Applepeels

Take-out Tomato Soup and Apple's view of the future

I actually don't see very many television commercials because I watch very little television.  While I know that television commercials are not a locked-in-stone view of the future, they do give us some insight into the companies who put them on the air.  Commercials especially help us identify the products that business like Apple love the most.

While it might not go into the annals of silliest commercials, Apple's last "Siri" commercial which features someone ordering take-out tomato soup deserves some consideration.

Long ago, Apple had a marketing campaign based on a flying car. It didn't last long. Perhaps it was just before its time since flying cars seem to be coming back for real.  

However, some of Apple's campaign's have really resonated with computer users.

Perhaps my favorite was the one with the dog and the young boy who unpacked his iMac and got on the Internet faster than an adult male who had purchased a Windows computer.

I think the commercial was a homerun because at the time, getting a computer other than a Mac functioning was a really time-consuming and frustrating experience.  Getting an iMac going was pretty easy.  Of course life even with an iMac was a whole lot better when it got a Firewire port and could write CD-ROMs.

We have come a long way since the iMac was first introduced. Other manufacturers have learned a lot from Apple.  I would argue that setting up a new Windows PC is not very different from a new Mac today.  I have done both in the last couple of years.

I don't think it is difficult to argue that Apple isn't nearly as interested in desktop and laptop computers today as they are in iPads and iPhones.  Long ago I predicted that Apple desktop and laptop market share would peak at around ten percent.  I think that is pretty close to their current US market share.  I don't see it growing.

However, I never guessed that peaking at ten percent would be because Apple has lost interest in computers. I know that iPhones and iPads are selling like hot cakes but isn't a Mac still at the heart of it? You certainly can't run iCloud without a Mac to create your identity.

Maybe Apple's focus on small gadgets is finally reaching Mac lovers as it appears that users might not be jumping on Apple's iCloud bandwagon.  Apple is now giving away Snow Leopard to make it easier for users to buy Lion.

Maybe Apple's marketing has become silly enough that it is no longer a company strength. Or perhaps potential computer purcahsers aren't interested in searching for take-out tomato soup with their phone assistant?

If you ask me to define Apple's current marketing message, I would say it is all about very fancy screens for tablets and a future where we are reduced to ordering take-out tomato soup.

Maybe I grew up in a different world, but the thought of being lazy enough to order take-out tomato soup is beyond what I can imagine.  And in this world where people are struggling to find jobs, does Apple really believe that there are people out there who can afford to order take-out tomato soup or who even would want to?

If the computer future that Apple envisions for us is asking my phone silly questions and following the responses, it might be time to say out loud that Steve's absence is being felt.

Those of you who still know how to cook might want to try my grilled salmon recipe which is at the end of this post.

Lessons that Apple might learn from its past

If you are a long-time reader of Applepeels, you might know that I have said many times over the years the experience of being an Apple employee depends a lot on what you are doing and the management team in charge of your division.

Today I came across a presentation from RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) that talks about what really motivates people. 

Paying attention to some of the thoughts in the presentation would really help Apple fix a hidden weak spot in their culture and management philosophy. 

You might argue that Apple doesn't need any help with anything, but I actually know some very good people who have left Apple.   In the long run even for a great product company, losing very good people could lead to problems down the road.

Apple actually had some great results in the past from the techniques discussed by RSA, but I suspect that years of wet-behind-the-ear MBAs have erased the memories.

It is likely not a surprise to some readers that Steve Jobs was not a fan of the Apple sales force.  At best he believed them to be a necessary evil.  I did get to hear him in essence say that.  Unfortunately, I never got to have a personal talk to Steve about his views on sales. 

However, I did work for some of his Apple managers who really did not understand sales.

Understanding the potential for success by having good sales leadership as opposed to having nit-picking sales management might not matter today in this world where Apple has become the darling of just about everyone.  However, it did once and might again some day.

In the mid-nineties until early in the next decade when customers, especially enterprise ones, were fleeing Apple, it was important to have a sales force which kept customers in the fold so Apple could survive.  I suspect it will be important in the future even if Apple doesn't slip.

There was a time when it was hard to get good people to work at Apple.  There were a lot of reasons for that, but one of the most interesting ones was that Apple sales people didn't make as much money as other technology sales people.  On top of that selling Apple was much more difficult than selling a generic computer box based on price.

That was especially true when you were selling to the enterprise. You had to convince your enterprise customer who was sometimes betting his job on making a large Apple purchase that Apple actually cared about his business.  That was tough to do when Steve spent most of his stage time telling people that Apple was a consumer company that didn't care about large businesses.

Fortunately Apple had people like Fred Anderson and Tim Cook around who were good at talking to enterprise customers.  However, Apple was like many technology companies in one respect.  It believed in a highly leveraged compensation plan that in theory rewarded the top performers the most.

Most of you have likely never been in sales, but those of you who have had some experience in sales would not be surprised if I told you that there is a lot of room for error in setting quotas and measuring performance against them.  All of this boils down to how much money sales people make.

Much of my first experience with Apple was in higher education sales where in the early days it was pretty easy to measure what customers were buying.  Higher education customers bought everything directly from Apple.  You had years of data to help structure quota.  If you had a decent manager and a reasonable divisional goal, you could feel pretty good about having a chance at making money.

