Author: The Macalope

Those iPhones. They'll kill ya.

Enderle.

Rob Enderle has some horrible things to say (tip o’ the antlers to Piotrowski via email) about using the iPhone in a corporate environment.

Hard to believe, isn’t it? The Macalope is just as shocked as you are.

But, apparently the iPhone can cause your entire company to come crumbling to the ground almost instantaneously. And give all your employees syphilis. Or something.

“The device isn’t secure enough, nor is it designed to run with corporate systems,” he said.

Enderle has been running around his usual circuit of lazy journalists spreading the idea that the iPhone isn’t secure since the day it came out.

The only real basis for this argument seems to be the fact that because it will run QuickTime, show a variety of image types and do other multimedia tasks, those files can be used to compromise the iPhone the same way they can be used to compromise a PC or a Mac.

Sooo, it’s no more or less secure than a PC or a Mac. OK. [The Macalope is working on a piece on security which he hopes to post over the weekend.]

What about it “not being designed to run with corporate systems”? There’s some truth here. iTunes is not an enterprise-level application, many web-based business applications use Java which the iPhone doesn’t support and many businesses eschew 802.11 because it’s not as secure as good o’ Ethernet cable.

But Enderle’s foil in this article — Forrester’s Charles Golvin — doesn’t seem to know what the hell Enderle’s talking about. He thinks some Office functionality will quickly make its way to the Mac (hey, even TextEdit can read Word files) and notes that Exchange does IMAP and so does the iPhone, unlike RIM devices. So the iPhone could be a good corporate player.

To really try to scare corporate IT executives, Enderle decides to play a little buzzword bingo.

If executives insist on connecting iPhones, then the IT department has a duty to report the violation since it could mean that Sarbanes-Oxley or other compliance rules have been broken, Enderle said.

Ooh! Mention Sarbanes-Oxley! That’ll get ’em!

OK, now, the Macalope has not read Sarbanes-Oxley in its entirety, but he does know a bit about it and the whole point of it is putting in place proper controls that are properly documented. It obviously does not dictate which hardware or software you can use. If your business decided that what it needed to do to be successful is have every executive walk around with a live grenade in their hand, that would be fine under Sarbanes-Oxley as long as you had the proper controls in place (i.e. their hands would be duct taped closed, they’d be followed around by an admin assistant whose job it was to hold their hand closed, etc.).

Enderle is simply trying to use the issues of corporate security and policy as a club to try to bash the iPhone and get his name in another useless he said/she said article. Anyone who manages IT policy knows that the iPhone could just as easily be part of a policy as almost any other device. Enderle is simply assuming that business won’t make an Apple product part of their policy and that the only way it could conceivably get into an enterprise is from some rogue and rather stylish executives who might also be metrosexuals.

The point should be that no device that’s not an approved corporate standard (not just ones made by Apple) should be used for company business in an enterprise environment. The Macalope didn’t make this rule up and he has a lot to say about how enterprises tend to pick the least common denominator (Windows) as their corporate standard, but that’s the way this works, like it or not.

You could just as easily pick OS X and the iPhone as you could Windows and the Blackberry (or all four!) provided your policies and procedures covered those technologies.

Enderle’s one-trick pony really needs to be put down.

Liar, liar, ill-fitting pants on fire.

Newsweek interview with Gates is a sad affair.

Poor Bill Gates (antler tip to several readers for the link).

The Vista rollout is simply not what he’s used to.

This is probably why Gates gets awfully snippy when asked about the “Get a Mac” ads. The Macalope’s velvety flanks heaved with laughter when he saw that Newsweek decided to actually put the “Get a Mac” ad in question on every single page of the interview in case readers hadn’t seen it. Just another in a long string of Vista rollout pieces that have turned into free Mac ads.

So forgive Gates for being reduced to his inner 14-year-old.

Does honesty matter in these things, or if you’re really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There’s not even the slightest shred of truth to it.

This response, really, is pathetic. The way to deflect these ads is not to get your panties in a bunch and whine that they’re just big fat stupid liars and shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!

You laugh them off and move on to the next question.

And did Gates just say Apple was cool and Microsoft was not?

It must be hard for all those painful junior high memories to come flooding back.

Gates engages in some “historical revisionism”, particularly with regards to security.

Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally.

Well, that’s just a load of crap. No, they do not come out with one every single day (cough). And even if they were, who’s exploiting these bugs? No one. Well, no one other than the MOAB folks themselves, that is.

