March 2011 Archives

If the MacBook Pro is "the last notebook you'll ever need", what's the point of making any more?

By Billy MacInnes on March 31, 2011 1:17 PM | No Comments
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Apple hasn't been slow to trumpet the InfoWorld review for its latest MacBook Pro and it's not hard to see why when reviewer Tom Yager waxes so enthusiastically about it to the point where he states: "After more than two weeks of continuous testing, it's hard for me to imagine what I'd want in a notebook in three to five years time that MacBook Pro doesn't deliver right now."

This statement follows hard on the heels of the phrase which Apple has chosen to headline the bulletin it placed on its Apple Hot News RSS feed: "The last notebook you'll ever need."

While, on the face of it, this appears to be a massive endorsement of the product, I wonder if, upon reflection, Apple might have been better advised not drawing quite so much attention to it. If the new MacBook Pro really is the last notebook you will ever need, who is going to buy the new models when they come out next year and the year after that? Should Apple just give up making new models for a couple of years or more and concentrate on other things?

Can I just add how glad I am that Yager stressed it was the technical merits of the new MacBook Pro that qualified it to be the last notebook you'll ever own. Otherwise, some people might be inclined to think it might be down to something more sinister. Just as well no one called it a "killer notebook".

Dixons profit warning: It's the economy stupid

By Billy MacInnes on March 30, 2011 3:29 PM | No Comments
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PCW high res.jpgIs it really any surprise Dixons has announced profits for the year end in April will be at the lower end of analyst expectations? Profits before tax are expected to be around £85m, right at the bottom of estimates that ranged from £85m to £109m, following the retailer's revelation that sales for the year to 25 March were down 11% in the UK and Ireland. 

Chief executive John Browett said consumer confidence across some of the company's markets was "fragile" and would "continue to be so through much of 2011". 

Jeremy Davies, CEO at Context, suggests Dixons is feeling the effects of being "in the wrong place, selling the wrong products" because of falling consumer demand, particularly for notebooks.

But there's a wider context here as Dixons suffers from the effects of measures being taken at a government level to address the UK economy on consumer confidence. The cuts due to take effect in the UK next month are already shaping consumer attitudes and making them more cautious about spending while Ireland is in the grip of a monumental banking crisis.

It's not just the UK and Ireland, however. Spain is also suffering and Dixons may decide to pull out of the country altogether. In addition, the company is planning to reduce capital expenditure and look at further cost-cutting measures.

On one level it makes perfect sense, but there's a slightly offbeat circular logic to Dixons undertaking similar cost-cutting measures at a micro level to those being pursued by the government at a macro level partly as a result of the effects of those government measures in the first place.

Linguists in war of words over Apple App store trademark claim

By Billy MacInnes on March 29, 2011 11:44 PM | No Comments
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Do you ever get the feeling some companies just have too much money for their own good? And that maybe they could be using it to better purpose than lining lawyers' pockets? Microsoft and Apple are currently embroiled in a fairly ridiculous court case over whether Apple should be allowed to trademark the phrase "App Store".

In the latest salvo, Microsoft has continued its opposition to Apple with testimony from linguist, Dr Ronald R Butters, PhD, arguing that app store just means "store at which apps are offered for sale". Butters has been employed to to refute testimony for Apple by Dr Robert A. Leonard, PhD, which argued App Store was a proper noun that had become associated with Apple. Or something like that. It's all a bit complicated, semantic even. 

As an aside, it's funny how both linguists have a middle initial in their name - do you think that's something common to linguists or only to linguists that provide expert testimony to computer companies engaged in trademark rows?

Quite why a company that trademarked the word Windows should have an issue with a company that has trademarked the word Apple seeking to do the same for App Store is a bit odd. Was Microsoft planning to follow in Apple's footsteps by launching its own "store at which apps are offered for sale" and calling it the App Store?

A bit of common sense might have been better employed from both sides rather than paying lawyers and linguists. Sadly, there isn't an app for that.


The BSA's new weapon against unlicensed software: disgruntled employees

By Billy MacInnes on March 28, 2011 11:04 PM | No Comments
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Interesting to see that settlements paid by UK firms caught using unlicensed software doubled to £2m last year according to figures from the Business Software Alliance (BSA). 

