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Moving to (or from) the dark sideWell, 2008 marked the purchase of a MacBook Pro for personal use and the replacement of the Windows Mobile Smartphone with an iPhone 3G for business use. Was the MacBook Pro life-changing? No, not really. Was the iPhone game-changing? Yes, it probably was that good. According to Jakob Nielsen (and others), Alan Kay said in 1983 that the Mac was the first computer worth criticizing. Jakob then commented that the iPhone was the first mobile Internet device worth criticizing. Others have said the iPhone was the first phone worth criticizing, but I guess "mobile Internet device" sound more impressive than "phone". My MacBook Pro had extra memory added to take it to 4GB and Fusion 2.0 from VMware was installed. As at the time of writing there are virtual machines for Windows XP with IE6, Windows XP with IE7, Vista with Office 2007, Windows 7 Beta and Ubuntu 8 with Open Office 3.x. It also has Office 2008 for Mac, Firefox 3.0 and iWork08. Physically, it is a well-designed device and it does feel less like work when you use it. But Entourage is some way behind Outlook as a mail front end to an Exchange server. A third-party application is needed to access the Global Address List, for example. The Mac gets "updated" almost as often as a Windows machine, and Yes, I've installed an antivirus product. Interestingly, Windows 7 has copied the Mac Dock concept, just at the time when Bruce Tognazzini (hired at Apple by Steve Jobs and Jef Raskin in 1978) is criticising Apple for not innovating with the existing services and core applications like the Dock. The iPhone is a different kettle of fish. Interesting, but with some serious flaws from a business perspective. How about no cut and paste - because Apple has run out of gestures! From what I see, version 3.0 of the iPhone firmware will allow Cut, Copy and Paste, where "taps" initiates the sequence. It looks usable, but it could be months away from release (and a 300 Mb download this time?). And emails sent from the iPhone appear in Entourage with a <no subject> heading and often garbled / encrypted text. However, my overall impression is that Apple is now benefiting from the virtuous circle of software development that WordPerfect once had, remember WordPerfect?, then Outlook / Exchange and now Firefox now enjoys. I am also a keen bicycle rider, owner of a Birdy (folding bicycle), Cruzbike (front wheel drive recumbent) and a Giant CRX Zero (flat-bar road bike). Thus I was intrigued to hear about how the Macintosh was almost a called a Bicycle, and why Steve Jobs thought that was a good name. We all knew that the Macintosh should have been called the McIntosh, because that's the correct spelling of Jef Raskin's favourite apple variety. Yes?
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