Hitting the nail on the head

While Jason is once again right, he of course profits from having built the hangout he makes use of when he needs to find the right people. On the other hand it shows that the guys from 37s know what they are doing when they are not trying to please everyone.

I guess sometimes you have to piss off some people as long as you can attract the right people – your target audience. It’s really all about focus.

 

Scoble on Google Calendar [Update]

Scoble writes this piece about Google calendar. I totally agree. Until today I’m not clear how one could switch to an application that lives only online without any offline representation. Since I’m travelling a lot, these situations occur where I’m not online but need a bunch of applications:

• in the train
• in the car (on the backseat, of course)
• in any cafe that does not have wifi access
• on site at companies that don’t have internet access (this happens quite often because you either can’t access their network or they don’t have wifi or the only use isolated internet PCs out of fear for viruses)

So my criticism is not specific for Google but for all applications that exist only online. Another reason, btw, why I’m totally happy with Windows Live Writer – finally I can really comfortably post offline without having to save my posts to files like in w.bloggar.

Update: Calgoo know presents a first draft of an offline application that syncs with Google calendar. Promising. True Web 2.0 style.

 

Doing it different

If you do things different from the competition, beware of the consequences. Two examples:

For many years, Apple did it different. Different processors, different operating system. While they definitely achieved their merits, the price was high. The company several times stood before its extinction and only when they decided to do it not different but better they started to get the real successes. Starting with the iPod, that used the same music format as the market (mp3) but with a better design the gained huge market shares. Next was the Intel Mac that finally allowed everybody to buy a Mac without sacrificing Windows, even if the applications used on Windows mostly were the same as on the Mac – MS Office and some browsers. Lesson learned: Don’t do it different, do it better, on top of existing standards.

The other example is HolzHer, a machine manufacturer. They decided to use a clever piece of software to be used as a frontend to program their machines. TwinCAM. Great software. Stupid CAD-interface. Every other similar software uses a text-based file format to store machine programs. Not so TwinCAM. They use a binary format and require CAD-vendors to write their own application, using COM/DCOM libraries, to write the required file format. Do I need to mention that TwinCAM is no longer used to drive HolzHer machines? Although the software was (and is) a great product, easy to use and powerful, the different approach on the interface side disqualified it for easy adoption by CAD-vendors. And since the interface to CAD-systems becomes strategic for CNC machine manufacturers, decisions had to be made.

If you are convinced that your special approach is the one to dominate the market, go ahead. But if you have the slightest doubt you might reconsider what you are planning to do. Sometimes, being to clever is simply dumb. Because individuals are dumb on average, the masses as a collective always us the most pragmatic approach. Not the most elegant one.

 

Another european comment

Nicole Simon exactly states what's a widespread phenomenon with most of the leading edge software products: totally US-focused.

 

30boxes

I joined the community of 30boxes beta testers.

So far, it seems quite functional and there are definitely good ideas like the integration of Flickr photos and RSS feeds. It’s a very fresh approach and this is really inspiring.

Nevertheless, I don’t see no fit to integrate it into my daily business life. It’s an island. I am an Exchange user and there is no sync between these to applications except for a vCard interface.

So I look forward how this product idea will evolve over time. Currently, it’s not more than a “look Ma, I can do clever Ajax” application. Deftly done, but there is no real use.

 

Delicious Monster

Delicious Monster is a product I’d really like to have on my business computer. Too bad it’s Mac only.
Like ecto or NetNewswire it’s a compelling argument in favor of OS X.
Working on the PC is more like “you have to do it because the software you NEED is there”. Working on the Mac is “I love working on the Mac because all the software I like is there”.
Oh yes, and forget about the Finder. That’s just overhyped. Compared to some years ago I notice I’m less and less actually using it. Moving files around virtually doesn’t happen that often any more.

 

Unsubscribed

Perhaps you know how it feels coming back in the office after a longer time of absence, without internet access.

You are instantly overwhelmed by tons of new mail, your mailing lists show incredibly high numbers of new posts and the same is true for your subscribed weblogs.

Although there is always that feeling to “miss” something important I decided to ditch several weblogs I’ve subscribed to in order to reduce the amount of unread entries. I know that I actually didn’t unsubscribe to some of the most productive writers but, hey, you have to start somewhere.

So, Rusell Beattie, kottke, Steve Rubel, Lyssa, Steve Gillmor and China Herald, you are gone. And no, I don’t link you here because I simply think that the information presented in your blogs can be found elsewhere or is simply not really worth the time.

Which doesn’t mean that I deem my blog even a bit more relevant. Definitely not. Vote with your feed, ahem, feet

 

How long will it take…

… until the first patches appear, allowing to run Windows XP on the new MacBooks?

 

Always a pleasure listening to Clayton Christensen

It’s always interesting listening to or reading Clayton Christensen. He definitely has a point and it will be interesting to see how things evolve. I really wonder whether the MP3 player market will behave in the same way as the PC market. Currently, no example comes to my mind where a proprietary architecture had this kind of market share in a consumer market like the iPod actually has.

 

Staying upstairs

To stay in Russell’s picture, although there may be less diversity on the Mac side of the world, life there is definitely easier. I just had to install a Mac and a PC. Both computers had to replace older models and the task at hand was to migrate all programs, data and stuff from the older to the newer computer.

The Mac beat the PC hands down. Using the migration assistant I was able to have the new Mac up and running in 30 minutes after the copy process was complete. I just followed the suggested steps after the first boot of the new iMAC G5.
On the PC side it took me several hours (say, 2 to 3) plus my expertise to get the data plus a reasonable amount of software (by far not everything) moved to the new machine. And that was only stuff from one of the 2 PC accounts on that Windows machine.
Subsequently, the Mac had all email accounts, printer settings, network settings etc. ready to go. The PC of course did find available printers but of course network settings and email had to bet set up manually. Yes, I do know that Dell has something similar to Apple’s migration assistant in its portfolio when you configure your PC. But I’m not quite sure how that software performs when moving data from a Windows XP Home machine from Medion to a brand new MT 380 workstation. I’ve made to many bad experiences to do these stunts…
While it is true that there is definitely more software available for the PC – for most of the business-type John Does out there this is absolutely of no significance. They use a browser, some office software and that’s it. Of course there are markets where every supplier does provide Windows-only software. But even this software isn’t needed on every computer in a company. And my recent experiences show that a mixed environment does not automatically increase administration cost. More likely, Macs just sit there and work. PCs will cause more trouble, more fiddling around, more maintenance. Which is OK for expert users but not for non-geeks.

So, all thoughts about UI wackinesses and specific software flaws set aside: The end-to-end solutions Apple provides are not only superior, they are also sufficiently compatible to the rest of the world. It’s a sad aside that in my opinion not more than 5 percent of all computer users really need a Windows PC because of the wider range of software available while actually 95% percent are using it.