In the mid-nineties during one of Apple's countless reorganizations, I got moved over to the business division.  The team I headed was responsible for resellers and large accounts.  It didn't take me long to be appalled at how bad the historical data was and how flawed the quota setting process was in the business division. 

The first year I was there, my team was given quota for a couple of "reseller locations" that turned out to be bank accounts in Delaware.  They ended up being not used the year after we picked up the quota for them.  It was literally millions of revenue which was in our goal and which turned to vapor the year when we were supposed to grow their business.

Still I had a great manager at Apple, and once we got control of the numbers, the next year my team went on to be very successful.  In the fall of 2001, my very good manager fell victim to being blamed for the failure of a hair-brained scheme from upper management to win the enterprise by selling interactive iMac kiosks.

New management was brought in, and my manager who had been in charge of business sales for the US ended up with only one person directly reporting to him.  That person was me, and I had been given the unenviable challenge of turning Apple's tanking federal business around. 

While competitors often had hundreds of reps covering the federal government.  I was given two reps, one on the east coast and one on the west coast.  My area associate came with me and one system engineer along with a person to work with resellers.

It was a daunting challenge, but one thing I did negotiate was a team goal.  In other words I convinced management and the finance people that it was more work to figure out individual numbers for customers than it was just paying everyone on one number. Our small team worked towards one quota number.  If we hit it, we would all be successful.

Doing that made all of our lives much simpler, we focused on the customer and didn't really worry about who was getting paid for what business or even through which channel.  We were wildly successful.  We grew our business a phenomenal amount, and I ended up being manager of the year.

Now the compensation plan obviously was not the only reason for our being successful.  I had run a stealth federal sales organization for over three years.  With help from a number of operating system folks in Cupertino and support from upper management, we removed a lot of barriers facing our customers.  We made Macs attractive as an alternative in the federal market to virus plagued Windows machines.

Still I firmly believe that it you look at the historical records, the team goal was a big part of the reason that a relatively small team of committed individuals were able to turn around Apple's federal business.

We managed to keep our team goal for three years even as the number of people working for me grew to over twenty.  Though we didn't make a lot of money after the first year, we more than tripled Apple's federal revenue in less than four years at time when no other enterprise team was nearly as successful.  The reason we didn't make much money was that each year after the first our goal was set so high that it was almost impossible to make.  That a whole different story.

Still I had a very motivated team that was growing Apple's federal business by leaps and bounds while making less and less money each year.  In the final year that I was at Apple, the team goal was abandoned until six months into the year when Apple had to admit they couldn't figure out individual revenue performance.

It is interesting that most executives get paid on the total performance of the company, yet they almost all believe that paying sales people on just the business they "personally touch" is the only way to effectively compensate them.  I would argue that what is good for motivating executives might work even better for sales people.  It certainly did for the ones who worked for me.

My experience at Apple and the research presented by RSA seems to indicate that a leveraged monetary reward for the top performers isn't necessarily to way to get the best performance out of anyone.  Fixing that might make a huge difference in the Apple sales force over time.

At least that is the view from NC's Crystal Coast where the winds are still blowing this spring, but the ocean water has warmed enough for wading and the air temperature is to the point that a quick dip in the pool is possible.  We still haven't found a new owner for our home in Roanoke, but I have started a new career selling cloud-based network asset management tools.

I will be focusing on that new opportunity in spite of living in a spot where there is a special place around every corner and the beach is always calling me.

 

 

Thoughts on Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs and the technology that he brought to market had an incredible impact on my life.  I was fortunate enough to be at Apple the first time Steve was there and to still be there when he came back.  When I won business manager of the year for Apple in the fall of 2001, my prize was one of the original iPods that was among the first off the line.

Actually I was a little underwhelmed with the iPod since previous award winners had gotten computers.  I would have much rather have received an iMac than an iPod.  I still have the iPod and while I used it on many cross-country trips, it certainly has not been a product that transformed my life.  That role fell to many of Apple's earlier products which allowed me to do things that I might never have attempted.

I first fell under the spell of Steve during the original Macintosh rollout in 1984.  I was working for a reseller and helping to manage five Apple focused locations across the Canadian Maritimes.  Seeing Steve draw a circle on a computer screen with a mouse convinced me that I wanted to work for Apple.  It took several months before I got an Apple job, but on November 26, 1984, I started to work for Apple Canada.

It was a wild ride with many high points and more than a few valleys. I continue to believe that Apple survived more because of three groups than anything else. First and most important were the dedicated customers, then there were some resellers who just wouldn't give up, no matter how badly they were treated, and finally there was Apple's field sales force that acted as a buffer between much of the craziness coming out of Cupertino and the people who really wanted to buy Apple products.  That to a large extent was true at Apple before Steve came back and remained so even after he took over again.

I got to see Apple management at its best and at its worst.  I made calls with Gil Amelio, Avie Tevanian, Fred Anderson, and a host of others at Apple. I had a number of briefings with Steve and Tim Cook. I was on campus enough to verify some of the legends about Steve, but they are not what sticks most in my mind about Steve.

