Tom’s Two Cents

This is in response to my brother’s post, My $.02 on Apple’s Response to Microsoft’s Response.
Even though I use a MacBook Pro these days, I consider myself as much of an Apple critic as a Microsoft critic. The fact that I have used macs a lot lately has actually led to even more mac criticisms, but part of that is just because I’m hard on whatever I use. The other part is that I think Apple is following in Microsoft’s footsteps — but somehow is in denial about it all. While it makes for a funny ad, Apple has no room to talk about Microsoft’s advertising budget when Apple is even more concerned about image. I’m talking about everything from Apple’s highly theatrical upgrade announcements to the black turtlenecks worn by Steve Jobs and all his faithful followers — I mean employees. It’s downright creepy. Maybe you have to be this obsessed to have really good hardware design… I don’t know. But the real question we should ask is simple: who is really delivering what the customer wants? Let’s see…

• Vista license servers… because entering that 25-character Windows XP product key wasn’t fun enough
• iTunes’ proprietary .aac (and coincidentally incompatible with anything else) music file format
• The new and “improved” (and coincidentally incompatible with anything else) .docx document file format

No, thanks. None of that helps me. In a lot of ways it feels like a race to the bottom. And, just like the presidential race, I find myself trying to pick the platform I feel will be less awful… but not really what I want. In this regard Apple is giving Microsoft a real run for its money. And while everyone has been asking Apple for a cheaper mac laptop, when Steve Jobs unveiled the new lineup of new MacBooks this month, the closest Apple came to that request was lowering the price of the old white MacBooks to $999… until those run out of stock. Beyond that the price of the next cheapest MacBook jumps to about $1300. Um… did I mention that it has a fancy new metal case? *sigh*

So don’t let the cute “I’m a mac” ads fool you. Microsoft and Apple are both spending plenty of money on advertising (and fancy new metal cases, if you’re Apple.) They even run ads about the other guy’s ads. Does this sound familiar? In some ways I wish the networks would suspend Microsoft and Apple ad campaigns — at least until the presidential election is over. I can’t deal with both software and political ad campaigns at the same time. Too much of the same useless stuff. And if there is anyone else out there that thinks they can build a reliable computer AND listen to customers at the same time, I’m ready to hear from you.

Chrome is coming! Google’s open source browser project, is coming out in Windows beta. This comic by Scott McCloud, creator of the classic Understanding Comics, does a nice job of explaining the technical details. Here is a brief summary:

Extreme tab makeover: Instead of traditional tabs below the address bar (like Firefox), Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window.

Multi-process design: This is said to use “a bit more memory up front” but it splits up the processing jobs of individual tabs. It’s similar to the design used in operating systems, with multiple processes happening at the same time. One advantage is that an error that would normally cause your whole browser to crash will now only crash that particular tab. Also, when web pages or plug-ins use a lot of memory, you can spot them in Chrome’s task manager.

Other streamlining: The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features (I am skeptical here, only because I have never used an implementation of auto-complete that wasn’t annoying). And when you open a new tab, instead of getting a blank page or your homepage, you will see your most visited webpages as 9 screenshot thumbnails. On the side, you will also see a couple of your recent searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed tabs. There are many other features, including a privacy mode, as well as anti-phishing and anti-malware safeguards that keep updating and warn against malicious sites.

Anyway, I’m excited to check out what I expect will be the next generation of web browsers. It’s nice to see that this is an open source project. It seems Google is betting big on the OSS (open source software) model. I think it will work. And I find it interesting how quietly Google goes about taking over… everything.