The Macalope found it really interesting that Gates chose to mention the MOAB (as if it were still going — a perpetuity of Apple bugs rather than just a month). Let’s consider again the timing of the MOAB — timed for Macworld or timed for the Vista release? Or both?

Well, the Macalope’s probably being paranoid. It’s not like Microsoft has ever paid anyone to conduct dubiously ethical guerrilla marketing.

Ahem.

The Macalope himself is getting a little tired of the Windows/Mac OS “who copied who” argument. It was more interesting during the naescent development of the desktop operating system market (indeed, Mr. Gruber’s detailed analysis is a walk down memory lane), but now that both platforms are mature, it would simply be irresponsible if they didn’t copy ideas from one another. But, as Gruber notes, Microsoft’s habit of saying Apple’s shipping product stole ideas from Microsoft’s vaporware (yes, Vista’s shipping now, but they’ve been doing this for over a year) is a sad piece of dissembling.

The one feature Gates mentions for the next version of Windows (coming in 2010! Or maybe 2011! Or…) is one that’s been rumored to be included in Leopard. So he’ll be able to claim Microsoft invented it first four years from now when it finally ships in Windows because he mentioned it once in an interview.

The house that Gates built sits on top of a crumbling hill. As Merlin Mann noted on the most recent edition of MacBreak Weekly, the company’s money-makers are, as they have always been, Windows and Office. Everything else — the Zune, the Xbox — is losing it money.

So when a big product rollout of one of its two money-makers fails to excite the user base and turns into an ad for the competition, it challenges Microsoft’s ability to manage its revenue stream like a subscription service.

And pisses off it’s founder and chief technologist.

However, one might have hoped for a better response than “I know you are, but what am I?”

UPDATE: Peter of the Norse in comments points out something the Macalope noticed but forgot to comment on. Many of Gates’ comments were heavily edited, prompting Peter to quip:

There are so many square brackets, I thought it was obj-C.

Aaaaaand now.

The MOAB is over.

Remember the Macalope had asked you to hold all your snide remarks about the lameness of the Month of Apple Bugs until, you know, the end of the month?

Well, you may fire when ready.

Or, you can just read TJ’s excellent wrap-up here.

Indeed, it does seem the Macalope may have given the MOAB folks too much credit as TJ subtly alludes. Not that it was a complete failure — some of the bugs could have been serious, if you didn’t know enough to take routine precautions. Still, Apple and the third-party vendors have patched many of the bugs — particularly the most serious one — and let’s not forget Landon Fuller’s work in providing real-time solutions to each of them. That boy deserves a hearty round of applause.

What the Macalope finds most interesting is the MOAB’s apparent belief that all the mundane tasks such as updating, giving credit and providing accurate information are for the little people, not the big swinging dicks of hacking. Weeks later, they still haven’t updated their web site to reflect patches.

Being a hacker is never having to say you’re sorry.

Clearly their intent in picking January was to try to steal some thunder from Macworld. Boy, that sure worked well, didn’t it? Remember how all those reports of bugs in, uh, VLC and, uh, FTP software the Macalope’s never heard of overshadowed the iPhone announcement? The Macalope remembers being on the showroom floor and how everyone was crowding around George Ou, who was behind glass and guarded by a security detail, just to catch a glimpse of him.

Oh, wait, that was the iPhone.

Well, the hacker crusade against Apple (or is it its customers? The Macalope’s a little unclear on that) isn’t over. Next up is the iPhone which, although no one has even held one yet and the final specs aren’t even settled, is apparently some kind of security nightmare. The Macalope supposes this is because it’s based on OS X and there was a whole month dedicated to security holes in that piece of crap.

Hmm.

UPDATE: Ah. So, it’s a crusade against Apple customers (tip o’ the antlers to Rahrens in comments).

OK. Good to know! Thanks, guys!

Switcher poser

Switcher… not.

Reader Toby provides a link to a report by Joe Hutsko on MSNBC entitled “A Mac user switches to Vista”.

Hutsko lays it on thick, leading off with a stern warning to Mac zealots: DO NOT BRING YOUR EVIL HERE!

Joe, the Macalope knows the Swamp Thing, he’s worked with the Swamp Thing.

You’re no Swamp Thing.

