tundraboy's Profile

  • Aug 28, 2008
  • 100
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Latest comments made by: tundraboy

  • Hmmm, Microsoft desperately wants to be loved. Well then, forget Gates or Seinfeld, they need to hire Sally Field. "You like me! You really like me!"
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Aug 28, 2008 Posts: 100
    Vista means having to say you're sorry
  • There is a basic tension between a single platform provider (MS for Windows, Google for Android) and their client hardware manufacturers (PC makers for Windows, smart phone makers for Android). This tension arises from the fact that the platform providers will always want the client PCs or phones to be as similar to each other as possible, while the client machine makers will want their PCs or smart phones to be as highly differentiated as they can get relative to their competitors. Life would be easier for MS if Dell, HP, etc. would be happy just selling generic, interchangeable machines. But of course the PC manufacturers wouldn't want their product commoditized. Same deal with Nokia, Moto, Samsung etc. The inevitable result is platform complexity that negates the presumed advantage of sharing a common platform. Android will suck for the same reason that Windows sucks: The effort to constantly fine tune the code just to accomodate this and that phone manufacturer's idiosyncratic specs will divert Google's resources away from truly innovative software development work. With so many moving parts, introducing a new feature or capability for Android becomes an excruciatingly slow process because every new thing must be tested against all the different Android smart phones out there.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Aug 22, 2008 Posts: 100
    iPhone: Death by Android?
  • Last year I've been commenting about how iTunes and the various stores within it (music, video, apps) is the secret sauce in Apple's recipe for digital hegemony. It's certainly playing out that way. It's the walled garden that Microsoft, Sony, Nokia, Google, Amazon, Netflix and everyone else out there is trying to replicate given that they can't get in it. But iTunes is too established already for anyone else to offer an alternative. If you manage your music there, might as well manage your videos. Might as well throw in the smart phone as well, and games, and movies and whatever else Apple can think of. Why bother dealing with another website/app when iTunes can do it all quite smoothly? Netflix is the only one that seems to be holding its own but it's not guaranteed that it can survive the disc-to-downloads transition.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Aug 12, 2008 Posts: 100
    Apple's Future Prospects
  • Also, let's not be so quick to judge Chinese employment practices on U.S. criteria. I'm not saying China is a factory workers' paradise but the alternative for a factory worker at Foxconn is probably unemployment and starvation as a rural peasant. If you are going to insist that China give this person U.S. level compensation under the pretense that you care for his welfare, then what you are doing is basically condemning him to poverty because no manufacturing jobs will exist in China if companies are forced to pay at or near U.S. scale. All, get this, ALL large industrialized economies today went through a low-wage phase where industrial labor was dirt cheap and the standard of living for factory workers were just a few notches above subsistence levels.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Jul 28, 2008 Posts: 100
    Apple's Pricing Scheme Is Starting To Bother Me
  • If you compare prices just based on the bill of materials, of course you will be quite upset. But somebody has to pay for the torrid pace of software AND hardware development going on at Cupertino. And that top-rated tech support at Apple doesn't come free. Staffing all those Apple Stores with geniuses doesn't come cheap. Dell on the other hand is a company that spends very little on R&D;and customer support. If you're mad at Apple for the 'high' prices, then buy some Apple stock so that you can benefit from their pricing strategy. So far with profits and market share growing the way they are, looks like Apple is keeping prices right where they should be.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Jul 28, 2008 Posts: 100
    Apple's Pricing Scheme Is Starting To Bother Me
  • It's nice to see that Apple will not make the same mistake that they made with MacIntosh in 1984 when they let Sculley prevail with his insanely high pricing and retarded the Mac's market share growth for the next 20 years.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Jun 12, 2008 Posts: 100
    Apple's Intrusive Smiley Faced Cash Grab: The iPhone App Store
  • What it needs most of all is a bigger HD movie catalog and more time to finish watching a movie rental. All those features suggested above are mere bells and whistles. People will buy AppleTV for movie rentals. If they don't get that right it will never sell in any meaningful quantity. No matter how many other features they put in there.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Jun 05, 2008 Posts: 100
    Come on Steve, at WWDC Make the Apple TV Great
  • If Microsoft really wants to maximize shareholder value, this is what they should do: Break themselves up into an apps company and an OS company. Let the apps company pursue any opportunity on any platform be it Windows, OSX, Linux or the cloud. Let the OS company focus solely on developing a modern OS without the added burden of running interference for MS Office. So all the apps makers can work with them without the fear that their tech secrets will be passed over to MS's apps division. And if the apps work better because of this, then the OS becomes more desirable. It also gets the EU and US antitrust monkeys of their backs. But of course it will never happen because nobody in Redmond has the guts nor the vision to do such a thing.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on May 15, 2008 Posts: 100
    Suicidal Microsoft?
