Fifth Decade

I was just reading an interesting story in MacFormat magazine about the NHS. They’ve spent a load of dosh (they can’t do anything without spending a load of dosh, apparently) on bringing themselves into the online age with a couple of applications - Choose and Book, and the even more expensive Electronic Patient Record system.

Anyway, they’ve spent £5,600,000,000 to be exact. That’s £5.6 billion. Plus £64.5 million on top. Like a kind of tip…

The story unfolds on Page 8 of the April issue of the mag “Safari users failed by NHS” and describes how NHS online schemes are unavailable to thousands of Mac users because the NHS systems only support Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers.

Health Minister Ben Bradshaw was queried in the House of Commons by the Conservative’s Stephen O’Brien about the £64.5 million Choose and Book appointments system and replied in a written answer using what can only be called Microsoft-speak:

Because of the number of browser versions available to internet users, priority has been given to certification of the application against the most popular browsers in the first instance.

Well, that is strange. I thought there was such a thing as Internet Standards? You know, rules like we have for driving - drive on the left, steering wheel on the right, accelerator on the right, clutch on the left and brake in the middle. Standards that when used mean that any manufacturer can build a car that works on the road, and that any driver can use without having to learn a new system.

On the internet there is a set standard, even a set of standards, and the best websites use what is known as “Standards compliant coding” which basically means they only have to design and code for one International Standard. It is then up to the browser writers to comply with those agreed standards. This saves a lot of money for developers.

I mean, why develop for many different systems when you could develop for just one global standard?

Ah, but that doesn’t help Microsoft sell their software does it, because when there are standards that anyone can use, there is no way to lock them in to having to buy Microsoft. Microsoft have a long history of sabotaging international standards, as we have just seen with the ISO voting process for Microsoft’s OOXML file format when there was already a perfectly adequate ISO standard with far wider acceptance in the Open Document Format (ODF).

That’s exactly what they have done with the internet. In order to force users to buy their Operating Systems they incorporated features into their browser that were sufficiently different to the agreed standards to make life difficult for those with different browsers. In fact, in many ways Internet Explorer does not read standards compliant websites awfully well at all - it’s a flawed browser on many levels, not least of which being security, something of a concern where our health records are concerned.

It’s the waste that gets me though. How on earth could the government spend £5.6 billion on any computer system at all? And then not have it fully working? That’s a lot of tax money. It’s a lot of free prescriptions. It’s a lot of patient beds, a lot of life-saving equipment. Oh, I forgot, it’s also a lot of profit for Microsoft and its supporters.

Well, at least we know what the NHS considers most important then.

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.

There was an interesting debate in Parliament about computing last week. Does the UK Government favour Microsoft?

Fanboys come in two flavours: the committed and devoted user with no financial stake to protect, just the defence of their decision to use one solution or another as an expression of their ego or intellectual snobbery; and the hard-working industry professional whose very financial success and future rests on the adoption of the platform he not only supports wherever he can, but also actively peddles to the less technically able industry and government purchasers he is paid well to advise just because that system will over the long term guarantee him the most work.

When it comes to awarding government contracts in IT, one of the perversities is that because of the size of the projects, the government favours IT consultancies that are large in terms of money earned, and employees available. They ask the consultancies to identify the solutions, when the consultancies have a vested interest in presenting a case that favours the solution that benefits them most. To stay big, and therefore remain on the gravy train, they need lots of man hours to be billed out.

The government say they are of course looking for a cost effective solution, but pre-select the most expensive ones by filtering out those consultancies who did not grow big or become rich because the solutions they provided were cheaper, lasted longer without needing attention, and were more reliable over the long term so needed fewer man hours to be invested.

How can firms that get to be big enough to qualify to tender because they tend to bill lots of man hours be asked to identify the most cost-effective solutions? That’s an organisational oxymoron.

The raison d’etre of both firm and technicians within it is to generate man hours. They should never be asked to identify the solution, because they will always favour the expensive one and find a way to make a convincing presentation that supports their choice. A mechanic who only knows how to repair a Morris Marina will not tell his boss to buy a VW: after all, just because you can find lots of garages with lots of mechanics with experience mending Morris Marinas does not mean the Morris Marinas were trouble free. How would the mechanics get so much hands-on experience if Morris Marina’s were totally reliable cars?