With a lead-in like this with its over-the-top protestations about having “mad Mac street cred, yo” while damning Mac fanatics and begging them to “just give Vista a chance”, one would understandably suspect this was the return of Microsoft’s previously outed faux switcher campaign, but wait for the pathetic punch line.

Hutsko’s piece is really just a fairly even-handed account of one person’s view of both operating systems and as such it suffers from the fact that he makes no attempt to look beyond his personal experience in the time he used Vista. So it’s already not very useful before Hutsko pulls the rug out from under the whole thing.

But I really miss that peaceful, Zen-like quiet I felt with my Mac when I’d wake it up or put it instantly to sleep. For me, it just works right, without really having to think about it.

So I decided to switch again. From Vista, back to the Mac — to the brand new, white MacBook on which I told this story.

What?! Joe, you didn’t switch. You got paid to write an article about using Vista and then went right back to using the Mac!

And what is up with your verb tense in those two paragraphs? You “miss” the Mac that you’re writing on? Wha-huh?

If we can’t write to you to lambast Windows, can we write to you to lambast your use of lame writing tricks and confusing conjugation?

Ouch!

CNN’s Miles O’Brien offers an accurate observation on the Vista rollout.

The Macalope didn’t see it, but his friend the Kraken was watching CNN’s Vista-palooza this morning and noted with some glee that after an interview with Bill Gates, Ali Velshi was talking about how many Windows users will face a confusing upgrade that may require them to buy new machines. Miles O’Brien replied “Or, they could just go Mac.”

The Kraken dryly noted that that pretty much took the air out of the whole piece which had been sounding a lot like an ad for Microsoft up until then.

But O’Brien’s comment is exactly what the Macalope’s been thinking about this all along. The Vista upgrade forces a purchasing decision for many Windows users. Most will simply suck it up and buy a new PC with Vista already installed because they either fear change, don’t know any better or just really prefer Windows.

But if you know any wavering Windows users, now would be a good time to try to talk them down off the ledge.

UPDATE: O’Brien also apparently asked Gates if he was deliberately trying to copy OS X.

Everything you can buy is a rip-off

Such is the implication of a piece on the Test Bed.

The Macalope has had a good chuckle at the meat-heads who like to say that Microsoft’s inability to ship a real operating system update for five years is a feature, but the Test Bed’s Emil Larsen — if his whimsically entitled piece “OS X is a rip-off” is to be taken seriously — must be the gristle of head meats.

This is the extent to which Emil covers the features Apple released in every update of OS X:

Apple, on the other hand, charged for OS X updates; sure they had new features – DVD playback, better CD/DVD writing capabilities and interface goodies like gui dpi control, but with v10.1 Apple had the cheek to charge for CD burning and only a minority of people took advantage of v10.3’s “fast user switching”…

Uh, Quartz? FileVault? Safari? iChat? Dashboard? Exposé? Spotlight? Smart Folders? Automator?

Any of those ringing a bell?

Many of those are features you can only now get on Windows by upgrading to Vista and you could have had them a year and half ago when Tiger came out. Earth to Larsen: that’s worth something.

Helloooooo? Anybody home?

Nope. Looks like Larsen must have stepped off the planet.

Larsen’s basis of comparison is looking at each release of OS X, adding up what each cost and then comparing it the price of Vista Home Premium. This is really not comparing apples to apples (no pun intended). Vista Home Premium, for example, can’t be used in a domain/AD-based LAN and OS X can. But, the Macalope is willing to spot him that particular point.

He’s not willing to spot him some other assumptions, however. For instance, how many people really bought Cheetah? The Macalope did, but ran it purely experimentally. It frankly was not ready for prime time and shipped so Apple could say that it shipped OS X. Puma was the first usable version (although most people probably didn’t convert until Jaguar shipped). So, a more realistic comparison is to add the price for Puma, Jaguar, Panther and Tiger for a total of $516 U.S.

Vista Home Premium’s suggested retail price is $159 (note: the Macalope is using suggested retail prices for both operating systems instead of Larsen’s trick of using suggested retail prices for OS X and discounted prices for Vista). If you’re still stupid enough to believe Larsen’s thesis that it’s not worth something to get a feature sooner rather than later then OS X is about 3 times more expensive than Windows. On planet Stupid.

So, advantage Windows!

Well, no.

If not having features to actually use is somehow itself a feature, then two can play at that game.