First and foremost he was a product person.  People outside of his inner circle mattered little to Steve, but when he was focused on a product, he had an intensity that was a wonder to behold.  I still remember a particular enterprise briefing when Apple was working on iMovie.  Steve came to the briefing and all he wanted to talk about was iMovie.  Not surprisingly, that didn't bother the customer, they just wanted to hear whatever Steve had to say.

Then there was a NASA CIO briefing when Steve showed up in shorts, sandals, and tee shirt.  Steve still held the room in the palm of his hand.

There was, however, a dark side to Steve, I still remember Apple's largest single site for Macintoshes writing to ask Steve to come speak at their 50th anniversary celebration.  They were willing to schedule the time for Steve and the anniversary celebration anytime during the year that Steve could do it.  They had gone straight to Steve and not involved me, but when they didn't hear anything after a couple of months, they asked me to try to get them an answer.  I took it up through our VP and after another three months of trying unsuccessfully to get a yes or no answer, I finally told the customer that Steve was unavailable. It was hard for them to swallow since the Apple campus is only a short car ride from their site.

This was the same Steve who did have the time to personally choose the chairs for our federal booth at FOSE the only time corporate ran the booth instead of the field.

I also remember the time when Steve was taking questions from the enterprise sales force. One of my system engineers asked Steve when Apple was going to do advertising for the PowerMacs that we were selling.  Steve replied never and that if he did, he could get rid of us all. It was not a motivating moment.  Steve didn't even get to speak to us the next year.

Steve did some great things with products, but his view of people and particularly the sales force was colored by his self-imposed isolation.  After Steve came back, we were told repeatedly that those of us who remained at Apple during his exile and helped to keep the lights on until he came back to rescue the company were basically worthless.

Perhaps the most difficult thing for the field sales force was the lack of trust.  Apple would often do non-disclosure briefings for customers and ask the Apple field employees to leave the room. In fact customers often knew more about what Apple was doing than we did.

There is no question that Apple leaked secrets for years, but the reality is that it was almost impossible for the leaks to have come from the field sales force, because we were never given much information.

One of the great challenges of being an Apple manager was standing up in front of a crowd after a MacWorld announcement or any product announcement for that matter and answering questions.  The only information that we gleaned came from Steve's customer presentation.  And to top it off, we were hearing everything for the first time exactly at the same time when the customers heard it.  Any literature that came before an event was often stamped with dire warnings of immediate dismissal if the literature were opened before the event.

Still working at Apple was a great privilege and an opportunity that changed my life. Some of things that I learned to do, I never would have mastered had I not worked at Apple.  The original Apple IIe, the Macintosh, the iMac, the Titanium PowerBook and OSX were products that I will never forget.  I still love the Cube, and though I have never owned one, I think the latest Mac Mini is an outstanding product.

Software was always a more challenging thing for Apple.  iPhoto was really the first piece of Apple software that really hooked me, but I remain convinced that Steve had nothing to do with the latest incarnation of iPhoto.  It certainly isn't up to Steve's standards.

I don't think there is any question that Steve was a product genius, but I don't know whether or not the organization that he left behind really got a chance to learn from him or just fear him.

Certainly Apple has great products right now, but the company has some products that I can tell haven't had Steve's touch for a while. I still believe that the design  of the current iMac's with a SD slot inches below the DVD slot never got the kind of attention from Steve that he gave the white half moon iMac.

Even a genius like Steve only has so much bandwidth, but with an Apple culture where many felt powerless because Steve always had the final veto, I am not sure genius had much of an opportunity to grow in the shadow of Steve.

So in a certain respect, Steve being gone might let Apple begin to change its culture.  Apple now has to make room for other very talented people and give them true decision making power.  Tim Cook is a very smart man, and some of the things he has already done at Apple are good moves.  I seriously doubt that Tim sees himself as a product visionary, but I suspect he believes that he can find those people and give them enough rope to keep Apple successful.

There might never be another product person as brilliant as Steve Jobs, but it is important to remember that what he brought to us were just products even if they were elegant ones. Those beautiful products took a lot more smart people besides Steve to get to market.  Maybe Bill's products weren't as beautiful, but they still remain the choice of the vast majority of the world's computer users.

Time will tell if Apple learned enough from Steve to continue its success.  I remain hopeful, but most of all I hope Apple remembers one of Steve's most important lessons.  If you are going to do something, be the best at it and focus your energies on only the few things where you can be the best.

We will have to wait and see if Apple can do OSX, desktops, laptops, iPads, and iPhones all to the degree of perfection that Steve would want.  It is a big challenge.  I will keep my fingers crossed.

I am working on a book which will offer my view of Apple from the inside.  In doing the book my goal is to let people see what it was like to work for one of our era's most facinating companies.   I think my book will provide some insight into how Apple survived until it found the right products to be successful.  

The nearly twenty years that I spent at Apple gave me a view that few people got.  No one that I know has been willing to share with the public a similar view.  Many of my stories will be hard for outsiders to believe, but I can assure you that there are plenty of Apple folks who will verify what I have to say.

Working on the book has been a real trip down memory lane, but I am committed to finishing the first draft before the end of the year.  I plan to give the book the same exceptional effort that I gave to my career at Apple. 

