggest computer manufacturer after Dell and HP.

Power Book/MacBook Pro
Before Macs went from PPC chips to Intel, I bought a Power Book as I needed some portability for international travel. It is another piece of scuplted Aluminium beauty that is wonderfully rewarding in so many ways, not least of which being the tactile satisfaction of just using it. When light levels fall, the screen dims and the aluminium keys automatically light up so you can still see which keys to press, a big help for my aging eyes.

Closing the lid automatically sleeps the computer, opening it gives you an almost instant restart. Amazing. My girlfriend’s HP notebook would crash if you did this. To be fair, it was running Windows 98 though.

My old model Power Book is completely at home doing everything I have asked of it though - basically it is a portable version of a G4 iMac with equivalent specification. I run mine with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, plus a 19″ standalone monitor, so have a portable desktop. The two fingered scroll pad is fantastic. So intuitive. So unlike a PC. And the new MacBook Pro is much, much better.

MacBook
When the HP finally gave up the ghost (not only had all the key labels vanished from the keyboard so hitting the correct letter was often guesswork, eventually the keys stopped working too, it would never run without crashing and a host of other minor irritants) I got my girlfriend a MacBook. Bad mistake. Not because of the computer - but because I didn’t consult with her, I deprived her of the fun of choosing.

But the MacBook itself is pretty fast, it’s the Black 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo version with the 13.3 inch screen. This is a bit small for most eyes, but unfortunately the MacBook is not available with a larger screen. You have to go up to the MacBook Pro for that which has either a 15″ or a 17″ display.

For most purposes, the MacBook is fantastic and fun, but it doesn’t have a separate graphics card, so for big movie making work it probably struggles a bit. For general office work though, it is fine and connecting to an external monitor is definitely a good idea.

Making your Mac faster.
In all cases, max out your RAM wherever you can - but don’t buy it from Apple unless you are getting a Mac mini which is remarkably compact and difficult to access. One supplier that has a great website for helping you identify which RAM you need and its cost is Crucial. 2 Gb will have your Mac flying, although 1 Gb is really sufficient if you aren’t running Windows and OS X simultaneously on the same computer. Yes, both Parallels and VMWare alow this, not to mention Apple’s own Boot Camp - now replaced as part of the Leopard OS.

Whichever Mac you get, you won’t be disappointed. Do make sure the one you get is sufficient for your needs though, just like choosing any computer.

Have fun! But remember all those folks still on PC who have to fight their PC constantly, rather than have it work with them to get things out rather than just put effort in.

On a Mac, things just work.

After at least six months of “my computer doesn’t work properly” I bought my other half a new MacBook. I admit I’ve been pushing for Macs in the office for 2 years - since I found out how good my Mac mini was. But it wasn’t as if she’d never seen the MacBook, she’d even said she liked it. Especially since it could run Windows.

She’d seen it in the shop and said it looked a lot nicer than the others (PCs) and if she had the money she’d buy one, even if it was a Mac which she “doesn’t understand”.

Then her keyboard broke. She sent me an email with all the words on a line of their own, with many letters missing to prove it.

So, mug that I am I went and bought a MacBook - the very same one she said she really liked. The Black One, 2.16 GHz etc.

When I brought it home as a surprise I got a black look, and a deadly silence. “I feel like you’ve hit me over the head!” she said. Huh? How’d that happen? Big discussion followed. I said I’d take it back. That was yesterday.

Today, she said she liked it. She’d have it. I felt good for a moment. Then she didn’t want it. I said I’d take it back.

I biked in to work today so left the computer at home until I took the car. I saw her in the afternoon “I’m sorry I gave you a hard time last night, I do want it, thank you.”

That was a sudden change, but nonetheless welcome.

When I got home this evening, I was expecting her to at least open the box, plug it into her iMac, and do a data transfer using Migration Assistant. She could have the computer to use in the office tomorrow to replace her buggered keyboard. And knackered computer.

No. She doesn’t want it any more. “All that money! Take it back!” Yet another discussion. I said I’d take it back.

