TheMacAdvocate

To say it is a laughable copy of an Apple Store is really understating it.

If I were an investor in Microsoft, I’d really, really want to know how they’re going to track the financial performance of these things.  Bury them in the “Entertainment and Devices Division”?  These stores – which sell nothing that you couldn’t get cheaper online and offer you no level of service beyond telling you that your PC-maker screwed you over – will fail.  And quickly.

In boxing, there are few things more satisfying to watch than a well-executed combination.  A lot of it is the result of what a fighter does before entering the ring.  Once there, it’s about opportunity and timing.

In Apple’s case, coming off another estimate-stomping quarter, they announced major refreshes to the iMac, the once-thought-dead MacBook, the artist-formerly-known-as-Mighty Magic Mouse as well as a respectable bump to the Mini.

In the iMac’s case, the specs are impressive: the top-of-the-line $2,199 model tops out at a 27″ 2560 x 1440 display and a 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Nehalem) processor ($200 less will get you an i5).  The MacBook gets the MBP treatment and now sports unibody (polycarbonate) construction and a 7-hour enclosed battery.  The mouse is an interesting concept.  In short, it’s a multitouch trackpad grafted onto a mouse’s body and it supports all the gestures of its integrated cousins.  We all know about Apple’s pathetic history with mice, so it’ll be interesting to see how it’s reviewed.

So in this boxing analogy, who is the opponent for which this one-two is intended?  I don’t know – is there anything else going on this week?

According to The Wall Street Journal, the analysts have finally shaken a little bit of the stupid out of their Q4 estimates for Apple:

Investors have grown accustomed to Apple crushing Wall Street estimates, so there are strong expectations for the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter, which ended September. Nearly 20 analysts have lifted price targets since September.

Analysts finally stopped notching their estimates at an average of $9.2 billion revenue and a profit of $1.42 a share.  So I guess the days of Apple catching analysts with their pants down are over, right?

Notsomuch.

This afternoon, Apple reported Q4 revenue of $9.87 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion, or $1.82 per diluted share, destroying every estimate on the Street.  You can take your pick of summaries, but Apple Investor News is a nice aggregator.

Apple must still be exploiting that lull in anticipation of Windows 7.

Apple holds its quarterly earnings call on Monday, which means that analysts are tripping over themselves trying to anticipate Mac sales for the quarter.  Both Gartner and IDC predict Apple continuing to buck the trend – to the tune of 7 – 12% growth, depending on who you ask.

The folks at IDC (the same IDC that found that “Windows is cheaper than Linux“) cannot understand why people continue to buy Macs.  I mean, WTF?!

“Their sales just seem to defy all logic,” [IDC's] O’Donnell repeated. “There are obviously a certain number of people buying Macs even in the face of a recession.”

There are also a certain number of people who persist in their employment despite having their heads cemented up their asses.

Pity poor Ed Bott.  Aside from being one of the most transparent Microsoft shills beating the tech pavement, he is also a sometime user of Apple’s products, which must be hell for a M$ apologist.  One of the prerequisites for being a really effective Micronaut is that you have to feign respect for Apple – sort of how your closeted racist cousin claims to “have a number of black friends”.  You see, this front allows him to seem like a fair critic‚ while also letting him play the outraged user and bash Apple at every turn.

Ed’s latest shaken fist is over Apple’s bundling of the iPhone Configuration Utility with his update of iTunes.  Being the vigilant watchman he is, he was immediately wise to Apple’s game.

THEY LEFT THE CHECKBOX CHECKED!  Such incursion; such violation!

This isn’t the first time Apple has tried to bundle other software with updates for iTunes, which gives birth to Ed’s clever click-bait title: “Apple up to its old tricks, pushing unwanted software onto PCs”.

I’ll let you soak in the irony of the title for a moment.  Funny huh?

It gets better.  Because I like to point out irony to Windows enthusiasts (who by their very definition have no sense of irony), I’ll bang out a sentence or two in the comments section of webskid like Ed’s article.  Most of the time, doing so requires that you register at the site.  Undaunted by the time and effort required to create a user name and password at ZDNet (and stifling the urge to shower immediately afterward), I was treated to the following:

Note the three checked boxes to the right.  HOW DARE THEY CHECK MY BOXES FOR ME?!

So, I chuckle at the bonus irony and uncheck the boxes.  No thanks, boys.  Then I get the confirmation email:

I wish to WHAT?  Not only do I have to UNCLICK MY OWN CHECKBOXES on the site where Ed cries his self-righteous tears of injustice, I’m being spammed by them anyway?  Are you for real?  Well, obviously, I want to change my newsletter preferences from “no, don’t send me shit” to “really I fucking meant “don’t send me shit” when I unclicked those checkboxes”.  So I click the link to change my preferences and:

Wow. You want more information about me in exchange for the privilege of unsubscribing from spam that I should have never been on a list for to begin with?

