Saturday, November 24, 2007

Oh, the pain of it all

Apple has warned investors that Boot Camp may discourage developers from developing Mac applications. That's a shame. With the exception of games, Apple seems more than eager to fill any voids left by developers.

Just look at iLife and iWork. There is no peer for those application suites, particularly iLife. With a Macintosh ecosphere to work in, you don't need much else. Oh yeah, Office is a more powerful and bloated system, but it costs hundreds instead of $80 for iWork. For the average guy who already has all that at the office, iWork is just fine for around the house stuff.

And there just isn't anything available at any price to compare to iLife. If Apple decides to merge Bento into the iWork suite, or just make it interoperable, good night Irene. Ooh. Wait. They did.

That warning didn't dissuade me from holding on to my shares.

Somebody just "Digged" a BusinessWeek story from 2001 about why Apple Stores were doomed to fail. Apple has been doomed since 1976, when they introduced that personal computer thingy. Face it, nobody is interested in an expensive gadget like that. In the view of forward-thinking pundits, Apple has been headed for the shitter for 31 years.

You have to wonder how they're going to screw it up this time. The consensus is that Apple TV is a non-starter. Microsoft already failed trying to merge the computer and the TV. Obviously, if Microsoft can't manage it, Apple should just give up. I haven't bought one yet, but I will. I'm waiting for the hacks that let me have a 2Tb drive attached, and rip my HD and Blueray DVDs to it. It's just a matter of time. Somebody will write a program for it or for my Mac that lets me control it. When they do, I'll buy one the next day.

The other thing that might happen is that there might be enough intelligent programming on TV that I'll actually want to turn it on when there isn't an NFL game in HD. You know, stuff I might be interested in downloading. I'm betting on developers and Apple.

Time for a turkey sandwich – sourdough, mayo, salt, turkey breast pulled off the ribs, anything else is red communism.