Her computer is a 4 year old Maxdata Pentium M Centrino 1.5 or something like that. The keyboard has no visible lettering anymore. Half the keys don’t work. It can’t connect to our wireless Network at home, and if you change the Windows 98 Network settings so it can connect up to the internet at home they all have to be redone manually to connect to the office network. And redone again on returning from work. There’s no automated script. The battery doesn’t work anymore. It crashes three to four times per day. It’s been infected by viruses at least twice.

She’s a lawyer. Would you believe it? She’s one of the principal earners in the office, if not the largest, and she depends on her computer for doing it.

Would I buy a computer for a woman again? Why bother? At least with flowers the same bad feeling only costs me a fiver!

What did I do wrong?

I’m getting a picture of Laura Metz, the head of desktops at Apple. It’s coming through the ether to me - big power shoulder pads, possibly in purple; lots of chunky costume jewellery, designer dresses, shiny patent leather shoes but not quite matching accessories. Oh yes, and “thin” is important to her.

Where am I getting this from? Well, the new Apple iMac of course. It’s big, shiny, glossy, overly decorated, designer label - and it’s accessories don’t quite match… Who decided a black, aluminium and glossy glass computer would match a white plastic mouse and a white and aluminium keyboard? Oh, yes, most important, don’t forget - it’s very thin! The keyboard is thin, the computer is thin. It’s a thin client computer.

Who cares if the computer is thin? I look at mine front on, it’s then just a 2 dimensional thing in front of me. Like a mirror. Actually, exactly like a mirror. No, it is a mirror! So much so that the only way to view the machine without seeing everything behind you and hardly anything in front of you (ie what’s on the screen) is to point the screen away from you like in this picture by Doug Rosa.

Suddenly it’s all become clear! Of course, its thin - it has to be! Yet another Apple Innovation - the world’s first only-viewable-from-the-side computer. Glossy? It has no option. Glossy glass for a lossy lass. Poor old Laura. Looks like she Metz her match with that one…

Shame really, I was going to buy one - but not with a glossy screen. No matte screen, no deal.

And Steve, I don’t care how bloody thin it is! I just want to be able to read my text…

Currency exchange is a complex subject with lots of interlaced layers. You can go deeper and deeper and still not explore ever nuance.

In general terms though, weakening your currency imports inflation. This then causes interest rates to rise, and this can hit the economy by hurting businesses as well as consumers, especially if the savings rate (basically the difference between a country’s savings and debts) is low - ie where mortgage lending is high, and people have high debts, increasing interest rates hurt. If they aren’t raised, the currency sinks lower, import costs increase, pushing up inflation until you end up with the Zimbabwean situation of hyper-inflation of 22,000% per year.

Yes, a weak currency does allow for cheaper export prices - or higher profits from exports where prices in export markets are maintained at high levels. This is happening now with Adobe (Europeans pay nearly double the US price), Microsoft (we pay about 50% more), and to a much smaller extent, Apple (about 15% higher over here). It does depend on the product you pick though.

When the pound weakened in the 1980s Jaguar took the decision to maintain Dollar prices and just make more money from sales in the US, although they could have made the price a lot cheaper because of the lower FX values. It’s also possible they didn’t have the money to invest in extra production (the Brown’s Lane, Coventry factory was renowned for being too small for existing production anyway, never mind increases).

I’m not sure that long term keeping profits high from exchange rate variations is a good policy; reducing prices and selling more volume should give you more customers for the future, many of whom will remain even after prices return to previous levels. Future upgrade costs from new customers can far outweigh short term profit benefits over the long term, but executive pay is geared to getting higher and higher short term profits without long term thinking being so important. It’s a delicate balancing act though.

The Chinese economy is benefiting from artificially low FX rates, but their currency doesn’t float and has a fixed peg to the dollar. That means their economic development can be paid for by the countries they export to. You can see their exchange rate is artificially low because they can even undercut products made in India, a similar country with similar levels of economic development.