Hopefully the great coastal weather and the lure of fall fishing and kayaking won't impact my schedule, but our recent summer weather has made staying inside and writing a little difficult.

One last batch of iPhoto and Picasa tests

I was traveling when I did the recent tests that I published regarding iPhoto 9.1.5 and Picasa.

Returning to North Carolina's Crystal Coast gave me a good chance to run some more tests and include my I5 iMac.

Again I formatted a SDHC device using my Sony camera.  I took 48 pictures.  I tested to see how long it took a computer to recognize the card, automatically launch the photo software and import all the photos.  I configured it so I only had to click once on each system for the import to start. Timing was done with the stopwatch App on my Motorola Droid phone. (Perhaps iPhoto 9.1.5 was protesting the Droid being the timer.)

Here are the results with the fastest system listed first

1. I5 iMac w/Picasa on Snow Leopard, time, < 30 sec.
2. HP I7 laptop w/Picasa on Windows 7, 31 sec.
3. MacBook, w/Picasa on Snow Leopard, 35 sec.
4. I5 iMac w/Photo 8.1.2 on Snow Leopard, 42 sec
5. Dell P3 w/f-Spot 0.8.2 on Ubuntu 11.04 47 sec.
6. I5 iMac w/Aperture 2.1.4 on Snow Leopard  52 sec.
7. MacBook w/iPhoto 9.1.5 on Snow Leopard  84 sec.
8. Dual G5 w/iPhoto 7.1.5 on Mac OSX 10.5.8 118 sec.

It is not unusual for me to import 500 photos in one day so speed in importing photos is important to me.

I have made my decisions on what to use. I will be using Picasa on my MacBook where I cannot go back to the previous version of iPhoto.  I'll continue to use iPhoto on my iMac where I still have iPhoto version 8 libraries.  I hope these tests might be helpful to others.

While it would be interesting to run tests with Lion, I keep getting reports from my more adventurous friends that are keeping me on Snow Leopard.

Here are two sample quotes from friends whose technical opinions I really respect.

"Not having a good Lion experience, it is a dog on my 2006 iMac and my 2009 MBP."

"Lion is not what it is touted to be. As have some others I have found it slower...."

However, this is not a discussion about Lion on which I have zero experience.

Also I realize that there is a newer version of Aperture, but I don't use Aperture nowadays so I'm am not interested in the spending the money for the upgrade.

The interesting question is why Apple would release a product like iPhoto 9.1.5 which is so much slower than the previous version?

I could speculate all day on that, and it would still just be pure speculation.  However, here a few thoughts on the issue.

From 10,000 feet, I still believe this has more to do with Apple trying to get their software more IOS like.

People who read the first post in this series might remember my statement that it took twenty years for Apple to come up with a piece of internally crafted software that I really loved.

Apple has also introduced some other really poorly performing software over the years with iWeb being the best example.  Additionally while I have finally grown to like Pages for certain uses, it has never been fast.

While this might seem out of left field, I believe the explanation can be found in some of my old experiences at Apple.

One of the interesting things about life at Apple is doing executive briefings and trying to get Steve to show up to talk to customers.  I can remember a time when we hauled some enterprise clients out, and Steve showed up and would only talk about iMovie.

Within Apple having Steve's focus is a good news, bad news scenario.  You will get the resources to do something, but it will be done Steve's way or heads will roll. A great breakthrough product like iMovie can result from Steve's focus.

One of the real challenges of a company driven by one person's genius is that even an extraordinary one like Steve has only so much bandwidth.  With very little real decision making power passed down to the troops, products or strategies can languish until Steve happens to turn his laser glance towards them.

I call it the "Keynote Phenomenon."  I believe Keynote has gotten regular upgrades and remained a solid piece of software because Steve uses it regularly.  I would be willing to bet that Steve never used iWeb and I suspect MobileMe services fall into the same category.

I can almost guarantee that if Steve tried to import 500 photos into iPhoto 9.1.5, we would have a fix and perhaps a much more usable piece of software.

If Apple still took the time to have customer advisory boards or to let heavy users test software changes, I suspect iPhoto 9.1.5 would have never gotten out the door.  Maybe Steve doesn't do movies and photos anymore?

Apple has a history of coming up with some really great ideas, but the company sometimes forgets the importance of staying laser focused on what is really important to users because it has so little interaction with users.  I think it is a company weakness, but I doubt it will change because it has been that way for so long.

I am not a huge fan of either Adobe or Microsoft software, but I still reach for Word and Excel at times, and I have been doing that for more than 27 years in the case of Word and almost that long for Excel.  I also still pull Photoshop out once in a while.

Unless Apple can figure out how to give products like iPhoto a life of their own, and Filemaker might be a good example and even role model, iPhoto, introduced in 2002, might not make it much beyond the ten year mark as a tool for those of us who are more than just casual users.

We can always hope that small developers continue creating more great tools like Rapidweaver, Coda, Pixelmator, Nisus Writer, and Shutterbug which I recently used to create a very nice non-flash based slide show that will play on my smartphone.

 

 

A Mac user's conclusion that Vista is a quagmire

I am six months into my Vista experience.  Today I reached the tipping point.  While I have to continue using it, I am going to say flat out that Vista is not worth the effort.

