One of the biggest signs of success and opulence is losing respect for money. If you have trust-fund-baby friends out there that have never had to work for a dollar (or euro or pound to be fair to my readers), you know what I mean.

But when corporations do it it’s like a thousand times worse.

First, shareholders must cringe when they read about what their profits will be going to. Employees aren’t far behind – as they are both the shareholders at times and probably feel they ought to get a better bonus structure if the company is doing so well. Stock markets follow this stupidity and don’t reward companies that make foolish decisions (buying of Skype, partnerships with Nokia) so even Microsoft is seemingly going away from rewarding it’s employees with stocks and using cash (“cash” sounds better than “salary”) instead.

Bad Idea Faceoff

First of all, relax. This rant is meant to be a joke, even though it draws on the facts.

Apple wants to build a 12,000 employee building that looks like a spaceship without an inch of flat glass vs. Microsoft branded tablet.

This is the kind of stuff you expect to hear come out of Donald Trump’s mouth, or maybe on an episode of MTV Cribs. But when two of the biggest software companies on earth get together to collectively put spinners on their stock value you’ve got to wonder if Shaq is now a corporate strategy consultant.

Now I don’t want to get on a rant, but come on Microsoft – haven’t you proven that putting Microsoft on a label doesn’t instill any confidence? Remember how hard Apple worked to destroy Microsoft and Vista trademarks? The constant taunting, jokes and ugly realities that people have not forgotten. Why in the world would you want to piss off all your partners that currently make devices using your OS? I know, I know.. because Google did it and they failed and Apple did it and they rock. Except Apple is a consumer electronics company and you are not. You’ll have the same level of success Google has had with their Nexus devices – nobody wants a “proof of concept” device. That is called “OS emulator” and you already make enough of those. Do your employees and shareholders really need to watch you launch another pot without a bottom like your Windows Phone that keeps on eroding in every metric available? Why can’t you just be happy that you get $10 (approximately) off every Android device HTC makes due to your patents and just retire to Florida like all the other retirees?

And Apple. Do you really want to put all of your employees in a glass prison? Don’t you have enough egg on your face from your Foxconn drama featuring suicides and explosions? Does Curpentino really need another Steve Jobs Penitentiary and correctional facility? And making a building out of glass? Go ahead and tell the world that the reception on the iPhone will suck so bad for the next 6 years that you had to build your headquarters in a way that everyone was working next to a window so they can get some cell bars. Seriously? What are you thinking? People can see through the glass and find out what you’re working – what about the corporate tradition of murdering people (ahem, suicides) secrecy?

Just take The Simpsons advice and build it under the sea.

Now back to being unfunny..

Respect Cash

There is nothing wrong with cash. It’s beautiful. The poorer the culture, the more beautiful their money is – it’s like a work of art.

Yet when companies grow their management seemingly gets bored and instead of perfecting their products and listening to their customers they decide to pitch a spaceshuttle styled glass building in California.

To everyone outside of your ears it only seems like you’re taking your eyes off the ball. To your customers, it sounds like you’re not really focusing on their problems. To your shareholders, you’re wasting money. Even your employees may feel slighted and boy do you have a problem on your hands when that happens.

It’s not a good recipe, no matter the size of the company.

Apple is slowly taking over Microsoft as the dominant software company both by mindshare and by revenue. It has hung it’s hat on being the leader in the post-PC (read: no-Microsoft) world. It’s actually a quote straight from Steve Jobs.

Yet, after their announcement yesterday, Apple stock tanked. With the new OS announcement, new iOS with tons of new APIs, new cloud service splash.. not helping Apple – and with the record shipments revenues and profit – Apple has not moved an inch in 2011. Why?

Those Who Ignore History Are Doomed To Repeat It

Once upon a time, Apple was a leading software company that had a winning platform and actually started the PC revolution. It manufactured it’s own PC, it’s own OS and everything in between. But as the other software and hardware companies came to market and worked with each other, Apple was left in the dust. IBM, Microsoft, HP, Packard Bell, Acer and countless others worked together and kept on innovating leaving Apple in the dust which it wouldn’t recover from well until Apple’s iPod became a hit in early 2000’s.