  • I did something similar when I got my AEBS. I ethernetted* my old D-Link wi-fi to one of the AEBS ports and ran all my 'g' devices on it while the AEBS ran pure 5GHz 'n'. *Look it up in any 2008 dictionary. They put in this verb to compensate for the official delisting of the adjective 'gullible'.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Apr 30, 2008 Posts: 100
    Using the New Airport Express an n Router
  • Nope. Clones won't help Apple. The received wisdom is that IBM clones are what made Windows so successful. That without the clones, Windows would not have been the dominant platform today. I beg to disagree. DOS (and Windows after it) succeeded because IBM picked them. Microsoft (not IBM) ended up dominating the personal computer market because IBM did not get the exclusive rights to DOS. And so Microsoft was able to sell to the cloners and the rest is history. If Microsoft was barred from selling DOS to cloners, IBM would still own the PC market today. Cloning makes sense for Microsoft because they do not sell hardware. Would it make sense for BMW to license their technology to BMW cloners? Would it make sense for Boeing to license Boeing clones? Would it make sense for Sony to license PS3 clones? Of course not. Why does anybody think Apple is any different?
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Apr 22, 2008 Posts: 100
    Is The Time for Clones Now?
  • Cognitive dissonance is a funny, sad thing to watch.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Apr 16, 2008 Posts: 100
    The Genius of Apple Stores
  • As Apple's sales success continues I am apprehensive about the prospects of the Genius bar. Though the demand for sales support rises in proportion to sales, the demand for Geniuses (which is an after-sales support service) is dependent on the installed base. Apple will thus have to keep spending more and more to support the Genius Bars or they will have to start rationing free service, probably cutting off Apple products below a certain vintage.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Apr 14, 2008 Posts: 100
    The Genius of Apple Stores
  • Most people get emotionally attached to music. That's why they buy the same album on LP (if they were old enough), then on cassette, then on CD and then remastered CD. What other proof does one need to realize that people want to own their music? You mention a music subscription plan and most people's immediate reactions are negative. "You mean as soon as I stop paying, all my favorite songs disappear?" Or even suspicious "You want me to get hooked on these songs so that I keep coming back and shelling out like a junky." And yet, a subscription, or shall I say "unlimited whole-song sampling privileges" can benefit both music buyers and sellers as it allows music buyers to expand their tastes and buy more music. So what arrangement would give sellers the income stream that they want from a subscription while allowing buyers to own the music that they like? Purchase $15 worth of music and you get one month's unlimited whole-song sampling privileges. For subsequent months, purchase just $10 dollars of music and your privileges continue uninterrupted for another month. Simple. No contracts to sign. No long term obligations.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Apr 01, 2008 Posts: 100
    The Greatest Threat, and Opportunity for iTunes
  • I finally saw and held a MacBook Air yesterday at the local BestBuy and I don't care what its shortcomings are. This thing seduces you like no other lump of aluminum does.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Feb 06, 2008 Posts: 100
    Apple Designs Make Work More Enjoyable
  • Okay, Tanner let's not say Ferrari. Let's say the much much cheaper Mazda RX-8. Same point holds. Apple is trying to hit market-differentiated segments here. You are unhappy with the MBA because it doesn't hit the product space you wished it did. The product space you should compare the MBA to is the one for lightweight (3 lbs and under) laptops. Then the MBA doesn't fare too badly price-wise and feature-wise. Yes, they picked a different compromise than Sony or Toshiba, they gave up a drive and ports in favor of ergonomics and processing power. We'll see if the buying public chooses their set of compromises. You can pan the product if you think it pales against the other lightweights out there. You can pan the product if you think this is a market segment that Apple is foolish to get into. But to pan the product because it isn't more like a MB or MBP or even the 4+ lb 12" PowerBook is, yes, missing the point by a mile.
    United Statestundraboy had this to say on Jan 22, 2008 Posts: 100
    Improving the MacBook Air