My efforts at liking Vista go far beyond what I would normally do for any piece of software.  I have used Vista ever day for over the last six months.   I have let Microsoft do whatever it wanted to do to my system through automatic updates.

I have intervened once and that was only when the wireless networking on the my Vista HP laptop was so bad that I was ready to throw it into the water behind the house.  I searched out some new drivers for my wireless card.  That improved wireless performance to the point where the system became usable.

Still I struggled through the stupid situation where every time I put the system to sleep I had to deal with a distorted screen once the system wakes from sleep.  The only solution seemed to be rebooting the laptop. Any Vista user can tell you that takes far more time than any computer in recent memory.

My guess and the guess of others is that I have graphics driver issue.  So I went to the nVidia website.  After I finally got it to figure out what system I was using, I was told that I could only get driver updates from HP.com.

When I got to HP.com, I found that there were over 40 systems with the name of HP Pavilion dv6000.  So I looked on the back and found another model number HP dv6451.us.   I made a mistake typing and put "Pavillion dv6451" instead of Pavilion dv6451.  At that point I was told that over 400 products claimed the name.  I finally got the name right only to find out that HP has no recommended driver update.

While I was on HP's site, I decided to see why my system has not been updated to Vista Service Pack 1.  First I found HP Notebook PCs  - Update to Vista SP1 Frequently Asked Questions and then the even more scary HP Notebook PCs  - Precautions to Take Before Updating to Vista Service Pack 1.  After reading that I decided that I did not even want Vista Service Pack 1, but I still wanted to fix my problems with the video.

I have been a little suspicious of HP Update program anyway since it has failed to install updates recently so when I saw this paragraph I decided to roll the dice and see if I could shake things up on my system.

The HP Update utility will check for updated drivers and software, however the older versions of HP Update (v4.000.005.007 or earlier) will not work properly after upgrading to Vista SP1. To install the latest version of HP Update, open the Control Panel and uninstall the older version of HP Update. Then go to the hp.com web site and search for the softpaq SP38202 HP Update and HP Software Update - Critical Security Update (English only).

I uninstalled my HP Update software and managed to get the new version working after a number of tries. When I finally ran the new HP Update, I got a message that no updates were available for my system.

So at this point I was beginning to think there was no hope for the driver update that nVidia hinted that HP might have available for me.

I decided to run Windows Update just for the heck of it.  Windows told me that there were no critical updates available for my system.  However, when I looked in optional updates there was a new graphics driver update for my system.  I installed it, and just gave my system the sleep-wake from sleep test.  Much to my amazement, I no longer have a distorted screen on waking from sleep.  Tomorrow we will see if that was chance or it is really fixed.

One would think that I might be making some type of convoluted progress, but it was just the appearance of progress.  If you have perhaps read my On the eve of Apple's Leopard, I buy a Windows Vista Laptop post, you might remember that the overriding reason for me, a user of Apple products for 26 years, to buy a Vista system was so that I could do real estate forms.

This afternoon I once again needed to send a PDF form to a remote customer so they could renew their listing with me.  Last week I had a problem doing PDFs with the forms package that I had installed to get around the one which had become very flaky on Vista.  An older program seemed to work once I retyped the client's information.  When I tried to do that tonight, I got an error and could not create a PDF. I tried the first program, and it wouldn't work either.

I resorted to the help menu only to get this message. It is amazing to me that Microsoft would not build some sort of mechanism to read old help files.  After all Apple figured out how to run non native software on Intel processors.  I decided that it was time to punt on the two forms packages on my Vista machine.

This was a two page document so I decide to save the file to my Sony USB thumb drive which I have never used in my Windows Vista machine.  I inserted the thumb drive and Vista started searching for a driver.  It actually hung the machine, and I had to reboot.  At that point I decided to print the document to my upstairs office where my old XP machine is.  I did that successfully and entered the information on the real estate forms package on the XP machine.  The PDF file was created successfully, and I emailed it to the client.

I had carried my USB thumb drive up to perform a test.  I stuck it into my Zonbu Linux computer.  I was not surprised when it automatically was able to use the USB drive.  I took this screen snapshot and actually sent it to my Windows Vista box.  First it went as a PNG file.  I tried to upload the image to Typepad.  Typepad didn't recognize it.  So after checking to make sure it had an extension, I went to my Mac and imported it to iPhoto and emailed it again as a JPG file to the Windows Vista machine.  Once again I tried uploading from the Vista machine and Typepad refused to recognize it.

At that point I saved my post as a draft, turned around, and climbed on the stool by my Mac.  I took the same file that had been sent by the Linux box and uploaded it to Typepad without any problems.

While all this might seem like enough to chuck the Windows Vista box, it really isn't the straw that broke the camel's back.  That actually came earlier in the day.

I have multiple email accounts from a variety of providers since I live by email.

This morning I noticed that two of my email accounts were unresponsive.  Since I used to work for the company hosting those accounts, I chatted with their Director of Infrastructure using my Adium instant messenger client.  He admitted they were having "bandwidth" problems.  I did not think much of it as my Mail app on OSX just put those two accounts offline.