It isn’t always a bed of roses though, often a weak currency smells more like the fertiliser roses need. You may remember (or have seen the clip again and again) Harold Wilson in the 1960s trying to explain that “The pound in your pocket is worth what it always was” just after Sterling hit a bad patch and was devalued overnight. Of course, he was totally wrong, it really was worth less because imports became more expensive. He was rightly lambasted in the press for that.

In the US, the Bush administration are wedded to income tax cuts, without reducing spending (look up “Pork Belly Politics”). This only really works if you can grow the economy sufficiently fast enough through exporting more than you import. But the US double deficit isn’t just about how much the government spends or receives in taxes. The second part is the Trade Balance: it’s at record highs because no matter what the state of the US economy American consumers are wedded to buying expensive imports on credit, and buy more from overseas than they export.

So, a low currency can appear nice, but while the total volume of exports may rise, the total value of these exports in monetary terms may not change that much. More volume for export also means factories at home working at higher capacity, and as output capacity gets tighter, wages and other costs rise. Meanwhile, the value of consumer-led imports does increase in cost. This all adds to more inflation.

Basically, both the US government and the US consumer are living beyond their means, funded by a pile of debt that ultimately is owned by the large exporting countries - mainly China and Japan. That’s why politically the US cannot threaten China much, because if they did the Chinese could dump dollars and cause a real crisis in the US as well as the world economy.

One of the many hidden reasons for going into Iraq was because of the threat by Saddam to price Iraqi oil in Euros, not USD, and other oil-leaders were thinking the same. That would have hit the Dollar’s reputation as the world’s reserve currency (it took over from Gold some years back).

So, unless the US consumer stops buying so much imported stuff - such as more attractive cars and luxury goods from Europe and Japan, cheaper electronic goods from China and the Far East and less oil from everywhere - then the Dollar will remain on a downward path. And ironically, giving disproportionate tax cuts to the rich and wealthy actually stimulates more imports of luxury goods, increasing the Trade Deficit rather than reducing it.

As I said, I’m only brushing the surface here. I’ll bet you didn’t really want to know that much about it…

I need exercise. Well, OK, we all need exercise, but not everyone needs it like I do. I’m medically obese (but only 1 Kg away from not being!) and a Type 2 diabetic. So exercise is more important to me as it helps me to control my blood sugar levels, reduce my weight, and fight diabetes.

My medical advisors suggested I need do half an hour of exercise three times per week. Anything that got my heart rate up would do, they said - even walking. Well, to begin with, walking was all I could manage! But I wanted to know how far I was going, and if it was possible to measure the calories I was burning too.

So I bought an iPod Nano and the Nike+ shoe attached pedometer. The idea of course is that I buy a special pair of Nike trainers that have a slot for the tiny Nike+ device to fit into. So I paid out about £80 for a pair of Nikes, the style of which I hated, and they didn’t fit very well either. But the shop only had two different styles of trainers, and this was the pair that suited me the most.

Now I like Nike - when I was an athlete all those years ago they were my shoe of choice. My favourites were a pair of Nike Elite racing flats which were light and very comfortable. Since then they seem to have become led by image rather than ergonomics though, because these new trainers were awful to wear. Not only that, but they were really shoddily made as well, with tatty stitching, roughly cut lace holes, and no sign at all that my £80 had really been needed to buy a shoe of such poor quality. I’ve seen £20 trainers that were better finished. I should have kept my money in my pocket.

I persevered with the shoes for a week, but then I found a really neat device called the iRun which is basically a pod for the Nike+ pedometer. It attaches nicely to the laces of my far more comfortable Reeboks, and performs exactly the same function as if it were in the Nike shoes. Except that I can walk further and faster with the Reeboks on because the Nikes are just too uncomfortable.

The shoes end of things wasn’t my only problem though. How do I attach the iPod to myself when I am out exercising? First of all I bought the Nike+ armband iPod holder. Well, that was a waste of money for starters: it wouldn’t even go around my arm! Even if I had managed it it is a huge piece of elasticated textile that is bound to make you sweat, and that brings me out in a rash so I prefer not to do that. Luckily the shop took it back, no questions asked.

