M$ Laptop Giveaway - Bribery or Feedback?

Microsoft Says No Favorable Coverage Expected In Laptop Giveaway:

Microsoft and Advanced Micro Devices sent expensive laptops as gifts to select bloggers who review technology as part of an effort to solicit "valuable feedback" from the influential writers in the blogosphere, not to encourage favorable coverage, Microsoft says.

If that's true then why not give the laptops to Vista beta testers? Simple. Because bloggers have more influence on public opinion. If Microsoft would just make a quality (original) OS, they wouldn't need to rely on bribery for positive press.

The dichotomy of iTune's success

Clearly, Apple has garnered many enemies over the last several years. At one time (around 1996 or 97), Apple was written off as a company soon to perish. However, Steve Jobs regained control of the company he founded and turned it around. Out were the old beige systems and in came the colorful iMacs--a great-selling hit. Then came the innovative OS X, grounded in the UNIX-based NeXT OS that Jobs once touted as the NeXT CEO. Daring, new systems and laptops appeared--some bombed and some took off. Then came the iPod, which together with iTunes (and its eventual sidekick, iTMS) revolutionized the way consumers bought music, regardless of the bitterness expressed by the old-guard, clueless record corporations.

Microsoft and others were left reeling; no longer could the competition continue to merely copy Apple, because the innovations were coming as fast as lightening-quick sucker punches. Vista is already being described as a bomb; and surprise, its graphics borrow heavily from the GUI of OS X, which has been around since 2000. Microsoft is truly an example of a giant that went to sleep after it made good business decisions; it has never made good technology decisions.

A few weeks ago, several news articles appeared that described "plummeting" sales on iTMS. The press has long had this obsession with harming Apple (link: Apple Death Knell Counter), for some reason:

Apple iTunes Sales Take a Nose Dive

Apple iTunes sales plummet 65%

Apple ITunes Sales Slid in First Half, Forrester Says

Apple responded immediately:

Apple Dismisses 'iTunes Slump' as Silly Claims

Now (as I can personally attest to the Christmas day sluggishness), we see this story:

Holiday demand overwhelms iTunes' ability to download

So which is it, media? The press has its enemies, and its tech enemy is Apple for some bizarre reason.

Windows chief: 'I would buy a Mac if I didn't work for Microsoft'

Windows development chief: 'I would buy a Mac if I didn't work for Microsoft':

Longtime Windows development chief James Allchin wrote in a January 2004 e-mail to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and company co-founder Bill Gates that the software vendor had "lost sight" of customers' needs and said he would buy a Mac if he wasn't working for Microsoft.

In the same article, Allchin tells MS employees to dump incriminating emails. This proves what Mac users have known about MS all along: it's a monopolistic giant that seeks to bury competition instead of compete on the basis of product strength. They can't compete on product strength, because their products suck. Even this senior MS chief here wants a MACINTOSH!!!

See what the Installer will install

Macworld has a great tip on how to see what a developer installs on your system if they use the Apple installer.

Quite simply, just hit Command-I at the main dialog to see a list, or use the File menu.

Good Blogger troubleshooting stuff...

Every now and then, something weird will happen to my blog. For instance, the other day I added a post to a blog and the sidebar immediately dropped to the bottom of the page. This sort of thing has transpired before, but the fixes I had previously identified were ineffective.

So I did some digging around through Blogger's Help function and found some great resources that helped me solve the problem.

The Google Group for Blogger Help is really great. This group led me to another great help site -> The Real Blogger Status.

Open Unix manual pages in OS X 10.4's Preview

Here's a neat article on opening up man pages using the Preview application.