Unfortunately I had something to do on my Vista laptop and happened to click my Outlook email client which was running and trying to download messages. Those two unresponsive IMAP accounts hung Outlook completely.

All of this taken together shows me that Microsoft has done a terrible job with Vista.  The Linux from Zonbu works better.  The forms packages that I bought the Vista system to use barely work and certainly do not have the promised functionality. And if two unresponsive email accounts are going to lock up my email package, I need another email package.

The amount of lost productivity due to Vista is amazing.  Now there are likely people out there whose Vista systems work perfectly for them.  Mine doesn't.  It was a brand new machine, and is only six months old.  While I am getting a few problems fixed, worse ones are cropping up.  The machine is scanned regularly, and the worst thing that has ever shown up is one tracking cookie.

It all boils down to this. Windows is a time sink. This morning we were having a debriefing on a promotion that our company recently did.  Someone happened to mention that it would have been a better promotion if he had been able to get to his files off his crashed Windows machine.  Apparently our support person has been trying to recover them for a couple of weeks.

I just smiled to myself since the head of our company had told me that the flyer I produced recently was one of the best he had seen.  It had taken less than an hour on Pages.

It is clear to me that if you are an independent contractor like I am, you might have to use Windows for some Windows specific things, but if you are trying to produce high quality work with a minimum effort,  a Mac is the only way to go.

Otherwise consider yourself in the never ending quagmire of Vista.

It might be easy to say that the problems with Vista are to be expected since the OS comes from one company and the hardware is thrown together from a variety of companies who have lived in a world where no one has taken responsibility for the user's problems for years.

However, it is not easy to be that Vista user in an environment where you have to support yourself.

It is much easier being a Mac user.  Apple certainly isn't perfect, but using OS X is an order of magnitude better than fighting with Vista.

There lots of things to do here on the Carolina coast that are more fun than trying to use a Vista computer.  Tomorrow, I plan to not torture myself with Vista.  I might even go fishing again.

A Vista perspective from a Mac user

Actually I like to think that I am more than just a Mac user.  I have been using Windows XP for over four years, and Linux for nearly the same amount of time.  I have also seen operating systems come and go since 1982 when I got my first Apple II+.

First off I suspect that Microsoft will work hard and eventually get Vista to be the operating of choice for most of the planet.  The reason that it will have that honor has more to do with inertia than engineering prowess.

The inertia comes from two sources, Apple and end users.  People do not like to get out of their computing comfort zone, and switching operating systems is a sure way to get a few headaches no matter how good the new system is.

After a few months of using Vista, I have some opinions on the product. 

It is almost deadly slow when it comes to booting, shutting down, and waking from sleep.  A Powerbook running OS X is an instant on machine compared to a Vista machine.

Second wireless networking on Vista is a work in progress.  While I will admit that my Airport Express network needs replacing, a number of laptops visiting us including multiple XP ones have had no trouble using it.

in the mornings I often get to the point of having to reboot my Vista laptop before it will connect to the wireless network.  In its defense, I do not have that problem at our office or at our other home which has a standard Airport network.

I have found Outlook to be a fairly capable email client, but it also is slow and somewhat prone to stopping if I click once too many times.

I have seen far fewer 'Firefox has stopped working" problems on Vista than I do on the Mac.  I still do not like Internet Explorer though the 64 bit version seems fast.

I also find Google Desktop search integrated into Outlook by far the most productive search engine that I have used.  I like Google Desktop search better than Apple's Spotlight, but I am only speaking from OS 10.4 Tiger experience.  I have not used Leopard (OS X 10.5).

Google Desktop as a side panel hangs regularly on Vista usually after the machine awakes from sleep.

I have had far fewer problems than I anticipated using Vista to hook up the wide variety of printers that I have access to at home and work.

I am not particularly fond of Windows Live Messenger, and I try to use Pidgin when chatting.  I find that I keep wishing for Adium on Windows.

I have the latest version of Microsoft's Office Suite.  I have had little trouble with it, and it seems to do whatever job that I throw at it.  Here I have to admit that I am no longer someone who is a power office suite user.  I have used Excel more than the other applications.  The new user interface took some getting used to, but now I find it more productive.

I also miss Fetch, the FTP Client that I use on the Mac.  I use FileZilla but it is not as nice as Fetch.

One of the best applications that I have found on Vista is SnagIt which does screen capture and a lot more.  I certainly do not mind paying for it.

On Vista I miss the ability to turn something into a PDF from any application at the operating system level.  I think it is a huge feature advantage for OS X.

In general most of the applications done for Vista do not look as good as Mac applications.  However, there is so much flexibility in Windows, that you can build a very productive work if sometimes painful work flow.

The combination of a built-in photo memory card reader, Picasa and SnagIt do almost everything that I need in the world of graphics.  I find it faster than iPhoto and  Photoshop.

I  have yet to do much web work on my Vista machine.  To be fair, I think I will wait until I have some more time with the Vista products.

So would I recommend Vista as a main operating system to anyone who had other choices?  The answer is probably not.  It just doesn't have the high quality feel that I thought it would after all those years of development.

Vista is not unusable, it is just disappointing.