Seemingly similar stuff is happening today. Google’s Android took off after the iPhone and has blasted right by Apple in terms of market share. Apple keeps on sliding because it lives in a closed world where they make the handset, the OS, the cloud service and virtually everything in between. Their cloud pitch:

“Competition will never be able to make it ‘just work’” – Steve Jobs

Apple is making a bet that their control and restrictions will get more people attached to their cloud and that they will just win. But if that was the case, Android wouldn’t stand a chance. Furthermore, Apple has no NFC, no 4G phones, no flexibility in their device selection whatsoever. That is not a winning recipe, there is only so far that great marketing can take you.

Right now Apple is making the same mistake it made in the 90’s. Instead of opening up it’s cloud and it’s platform an licensing it’s OS and it’s massive library – it’s closing things down. It’s trying to make the “cloud” a feature of the iPhone/iPad/iOS which is something that will ultimately only appeal to the iFans and not to the overall marketplace.

Let’s remember that Apple’s resurection was thanks to Microsoft’s investment and iTunes on Windows. If Apple made their iPod capable of taking music files only from their 7% desktop PC, they would be long gone by now. Yet, they are ignoring that now and instead of applying their massive mobile dominance and experience to gain market share they are clamping down yet again.

Except they aren’t the sole player now. Look at this PC Magazine comparison of Amazon Cloud Player, Apple iCloud and Google Music. Apple is more expensive than anything else out there and it needs friends.

Apple owes it’s success to the massive army of developers who built tons and tons of apps for the first really good smartphone and tablet. Now as Android takes Apple over in those categories with an open approach, and has a larger audience, guess where developers will start to look to? Developers made Microsoft and they made Apple in the mobile world. But with Apple falling back, will they learn from their history on how to embrace the open cloud or will they stick to what has failed them before?

Yesterday I waited in line for an iPad with a few hundred of my closest friends and I killed time tweeting and catching up on my Facebook friends. Everyone wanted the opinion of the iPad and after a day of using it I am going to offer you some insight.

First, have an idea of what the device is going to do for you. Buying a gadget just for the sake of having a gadget will only bump up your electricity bill and introduce more dust and cabling nightmares. What can a gadget do for you that others can’t?

For me, the iPad is hopefully something I can use to structure my first and last hour of the day. Much of what I do these days is research, mentoring and management and I think the primary role is in communications. But when its late at night, an inbox with 299 emails to reply to sometimes takes a back seat to ESPN. Or I send a 10 page reply to someone that makes us $9.99 a month. Surely there is a way to be more efficient and less distracted.

My hope is not to have to bring a notebook into the bedroom and minimize those last minute distractions.

So thats my story. Here is my initial impression.

It’s hard to type laying down. The device is very slippery and slides around the sheets quickly. If I gain some weight I will pinch it between my gut roll and my legs. Got the image? Good.

The browser is absolutely amazing. Everything that is frustrating about the iPhone browser is absolutely perfect about the ipad one. Its kind of amazing, just as many prerelease reviews noted, the device simply disappears from the view.

The autocorrect onscreen keyboard is great but could use some work. Having an android business phone I can tell you that the keyboard is quite amazing, but it still has its quirks just like an iphone one.

The email app is great, but could really thrive with some management functionality, like flag categories and so on. For now, I just move stuff into a review folder and go from there but it should be easier and more Outlookish.

Lack of multitasking is a real downer. I know that they are going to introduce that soon and for now just having the multiple browser windows helps.

Overall design is great and when the device is on you don’t see any smudges. Turning the screen off would make you run for a bottle of Lysol. I didn’t buy any screen protection or sleeve for it at all, I don’t anticipate taking it outside of the house / bedroom. The screen lock while charging doubles as a digital picture frame.

I heard some comparisons drawn between this and a net book. In my opinion this device is far faster and friendlier than a net book. However, it is not as flexible. Much like all the Apple software, its great at a few limited things and sucks for just about everything else. I don’t own a netbook anymore but I would not consider this a good replacement for it.

All in all, I love it.

Provocative title, except I do not intend it  to be.

This weekend was an upgrade weekend at Casa de Vlad. I upgraded my Macbook Air to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. I upgraded my desktop to Windows 7. These are the best the two companies can produce.

