Map Attack

Following reports in Wired News this morning that the new Virtual Earth from MSN shows Apple Headquarters as an empty lot I decided to have a look for myself ...



Sure enough. Microsoft have now fully decided to ignore completely the Cupertino crowd. They blame old maps. No excuse.


The same view from Google Maps showing the 11 buildings in the oval that make up the Apple Campus.



What is more interesting though is the way the two mapping rivals treat each other. Google is confused about itself .. Somehow it thinks it is Keyhole and is based in an empty lot beside a freeway.



MSN does depict the location ... Surprise, surprise. I guess Apple are just hacking off MS more in their games of endless catch-up with both companies.

Bollocks Fast Company

In an article published for their August issue, Fast Company argue that the iPod is doomed because Apple's competitors are adding more features for their players while the iPod remains closed.

The author, John J. Sviokla, argues that the iPod's competitors are operating in an open "ecosystem" and that history has always favoured such.

Well that is debatable and there are precedents for suggesting that the inferior technology offered by this lumpen conglomerate of PC lovers could succeed ... but really it's beyond them now because none has the sheer effusive style and panache of the iPod.

Even consider for a minute the fact that Creative, one of the first company's on the market with a MP3 player, actually saw their profit fall last year.

How can they innovate and research when they have no money? Will Microsoft's support be enough? I would say their support would be a hindrance rather than a benefit.

The MSN music service is muddled at best with its typically timid washed-out MS design and featuring all this stuff that gets in the way of what I want.

Apple though have made a iTunes is a classic ... They have the classic paradigm ... The device combined with the application and augmented by the service (the Music Store) all with miraculous ease of use. Nothing can beat it. Not in a million years.

Squandered Opportunity

In my home of Auckland, TVNZ are tonight screening the first episode of the hit UK drama Hustle.

Looking like a cross between Snatch and Ocean's Eleven, the network have been pumping this baby for weeks with promos setting out to titillate and encourage us to dive in there on the night.

None of the promos really got me going though like some thing that I caught out of the corner of my eye a few nights ago advertising the Auckland Harbour Bridge being for sale. Details were apparently planted in the Herald of the next day ... it was shaping like a media bonanza ... I had to see it.

So yeah, they'd taken out a full page ad (right-hand page, inside back front section - prime space) advertising our bridge being for sale and referring us to a website for Clacy Hughes Realty ... (or Clacy Huges Realty in the title bar)

So what does one do .. well one goes and has a look and yes, its pretty much a replica of the print ad. same picture, (albeit cut down) but with one difference, blinking text enticed me to CLICK HERE to view tenders.

So I did that too and then I was greeted with a screen that told me I'd been hustled. Hustled? For clicking through on that? Maybe if I had been genuinely tricked. Great idea for TVNZ to try stepping outside the bounds of their usual promo activity but not quite enough to convince me ... Having come up with the idea they could have at least seen it through ...

vPod or vPort?

With the rumour mill running at overdrive that Apple are going to release a video iPod, and the news reports about the negotiations (the oft-quoted Wall St Journal story) going on at the moment with the film companies it is worth taking stock of some things that Steve Jobs has said in the past about such a device.

Audio different from Video

Audio is an ambient medium that you can do other things to while video requires your full attention. This alone would negate the device being anything but large.

Device Size

As video does need to be so immersive then how can Apple achieve a form factor that will satisfy the market and create the hit product they would need ... How?

It already exists. You just have to look (as Cringely says) at the "shoes" already thrown by Steve Jobs. But even hasn't picked up on this.

I would bet they will do nothing with the iPod but look to doing something with AirPort Express with iTunes. The video codec has been added to iTunes. Apparently that was trivial.

This is one cool little product that is about to get seriously extended so that you can enjoy (well anybody in the USA with a broadband connection and a middle-class income at least) video on demand and movies whenever you want. And on a device that will support watching video -- ie ... your TV.

Then again, I could be completely wrong and Jobs will be seen holding up a vPod at a product launch in San Fran around September. The RDF is like that ...

More iPod Envy

The Microsofters are getting more desperate by the day is this strangely named page (accessed via a link off the beta version of the new aol.com) shows.

Its all about passion, and the default screen for this collection of Passion that encompasses "lifestyle" is music.

What marketing dweeb at Redmond Headquarters would have signed off on this creative? It's fairly appallingly generic (reminds me of clip art gone crazy from 10 years ago) and a classic example of a company on the back foot, pumping up the vapourware while another little company (with supposed tiny market share) has stolen the march and keeps improving and developing its product range in both hardware and software for where the next computing battle is being fought ... the home.

I would say now that this goes beyond iPod Envy, this is now fully Apple Envy and Microsoft are very scared and probably more so now that Apple has a pending move to Intel in the wings.

Theories about The Switch

This article is an interesting take on the Apple to Intel switch, especially in light of the release of those new IBM chips.

You've got to wonder and perhaps even agree with Jon Stokes (the author of the
ArsTechnica article) that he is right considering these chips would drive the Apple laptops to G5 speeds without melting the motherboard.

They would also provide the low power drain that laptop consumers demand and need these days.

So apart from what he is saying about Apple being an incredibly demanding customer that couldn't get what it wanted when it wanted, what on earth could be driving the move away from IBM with all its complicated architecture redesign?

The desire to beat Gates. More on this later ...

You Don't Know

This has been building for some time but it is now growing so fast that it cannot be ignored.

The shuffle factor, made mainstream by the iPod but utilised for years previous as Random Selection on desktop audio players and CD systems, is now influencing radio so much that a new format has arrived and is gaining traction big-time.

Jack Radio is a genre-bending "train wreck" of end-to-end songs akin to the selection diversity one might come across on an iPod set in Shuffle mode with upwards of 1000-1500 songs.

On mine, (2,200+ songs) Julian Cope can come up before Roots Manuva and on Sunday, the faithful G3 was shuffling through the library and we heard Portishead (Glorybox from Dummy) before Interpol headed off Patsy Cline. Only the huge capacity made possible by the iPod has created the template for the disjunctive surprise of 'What's coming next?' that many people now enjoy.

There's a kind of poetry to this as the iTunes code serves up this randomness and we are tempted to wonder whether there isn't a bit of AI going on here. How much is the thing learning from me?

It just goes to show how we are all rediscovering how much great music there is and has been rather than filling up on the average of the moment sounds. Even if you are a white guy who's not quite as cool as he thinks he is.

If Jack Radio is going to be a serious contender in the radio formats of the future then I'm sure we'll see many flavours of Jack.