Does Bill Gates Becoming #3 in Wealth Signal Beginning of the End for Microsoft?

Even though we've known it was coming, I was still surprised when I read this afternoon that Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft and formerly richest man in the world, had dropped to number three in the world.

I was expecting him to drop to second, behind Carlos Slim. But... Carlos Slim isn't even the richest person in the world. Warren Buffett, long-time friend of Bill Gates and richest man prior to Bill Gates' reign, is now the richest man in the world again.

I'm wondering if this signals the beginning of the end for Microsoft. Its dominance has come as its leader is the richest man in the world. It's dominance is starting to fade to Apple, Adobe, Google, open source, and Linux in really unprecidented numbers for the company, and its leader didn't only drop one place - he dropped two places in Forbes' world's richest man list.

I think the connection is there and is very clear. This could be the real "beginning of the end" of Microsoft's dominance.

March 5th, 2008 / Tags: microsoft, bill gates, apple, linux / Trackback

My Surprisingly Decent Experience with Apple Support

Since I did buy iWork '08 along with my new Mac, I decided to install it almost immediately.

In all the "excitement" last night, I didn't even bother really exploring Pages, Keynote and Numbers. Sometime very early this morning (I would say around 1:00 AM EST), I opened up Keynote and made a nice presentation through which I explored the sheer power of Keynote.

But it wouldn't save. I would get an error saying I couldn't save the file each time I hit the save button and used the dialog, regardless of what I named it. So, after a quick search of the Apple Discussion Forums, I started my own thread, and within just a couple of hours got a response from a very, very frequent helper (this person has almost 7,400 posts). Within just an hour or two, I had the problem solved. Or so I thought.

Well, the issue persisted. So I got on the phone with Apple Support and after about 30 minutes of decent on-hold music, an American (!) man who spoke English natively (!!) came on my line and walked me through what I had already done per the Discussions thread, but oddly this time it seemed to do the trick.

Once I got off the phone (actually, I used Skype) with him I realized some permissions were a bit messed up for some of the folders I was trying to save to. All of the folders with the weird permission settings have been re-assigned permissions as appropriate.

I am completely surprised at the level of Apple's paid support and volunteer support. It's very clear that there's a community of users who want everyone to have just as good of an experience with their Apple products as Apple themselves do. And by not outsourcing their support to India or Indonesia, Apple is doing their part in trying to provide a good experience to their customers.

Or maybe it's because Apple makes enough money on their products to not have to worry about cutting costs ;)

February 17th, 2008 / Tags: mac os x, apple / Trackback

What is the true meaning of innovation?

Throughout my journey on the Internet (and particularly technology-related websites), I've always found lots of talk about innovation.

Innovation is great... right? But what is it? How can one define it?

In the technology realm, I really see two types of innovation. There's open source-type innovation, and there's Apple innovation.

Open source innovation is really the larger ideas (such as, "build a better browser with great security and a revolutionary addons system"). That's what has created Firefox, Thunderbird, Apache, Linux, OpenOffice.org and countless others. But they don't have to be open source, per se - I see the GUI (which Xerox first developed) as open source innovation, even though the code was proprietary.

Then, there's Apple innovation. Apple innovation takes the open source innovation (either the idea/s or the literal source code, depending), polishes it, makes it nicer, maybe adds some more convenient features while limiting some freedoms in terms of options and customizations, and then re-releases it. That's what has created Mac OS X, the iPhone, the vision (not result) of Windows 95, Photoshop, Flash, and many other decent products.

Let's look at Mac OS X Leopard for example: a lot of those 300 new features are, in fact, not Apple-pioneered. As a Linux user, I die a little bit every time someone suggests that Apple created the idea of multiple workstations (i.e. Spaces). Multiple workstations have been available in countless other UNIX-like and non-UNIX operating systems for decades.

What features did Apple pioneer in Spaces, then? Not really any. But they did the whole idea of multiple workstations right. They made it useful - no, beyond useful - to more than just the complete power user or l33t Linux hacker. And they absolutely ought to be commended on that. They shouldn't, however, be praised for "inventing" multiple workstations. Or for "inventing" the countless other examples that fit in just like this one.

So, which one is actual innovation? Many dictionaries define innovation as "the act of introducing something new." Obviously "open source" innovation fits under that. Does Apple innovate? Yeah, but maybe not to the extent of "open source" innovation - at least in terms of the "big picture."

What do you think about this? Apple and the open source/Linux communities innovate in different ways, therefore should there be two definitions of innovation? Should we support the people coming up with the ideas or the people who polish the ideas and re-release them? February 13th, 2008 / Tags: apple, linux, open source / Trackback