September 27th, 2009

Apple up to its old tricks, pushing unwanted software onto PCs

Posted by Ed Bott @ 11:52 am

Categories: Apple

Tags: Apple Inc., Windows Installation, Tools & Techniques, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows 7, Digital Music, Digital Media, Management, Operating Systems, Software

[Update 28-Sep 1:20PM PDT: The iPhone configuration utility has apparently been removed from the Updates list. The contents of the New Software section are unchanged however, with QuickTime and iTunes both being selected by default when using the Apple Software Update utility. Thanks to Gregg Keizer of Computerworld for the tip. ]

I don’t own a lot of Apple products. My wife has an iPhone (she loves it), but I don’t. I have an iPod Nano that I keep around for compatibility testing, but I haven’t plugged it into a PC in this office in more than a year. On the Mac Mini that I’m currently using half-time, I’ve installed Boot Camp so I can switch between OS X Snow Leopard and Windows 7 Home Premium. The Windows installation is a bare-bones clean install with a minimum of software.

So imagine my surprise when I started Windows 7 (via Boot Camp) on my Mac this morning and was greeted with this surprising dialog box: Read the rest of this entry »

September 23rd, 2009

Can a Windows geek learn to love Snow Leopard?

Posted by Ed Bott @ 9:40 pm

Categories: Apple, Windows 7

Tags: Apple Macintosh, WMA, Firefox 3.5, Songbird, Amarok, Microsoft Windows, Desktops, Operating Systems, Software, Hardware

In the interests of science, I’ve been dividing my time lately between a Mac running Snow Leopard and a PC running Windows 7. My goal is to gain hands-on experience with Apple’s hardware and software to go with the years of experience I already have with Windows. With a deeper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms, I can respond rationally when OS-related food fights break out in the Talkback section below. (If you’ve spent any time in the Talkbacks, you know it doesn’t take much to set off either side. And yes, I have a Linux box here, too, but this month I’m all about the Mac. Thanks for understanding.)

Just getting set up so I can do my daily work on an alien platform has been an interesting challenge. I do my job at a desk, not in a coffee shop or on the road, so I prefer a desktop PC with as much screen real estate as possible. To that end, I’ve connected the Mac to a 24-inch display running at a resolution of 1920 x 1200. I’d prefer dual monitors, but the Intel GMA950 graphics on the Mac Mini aren’t up to the challenge.

The Snow Leopard upgrade was uneventful; it took about an hour, and nothing appeared to break. After it finished, I used Boot Camp to partition the system drive and install Windows 7 Home Premium so I can compare common tasks on Windows 7 and Snow Leopard using absolutely identical hardware. (For the record, both systems perform very well—no complaints.)

And now the fun part: assembling a suite of software to help me handle daily work. With one exception, I was able to find everything I needed. Here’s the list, broken down by category.

Read the rest of this entry »

September 4th, 2009

Friday follow-up: six online music services revisited

Posted by Ed Bott @ 12:14 pm

Categories: Apple, Digital media

Tags: Subscription Service, EMusic, Online Music, Album, Apple iTunes, Service, Zune Monthly Fee, Digital Music, Digital Media, Personal Technology

Last spring, I took a closer look at six online music services, comparing them to iTunes on the basis of price and selection. (If you missed that post, you can read it here: 6 music services compared: who can bust the iTunes monopoly?)

Since then, I’ve been keeping close track of all those services. Although it’s only been a few months, I thought it might be worth recapping what’s changed since then (a lot, it turns out) and whether these iTunes alternatives can really make an impact on music purchases.

eMusic goes mainstream. The biggest change in recent months involves eMusic. Last month, the service announced a new partnership with all of the Sony labels (Arista, Columbia, Epic, among others). Where previously eMusic was strictly an indie alternative, now it offers access to recordings from major artists like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and The Clash. The change comes at a price, though: The monthly cost of an eMusic subscription is up substantially, to an average cost of 42-50 cents per track. At an average cost of about $5 per album, that’s still a bargain compared to other services, but longtime customers like me saw our monthly charge nearly triple.

My initial reaction to the eMusic changes was disappointment and the fleeting thought of canceling. After using the new service for the last month, though, I’ve changed my mind. Given the expanded catalog, I’ve found that I can fill a lot of holes in my collection at a very reasonable price, and it’s still a great deal for indie artists that are hard to find elsewhere. Ironically, the higher-priced eMusic might be a better overall deal for music fans willing to dip into older catalogs for overlooked gems.

iTunes is expensive. I’ve been faithfully checking the prices of every new album I’ve purchased since the beginning of the year at iTunes, Amazon MP3, and Lala.com. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve purchased roughly 30 albums at those sites, and in every case, without exception, the price difference over iTunes was substantial. Without exception, I was able to purchase albums for at least $2 less than iTunes every time, and I was able to locate the exact title I was looking for every time.