Next I bought the Apple armband. Slightly better this time, thinner and at least it fitted - just - but now there was nowhere to plug in the radio pick-up for the signals from the Nike+ pedometer! The bottom of the holder totally blocked the port. Well, Apple, that was good design, wasn’t it? Another waste of money.

Then I found my solution. The XtremeMac TuffWrap Accent. It’s a silicone cover with a clip at the back which allows me to attach the iPod anywhere. It’s really useful - and I can plug in the pedometer receiver.

So how does the collection work in action? Faultlessly. I select Nike+iPod from my iPod’s menu, select the type of workout - Basic (pure measurement of what you do, nothing more); Time (which tells you when your exercise period is complete); Distance (so you can preset how far you go and stop when you have completed it); and Calories (where I believe you can set the amount of calories you want to burn and the iPod tells you when to stop exercising when you have reached that target).

So far I’ve only used Basic, because I don’t exercise in a gym and have landmarks, places and people to give me feedback which I prefer. I’ve had some great walks through the countryside, getting close to nature in its own backyard. That can be so motivating.

I can choose whether to listen to music or not, and if so, which playlist, random or ordered. At the end of each session I get a spoken overview of how far I went, my average speed, and can see on the screen how many calories I have burned. If I have done a record long or record fast session I get a voice over from either Paula Radcliffe or Lance Armstrong giving me a motivatory congratulation. That’s a nice touch.

Overall then I would say getting the iPod and Nike+ was a good decision, but buying the Nike products was not what I had expected them to be. Once upon a time Nike were the Apple of the training shoe industry, now they’re just trading on their name alone and aren’t really producing the goods anymore, from my experiences.

If you are thinking of buying the Nike+, just don’t think you need Nike trainers to use it. There are plenty of ways you can attach it to your favourite and most comfortable trainers. Wearing uncomfortable shoes is not good for diabetics so I am off Nike now.

There is a website which you can connect to and upload all your information to, but personally I would prefer to upload it to my Mac computer, but this seems impossible from what I have found so far. I am not going to add my personal data to any website though! No way!

Marks out of Ten for individual items:

Apple iPod Nano: 9/10
Nike+ pedometer: 9/10
Nike+ armband: 1/10
Nike trainers: 1/10
iRun pod fix: 9/10
Apple armband: 3/10
XtremeMac TuffWrap Accent: 8/10
Nike+ website idea: not for me!

Overall Mark for the system as a whole: 8/10

A little while ago I wrote my piece on the dietary regime I’ve been following to combat Diabetes. I was diagnosed with the condition on 15th April 2007 and spent a week in hospital. Since then I’ve been trying to live as healthily as possible, and it’s had a marked effect on my life. For the better. My goal was to combat the disease through a combination of healthy eating and exercise. I wanted to lose 10Kg of weight each year for three years.

Well, the changes to my lifestyle and my attitude are really paying off big time. In seven weeks I’ve lost 8Kg - that’s about 18 lbs, or 1 stone 4 lbs in old money. Without feeling hungry. And while enjoying my food even more than before. Different food, sure, but it certainly isn’t boring. Maybe one meal a week is forgettable, but that’s just down to bad planning, or experimenting to find a new dish.

The weighing scales I bought that can calculate the proportion of body fat, water and muscle also show big improvements in the kind of weight I carry. Fat down from 35% to under 30%, with muscle mass up from 34% to 37%. When I lose my next Kilo I will officially no longer be considered obese! Man, that feels good.

Before my change to a healthy lifestyle I had got to the stage where just getting up off the floor from playing with my one year old was a struggle that needed all four limbs to lift me up - tragic I know, but so many people have similar problems. Now, I almost float up stairs, and relish the next staircase to walk up. Getting up off the floor is easy again - no hands needed! Because I’m not on a fad diet I’m not just losing weight, I’m also getting stronger. My neck is thinner and more muscley, my paunchy stomach is much, much smaller, and my muscles glow even when I’m sitting still, so I am burning more sugar just because there are more of them.