But I am also disappointed in Apple.  It continues to amaze me that a company with Apple's financial resources and popularity cannot seem to fight its way out of the paper bag of Windows.

Bill and team have done everything possible to hand over the market to Apple, yet Apple does not seem to want the opportunity.  Back when XP was having unbelievable security problems, Apple was so insecure about their own security that they would not market it.

Apple has changed chips, and Macs can run Windows natively and in virtual machines.  Still Apple's market share even in the US is barely half way to double digits.  As we have heard  from some international visitors to Applepeels, Apple is not exactly rolling over the competition selling and supporting computers in other countries.

Apple might have a few bumps with Leopard, but I seriously doubt it is the anything like the pain in the rear that Vista is.  With Vista languishing while waiting for a service pack, the best Apple can do is a few funny commercials.  Even with the best retail chain in the nation and  a stock price that is headed over $200, it looks like the majority of the computing world will remain Windows centric for the foreseeable future.

I guess there is not enough pain in the Windows environment or enough innovation in the Apple world to get consumers moving on their own.  Steve Jobs apparently was serious years ago in his concession to Bill over desktop operating systems.  He certainly does not appear to be interested in winning that war even with his superior weapons.

I would love to see the innovation of the Zonbu computing  model married to the better than anything else user interface of Apple and the nearly unlimited choice of the Intel hardware world.  If you could integrate it into better bandwidth and a choice of server providers that would store and protect our data, we might get people to try something else.

Right now I guess I am stuck with Vista for my real estate world,  and Macs for my website work with whatever computer I am using being the repository for my photos.

I managed to get a batch photos into my Zonbu machine, but I do not see me using it for the 100 photos or more a day that I do until we take another leap in bandwidth.

So maybe Apple will surprise me and take the next leap forward at MacWorld this year.  If it is iPhone II, pardon me if I yawn.

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A Real World Update

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I had to work this afternoon so I lugged my Vista laptop into one of our offices.  The wireless network was down so someone rebooted it.  The Windows XP machine on my desk connects immediately.  The Vista laptop which had successfully connected to this network several times before, cannot see it either before or after the wireless reboot.

So I decide to reboot the Vista machine.  I joke to one of the administrative assistants that the best thing Microsoft can do is to buy OS X from Apple and replace Vista with it.

While my Vista machine is still in the process of rebooting, I pull out my spare computer, a MacBook, and bet that I can be surfing the net before the Vista machine is done booting.

I count out loud and in eight seconds from the time of opening my MacBook, I am surfing the web.

While I am logging into Typepad, the Vista machine finally gets to the point of needing a password for login.  Even with the reboot, I still cannot see the network which the MacBook sees and the Windows XP desktop beside it also sees.

I would be embarrassed in the year 2007 to ship an operating system that cannot reliably and without failure hook to wireless networks.

As I said long ago, Windows, This is nuts.

 

My Mac saves my PC once again

Technologically things were going well, but it about to go downhill rapidly.  In the end it was only having my Mac around that rescued the day.

I had managed to survive the first few months as a Realtor® without spending much time on Windows.  My Dell Dimension 4700 which I bought nearly three years ago had continued to perform admirably. 

The Macs and the Dell were exchanging information nearly seamlessly and to top it off Ubuntu was working well.  In fact I had just installed Ubuntu's Fiesty Fawn on my system on Tuesday night. The printers were all working well, and as far I could tell, I was as close to technological nirvana as one user might get.

Monday afternoon we read about what we thought was to be a brief power outage in our area on Thursday.  I had to do duty in our real estate office on Wednesday afternoon.  When I got home my wife said the power was off for a couple of minutes.  I thought for a second that I should get that UPS for my office the next time I am at Staples, but it was just a passing thought.

Later that night when I went up to my office to do some work, my Windows PC would not boot.  It would get half way through the Windows splash screen before dropping back to the screen I get before GRUB shows up.  I tried booting into Linux and was able to get both versions of Linux up on their individual drives.  However, the Windows partition on the Ubuntu drive just didn't want to work.

I pulled out my Windows XP CD and tried unsuccessfully to get it do anything useful.  I even disconnected my SATA controller that had initially rescued me three years ago and tried the drives one by one on the motherboard controller.  Nothing worked so  I decided to go up to Staples just to see what a new PC would cost.

I was pleasantly surprised that I could get a HP Laptop (link will likely not work well) with 15.4" screen, 2 gigs of ram, 160 gig hard drive, and the 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo for $999 with the $50 rebate they were offering.  The problem was that there was no information on the system.  I had to wait 15 minutes for someone to bring me a box from the back so I could read about what I was contemplating buying. I did try the keyboard and found it to be as good or better than the one on my MacBook. Fortunately this model from HP wasn't one with an off center trackpad.  I am left handed so I will not even consider one of those.

Actually I did tell the Staples guy that I would take one, but I had a case of one minute buyer's remorse and told him to stop, and I would think about it for a day or two.  I suspect my wife's comment of "Why are we buying another computer?" had a lot to do with it.  To me it seemed a reasonable price to pay for no more wrestling with the innards my Dell which I was content to have as my Linux machine.  Some of my reluctance on the Dell was that everything is so closely fitted in my new office that I have to get down on the floor on my side, disconnect cables, and carefully extricate the Dell from a shelf on a table by rotating it sideways.  I then have to go through the same process to test whatever I do.