Because it’s not like Apple held a gun to your head and forced you to upgrade. You could have simply bought Puma (or Jaguar) and not upgraded again until Tiger. Then OS X is only 1.6 times as expensive as Windows. Or, you could have not bought anything and simply continued to use OS 9.2! Or 8.5! Or 7.1! Or a slide rule with the Mac OS smiley face drawn on it!

Advantage Mac!

Conversely, by Larsen’s logic Microsoft could never release another version of Windows again and be infinitely more cost-effective than the Mac!

Advantage Windows!

Ugh.

Do the people at the Test Bed know that if they don’t have any good material they can just not post that day?

No link for you!

Dvorak.

The Macalope has been both chastised for linking to silly pundits looking to enjoy ill-gotten hits by senselessly bashing the Mac and for not linking to them and allowing readers to decide for themselves.

But if there’s one silly pundit who does not under any circumstances deserve a link, it’s John Dvorak. He’s already admitted on camera that he does it deliberately, so no link for John. Mr. Gruber has already covered Dvorak’s weird personal phobias (and he provides a link if you want to read the piece yourself), so let’s look at some other incendiary quotes from his piece ostensibly arguing Linux stands to make some gains on Vista.

You can tell he’s just out to rile Mac users from the get-go.

From what I can tell, the Mac community likes Vista more than the PC community.

Wha-huh? You may be mistaking lack of concern for praise, John, because, frankly, we’re kind of over Windows.

From there Dvorak slides into a bunch of silly “PC users are from Mars, Mac users are from Venus” crap that makes it apparent he hasn’t laid hands on a Mac since the early 1990s and is simply recycling the same material he used to put on the back page of MacUser magazine.

Really, just how right-brained is the Unix system structure, John?

When it comes to the Apple-versus-PC battle, one oft-neglected discussion is that the majority of people do not like Macs. Get over it, it’s true.

Well, actually, the Macalope would note that the majority of people have not even used a Mac, but for the sake of argument, he’ll concede the point. They’ve at least chosen the PC over the Mac and maybe you can define that as “liking” it more.

But why don’t they “like” Macs?

They don’t like them because they don’t have the breadth of applications that are available on the PC (particularly games), they have traditionally been harder to find (the Apple Store is changing that), you can’t buy really cheap(ly made) Macs and because they’re just used to using Windows at work. Dvorak seems to be implying that people prefer the Windows interface and for most people (but not all people) it’s not that at all. They may be used to the Windows interface, but that doesn’t mean that if they were able to look at the two objectively they wouldn’t prefer the Mac.

And there is the much-discussed odd nature of the fringe Mac users who are cultlike and often psycho in their behavior: They see the machine as an extension of themselves and defend it from criticism with an unpleasant vehemence.

As opposed to those who criticize it with an unpleasant vehemence and profit in doing so. Look, any time someone likes something quite a lot, they tend to defend it. How is that more bizarre than conducting a 15-year editorial campaign against a minority platform?

If Dvorak were at least trying to form a legitimate argument against the Mac — and you can form a legitimate argument against the Mac, the Macalope has already made a better one than Dvorak did — it would be one thing, but we already know he’s just whacking at the hornets’ nest hoping to stir up some hits because he’s told us right to the camera that that’s his shtick.

This article is a twofer of linky goodness for Dvorak. He get hits from the Linux community by being a big-name columnist praising the operating system and he gets hits from the Apple community by — inexplicably — blaming the shortcomings of Vista on the Macintosh.

Wow.

If you listen closely, you can still hear the echo of the girlish squeal of delight he emitted upon dreaming up this twisted feat of logic.

If Vista has a tough row to hoe in convincing Windows users to upgrade it’s because:

  1. Microsoft left its users on XP for five years instead of providing incremental upgrades to ease the transition.
  2. To “enjoy” the Aero glass interface elements, many users will have to upgrade their hardware.
  3. Microsoft is offering so many versions of Vista you need a wizard to determine which one you should buy.
  4. The thing is DRM-ed out the yin-yang.
  5. It’s simply getting reviewed poorly.

The Linux Foundation is an attempt to solve some of the problems with Linux and make it a better desktop alternative. Hopefully will pay off, but it’s not going to happen during the Vista introduction.

No, the biggest threat to Vista currently is the Mac and Dvorak knows that. His absurd attempt to blame a potentially lackluster Vista rollout on Apple is just another in a long string of his annoying attempts to use Mac users.

It’s way past time we stopped playing along.

The Peter Principle

Wharton’s Peter Fader provides a compelling argument for changing majors.

Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader provides today’s object lesson in why an MBA may be a tremendous waste of your time.

Fader is asked his opinion of the iPhone, the AppleTV and Steve Jobs and manages to get just about everything wrong.

He even breaks out our old friend, Artie MacStrawman.

Pete Mortensen and innerdaemon do a good job of deconstructing much of Fader’s absurd analysis, but the Macalope loves a good piling on, so he’ll try to hit some points they declined to.

I think that when this phone actually hits the market, some of the grand visions of Steve Jobs has as well as some of the Apple zealots are going to be rather disappointed.

Use of the term “Apple zealots” should automatically disqualify you as an impartial judge of the company, let alone passing yourself off as someone competent enough to be teaching marketing to anyone other than members of the Microsoft management training program.

In fairness, it’s quite possible that Fader got his ass kicked by some Mac users back in grade school and has never gotten over it. If that is the case, the Macalope would like to apologize to Fader on behalf of Mac users everywhere.

Asked if $500 is too high for the iPhone, Fader says:

Well it’s not going to be too high for the first few hundred thousand people who just have to have it. You can charge them anything and they’ll pay anything.

Ah, those must be those craaaaazy Apple zealots! Of course we’ll pay anything! We’re Steve Jobs’ butt monkeys!

NEW ORDERS HAVE BEEN RECEIVED FROM APPLE HQ. REPORT TO CINGULAR RETAIL OUTLETS TO RECEIVE NEW DEVICE. BRING LARGE BILLS. THAT IS ALL.

Please. This kind of childish crap can be refuted with two words: G4 Cube.

Also, while it’s not at the same level, the Macalope would like to point out the time when we came together as a community and stood up and said “No!” to iPod socks.

But for the mass market, if they really want to create something that is anywhere close to what the iPod did, it is very expensive.

Right you are, Petey. Because it’s not like the original iPod was considered too expensive.

Wait, what?

Not to mention that Fader’s concern seems rather foolish with today’s revelation that the $500 will include 18 months of service as AT&T attempts to go for the market share gold. [Scratch that. AT&T sez no. (link via Daring Fireball and Jared Rice in comments).]

And, I think on the feature side, it doesn’t really have that many features.

Are we talking about the same phone? The one that’s an iPod, a phone and a breakthrough internet communications device? The phone with a full web browser? That phone?

Did you see that interface? That’s a feature. A feature you will use every single time you touch the phone. And it’s a feature none of the other phones have.

The problem with Fader’s analysis of “features” is he’s looking at some checklist he’s thrown together of “features” such as “upgradeable memory” and “removable battery” and “FM tuner” and, well, golly, the iPhone don’t got none o’ those.

Well, yes, dumbass, that’s going to happen when you just count “features” of other phones (many of which no one will give a crap about when they see the iPhone’s interface) and don’t count features of the iPhone that are less tangible.

As an example, which of these two features are more important to you?

  1. An FM tuner.
  2. The ability to just guess how something works and be right about 99% of the time.

The Macalope’s thinking #2 is just a tad more important, is not on Fader’s list of “features” and will be one of the big differentiating factors bewteen the iPhone and pretty much every other phone on the market.

On Steve Jobs, Fader says:

He’s a brilliant man but he’s of course very mercurial…

Of course! He must be! Someone wrote it on the bathroom wall at CES!

…he’s unpredictable and he’s very private.

“Unpredictable”? Really? Then why is Fake Steve so dead-on all the time? Jobs is, actually, fairly predictable. If you have enough imagination.

As far as I know there were no announcements about the Mac. That really is the bread and butter of the company.

Actually, no, it’s not really, love chunks. The iPod generated about 48% of the company’s revenue in the last quarter compared to 43% from Mac products.

And it’s a signal that they’re not going to be developing or supporting it as much as they used to.

That is simply a load of crap. While the iPod is overtaking the Mac as Apple’s most prominent product, the fact is that Steve Jobs chose to roll out the iPhone in dramatic fashion and that says nothing about the company’s support for the Mac.

How is it that Microsoft can go five years without a major update to Windows and Jobs fails to devote time to the Mac — after devoting almost all of his WWDC keynote to it just five months ago — and Apple’s suddenly dropping the Mac?

The interview is really an indictment of Wharton’s marketing department and if the Macalope were dean he’d call up Knowledge@Wharton and have them pull the thing immediately.