Google has much better …
. . . Excel help than Excel.Every single time I need to find out how to do something in Excel, I try to figure it out from Excel help. Search usually gets me nowhere, but sometimes gives me a clue what I should actually be searching on. But the help I usually get is not very helpful.So I turn to Google, and usually on the first page of results, using the search terms that make sense to me (an admitted Excel weenie, and proud of it) I find the answer.Isn’t that bass-ackwards? Shouldn’t the best source of information about your product come from your company?
Umm … which one?
In a discussion on the burning question of “who Bill Gates really is,” we get the following brilliant insight:
“Bill Gates is the proxy for how Microsoft will be remembered. First and foremost, he’s a businessman. He’s not an inventor or technologist, per se, and I don’t think he would claim to be. He’s fundamentally a geek.”
Greg Papadopoulos, CTO of Sun Microsystems
Count me confused.
eWeek and iPhone: fear and loathing?
Is 3 negative articles in one day a coincidence?
- Analysts: iPhone Has Neither Security nor Relevance
- Enterprise Hurdles Await iPhone
- Fear and Loathing in IT: iPhone and Macintosh
Holy mother, what on earth is going on here?
Could it be an extremely Windows-centric empire of analysts and business media is absolutely terrified that their comfortable bread-and-butter Windows hegemony is dissolving in front of their eyes?
I guess Linux was bad enough - it wasn’t in the MSCE textbook but at least it was technical, and needed user handholding, and ensuring lots of expensive tech support and high-end analysis was required.
But Macintosh! Is iPhone at last the trojan horse that will take Apple into the enterprise, just like iPod has in the home? The very prospect has Windows weenies running scared:
After all, the horde carrying the forthcoming Apple phone won’t be barbarians; rather, the very folks doing the work, and worse, some may well be the boss.
IT departments like devices like Blackberry’s with centralized command and control. They hate things they don’t bring in, that they haven’t first subdued with strong corporate chains. And they fear Apples’ recent success.
Their fear is both justified and unjustified. On the one hand, corporations don’t change their systems and applications overnight. On the other hand, a real alternative is slowly taking shape.
However things go, this outpour of vitriol and epidemic of trembling knees is pathetic.
Word and the web: incompatible
It’s hard to believe that people at major weblogs and web content companies don’t know this yet, but Microsoft Word and the web don’t really see eye to eye:
(At least for people on non-Microsoft browsers and platforms.)
Apple on speed?
Since when is speed the most important factor in a browser’s performance?
Safari 3 is the fastest browser running on Windows, rendering web pages up to twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2, based on the industry standard iBench tests.
Like others, I was a little underwhelmed by Apple’s WWDC conference. Safari for Windows was a surprise, but not the kind of wow I was hoping for. The big thing that is bugging me, though, is selling a browser on speed. Maybe that’s just because I’m a Mac user, but is IE or Firefox slow for most PC users? Do they feel slow?
I haven’t heard that from any of my friends who use PCs.
My only guess is that the average non-technical PC users junks up his PC (and his browser) with all kinds of plug-ins and toolbars - which could make IE feel slow. Safari will win that comparison simply by virtue of not being compatible with anyone’s toolbar.
But I doubt anyone on a reasonably modern PC with a fairly clean IE install is terribly worried about browser speed. I just don’t see it.
Microsoft oPhone
Now this is how to respond to your competition:
(Doesn’t change the fact that I think iPhone is going to rock, but it’s funny, well-done, and … it’s got me listening.)
Tags: iphone, ophone, microsoft, apple, marketing, youtube, john koetsier, pr
Microsoft & Yahoo: dumb and dumber
So Microsoft and Yahoo! are in takeover/merger talks. It’s getting major coverage. Is this a good idea?
- Bill’s Hard Drive
- Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo
- MSFT to YHOO?
- Microsoft aggressively courting Yahoo (again)?
Buying Yahoo! would be Microsoft’s dumbest move ever. Focus dilution, merge headaches, corporate culture clashes … the list goes on and one. Frankly, if I was Google or any other Microsoft competitor, I would be praying that they do buy Yahoo!