What we need here is separation. Separation between solution selector, and solution provider. At the moment, critics are fighting the symptoms, not the causes. Asking for the solutions to be “more cost-effective” just means the reports the big consultancies produce address this issue as part of the many other issues they know the government consider to be important. Only by having the solution identified by someone or somebody with no possible future advantage from favouring one solution over another will this perversity be addressed.

This is what they did not so long ago with the big accountancy firms. Their auditing and consulting arms were joined at the hip, and this gave each an unfair advantage to the detriment of investors. So the firms were told to separate their two halves, which they did. Now we need the big IT consultancies to do the same: they are too much in bed with Microsoft, and so it is no surprise that their solutions suffer from code bloat, setback, cost-overrun and lack of reliability. They do, however, produce lots of man hours.

Surprise, surprise. Who’d have thought that would happen?

But why do the critics suggest the UK government is a Microsoft fanboy? Dr Pugh MP (LibDem) said “The alternative (to Open Source and small company solutions), which applies across many Departments, is the tendency to have memorandums of understanding with big companies, often foreign and usually American. There is a close association between that side of the industry and the Government—an association that is personal, consultative and advisory. The House will be aware that the former Prime Minister launched the Labour business manifesto at Microsoft. Hon. Members will also be aware that, on the International Business Advisory Council formed by the current Prime Minister, there sits the owner and founder of Microsoft.”

You can certainly hear Microsoft’s own sales training manual coming out of the mouths of babes over and over again, such as in this defence of their position by Treasury Minister, Angela Eagle MP: “It is often suggested that open source solutions offer better value because they are cheaper to buy. In fact, the total cost of ownership is considered in procurement, and it is not always the case that the open source solutions are the cheapest.”

Well, it does depend a lot on who does the study. And if they consider hardware and software together or separately. Let’s face it, Windows programs and applications are not exactly intuitive, are they? There are considerable training costs associated with these too, although admittedly a lot of this familiarisation goes on at school. Yes, the good old Education budget subsidises the training cost of future Microsoft related solutions. I bet they don’t add in this cost to the analysis of doing business with Microsoft products, services, or applications - although they do seem to unfairly add in such costs as extras in the TCO calculations for training on the alternative Open Source or Mac solutions.

Angela Eagle goes on “Although they are free of licence charges, because they can involve high levels of support and training costs, they sometimes do not provide the best value for money. External studies have not shown a consistent cost advantage to open source solutions over proprietary solutions. It is often bandied about when such issues are debated that proprietary solutions are necessarily more expensive than open source solutions, but we have yet to prove that. Some of the figures of potential Government savings from the wholesale adoption of open source that are being bandied about are not taking into account the extra support costs over the lifetime of the project.”

Now, where have I heard that line before? In reality, Total Cost of Ownership studies have clearly shown that buying computers that use the Windows platform is the most expensive long-term option, especially when compared to the purchase of Apple Mac computers. Linux based solutions in some situations can be even better, although for commercial use the lack of a single responsible party to talk to does undermine the uptake of the various distributions somewhat.

But then, another perversity pops up. Dr Pugh again: “inside the Palace of Westminster I can no longer use an Apple Mac computer to surf the internet, which the Parliamentary Information and Communications Technology department has said is because of security, although it has never actually explained how.”

Perhaps they really mean that Apple Macs are so secure that the security services cannot snoop on them as easily as they can on the Windows computers that now have to be used. That wasn’t the decision of the government though, nor of Parliament itself, but a small committee called the “Information” Committee. They never did provide the information, just the secret lockout.

Were they nobbled? It wouldn’t be the first time Microsoft have successfully altered the composition of a body judging them - they even got the Judge changed to one more to their liking in their monopoly trial in the US when it was rumoured the Judge who found them guilty of abusing their monopoly favoured splitting Microsoft up into separate Operating System and Applications entities. The new Judge was more lenient. Quelle surprise.

Where the Government and Microsoft are concerned, there are lots of secrets - and lots for the rest of us to be worried about. For instance, the seemingly preferential treatment Microsoft are getting over IT in the NHS. Dr Pugh again: “I would like to believe the Government when they tell me that they have an efficient deal with Microsoft in relation to Connecting to Health, but I am less than happy that the details of the deal are subject to a confidentiality clause.”

