The new Macbook Pros announced today from Apple are, in the main, evolutionary rather than revolutionary in terms of the business environment - slightly faster CPUs, larger hard disks, multitouch trackpad technology from the Macbook Air, better casing - none of these are going to require across-the-board upgrades. However, two things in particular stand out.

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Macbook, Macbook Pro, Cinema Display

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Posted: October 14th, 2008 under Comment.
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Getting there eventually is not an experience I usually associate with Apple. Famously, their stuff Just Works. The launch of the iPhone 3G in the UK has been a clear and frustrating exception this week. OK, demand peaks like this are always terrible things to manage, but did Apple compound the issue by trying to do too much at once?

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Posted: July 13th, 2008 under Comment.
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Around six weeks ago we wrote about why we thought using Google Apps Team Edition was no real substitute to having the same apps provided by in-house IT. The reasoning was, it has to be said, more gut-feeling than anything else - that it was a bad idea to have your corporate data anywhere other than on your corporate servers.

Now, it turns out that there is a very good reason indeed for keeping data in house only. The US PATRIOT act, allows data at Google - including your data - to be spied upon by the US Government with only the most limited of legal oversight. This is a clear conflict with any requirement your business for keeping its data confidential - that may be as simple as matters of competition.

Where it really strikes home though if you’re using data that can identify others. That could be for Marketing, information on clients, or even worse, processing information supplied to you by clients. Anything that you do that requires your use registered with the Information Commissioner? It’s pretty safe to say you must not use Google Apps to do it.

(Oh, and that’s whether you’ve actually registered or not!)

Be careful now. This is the article where the problem first emerged.

Posted: March 26th, 2008 under Comment, News.
Comments: none

We have to admit that the Macbook Air is a beautiful machine. It makes holding a laptop as little effort as holding an iPhone. Pricewise, it’s pretty good - £1199 for the 1.6GHz version. Battery life at five hours isn’t shabby either. The construction is simply beautifully clever. But it’s all show and no go.

Firstly, you can’t upgrade the memory. The solid-state hard disk adds a lot of cost - £639, and there’s no telling how long it will last. Solid state memory has a finite read-write cycle.

(incidentally, that means the secondhand value of machines with solid-state memory will be poor. How long can you predict it will last?)

But my main issue with them is that they’re not robust. Strength has definitely been compromised in favour of lightness. The body clearly flexes when you press on it even gently. (The Apple demonstrator watching me do this had a look of undisguised horror on her face.)

Sure, you can wrap it in a robust case of plastic or metal. Which will add the weight back and leave you with a poor performance to weight ratio. If you do that, you may as well have bought a Macbook Pro.

If style over substance matters - buy the Macbook Air. It is beautiful. It will sit perfectly on paper-free desks in gorgeously minimalist offices. If you need a machine on which to get your work done, get a Macbook Pro instead.

The Time Capsule is fairly useful in very small businesses. The combination of wireless router and Time Machine backup disk is good. I hope a software update to existing Airport Expresses will allow USB disks to be used as easily - there’s no reason why that shouldn’t happen. It was the one update that wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the Keynote though. We’ll see.

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Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, Apple, MacWorld

Posted: January 15th, 2008 under Comment.
Comments: 1

For most users of RSS readers, the news that NetNewsWire has gone free is either good or, if you’ve already bought the software, not really relevant. And don’t get me wrong - it’s a good newsreader. It’s fast, intuitive, clean and clear. It also, however, synchronises with the Newsgator online feed reading and aggregation service.

Now that is usually seen to be a good thing. It allows you to read your feeds online if you’re away from your computer. It keeps what you’ve read synchronised. It allows Newsgator to pull only one copy of message from a server, and redistribute it to everyone using Newsgator or NetNewsWire. This is a good thing for those running RSS feeds. Less load.

It also has a downside. It means that Newsgator knows about all that you’re reading. It knows about the private feeds internal to your company. It might not be able to access them all, but it means that the fact that they exist is out in the hands of another company, and leakage of this sort of information is not good and should be actively prevented where possible.

Luckily, there are more free newsreaders out there. My pesonal favourite is Vienna - an open source newsreader, built especially for OSX. It’s just as functional (no synchronisation of course) and is close enough in look and feel to be an easy switch. We think if you have concerns about information leakage, you should give it a try.

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software, vienna, netnewswire, newsgator

Posted: January 10th, 2008 under Comment.
Comments: 1

This article from Marketshare is being widely quoted on the blogs at the moment - saying that Apple’s presence on the internet has gone to above 7.3%. That’s great. It also says that Apple made even greater gains in the last week in December.

Of course they did. Many corporate (therefore Windows users) were on holiday. thus skewing the stats. Ignore that bit of the report.

The very interesting thing though is to note the numbers for Vista in comparison to OSX. You’ll find them here - 10.48% for Vista, 7.5% for OSX.

This reinforces something we’ve been saying for a while. The upgrade path to Vista from XP is not automatic. People are evaluating their options. Of course, I don’t expect companies with significant structural investment in Microsoft operating systems to jump ship overnight. But I believe they should keep their minds open, and consider carefully their best and most cost-effective approach for their future IT requirements.

Technorati Tags:
OSX, Vista, browser, market share

Posted: January 3rd, 2008 under Comment, News.
Comments: none