Even more significant in terms of monetary savings are the specials that Amazon and Lala.com offer. Both services regularly discount new releases substantially in the first week they’re available, which is why I was able to get new albums from Steve Earle, U2, and Green Day for $2,99, $3.99, and $4.99, respectively. They also discount selected older albums to $2.99 or less as part of daily specials. By contrast, I have never seen iTunes Music Store offer a one-time sale price on any title, old or new. I’d estimate that for those 30 albums alone, I paid about $120 less than if I had purchased them at the iTunes store. If I added in the savings from 70 or so albums I picked up at eMusic, my total bill would easily be $300 less than the equivalent tab at iTunes.

Subscription services are frustrating. I pay Microsoft $15 a month for an all-you-can-listen to Zune subscription. My Rhapsody subscription, which is paid annually, works out to about $12 a month. Both services give me the ability to synchronize subscription tracks with a portable player. When I’m traveling, I like to fill the player up with a few dozen albums from artists that I want to hear more from. The ability to listen to an unlimited number of tracks and albums has kept me from wasting money on albums that looked good on paper but disappointed in hearing. I’ve also found several albums that are keepers that I gladly paid for after a few listens.

The Zune monthly fee includes the right to download 10 tracks a month, which is useful but adds some hassle to the process. Ideally, to get the bast bang for the buck, you’ll want to find an album that’s exactly 10 tracks that you would have paid $9.99 for (or $7.49 at Lala); for an album consisting of more than 10 tracks, you either have to cherry-pick which 10 tracks you want to download or pay extra to fill in the missing numbers. Those “free” tracks expire monthly as well, so you have to be vigilant to avoid losing them. (That’s happened once already to me. Ouch!)

All three of the services I continue to use regularly for music purchases—Amazon, eMusic, and Lala—include their own downloader utilities, which copy purchased tunes in the background and move them into either the iTunes or Windows Media library. It’s arguably easier to do it all from the iTunes window, but my experience suggests that a collection drawn from different sources requires no extra management tricks beyond installing those mini-downloaders.

When I wrote my original post, several commenters chided me for being fixated on saving pennies. As it turns out, those pennies add up: if you’re a music fan, the actual savings can be hundreds of dollars.

Your turn: Are you willing to pay extra for iTunes? Have you switched to any alternative services? Leave your comments in the Talkback section.

August 25th, 2009

Snow Leopard upgrade: what's in it for me?

Posted by Ed Bott @ 3:54 pm

Categories: Apple

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Kernel, 64-Bit, Desktops, Network Technology, Processors, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, Networking

Last month, I purchased a new Mac mini to replace the borrowed Macbook I had been using earlier this year. Among other things, I want to be able to make accurate comparisons of features and performance between Windows 7 systems and their Mac counterparts later this fall. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my cheap system (which was officially part of the Mac lineup as recently as March of this year, when it was replaced by a new design) qualified for a free upgrade to Snow Leopard, which should be waiting for me when I get back from vacation next week.

I thought it was a nice touch on Apple’s part to deliver the update a few days early. But I’m still puzzled over exactly what’s in it for me. Apple’s Snow Leopard page is uncharacteristically modest, promising only that it will be “faster, more reliable, and easier to use” and will have some “new core technologies.”

Fortunately, I ran across an excellent post by Stephen Foskett yesterday, who summarized who gets what:

Snow Leopard is really a major jump forward in terms of advanced hardware and software integration. It brings Grand Central, OpenCL, full 64-bit mode, and QuickTime X along with Exchange support and many tweaks. But many of these features are highly hardware-dependent, so not all Mac users will get everything.