Snow Leopard: I connected my USB DVD to my Macbook Air, slipped in the DVD and powered it on. I clicked on about 3 OK / Welcome / Next buttons and went to sleep. This morning, I woke up to 10.6 seemingly a bit faster, same experience and behaviors with some more polished effects (Expose)

Windows 7: Later this afternoon I upgraded my Vista development system to Windows 7. Well, I tried, it failed. So I put in a new set of hard drives. First time Windows 7 failed because it couldn’t setup a system partition – it told me to look at Windows Setup Logs but provided no information on how to find those. It just failed and took me back to the start of the setup. So I created and formatted a partition, rebooted and this time setup worked. After a reboot it couldn’t find bootloader. Ok, try again. This time it worked.

One of these is an OS built in 2009, the other one feels like it’s still 1999.

I think we are at a time where Microsoft’s big TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) argument will come back to bite them in the most unfortunate way: are Windows systems too expensive for business if they impact knowledge workers for more than a day?

Today Apple released the iPod  Shuffle upgrade. This has been by far my favorite Apple product and perhaps the most valuable one given price / feature breakdown. We’ve given away hundreds of them to partners, folks reading this blog, business associates, employees..  I think the Mazek family alone has  at least half a dozen of them. They are convenient: for running, for cars, for training and for flights. Quick, simple, battery lasts forever. You can just stick your hand into the pocket, hit a few buttons while doing something else and you’re done.

Today, Apple either screwed all that up or is about to revolutionize the way headphones work. I’m betting on the former. By shifting the controls to the headphone it forces folks to mess around with the headphones, etc.

If I had to call it, this is the biggest failure since Microsoft changed their office UI from dropdown menu system to ribbons. At least Apple isn’t risking a multibillion dollar line of business.

Few weeks ago I was blogging or twittering (can’t really find the thread) about how much I liked MacBook Air but how I would never buy one because 800 pixel vertical resolution just wasn’t good enough for me.

Earlier today, a MacBook Air showed up in my Orlando office. Not sure who sent it, but thank you. I appreciate it.

Now on to another, more pressing topic.

I really, really, really love the new convertible Lamborgini Murcielago. Absolutely, in Gator Orange too!!!

However, I can’t afford to change my current vehicle because the baby seat can’t fit into the passenger seat.

If anyone from Sant’ Agata Bolognese would like to change my mind, I’ll even come over and pick it up….

Note to self: Don’t mess with Apple. My god, this level of shaming and humiliation that is so in tune with every Microsoft step ($300 million ad campaign, renaming Vista R2 to Windows 7) is just unfair This is likely the funniest thing I’ve seen all year (well, maybe second to “Ghostriding the Whip” series)

Poor Microsoft…

Update: Oh dear god. I just got an email linking to the patent Microsoft was recently awarded. Go on, I’ll let you guess. Based on the last commercial there. Give yet? Patent for realtime bleeping out of profanities. Not ****ing kidding you, this is just got funny on a whole different level!

If you were Microsoft, what would you do? 

Lot’s of coverage in the blogosphere regarding Apple (I know, what else is new?) and their big MacBook event today. Engadget got some shots of the new MacBook Pro and one word comes to mind… fugly.

I realize that sex appeal of your laptop is something subjective and highly irrelevant, but I can’t help feeling like this thing is just a polished silver version of Commodore-64.

I dunno, for the entire computing brand built on the image being more important than the functionality.. to take this kind of a step.. 

Own Web Now legal strongly recommended that I do not publish this blog post on our corporate blog to answer a question from Diana, Amy Babinchak’s techie. Personally I don’t see what’s wrong with it, if you see a problem with it please let me know.

Put on the thick gloves, this one is going to get dirty. I would like to preface with the fact that most Mac users are dirty unemployed losers, so the odds that a Mac user would see this article, or even be capable of reading, are slim to none.

Exchange 2007 Outlook Web Access includes the ability for users to access Public Folders in the rich version of Outlook Web Access. This feature is only available to the Microsoft Internet Explorer users 6.0 and better, you know.. business computers.

So what if you have a Mac? Well… You go browse myspace, upload a photo of your nipple ring to Facebook, maybe record yourself on your camera and share with your other middle school friends and after you’re done with that and grow up you get a real business computer one day? Cause you’re not getting Public Folders through OWA without paying for Entourage.