As it's pretty clear 2010 was not, in general, twice as vulnerable to criminal acts than its predecessor (2009), there has to be another reason for the surge in settlements.

If the amount of crime is unlikely to have vastly increased, the only other answer has to be more of it is being detected or solved. According to the BSA, one of the factors behind greater detection has been the impact of whistleblowing from employees at companies using unlicensed software.

"Informant reports come through frequently and businesses need to be aware that it is easy for employees to blow the whistle on unlicensed software use," says EMEA compliance marketing head Julian Swan, describing it as "an ideal excuse for frustrated employees to secure some payback on management that thinks it can get more with less".

Might there be some correlation between businesses cutting corners on their software licences and companies annoying employees by cutting costs on everything else, including some of their perks or even their wages? There could be a lesson there. 

Mind you, it begs the question of whether some of those firms might still be getting away with using unlicensed software if they had only kept their employees sweet.


"We're not a broadliner anymore," says C2000 boss. So what are you?

By Billy MacInnes on March 25, 2011 3:57 PM | No Comments
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Computer 2000 is not a generalist distributor. Has everybody got that? You at the back, did you hear it? C2000 head honcho Andy Gass was pretty clear on the subject when he told attendees at its annual Vendor Summit in London today (25 March): "We do still get termed at times as a generalist distributor but that is something I want to kill today."

He went on to say the distributor needed to do a better job of telling the market about its breadth of business, the different models it was running and the number of areas it touches and urged vendors to "challenge your preconceptions" about C2000.

Gass backed up his comments with the revelation that its specialist distribution businesses - Azlan, Brightstar, Maverick and Datech - contributed 46.5% of C2000 sales in the last financial year. 

That still means that the majority, just, of sales came from volume business, so it's probably a tad premature to jettison the 'broadline' tag just yet. But we are getting to the point where we probably ought to try and think of a new acronym for this type of distribution business, especially as C2000's likely to fit into that category for quite a while to come. 

What about something like volume added value (VAV) distribution or value added volume distribution? Or value added broadliner (VAB)?

What's the cost of illegal downloads? Record companies say $75 trillion

By Billy MacInnes on March 24, 2011 8:58 PM | No Comments
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I spotted a link on Slashdot to an interesting article on law.com which showed just how ridiculous the music industry can be when it comes to copyright infringement over the net. In this instance, 13 record companies that won a summary judgement in May last year against Lime Wire have demanded damages for each instance of infringement where two or more parties were liable.

Strip aside the legalise and what this means is that in the case of Lime Wire which had millions of downloads from thousands of users, the damages award could be as high as $75 trillion. Manhattan federal district court judge Kimba Wood has given the damages request short shrift, labelling it "absurd". In her opinion, Kimba wrote that plaintiffs were asking for "more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877".

Still, you can't blame the guys for trying, although as Lime Wire's lawyer Joseph Baio of Wilkie Farr & Gallagher pointed out, with that kind of money they could pay for health care and wipe out the national debt. But on past experience, they'd probably blow it trying to market crap pop tunes to the rest of us that we don't want to hear.

Miliband adds iPod insult to injure Osborne

By Billy MacInnes on March 23, 2011 5:22 PM | No Comments
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Labour leader Ed Miliband got in a good crack during his reply to George Osborne's budget speech today (23 March) when he compared the current situation to the last time the Tories were in power in the early 1990s.

"The same hubris and arrogance of the early 1990s, the same broken promises, the same view that unemployment is a price worth paying," he said, before describing the Chancellor as "Norman Lamont with an iPod. And no doubt on his playlist, Je Ne Regrette Rien."

While it might be an achievement for the iPod to be used in political discourse in the House of Commons, somehow we don't think Apple will be rushing to use it in an advert any time soon.

Nintendo 3DS midnight launch: Is any gadget worth staying up for?

By Billy MacInnes on March 22, 2011 3:16 PM | 1 Comment
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The very very early hours, actually minutes, of Friday morning could turn out to be a mugger's paradise with the news that more than 1,200 stores are opening at one minute past midnight in the UK for the launch of Nintendo's 3DS game console.