To recap:

1. Ed Bott bitches about Apple’s software update foisting things on his PC he doesn’t need – that is, if he doesn’t understand that a checkmark in a box means he will in fact be downloading these things.

2. To register to leave comments on Ed Bott’s site, ZDNet‚ you have to uncheck 3 boxes to prevent you from being spammed by them.

3. Unclicking a checkbox on ZDNet apparently doesn’t mean what Apple thinks it means.  ZDNet still spams you.

4. You have to provide ZDNet with more information about yourself in order to really, really unregister for the shit you shouldn’t have been getting in the first place.

I mean, as a Mac guy who likes to laugh at Wintards, I’m all about the low-hanging fruit, but this even makes me a little embarrassed.

If you’re the kind of person that tries to rope friends into helping you move‚ claiming it’ll be “fun” and offering a cold beer in lieu of money‚ Microsoft has an idea for you: the Windows 7 launch party.  They’ve even posted a video how-to guide‚ with a somewhat incomplete list of suggested activities.  What happened to “pin the driver on the peripheral” or the “custom install app registration code treasure hunt”?

If you choose to host‚ I’d recommend a strict designated driver policy.

Remember Kylie?  She’s the cute four-and-a-half year-old who figured out how to download pictures from her camera to her PC, apply image correction to the photos and email them using a distribution list – all in Microsoft’s Windows Live.

Yeah, I didn’t quite buy it either.

Seems Kylie may be the next Jerry Seinfeld for the brand.  Not content to let an ad campaign stand by itself, Kylie has appeared in a crossover ad for Windows 7.  Using her legendary computer skills, she even puts together a slick slideshow with some of 7’s most positive reviews:

Advertising challenge: plot the demographic for this ad.

I honestly can’t tell if they’re leveling themselves or if they believe they’re actually targeting viewers.  That Redmond ad group is one wacky fun machine.

The way I redefined the aria.

9 apps taking from 8 to 30 seconds to load.  And this:

What will it take to get you into this Kia? from Ars Technica on Vimeo.

Advertising.  What did you expect?  They are free‚ you know.

As a result of an announcement made at Apple’s ‘It’s Only Rock and Roll’ event‚ you can officially kiss goodbye any hopes you had of doing something stupid in public and not getting caught.  Yes‚ the rumors were true – the newest iPod Nanos can now capture you being Sharpie skunked by your “friends” in 640 x 480 pixels at 30 fps – complete with AAC audio of your feeble attempts to ward off your attackers.  I imagine Cisco feels like the time I guy you hear about who bought the HDTV from the back of a van and ended up with a box full of bricks.

They start at $150‚ so boo for remaining privacy/yay for stealth pr0n‚ depending on how famous you are and what you’re into.

The new Nanos also got a pedometer (for Nike + integration)‚ Voice Memos and FM radio.

While I’m sure someone over in the Zune product design camp is doing a little fist pump of vindication‚ Apple has done what it usually does with useless features stapled onto other people’s offerings – made them useful.  In addition to being easily able to navigate stations and program presets using the scroll wheel and middle button respectively‚  “Live Pause”‚ brings timeshifting to FM radio.  Pause a station when you’re interrupted and resume when you’re ready.  You can even rewind and fast-forward through content.  If you hear something you like and the station supports it‚ you can also “tag” a song for purchase (bonus revenue hook FTW!).  So I guess M$ can go back to sucking it.

In other news‚ the new iTunes 9‚ also announced today‚ features “Home Sharing”‚ which allows you to share content between computers on the same LAN.  While one would think that allowing one to access his content via MobileMe wouldn’t be a stretch‚ apparently that’s not yet supported (at least not in the 15 minutes since I started messing with it and subsequently threw my wireless keyboard).  I WANT MY UBIQUITOUS CONTENT NOW!!  /rant.

All in all‚ Apple looked to further position itself as a media innovator.  As TMA digs further into the upgraded iTunes‚ I’ll be sure to keep my loyal readership posted.  /sarcasm.

Oh – and the Beatles still aren’t on iTunes.  If all media outlets could agree that “the Beatles” and “Apple” would never used in the same sentence for the remainder of time until it fucking happened‚ all famine and war would cease immediately.

Seriously.

Long time reader/first time poster.  Fellow “productivity porn” recovering addict.

Sorry to hear about your run-in with Snow Leopard.  Almost more sorry to see the clicktards at Infoworld are using it as a way of equating it to Vista (sorry – no clickthrus for clicktards).  Two upgrades here – no problems.  But I’ve been where you are.  Hope you cloned your drive with SuperDuper or something and didn’t do anything silly like dive right into the upgrade.  That way you could always go back to 10.5 until all the bugs in this half-baked point-something-upgrade get worked out.  A guy with so much going on shouldn’t take chances.

I’m not here to call out Merlin like he claims a lot of his Mactard peers are doing. I have too much love for the M².  I wish him the best and hope he gets back on track soon.

Get well soon bro.

/Jesus peace

TMA