Another Short Post

That's what she said just before the bed broke.

It's Wednesday. In all my reading, all Apple has said this week is, "We're having a media event next Tuesday."

Other news based on absolutely no real information has driven the stock up to $145+, then down to ~$131. Remember: Absolutely NOTHING REAL has happened, or even been said. Tech pundits, analysts, and fund managers working in concert could fuck up the phases of the moon.

What a bunch of morons.

I will no longer report news of Vista or Zune. I read a site today where dueling geeks compared OS X to Ubuntu as alternatives to Vista. Sort of like Disneyland or Marriott's Great America as alternatives to a cell in Guantanamo Bay. Vista is the sound of a dying dinosaur.

Let me repeat something I said earlier in the year. When a new operating system is five years in the making, it must ROCK when it hits the street. It must leapfrog all the other technologies out there. It must be better in every respect to everything that could compete with it. Vista does not meet those criteria. Vista may be just as good as OS X; depending on who you talk to, maybe it is. It might be somewhat more stable than Linux. But it doesn't rock. Therefore...

Vista sucks.

Linux and OS X are all there is for right now boys and girls -- and Linux is just too geeky for most of us. It requires way too much computer brains for me to use it, and I've been a computer hobbyist for almost 30 years. John Q. Paralegal-Actuary-Dieselmechanic, who just wants the frigging thing to access email, the internet, and the laser printer does not want to spend time tweaking things in the command line.

The August 7th Thing

I'm betting Apple will introduce a real entry-level Mac at next week's media event. Something they can sell at an Apple kiosk in Best Buy. They've already stolen Dell's "custom built at the factory" strategy and improved on it. The individual Apple stores are making more money per square foot than any legal retail operation outside of Nevada.

Now if Apple starts selling computers outside of Apple stores – in places like Best Buy – Sony, HP and some of the lesser brands will start to feel the pinch too.

This time, though – having learned the lessons of partnering with Sears and some others a few years ago – Apple can put some Mac savants in the building to make sure their stuff gets marketed and sold. Then if they put a low-end home machine in the store... Oh yeah.

That's as serious as I'm going to get this month.

Time to brush my teeth and put on my jammies.