As it turns out, my Mac was introduced in 2007, although it was still part of Apple’s lineup until March 2009, just a few months before I bought it. Because it uses older technology (notably a 32-bit EFI and onboard Intel graphics), it is unable to take advantage of several of those new core technologies in Snow Leopard. I have plenty of company, though. With Stephen’s permission, I’m reprinting a chart he put together from Apple’s documentation, listing which features are available for each family of Macs. I added color coding (red if a feature is unavailable, yellow if it’s partially enabled) to make the chart a bit easier to read (the chart is available after the jump):

Read the rest of this entry »

July 1st, 2009

Microsoft to offer Family Pack for Windows 7 Home Premium

Posted by Ed Bott @ 9:40 pm

Categories: Apple, Licensing, Windows 7

Tags: Apple Inc., Agreement, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Ed Bott

Update: A few small retailers have inadvertently leaked details of Family Pack and Anytime Upgrade pricing. See my follow-up here: Windows 7 Family Pack, Anytime Upgrade prices leak

—

In two recent posts (Windows 7 versus Snow Leopard: How much do upgrades really cost? and Do you need more than Windows 7 Home Premium?), I took a closer look at the differences between Windows 7 editions and their counterparts from Apple. In the Talkback section of both posts, several commenters noted that Microsoft is still far behind its archrival in Cupertino. Until Microsoft comes out with a Family Pack license, they say, Apple will continue to have the upper hand.

Well, maybe the wait is over.

Thanks to a tip from Kristan Kenney, I took a close look at the agreements embedded in the License folder of the latest leaked builds of Windows 7. This is no longer a beta license agreement and is presumably very close to the final agreement that customers will accept. The agreements for retail copies of Windows 7 Home Premium contain this eye-opening clause:

If you can’t read the screen shot, here’s the relevant section: “If you are a ‘Qualified Family Pack User’, you may install one copy of the software marked as ‘Family Pack’ on three computers in your household for use by people who reside there.” (And a proofreading note to Microsoft Legal: Fix the typo in the last sentence of that clause before RTM.)

When I first wrote about Windows 7 pricing last month, I speculated that Microsoft was likely to have a program like this up its sleeve:

What else can we expect to see? Back in early 2007, Microsoft offered a so-called Family Discount for Windows Vista, which allowed anyone with a Vista Ultimate license to purchase two Home Premium upgrades for $49.99 each. I expect to see an improved version of the Family Discount this time around. If Microsoft wanted to aim directly at its archrival Apple, it could sell three Home Premium upgrade licenses (to be used only in a single home) for $199 or less.

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Microsoft prices the Family Pack at $189, which is $10 less than Apple’s Family Pack (although Apple’s license is good for five Macs in a single household).

By the way, these same terms are also contained in the license agreement for Windows 7 Home Premium E (the one sold in Europe, sans Internet Explorer), as well as the N, K, and KN Home Premium versions, which are also deliberately gutted of one or more features to satisfy antitrust authorities. The Family Pack language  is not included in the license agreement for any other Windows 7 edition.

Just as with Apple’s Family Pack license (PDF), the deal will apparently be restricted to users in a single household and is not available for business users. Apple’s agreement specifically says: “The Family Pack License does not extend to business or commercial users.” No such clause is in the Windows 7 license agreement, but it’s probably contained in the definition of a “Qualified Family Pack User,” which is referred to in a link that isn’t yet live.

In some respects, this is an extension of Microsoft’s licensing efforts with Office 2007 Home and Student edition, which is licensed for use (PDF) on up to three computers in a single household. In that case, the product carried this restriction: “The software is not licensed for use in any commercial, non-profit, or revenue-generating business activities.”

Update: My colleague Mary-Jo Foley asks some interesting questions about the the Vista predecessor:

Microsoft ended up offering a Family Pack for Vista, but wouldn’t confirm its existence until just before the worldwide launch of Vista in January 2007. The company made the Vista Family Pack available to users who bought Vista Ultimate at retail. (But Microsoft may have phased out the Family Pack offer, as it no longer shows up when searching the Windows site.)

I’ve mentioned that offer several times in the past few years. There are some very big differences between that deal (which was called the Windows Vista Family Discount) and the one that appears to be on its way for Windows 7. As the original press release (linked above) made clear, the Vista Family Discount was a “limited-time offer for customers who buy retail copies of Windows Vista Ultimate.” In other words, it was a temporary discount on products that were otherwise licensed according to standard terms.

Also in that announcement was the news that it was a limited promotion that ran from January 30 through June 30, 2007. This deal, on the other hand, is actually named in the license agreement, which strongly suggests that it is a permanent addition to the list of retail packages and not a temporary promotion.

What price would you pay for a three-pack of Home Premium licenses?

Update, Noon Pacific time: Reached for comment, a Microsoft spokesperson says only, “We will continue to work with our partners and expect to have other great offers in the future as we lead up to and beyond general availability. We have nothing to announce at this time.”

June 26th, 2009

Windows 7 versus Snow Leopard: How much do upgrades really cost?