First, download a real web browser. Don’t worry, Disney’s Toontown Online will still work on your Mac, but the latest versions of Firefox will let you actually use your Mac for something useful. In the address bar type:

about:config

You will be given a nastygram about how doing this will void your warranty. Yeah. For the free software that comes with no guarantees or warantees of any kind. Do the math. My bad, I forgot that you paid twice as much as you should have for a computer.

Create a new string, called general.useragent.override. You will want to right click

If your brain didn’t explode looking for the right button on your retard mouse/touchpad, just hold Ctrl down when you click. De-de-de.

Set the value to: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0b; Windows NT 6.0)

That’s all there is to it. You still have a Mac so you’re still required to ride the short bus to school But you now have Public Folders.

Now you have more than just a shiny toy.

My name is Vlad, and I’m a PC.

* Believe me, this is the clean version.

Last week I switched my mobile platform from Windows Mobile to iPhone. I have written some fairly nasty things about iPhone and still stand by many of those statements. I will write about this at some length because as far as the development of our industry is concerned, the iPhone 2.0 is pretty earth shattering. So why does someone who has had a virtual love affair with a Windows Mobile device switch to iPhone? How in the world do you justify abandoning a platform on which you’ve invested tens of thousands of dollars in app development? Why?

For the same reasons we use Vista. It may have issues, but it’s the best fit for what we do.

It really is as simple as that.

I love Vista. I use it at home, at work, on the laptop, it fits just about everything I do. Business, development, video and image editing, etc. Is it crash prone? No. Does Outlook 2007 have a slight heart attack every time I touch it? Yes. But pound for pound, no other system I have met is as reliable and able to work with all my computer needs to the extent that I will overlook the few issues it has. Most disagree with me on that, but to each his own.

Windows Mobile for me was a business tool. But Windows Mobile has made just a few inches of progress throughout the years. It is still a clunky, battery-draining highly unreliable and inconsistent phone software that fails at meeting even the most basic of my needs. For example, last week the Live Messenger on my phone just died. No errors, nothing running in the background, just clicking on the little green buddy does nothing. Stock AT&T rom, before you ask. Mail sync is supposed to be 100%, but I found myself rebooting the phone twice a week to get it going. Pocket IE is starting to give Microsoft Internet Explorer a bad name for Petes sake!!!

Windows Mobile, for all its compromises, is not even good enough to do the one thing it is designed to do. With iPhone 1, it was just an interface battle. With iPhone 2, Microsoft should just kill their mobile effort. Yes, it’s that far behind and with App Store it may not have a chance at all, especially if Apple starts offering a choice of handsets.

So I switched to iPhone 2.0. Is it perfect? Oh, lord no. Not even close. For example, while they have licensed Exchange EAS for push sync, it doesn’t have a reliable folder sync. For example, it syncs my mailbox just fine. But it does not alert me to the new messages in any of the subfolders. Dialing a contact is as easy as just typing in their name. On an iPhone it’s clicking on Phone, Contacts, letter of their last name, phone number selection. Yes, really! There is no way to search through the mail. There is no way to search the server for anything. No way to flag items in the mailbox.

I’m willing to tolerate those problems because Windows Mobile has never been at even 80% satisfaction rating with any of the above. Sure, it was capable but it simply did not deliver enough to be a viable business tool.

So when you can’t count onto something for business, why should you be tied to it for all the other stuff you do? For me, that’s Facebook. Today I receive more friend and personal communications over Facebook than I do over email. I line up appointments and see what my buddies are up to using Twitter. I like the fact that I can get some entertainment value from my device, so I don’t have to carry a phone and an iPod. Write a blog post, attach an image to it? Done.

With iPhone 2.0, Apple has been able to bring a comparable business experience to the Windows Mobile, and platform-wise and entertainment-wise simply destroy any chances I would ever want to look back to Windows Mobile. The App Store brings an actual platform to iPhone, ability to obtain and play with apps that are designed for the device, checked through by Apple, quickly installed and uninstalled giving me the ability to play with stuff if it works or dump it if it doesn’t.

iPhone fits my lifestyle better, as far as I am concerned it is the best. It may not be perfect, but it is robust enough to fit everything I do that I am willing to overlook a few problems. As Apple continues to push down this path I think Microsoft will have more and more to worry about. How far along do you think AppStore for Mac OS X is?