The stores are all over the UK, taking in places like Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Birmingham, Cambridge, Leeds and Manchester.

Okay, so it's 3D but is it really worth queueing at night when you could pick it up the next morning? And what will employers think of Nintendo if a number of their staff come into work bleary-eyed on Friday morning having queued up for hours for the 3DS, taken it home and played on it for ages before snatching a couple of hours sleep?

Is any gadget really worth losing sleep for? The worrying thing is there are obviously quite a lot of people in this world who think it is.

The iPad is child's play? It's even easier than that

By Billy MacInnes on March 21, 2011 5:42 PM | No Comments
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Saying something is 'child's play' is usually a sign that it is very easy to use but in the case of Apple's iPad, it looks as if the phrase needs to be amended to 'baby's play' judging by this video on YouTube of a two year old boy playing with the Apple tablet.

"Get them while they're young" is a well-worn truism and Apple seems to be taking it to heart by catching them younger and younger. Mind you, there are plenty of people in the Windows world who will view the video as merely reinforcing their perception of the Cupertino company as a maker of shiny toys. Perhaps they'll grow out of it as they get older. But if they don't...

Apple faces exodus of customers over 'gay conversion' app

By Billy MacInnes on March 18, 2011 4:41 PM | No Comments
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Apple's app store has been very successful - the recently launched Mac app store has also been doing very nicely thank you - but the company has found itself in a number of compromising positions over how it decides which apps can go into the store and which can't.

In December 2009, for instance, it banned an app called NewsToons from Mark Fiore. In April 2010, Fiore won a Pulitzer prize. Whoops.

Now, according to the PInk Paper, Apple has managed to annoy a lot of gay people by allowing an app from an organisation called Exodus International. The christian group just happens to believe that people can be turned away from being gay through the power of prayer. On its web site it says the answer to the question of whether people who "experience same-sex attraction can overcome those temptations and lead a life of sexual integrity" is "yes". 

The app has a 4+ rating which, according to Apple's definitions, means it contains "no objectionable content". Maybe Apple should reconsider after looking at the comments from App Store customers. "How did this get approved?" asks one. "Homophobic rubbish," says another. Someone else states: "As a straight man I find this app offensive and totally inappropriate...I am disgusted with Apple and will think twice before I purchase any more Apple products until this is removed from the site."

Looks like quite a few people find it objectionable.

Postscript: Sometimes, even though we live in a wired world, news seems to travel very slowly. The Pink Paper story appeared today but according to the App Store, the app was released on 15 February.

Replace gardening leave with volunteering to help society

By Billy MacInnes on March 16, 2011 10:02 AM | No Comments
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Following on from BusinessMan's blog about gardening leave today (16 May) and the issue of whether companies can enforce it even if it isn't in an employee's contract, it occurred to me that in the current circumstances, maybe we should be looking to completely change the concept of 'gardening leave'.

With Dave Cameron being such a keen advocate of volunteering and the Big Society, maybe companies should consider striking out their gardening leave clauses and replacing them with "volunteering" or "big society" clauses. That way, instead of paying someone to stay at home doing nothing for three or six months before moving to a job at a competitor, a company could pay the employee to do something useful for society.

From the employee's perspective, they will surely feel much more fulfilled giving back something to society instead of lolling around the house wondering what to do with their days until the new job starts. Admittedly, the volunteering wouldn't be quite as voluntary as it should be, but the employee would still have a choice as to which worthy cause to work for.

Sounds like a good idea to me. 

Out of tune Zune player fades out

By Billy MacInnes on March 15, 2011 8:00 AM | No Comments
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Can it really be true? Will the Zune really be no more? Such are the rumours that Microsoft is preparing to pull the plug on its iPod killer a mere four years and four months after its launch.

And yet, it all seemed so different back then. Even though the iPod had achieved huge dominance in the MP3 player market, Microsoft was confident it could do what it did back in the good old days with Windows 3 and come in and steal the market from Apple.