Microsoft’s niche - OK, ecosystem - is not the web. That’s not what they do best. They’re desktop and server. That’s where they win. It’s not clear to me that buying Yahoo! makes them any more web-native.
Microsoft would effectively be granting competitors a 6-month headstart - at least - while they tie themselves and Yahoo! up in interminable negotiations, strategizing, and what/who stays/goes triage.
Finally, Microsoft’s ace in the hole - one of them, anyways - is their massive cash hoard. That loot buys them 5-6 mulligans in just about any business sector they’re in. If they use up all or a significant part of their cash, they become that much more vulnerable to the consequences of screwing up.
And screwing up is easy to do when you take your eye off your ball.
Apple: welcome to life as Microsoft
It’s a great story to be the underdog … but it’s nicer to be the top dog.
Unfortunately, being top dog means being treated like one. Apple is now being hit with intellectual property and patent lawsuits almost weekly. The latest one, from Individual Networks, hits Apple where it hurts: the iTunes/iPod empire.
Individual Network’s complaint accuses Apple’s entire music ecosystem of profiteering from iTunes sales and points to anything which can download copies of that content, including the iPod, as contributing to the reported damage. If won under ideal circumstances, the suit would grant the plaintiff not just royalties for every iTunes song or video sold but also a “reasonable” percentage of the revenue from associated devices such as all iPods. The Apple TV and iPhone may also be subject to a future ruling.
While it’s incredibly annoying that companies that do nothing but dream up squiggles on paper and then get them patented could potentially make billions off of others’ hard work of actually building a real product and a real business, that’s the business/legal world of the USA today.
Welcome to Microsoft’s world, Apple.
Tags: apple, legal, IP, patents, microsoft, john koetsier
My very first Mac virus: fake Flip4Mac?
I just received this in my mailbox:
That really, really looks like a virus infiltration attempt. Which is amazing, because although I’ve seen many of those, they always end in a .exe or some such Windows extension. This is the first I’ve seen targeted for Mac.
A quick google reveals that Flip4Mac, which is an actual legit Mac application for viewing Windows Media files, has a vulnerability … but nothing that suggests that there is a virus out there masquerading as Flip4Mac, or Flip4Mac components.
Sounds new. Anyone else seen it yet?
Tags: virus, mac, flip4mac, security, apple, windows, john koetsier
Sony camcorder & Mac OS X: not happy together?
Yesterday I bought a new camcorder - the Sony DCR-SR82 with a 60 GB hard drive. Today I shot some video, and tonight I tried to hook it up to my Mac and play in iMovie HD.
No such luck.
- Sony wants you to use their proprietary software … which is Windows only
- Sony provides a sort of a dock for this camera, which you are then supposed to connect to your computer - there’s no real USB output on this camera
- iMovie HD doesn’t recognize that a camcorder is attached, and won’t import any video from it
- The Mac finder can see the camera via disk mode, and I can see my movie clips in QuickTime format … but I can’t open them. They’re “muxed,” meaning that the audio and video are mixed together and QuickTime can’t open them
- Well, actually QuickTime can open them … if I spring for a $20 plug-in to QuickTime. Hrm … do I look stupid? Shouldn’t QuickTime just come with this needed component in the first time? Isn’t this the zen of Mac we’re talking about here … stuff just works?
- But even if QuickTime can open them after I pay extortion, iMovie HD will still not like me very much … iMovie HD won’t import, play, or edit muxed files
This is just wrong. OK, there’s only one course of action:
- Return crappy camcorder
- Buy new camcorder with better outputs and Mac compatibility
- Write nasty blog post about this hassle (check!)
To be completely frank, being on a Mac should mean that I never have to think of or even hear something so esoteric as “muxed video.” That’s what Apple engineers are paid for.
To be completely george, Sony is smoking something powerful if they think I’m going to change my computer to work with their camera. Not bloody likely.
They just lost a customer.
Tags: apple, mac os x, mac, sony, DCR-SR82, incompatible, muxed, iMovie, john koetsier
-
-
About
Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
Welcome, enjoy, buy the T-shirt, take a picture, tell your friends. -
Virtual me
-
Blogroll