Is it confidential because Microsoft do not want to be prosecuted for illegal restraint of Trade, for again abusing their monopoly power, because of pork belly politics, or because the contract was bought so cheaply the EU competition commission would see it as an abuse of monopoly, trade “dumping”, or illegal state subsidy?

We are right to be suspicious. Dr Pugh reminds us that “during the court case against Microsoft, Judge Jackson in the US Department of Justice said—I would not have put it in such a way, as he said things that are quite damning—that Microsoft’s executives had

“proved time and time again to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false…Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing.” “

What chance has Open Source with the British government if they don’t even practice Open Government, particularly with such partners? And how will anyone be able to see if there is any skullduggery involved? The press make a big thing about contracts to Saudi Arabia over arms deals with hidden payoffs from private companies who just happen to be British, but nobody kicks up a stink when UK taxpayer’s money is spent by our own Government without us being able to see exactly how.

There should be no confidentiality clauses on large deals. The bigger the deal, the easier it is to “launder” some money for some pork belly scheme or another, and the more concerned we should be about where our money is going.

I am quite prepared to believe that many politicians really do want a level playing field, but what about the civil service? All those Sir Humphrey Applebys… they don’t like change, they do like monoliths. They tell the politicians what to say. And they like little advisory jobs after retirement.

I bet they love Microsoft. Maybe the fanboys are the real power behind the throne?

“Yes, Prime Minister.”

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…

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

I’ll be honest, most of what Microsoft does I don’t like. But somewhere deep in the bowels of the giant monopoly abuser are some good people doing some good coding and producing some interesting and profitable programs despite the efforts of the upper echelons to cripple good ideas.

First of all, forget the top two. They’re both there because Bill G’s mother sat on the board of IBM at the time IBM chose Microsoft to supply the Operating System for the new IBM PC. And don’t forget - they didn’t write that themselves, they hacked someone else’s code paying the inventor of CP/M $50,000 in the process. Since then they have hardly shown themselves to be especially talented, unlike many of the people who work for them.

Forget too the business ethics department at MS, because they palpably don’t have one. If they do, it doesn’t work the way you and I understand ethics. For one, they really seem to believe they are above the law. Even where they have been found guilty of abusing their monopoly - in the US and in Europe - they have tried wriggling out of things, or dragging legal cases on so long they evaporate competition while the courts deliberate. After being found guilty of monopoly abuse in the US they applied political and financial pressure to have the judge who found them guilty removed from the case that would identify the appropriate punishment in the US; the replacement left the company intact, a big mistake in my opinion for both the coders at Microsoft and their customers. In Europe they applied similar political pressure to politicians in an attempt to wriggle out of paying that fine - which they still haven’t paid 5 years after they lost the case.

Forget how they treat competitors. The Microsoft way to dominance is to bully the opposition either by forced or coerced buyout, by sabotaging other competitors’ markets by undercutting them with loss making cheaper or even free products (eg the neutering of Netscape), or by writing the code of Windows so that it favours their own Office product (eg the removal of Word Perfect from the No 1 Word Processor slot). I’m sure you can think of other occasions.

Forget anything to do with making customers want to do business with them, the Microsoft way is to force customers to do business with them. This is in sharp contrast to companies like Apple whose customers are wooed by the company with great systems, amazing designs, and an “I want one!” culture so powerful that the shares of other companies can plummet just on the rumour that Apple the innovator might enter their market (eg mobile phone maker shares on the announcement of the soon to be here Apple iPhone).

Forget innovation too. Microsoft haven’t made anything truly innovative since the, err, erm…. actually, what innovation have they brought to the table? Ah yes, the legal argument that if the company was split up it wouldn’t be able to innovate. Er, hello? Innovation is something other companies do Microsoft. You just copy and that isn’t the same. MS is a bit like Bizarro from the DC comics Superman stories, if you remember that far back.

But Microsoft really does have a diamond in its cupboard, and that diamond is Microsoft Office. OK, it has a load of crap stuck in there too, and some of it (such as Access) has been artificially restricted to force users (there they go again, forcing) to buy the more expensive SQL server.