As then chairman Bill Gates said back in November 2006: "Zune is a big investment for us and it's a vision that will carry us forward for years." Pity it appears to have been the wrong vision.

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Zune product manager Matt Junelirer rather rashly promised that Microsoft would "continue to innovate where and when it makes sense for our customers, so we can keep exciting them for years to come". Maybe he was misheard and he actually meant "four years" rather than "for years". As for that excitement...

And then, of course, there's always the man who laughed at the iPhone, CEO Steve Ballmer, who spoke about Zune and iPods in these tones. "We can beat them [Apple], but it's not going to be easy. The market will have two big players for a long time, us and Apple. Obviously we're the David in this one. Apple's the Goliath." He was right about it not being easy but he was seriously wrong about Microsoft being a big player in the MP3 player market for a long time. Even the David and Goliath stuff was a bit skewiff because while Microsoft may have been David in the MP3 player market, it was still Goliath in the wider IT industry.

Now, it looks like Microsoft is pulling out of the iPod space entirely. In the meantime, it has other things on its mind, such as Windows Phone 7 which is aiming to do to the iPhone what Zune was supposed to do to the iPod. The odds are a little better here if only because the smartphone market includes business users as well as consumers but, to quote Ballmer, "it's not going to be easy".

Careful what you say, social networking isn't above the libel laws

By Billy MacInnes on March 14, 2011 3:39 PM | No Comments
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The Internet may represent a faster, more immediate method of communication and means of providing information but when it comes to the law it can be just as dangerous as print in a newspaper or careless words on the radio or TV.

The growth of social networking forms such as Facebook and twitter are encouraging many people to put down in writing what they might usually only say to a small group of people or close friends. The problem is that their writings on Facebook and twitter are not the same as a casual remark to an associate. They have a potentially much wider readership base and are often public forums rather than private. People need to be aware of the potential for ending up on the wrong side of m'learned friends if they are not careful.

A case in point involves Caerphilly county councillor Colin Elsbury who has been ordered to pay £3,000 damages and legal costs of around £50,000 after Cardiff Crown Court found he had wrongly claimed on twitter that rival Eddie Talbot had been removed from a polling station by police during a 2009 by-election.

In addition to libel damages and costs, Elsbury will also have to tweet an apology. Talbot's solicitor Nigel Jones predicted there could be more libel cases involving twitter in the future because anything posted on twitter is in the public domain and subject to libel laws.

Don't say you haven't been warned.

iPad is a curse for Acer and a blessing for Dell

By Billy MacInnes on March 11, 2011 12:06 PM | No Comments
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ipad2_facetime.jpgAcer has reason to curse the iPad. Not long ago, the Taiwanese vendor was riding the crest of the netbook wave and its notebooks were making serious inroads into the consumer market. The strength of its consumer products helped propel Acer into second place in the global PC market.

Then along came the iPad. The success of Apple's product and other media tablets which have trailed in its wake has had a serious effect on Acer's business. According to market research company IHS iSuppli, Acer was overtaken by Dell in the last quarter of 2010 in unit shipments. Worse still, Acer's Q4 figure showed a sequential decline on the third quarter and that fall (12.9%) helped push Dell, which shipped pretty much the same number of units in the third and fourth quarter, into second place for the entire year. 

A lot of people might think it's a funny old world when Dell reclaims the number two spot primarily because of the performance of a company that founder Michael Dell once infamously suggested should be shut down and the money given back to the shareholders.

Meanwhile, while Dell and Acer were swapping places, HP increased its lead at the top of the global PC market.

HP chief plans WebOS on every machine but do users want it?

By Billy MacInnes on March 10, 2011 2:30 PM | No Comments
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HP CEO Léo Apotheker is reported to have revealed plans to include the WebOS on every PC the vendor ships from 2012 onwards. Not that it's getting rid of Windows, you understand, but it will ship WebOs alongside the Microsoft product on every machine.

While WebOS has been, to date, an operating system for Palm smartphones, it is set to power HP's TouchPad tablets which are due in the summer, although there are reports it could arrive earlier.

The move to include it on desktops and laptops has been mooted by HP but the expectation was it would be a gradual process. Apotheker's comments suggest he is keen to do things in a faster and more radical way. 