I’m also doing well on the medication front. Within a very short period of time after leaving the hospital I managed to give up insulin, although I am still taking Metformin to help my body deal with the sugars better. Just last week I gave up the blood pressure drugs that had been necessary when my blood pressure was 140 over 90. Now it is pretty stable around 105 over 70 - without any medication at all to reduce it.

My seven day average blood sugar level is 5.7 mmol/L which compares nicely with a non-diabetic value of 3.9 to 5.5 mmol/L. I’ll stay on the Metformin a bit longer though, it seems to be helping, and I have to lose quite a bit more weight yet. But I’ll get there.

Of course, I’m lucky with the weather at the moment. Spring and summer are here, with mostly dry, sunny days in which it is really easy to cycle or walk just that little bit further. But winter lies ahead and I have to prepare for it. I need an exercise machine.

I looked in a couple of gyms at the equipment they have, and compared it with the normal consumer stuff you see in sports shops. Mostly the consumer stuff is a pale comparison of the serious equipment a gym can provide. But I haven’t signed up for a gym yet. Most gym memberships fail after two months. In fact, for some people just signing the application form gives them more of a workout than they ever get in the gym itself.

I asked around at a couple of manufacturers at the prices of new kit - too much for me - but they sometimes get in reconditioned stuff after gyms have had the kit for three years on a contract before they renew with brand new equipment. I found I could save 75% off the cost of new gym level equipment, fully refurbished and with all the latest software just by waiting a little. Delivery should be just around the time the weather changes and outdoor exercise becomes less easy, and I’ll be paying about the same as I would for a top level consumer item that would actually give me less back.

I’m going to get a bike, rather than a rowing machine or treadmill for no other reason than that of space saving. For exercising the rest of me I’ll continue doing those circuit training exercises I learned all those years ago when as an athlete I tagged onto the weekly rugby training sessions, together with some isometrics.

Isometrics are easy to do, build muscle mass quickly, and take very little time. They also have the benefit of being possible anywhere. The basic principle is that you push against an immovable object so that your muscles try and try to move it, but instead just stimulate their own growth.

One example of an isometric exercise is to stand in a doorway, place the palm of each hand on either side of the wall so that if the wall were not there your hands would meet palm to palm with elbows bent so you push them together, trying to squash the wall. Another good one is to stand with bent legs for as long as you can manage, rest for a minute or so, and then repeat two more times. It’s amazingly effective.

Just don’t do isometrics without something to get your cardio-vascular system going as well though - that means one of cycling/swimming/walking/jogging so that your heart rate reaches a level sufficient to burn off fats, about 120-130 for me from what I can gather (see previous post about this).

Equipment that has helped me
I get paid nothing for saying this, and have no connection with any of the companies concerned other than my positive experience as a customer.

• Kitchen Scales: Tefal Copper 5 digital scales - very small, fit anywhere
• Bathroom scales: Soehnle Body Balance Rio (measures weight, fat, water, muscle masses)
• Pedometer: Silver Apple iPod Nano with Nike+ (calculates calories burned)
• Cyclometer: Marks and Spencer (calculates calories and fat burned)
• Glucometer: AccuChek Aviva (for measuring blood sugar)
• Blood Pressure meter: Omron R6 Wrist Blood Pressure monitor (simple, light, quick way to get a reading of blood pressure one handed)

I’ll write some more another time and let you know how my regime goes. I’m quite enjoying life at the moment though, and I am so pleased something like Diabetes came along and shocked me out of my apathy. I’m enjoying life a whole lot better now, and feel a lot more positive about myself too.

As the song goes “Always look on, the bright, si-de of life! Da-dum, da-dum die dum die dum…“

A lot has been written about Microsoft and it’s stranglehold over desktop and office systems, and rightly so as that company has shown they do not use their monopoly power ethically. They claim to be innovators, but their latest Operating System, Microsoft Vista, is no more than a copy of Apple’s OS X - it even looks the same. But enough of that. We all know about that monopoly. But are there any others?

Many people complain about the growing prevalence of the iPod/iTunes mix, but that is far less pervasive IMO with far more media providers, and no hardware or software lockins. When someone brings out a competing product that is more stylish and easier to use, Apple will not be able to force consumers not to buy it as Microsoft can with Windows and Office.