Posted by Ed Bott @ 5:00 am

Categories: Apple, Microsoft, Windows 7

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Upgrade, Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Snow Leopard, Upgrade Cost, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Desktops, Operating Systems

In one of its brilliant “I’m a Mac” ads recently, Apple lampooned the complexity of Microsoft Windows with a dizzying display of fine print that eventually filled up the screen and covered up both characters.

I thought of that ad when I saw Apple’s recent announcement that it was going to make its next Mac OS X upgrade, Snow Leopard, available as a $29 upgrade. That sounds so much better than the broad range of prices that Microsoft is going to charge its customers for Windows 7 upgrades. Too bad the $29 upgrade is not that simple. In fact, according to my analysis of Apple’s own sales figures, 57% of Apple’s customers who bought and paid for new Macs in the past five years are ineligible for those cheap upgrades.

That hasn’t stopped casual observers and even some seasoned analysts from falling for Apple’s ruse. Michael Gartenberg, for example, issued this critique in response to Microsoft’s announcement of Windows 7 pricing:

Apple showed the way. Snow Leopard is also not [a] major update but rather an enhanced version of Leopard. With an upgrade price of $29, that’s about where MSFT should be for the Home Premium version of 7…

Yes, $29 for an OS upgrade sounds like a great deal, if you qualify. But do you? I looked at the fine print for this offer, and was shocked—shocked, I tell you—to discover that the majority of Mac owners don’t qualify for that pricing. In fact, a significant number of Mac owners won’t be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard at any price.

Details after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

April 23rd, 2009

6 music services compared: Who can bust the iTunes monopoly?

Posted by Ed Bott @ 11:24 pm

Categories: Apple, Digital media

Tags:

Update: At least one of the services I discuss here has significantly changed its policies since this post was published. For a look at what’s changed with eMusic and a tally of how much I saved by forgoing iTunes, see Friday follow-up: six online music services revisited.]

What does a monopoly look like? In 2009, you can get a pretty good idea by looking at Apple’s iTunes Music Store (iTMS). It has overwhelming market share with a hockey-stick growth trajectory, is designed to work exclusively with the enormously profitable iPod/iPhone family of hardware devices (another near-monopoly), and appears to be immune from pricing pressure. Having a monopoly isn’t illegal, unless a court or governmental agency rules that you’re trying to abuse the monopoly position (just ask Microsoft). In fact, if you can stay on the right side of the antitrust regulators, having a monopoly is like a license to print profits.

Apple’s success in digital music is not for lack of competition, however. Over the past few months, I’ve been sampling all of the major U.S.-based competitors to the iTunes Music Store, as well as a few fascinating minor-league competitors. In this post, I’ll show you how each one stacks up against iTMS in terms of pricing and available features. After my testing was complete, I had a new favorite music service, and after you read my report you might decide it’s right for you too.

In all, I compared iTunes to six competitors, all of which sell music downloads sanctioned by the labels that own the digital rights to those tunes: Amazon MP3, Zune Marketplace (Microsoft), and Rhapsody (RealNetworks) are all divisions of much larger companies; eMusic, Lala, and Amie Street are smaller independent services trying to carve out niches.

Here are the criteria I used:

Read the rest of this entry »

December 16th, 2008

A new record for Godwin's Law

Posted by Ed Bott @ 3:45 pm

Categories: Apple, Microsoft

Tags: Apple Inc., Godwin, Sales Strategy, Sales Force Management, Sales, Ed Bott

Everyone knows Godwin’s Law, right? The longer a heated discussion goes on, the probability that someone will compare someone else to Hitler or the Nazis approaches certainty. The original rule applied only to Usenet newsgroups, but it has since expanded to include any sort of online discussion, including comments on blogs.

Usually, when Mac-versus-PC arguments are involved, it takes some slow simmering, followed by a few back-and-forth insults that eventually burst into flames, before someone lets fly with the Hitler references. And I’m usually gone by that point, because flame wars between mindless fanboys are, frankly, boring.

But today’s comment section beneath a post on BusinessWeek’s Byte of the Apple blog sets a new record for invoking Godwin’s Law. The discussion centers around an article in today’s Wall Street Journal that claims Apple’s sales declined year-over-year in November, indicating that perhaps Apple is subject to the same economic pressures as every other company selling pricey consumer goods.

Even Apple Inc. is beginning to suffer in this year’s dismal holiday season, and worries are mounting the recession will weigh on its business next year.

Apple, which has outpaced the overall personal computer market this year despite its strategy of eschewing discounts, showed its first signs of weakness in November.