My Dual G5 was too big to fit in the spot so it is a lot easier to work on should it ever fail.

We spent a grumpy 20 minutes riding home since I did not see a lot of options.  I had an immediate need to get going with this Windows forms package for a listing that I am doing with our broker in charge. When we got home I immediately brought up the Parallels Desktop on my MacBook, determined that I had to throw away about 2,000 pictures and went through a relatively painless Windows installation, followed by a relatively easy installation of realfast forms.

The pain came when trying to use it on my MacBook's small screen.  I did manage to work my through everything to solve my immediate crisis.  The problem as I explained to my wife was that my Windows validation did not work since I was trying to use the code from my dead Dell.

I suspect the validations are tied to hardware profiles so I was not surprised. So I explained to my wife that this was an imperfect solution which would last only 29 more days.  I also told her I had no intention of paying over $300 for a copy of XP since you could get a cheap new system for not much more than that.

Later that evening I took another run at re-installing XP on my Dell.  I did a complete format of one drive which took nearly two hours and failed.  Since that was my Suse Linux drive, I could only console myself with the thought that I did not like Suse a lot anyway since it started breaking every time I did an upgrade.

I spent a restless night trying to solve the problem in my sleep.  Next morning I confirmed what I thought was the case.  I had messed things up enough that GRUB would not work and my Dell had become essentially useless. I had downloaded Ubuntu the night before and tried to reinstall it, but the installation would not work.  That led me to trying to format the second SATA drive.  Three partitions showed up, so I picked what I thought was the previous Windows partition and did a quick format since I had enjoyed such success with the full format previously. Miraculously it worked.

I then stuck in my Windows CD and mirable visu it also worked and decided to install Windows. When the installation finished, and I rebooted into Windows and could not access the Internet it dawned on me that I needed the stupid drivers disk to make everything work.  In essence my Ethernet controller was worthless.

I turned to my Mac and went to Dell.com.  I actually have to give Dell credit, since once I entered some codes that were on the side of my Dimension 4700 I could access a copy of the configuration of my system and the downloads to match.  I downloaded the Ethernet driver and the video card driver to my Mac, burned a CD and loaded them onto my PC. I installed Firefox, Google Pack and Desktop.  I was then off to the races.

Of course off to the races, mean installing 75 security patches.  We just went out to lunch and had a nice piece of Grouper at T&W's Oyster House while that happened.  I came back installed Office which fortunately I had with me, and went through some more updates.  Then Internet Explorer got updated, and I bought a new subscription to Norton Anti-Virus since I had been meaning to switch from McAfee anyway.

I downloaded a new driver for my Brother laser printer, did one more installation of realfast and I was set to go.  I eventually stuck Thunderbird on the system. 

Once I found a drive that would work, it took about six hours for everything to get back up to speed.

I was probably only around for about three hours of it.  Much of the three hours I was doing something else on the Mac so it ended up not being too bad.  I shudder to think of how long it would have taken if I had not had the Mac and Internet access for those crucial drivers.  I did not really lose any data on the PC.  Most of my important data is on various web servers or backed up on firewire drives.

So once again I came close to buying another PC laptop.  I actually have a Dell 610D Latitude which was swiped by my youngest daughter who is finishing a business degree.  I am glad I did not buy the HP more because I know new processors are coming next month than anything.  While I love my Macs, I have to admit that I like the variety of laptops in the Windows world, and I am very impressed with the pricing.

I suspect that being a veteran of three versions of Linux, Windows XP, and Mac OS X along with other operating systems back to the beginning of computer time, that I could survive Vista without a lot of problems.  I even noticed Vista drivers for my printer and a Vista version of realfast so it would not be the end of life as we know it if I bought a Windows laptop with Vista.

It occurs to me that both Bill and Steve are missing a great business opportunity.  They should be selling discounted versions of their operating systems to run alongside the other.  Maybe what they need to do is get together and sell an operating system two pack which will run on anything. I would pay $300 for copy of Apple's and Microsoft's latest which I could run on anything. Of course I am dreaming and giving both Steve and Bill nightmares especially considering that they both had good quarters.

Since I have some Microsoft stock, I am pleased to see the giant money machine turn in a very good quarter.  With Apple I can only watch and wait to see if all the focus on things other than computers ends up being good or bad longterm.

I know that solving my Windows problem even with the help of the Mac allowed me to get back my focus on living on the coast.  We headed over to Emerald Isle, enjoyed the beach, and watched the waves.

Monday I get to do my first listing as a mostly Mac toting Real Estate agent, we will see how it goes.  I am thinking maybe I should offer computer support to any buyers who use me as an agent.  Computer support in our area is a work in progress.  Of course most visitors to the beach should take the advice that I offered in an article and just leave the computers home.

Still I better not catch any Mac users out there who want to visit the area and maybe even consider it as a place for a second home working with a completely PC real estate agent.  I got a pretty unenthusiastic response from the local PC reseller when I suggested that they try to get Mac authorized. So I remain one of the few Mac resources in the area, and you might need me.