The other monopoly in computing though is one not often written about, but one that is nonetheless becoming problematic for consumers, particularly European ones.

I am talking here about Adobe/Macromedia.

Their stranglehold over the graphics market (particularly web design) is awesome. When the two companies merged recently I was amazed the US competition authorities didn’t complain about the reduction in competition this would cause. The result has predictably been to create a monster that is abusing its monopoly power with hugely exorbitant prices for its software.

One good example of this is their newly launched CS3 product. The price in Europe is nearly twice that of the identical US product when measured in USD terms. It’s also about twice the price of the Macromedia Dreamweaver/Fireworks bundle I bought a few years ago.

In former times, pre-merger, the top applications for web design were Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe’s GoLive! which wasn’t quite as good, but at least the competition between them kept prices down.

Since the merger in Dec 2005, Adobe has had a free rein to raise prices because there is nobody to undercut them anymore. There may be other editors out there, but none with the market penetration of Adobe’s package. It is widely expected that eventually Dreamweaver will have totally replaced GoLive! to the detriment of consumer choice as well. And that means prices will go up. Again.

One sure sign of being a near-monopoly is when you try to hide the fact by deflecting attention from your own business to that of others - hopefully onto others who are monopolists. Adobe’s boss, Bruce Chizen: “Microsoft is a $50 billion monopolist who’s in the software business. I take them very seriously.” Maybe he’s trying to emulate them?

I just love this.

Apple has brought out a new iPod patent that encourages people to touch their back-side touch-surface with a finger!!!

Schoolboy humour it may be, but it highlights a wonderful disconnect between American English and British English, as well as identifying just how humourous cross-cultural relations can be.

First it was Microsoft calling the Zune a name the Canadians and others reserve for male private parts. We all laughed at that one. Now Apple are doing the same. Do Americans not realise that 60 million Brits fall about laughing every time they or some other foreigner (American or German speakers particularly make this mistake) quite innocently says “it’s on the back-side” or “you can’t see it on the photograph but on his back-side you can see everything clearly”? I’ll bet you can!

You see when you, dear Foreigner, say “back-side” we Brits immediately think you are referring to our bottom - our “ass” as Americans put it. When you talk about our “ass” we first of all think of a four legged creature found in the Middle East that is a close relative of the horse, an example of which Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

When we are talking to a native German speaker, we may try to remain po-faced (straight-faced) about it, but this again (if we ourselves speak German) causes much mirth (the German for “bum” is “po” you see; no, dear American reader, I am not talking about some homeless tramp, but again, an “ass”).

But back to the iPod story. The idea of the new patent is that you will sensitively run your finger around the back-side touch-surface, which will move a cursor that tells you where your finger is. Excuse me! If I had my finger on my back-side touch-surface I’d know exactly where it was, thank you…!

Leaving apart the humour, I can’t see a dual-faced product being so successful; most people like to wrap such expensive purchases up in leather cases or bind them in some other way so they cannot become easily damaged. With the new system, you’d have to leave your back-side in full view so it could be touched more easily… I’m sure there are some people reading this who might think that was a good idea. I mean, back-side touching used to be a popular pursuit in the workplace until it became sexist. Bit before my time though - but maybe Steve Jobs still remembers?

You may remember a few years ago that Apple was in such dire straights it had to run to Microsoft for some money or go bankrupt. Of course, Microsoft asked for some shares in exchange, and promptly became a 25% shareholder in Apple Computer. I haven’t checked whether they still are, but have been told this relationship ended years ago. But I still wonder…

Microsoft’s launch of Vista has been a big disappointment by all accounts - even Windows fanboys don’t like it. There have been reports of Microsoft haemorrhaging money, with the megalith’s cash reserves halving recently. Vista is causing huge problems for Microsoft, whose penchant for long legal wrangles is so strong they really need a huge inflow of money every month in order to fund just that.