If people start using WebOS on PCs, it will give HP some clout with Microsoft and leave it less reliant on Windows. It would also open up the possibility of a more fragmented and potentially much more interesting desktop OS environment going forward. 

There could be an attraction for people who buy Touchpads or HP smartphones to run WebOS on their HP PC but the potential for confusion also exists if they have two OSes on their desktop. How will they decide which one to use and how  will HP get those without Touchpads or phones to take any notice of WebOS on their PC? Will it annoy Microsoft in the process?

You can see the attraction for HP of using its massive PC and laptop production to market its own product at the same time, but it might not turn out to be such a positive if users take exception to another piece of software loaded onto their machine that they didn't ask for.

Should employers leave staff to their own smart devices?

By Billy MacInnes on March 9, 2011 3:39 PM | 1 Comment
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Interesting story today about the failure of employers to come to terms with the way employees are connecting to corporate networks with their own mobile devices. According to Tom DeLaughter, CEO of Mformation Technologies (and no, he's not joking), 76% of CIOs are worried about the security issues posed by employee-owned mobile devices but 78% don't know which devices are connecting to the network.

DeLaughter argues smart devices, such as iPads and iPhones, are going to be a fact of life with the consumerisation of IT and corporates need to acknowledge that fact and adapt accordingly. He warns that if employers try to lock them out, determined employees will find 'backdoors' and create security risks in the process.

It says something about employees' attachment to their own smart devices that they are prepared to go to the length of compromising corporate security to be able to use them for work. But it also says something about the quality of IT products provided to them by their employers that they try so hard to use their own smart devices.  

Common sense would dictate it makes more sense to concentrate on incorporating employee-owned devices into the workplace than shutting them out and forcing people to use devices they don't want. Sadly, common sense and corporate networks don't always go together, especially if it costs more than the option of doing nothing.

International Women's Day web site hit by DoS attacks

By Billy MacInnes on March 8, 2011 3:33 PM | No Comments
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It says something about the hacking community that the International Women's Day website has been the subject of three denial of service (DoS) attacks today (8 March), the centenary of International Women's Day.

According to the internationalwomensday.com website, it was subjected to a "number of massive 5 gigabytes per second denial of service attacks". The web site's founder, Glenda Stone, said women's spirits "will not be dampened by the attempts of those who do not support International Women's Day. Activity around the world continues to mark the day's significance as millions of women campaign for equality and celebrate achievement".

I'm trying my best not to understand the motivation of targeting the web site of a campaign seeking to deliver equality for women around the world, but I can't get away from the fact there are obviously people out there in the hacking community who don't think women deserve equality and they certainly shouldn't be allowed to celebrate their achievements.

Chips every night as Brits turn to PC dinners

By Billy MacInnes on March 7, 2011 3:26 PM | No Comments
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It looks as if research conducted by video on demand service SeeSaw may have helped coin a new term for the 21st century. We're all familiar with TV dinners but SeeSaw's research found that one in five of those surveyed regularly ate their evening meal in front of a computer, giving rise to the tag PC dinners. 

John Keeling, platform controller at Seesaw, claimed the growth of the PC dinner was a "remarkable new trend and for many across the nation, has now replaced the traditional TV dinner".

But aside from being even more anti-social than TV dinners, PC dinners are also not very healthy. It's the chips.

Balloon stunt for new game leaves THQ red faced

By Billy MacInnes on March 4, 2011 12:36 PM | No Comments
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More from the inexhaustible supply of idiotic publicity stunts by IT companies: game developer THQ has landed in hot water San Francisco Bay water with a harebrained stunt to promote its latest masterwork. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, THQ decided it would be a good idea to release 10,000 red balloons into the sky above the city, copying a method used by South Korea to send messages of hope to North Korea.

The stunt was designed to draw attention to the new game's utterly plausible storyline of the US being invaded by troops from North Korea. Er, let's try that one again. The US is invaded by troops from North Korea! 

I suppose if you're promoting a game based on such a far-out premise the idea of floating 10,000 balloons above San Francisco makes some kind of awful sense. Not to local residents, however, who have complained that most of the balloons ended up in the bay.