Sales of Macs in U.S. stores last month declined 1% from a year ago, while industry-wide PC sales rose 2%, according to research firm NPD Group Inc., which tracks retail sales.

Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek disagrees that this means bad news for Apple, arguing that the comparison is skewed by unique factors, including the launch of new MacBooks in October of this year. Obviously, when interpreting economic data, reasonable people can disagree.

Oh, wait. Did I say reasonable people? The very first comment beneath this post heads straight for Godwin-land. Here’s what commenter Zato wrote:

The Wall Street Journal will say whatever it can get away with to discredit Apple and Google. Both are marked for elimination in Rupert Murdocks [sic] and Microsofts’ plan to control the internet and build the fourth Reich.

In 20-plus years online, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen someone go Godwin on the very first post. An awesome performance indeed. A mere two weeks before the end of the year, I believe we have a winner.

Meanwhile, I’m feeling pretty comfortable with my decision to skip CES and Macworld next month. Anyone taking bets on which show folds first? And how long will it take before the TalkBack section beneath this post slips into Godwin territory?

October 24th, 2008

OS X versus Vista, RAM division

Posted by Ed Bott @ 3:11 pm

Categories: Apple, Windows Vista

Tags: Microsoft Windows Vista, RAM, Apple Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Operating Systems, Software, Apple Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, Ed Bott, Memory

As I noted earlier this week, I’ve begun using a MacBook (the basic white model) and keeping a log of my experiences.

Yesterday, I received the adapter cable I needed to hook this machine to an external monitor so that I could use it in a desktop configuration. (A note to the thrifty: Don’t pay Apple $29 for this mini-DVI cable. Instead, go to Monoprice.com and pick up the generic adapter for $9.96. With shipping, it was still under $12, and it works just fine.)

Now that I have this system up and running on a full-sized screen, I’m ready to make some head-to-head comparisons with Windows. Because this system has a mere 1GB of RAM, I was curious to get a sense of how thrifty OS X Leopard is when it comes to memory usage. I was especially curious to see how Leopard compares to Vista, which as been slammed by critics as a resource hog.

To get started I opened Safari and opened a single web page, then began playing an MP3 track in iTunes. With those tasks running, I checked the results from Activity Monitor:

As you can see, the OS reports that 581MB is in use, with 430MB free.

Next, I launched a similar set of tasks on a system running Windows Vista Ultimate. To make the comparison fair, I used the System Configuration utility to disable all but 1024MB of memory in the system, which has 4GB of RAM. This system is using the full Aero interface (disabling it had no significant impact on the RAM footprint). I opened Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer, began playing the same MP3 tune and browsed to the same page that was open on the Macbook. Here’s what Task Manager showed for memory usage:

For those keeping score, the Vista machine is using 594MB of RAM, which is roughly 2% more than its Mac counterpart running the same set of tasks.

Vista gets a bad rap for lots of things, including its reputedly voracious appetite for memory. As you can see, Vista compares favorably to OS X in this regard and doesn’t deserve that reputation.

October 21st, 2008

Adding up the Apple tax

Posted by Ed Bott @ 2:55 pm

Categories: Apple

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Tax, Apple MacBook, Apple Inc., RAM, Mac Way, Microsoft Windows, Desktops, Notebooks, Operating Systems

Through the graces of an anonymous benefactor, I have a recent-vintage white MacBook to use for the next few months. Although I’ve tinkered with Macs in the past, I’ve never actually used one for more than a day or two at a time.

I’ve been using the MacBook off and on over the past few weeks, and after getting past some of the initial disorientation and learning the Mac way to accomplish some common tasks, I’ve reached the point of basic productivity. The Mac way is different from the Windows way, better in some cases (connecting to a wireless network is easier, for example) and not so great in others (I’m not liking the dock). I can adjust through trial and error, but I’ll need to do some reading and maybe even buy a book or two to learn the little secrets and shortcuts that translate into improved productivity.

Anyway, as a newbie Mac user, I paid special attention to Apple’s announcements of new MacBooks last week. And Microsoft paid special attention, too, as I received multiple e-mails from folks in Redmond, who wanted to make sure I know what a great value the PC platform is compared to Apple’s products. Microsoft is peddling a line about an “Apple tax,” but most of those analyses are based on the hardware cost. I’ve been paying close enough attention to know that the differences in price extend over multiple dimensions, far beyond just the initial outlay.

I’ve been keeping some notes about the experience. But right off the bat, here are some observations about the platform:

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