But Microsoft’s problems have been seen as a B I G opportunity by Apple supporters. They want Leopard (the new version of Apple’s Operating System) to be launched at the moment of maximum weakness for Microsoft, thereby killing off their old adversary. Now that’s a bit optimistic.

However, with the announcement on the Apple Hot News website today of Leopard’s delay to October:

“We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the (June WWDC) conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October.”

any talk of a favour being returned by Apple to Microsoft cannot be ignored. Which is both a bad and good thing. Bad, because it lets Windows off the hook. Good, because Apple can now release programs, applications and other stuff (such as a decent spreadsheet in iWork) to compete with MS without breaking a gentleman’s agreement, spoken or implied, not to directly compete with Microsoft - if you don’t believe me, look for an area in which Apple directly and aggressively competes with Microsoft: they don’t.

Apple’s TV ads always point to PCs being for work, and Macs for the home; their software is always for niche groups such as graphic artists and sound engineers, not mainstream businesses involving finance and accounting, databases, visual charting tools for organisations, or other everyday uses.

This stance is aided and abetted by MS whose current Office app excludes the popular Access database and the oft maligned but school recommended MS Publisher, while the new version of Office will exclude Visual Basic for Applications entirely, so the software will be even less useful for businesses looking for cross platform solutions. OK, Real Basic could step in here, but you get the picture?

Contrary to some expectations, I’m not completely against Microsoft. I believe there is a place for them in the computing world. I just don’t believe their dominance of any market they act in is good for that market, or ultimately, for the rest of us.

But how is the delay of Leopard going to affect Apple? Apart from giving the some-would-say “dying” Microsoft another lease of life, moving the launch of Apple’s major Vista competitor until after Vista’s first service pack can be launched will also severely impact sales.

Why? Many people - such as myself - were in the market for some new Macs, the ordering of which they were holding back until the new OS was launched. I was going to order four new Mac minis and four copies of the newly expected iWork ‘07 for the office. On top of that I wanted to buy a new iMac 24″ plus a copy of Final Cut Studio, a family pack of iLife 07 and a family pack of iWork for home. Now I, like many others, am just going to have to wait. That will hit Apple revenues quite hard because the revenue won’t be coming in, but the goods will be being sold.

On top of that, with reports saying “New Mac Pro hobbled by memory, Tiger?”it seems a lot more is riding on this Leopard than was first thought.

Leopard was supposed to be a significant upgrade (we are already up to v 10.4.9 for the Mac OS so we shouldn’t really have any more incrementals). It was supposed to be capable of allowing a user to easily install Windows XP or Vista onto an Apple Mac computer, but Microsoft have changed the licencing requirements on Vista and announced that they will be removing Windows XP Pro OEM edition from the beginning of 2008, leaving Apple with just two months to get the “Switch to Mac” juggernaut moving and attempt to bring the Mac platform into dominance (OK, eat a little more into the Windows monopoly). It ain’t gonna happen.

So, it looks to me like when the seminal moment arrived, rather than stepping up to the plate and hitting a Home Run (I know what one of these is now, thanks to my fantastic Nintendo Wii) Apple wobbled, and instead of hitting Microsoft for six, they decided to play with a little hand toy of their own, the totally untested, untried marketing newbie of the iPhone rather than their solid and known product range. Apple had the choice of getting either the iPhone or Leopard ready for release in June, they chose the untried high risk option.

Maybe Apple as personified by Steve Jobs doesn’t want to be popular in the larger marketplace? If that is the case, Steve Jobs is heading for another fall at the hands of the professional shareholders, just as he did once before. Allowing Microsoft to lick it’s wounds and come back again, stronger and even more dangerous.

Nice move, Steve. That itty bitty toy the iPhone needs to be a pretty good distraction to make up for the other losses…

You really have to say this guy hits the nail on the head when it comes to forecasting the future of digital music. It’s a shame only the precis worked as an article, but I just hate that faux friendly folksy meaningless bonhomie that some writers think makes them better writers.

My arse it does.

Original (much longer, but less informative for being so) Business Week article here. I guess they wanted it two pages so they could sell more ads…