To them, the threat of pollution in the bay is probably a little bit more of a concern than the prospect of being invaded by hordes of heavily armed soldiers from North Korea.

THQ says the balloons are biodegradable but as Nena pointed out all those years ago, when it comes to releasing red balloons into the wild, you really only need 99. If 99 red balloons were good enough for Nena, they should have been good enough for THQ. Besides, "10,000 red balloons fall into the San Francisco Bay" doesn't scan so well.

File under 'Creepy': Japanese researchers develop 'fleshlike' mobile phone

By Billy MacInnes on March 3, 2011 4:55 PM | No Comments
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AFP reports that Japanese researchers have developed a mobile phone shaped like a person that has an outer coating that feels like human skin.

The press release from Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (a collaboration between Osaka University, NTT DoCoMo and others) described the device as a "revolutionary telecom medium", claiming the mobile phone could "feel like the person you are talking to".

The plan is to put it into commercial production within five years. Yuck! Why on earth do people believe something like this could be attractive? Who to? Personally, I think holding something flesh-like to my ear or in front of my face would make my skin crawl. And the thought that someone else would be doing the same when they're talking to me on the phone would, as they say in US teen movies, "creep me out".

Apple to Microsoft: if you can trademark Windows, we can trademark App Store

By Billy MacInnes on March 2, 2011 2:31 PM | No Comments
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The latest development in the Microsoft v Apple court case over Apple's attempt to trademark the phrase "App Store" is a case of the biter bit. Personally, I don't agree that Apple should be allowed to trademark such a generic term although there is an argument for saying it's only become generic because of Apple's use of it.

Nevertheless, as Apple's attorneys point out in their response to Microsoft's motion, it's a bit rich for a company that has trademarked the word Windows to start taking issue with Apple for trying the same with App Store.

"Having itself faced a decades-long genericness challenge to its claimed WINDOWS mark, Microsoft should be well aware that the focus in evaluating genericness is on the mark as a whole," they state, accusing Microsoft of "missing the forest for the trees" and offering "a hodge-podge of out-of-context snippets of material that Microsoft argues reflect generic uses of the term APP STORE".

The filing also notes the existence of a host of other store trademarks including The Container Store, The Auto Store and The Radiator Store, suggesting their trademarks would need to be rescinded if Microsoft's objection is successful.

Basically, the argument boils down to the fact that if the United States Patent And Trademark Office was happy enough to grant those trademarks, it can't really object to Apple's App Store application.

Money can't buy you love, but it can buy you a channel

By Billy MacInnes on March 1, 2011 2:28 PM | No Comments
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Xerox has a very simple strategy when it comes to the channel. If the company decides it needs a particular presence in a country it doesn't get bogged down in appointing distributors and setting up partner accreditations, it just goes out and buys someone else's channel partner instead.

In January last year, it bought Irish Business Systems, Konica Minolta's exclusive partner in Ireland, acquiring a readymade channel for its products, an experienced salesforce and access to over 10,000 customers in the process. It also caused huge disruption to the channel of one of its biggest rivals at the same time - and all for just €31m.

It did something similar in the US in 2007 with the purchase of Global Imaging and with the acquisition, a year later, of Veenman in the Netherlands. All of these acquisitions also helped to strengthen Xerox's managed print services credentials.

So it probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that Xerox has just bought Concept Group, which claims to be the biggest Canon dealer in the UK in terms of spend. The strategy appears consistent with the earlier acquisitions. The management team is remaining in situ but reporting to Douraid Zaghouani, president of indirect channels group at Xerox.

Zaghouani emphasised that channel expansion was a "key aspect of the Xerox strategy for Europe". The purchase of Concept Group would "significantly increase our presence across the UK" and expand its reach into the SMB market. As with IBS in Ireland, it would also hurt one of Xerox's rivals at the same time.

Rivals can have no excuse for not being aware of the dangers posed by Xerox's strategy to their own channels, which makes it strange they don't appear to have been making a stronger effort to keep their partners out of the clutches of the office equipment giant.

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