Perhaps Word is rather too difficult to navigate, and sometimes you need to alter three seperate settings held on lower sub-levels of more than one menu selection just to change what something looks like on a page. Word also makes you change each formatting setting one at a time, whereas programs such as IBM’’s Lotus Smartsuite have a pop up menu with all the options available in one place with one click alterations possible. Word files (.doc) take up a lot more space for storage than the equivalent from OpenOffice (.odt files) too.

PowerPoint and Publisher are pretty awful really when you look at other alternatives out there. FrontPage is tragic - have you ever seen the amount of sewage-code this generates for a simple text only web-page? It’s mind-boggling. As for Outlook, it’s really not very powerful and has loads of holes.

The brightest bit of the diamond is though, without a doubt, Microsoft Excel - particularly it’s graphing capabilities. This program is amazing, and when compared to the main opposition at the moment, OpenOffice, it’s like comparing a seedling with a California Redwood. Except that Apple comes from California of course, not Microsoft.

OK, the standard colours of the charts Excel produces are pretty uninspiring, but it’s amazing how few people change them. You can see them dotted around, here and there, in coprorate brochures, annual reports and other literature. But to give them their due, Excel I believe is a wholly grown internal project, not bought in, not pirated, not copied. When it was launched it really did mess up the sales of the then leader for spreadsheets, Lotus Corp’s Lotus 123.

If it wasn’t for Excel, I wouldn’t have bought Microsoft Office. I did buy it to run on a Mac though - I still don’t have MS Office on my PC. Actually, MS Excel appeared on Macs before it appeared on Windows, if you are to believe the stories. One other program Microsoft makes that is pretty good is Visio, but it doesn’t come with MS Office.

But don’t you think it is ironic that MS, who regularly spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) about other platforms such as Linux and Apple - and who try to put Apple off people’s shopping lists by dismissively saying “Macs are only good for graphics” actually have as their “best” products two, err, graphics related programs?

The best thing that could happen for Microsoft would be a breakup, as the one that broke up Standard Oil in the 1920s. When that oil monopoly was broken up into 34 daughter companies including Exxon, Amoco, Conoco etc the sum market capitalisation of all the post-breakup component companies almost doubled overnight - a capital movement the like of like which Microsoft hasn’t seen for many years, unlike the much smaller Apple Inc whose shares have more than doubled in the last year alone. But making more money probably isn’t important as keeping control of as much as possible when you reach top executive level at MS. If I were a shareholder in the company, that would worry me.

Only after a breakup will the bright young minds that are hidden away, deep inside Microsoft have the freedom and lack of top-down management to become truly innovative and bring the world ideas to stimulate our minds and make us finally want to buy MS stuff. Maybe the hard light of day shining into the recesses of the machine would purify and illuminate smaller, post-breakup companies. I fear it’ll be just more of the same though.

What a lost opportunity.

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…

You’ve probably noticed you can get iPod Nanos in many different neon-like colours. Now you can even get iPod shuffles in brilliant colours. Heck, even the Microsoft Zune comes in bright, err, brown.

Looking at cars, most women I know haven’t got a clue what make of car their friends drive, but they do know what colour they are. They can’t tell the sound of a V8 from a straight 6, but they do remember colour. We men aren’t immune either: not for nothing is the most popular car colour silver. Well, after red, blue and white of course.

So, what about computers? Apple laughs at the tired old beige boxes that PCs represent - but then only sell MacBooks in White. Or Black. That’s it - there is no iPod halo effect here. Colours are completely missing from the picture, even though the polycarbonate case of a MacBook lends itself perfectly to colour coordination.

With today’s fast injection moulding processes, the case could easily be custom coloured as an optional extra, and to fit in with all those Graphic Designer types that use Apples all the time for their work, perhaps they could launch a range that use the standard Pantone colours! Hey, you could buy a set of laptops in your own company colours.

Anyway, my girlfriend wants a blue one. She doesn’t know it yet, but if it were blue she might even forget it’s a Mac which she doesn’t understand. She happily reboots her Windows PC 5 or 6 times each day, but won’t make (can’t make) the switch to Mac completely as it is too different for her. One day she’ll have to leave Windows 98 behind though, and I don’t fancy having to pick up the pieces of Vista reinstalls…

So, c’mon Steve, bring us a range of coloured MacBooks. I’ll be blue if you don’t…