Won't Get Fooled Again

For some weeks now, I have been promising an offering on the Mac vs. Windows debate. And I still plan to deliver it, but probably not in the way that most of you are expecting. I will give you all a bit of a hint of the tone of that essay when I say that a lot of the people on both sides, myself included, put entirely too much importance into a question that is, I feel, on the level of whether one's favorite color is red or blue.

That said, I do have a dog in that particular race, as they say. And for that reason, I cannot let a small bit of tech business news from today's New York Times website pass without comment.

According to the Times, Apple has just passed Microsoft as the world's most valuable technology company. Let me put that another way; as far as Wall Street is concerned, Apple is now officially bigger than Microsoft.

When I first read the news at work, I hunted down a fellow Apple fan boy and co-worker to share the news. We exchanged a quick high five, then got back to what we were doing.

But now that I've had a chance to ponder this little tidbit, the ramifications are starting to hit me, and my sense of stunned disbelief is starting to rise. And I hope you will bear with me when I say that for me, this feels a lot like the way the end of the Cold War felt.

Not that I'm even remotely elevating the fall of Communism to the level of one brand of grown up toys selling more stock than another. The latter happens all the time, as businesses wax and wane. But what makes this news so epic is the context of history; for all of my life, Microsoft was the big boy on the block when it came to computers. As I think about it, 7 of the 11 computers I've owned in my life have had Microsoft operating systems (the other four, and the most recent, were, of course, various flavors of Mac's OS X).

Back when I bought my first computer (running MS-DOS 4.01), Microsoft seemed relatively benign, and even vaguely likable. And mean, what can you say about a company whose idea of a game is a flight simulator accurate enough to do low-level flight training on?

But the more software they sold, the bigger they became on the big electronic playground, and the more of a bully they became. No one seriously challenged their operating system, and any rivals that were foolish enough to go up against them in other areas were smashed; the Netscape web browser, Lotus's 1-2-3 spreadsheet, and my own beloved WordPerfect word processor; all were ground beneath the boot of Redmond. They did this with tactics like loading free versions of programs like Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word onto every computer sold, and arranging for some computer manufacturers to sell machines with pre-loaded copies of Microsoft Office which customers couldn't not buy (and yes, I speak from personal experience on that last one. I wound up choosing another PC maker rather than buy $150 worth of software I didn't want).

So even before I made the switch to Apple, Microsoft was the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and everyone's symbol of technological tyranny — you danced to their tune, or you didn't dance at all.

At the same point in time, MacIntosh computers simply weren't a viable alternative for me until 2005. They were too expensive, impossible to get software for, and incompatible with every piece of software I had ever bought in my life. As a result, I wasn't one of the old guard Mac users; people for whom today must seem even more surreal.

For me, though, it is plenty surreal enough. In the 1990s, the idea that Apple would ever be bigger than Microsoft was strictly the province of rabid Apple fan boys (known among us Apple geeks as Kool-Aid drinkers — a tactless allegory to the Jonestown Massacre, with Steve Jobs in the role of Jim Jones). But times change, and apparently, Microsoft didn't; at least, not fast enough. Apple still only accounts for about 10 percent of computers, but computers are moving off the desk and into pockets — an arena where Apple has been giving Microsoft a beating since the iPod. Microsoft isn't dead yet, but its influence is dwindling; the new tech powerhouses are Apple and Google, and the new battlefields are smart phones and search.

It's starting to feel like a bit of a hollow victory, though. As Apple grows in power, the new Apple is starting to seem a lot like the old Microsoft. The last few weeks, we've been hearing about Apple demanding apologies for ad parodies, shutting out apps for the iPod Touch and iPhone for no reason, firing an employee who violated company security by showing an iPad before it's release to the (now retired) co-founder of the company, among other things. In other words, it's not all puppies and rainbows in Cupertino.

So I'm happy for my favorite toy maker today. But I hope they remember that the people that kept them alive in the lean years supported them precisely because they weren't Microsoft. I hope they take a page from their new rival's playbook — namely, "Don't Be Evil." And to paraphrase one of my favorite composers, I really, really hope that the new boss doesn't turn out to be the same as the old boss.

The shape of things to come?

The other day, I got an e-mail from Amazon.com. The good people there just wanted to remind me that there was a free Kindle reader available for my PC, should I feel so inclined.

Now, I have been eyeing the Kindle since they were introduced a few years back. Portable book reader that does for books what the iPod did for music = good. A sticker price of $259 and no color display = bad.  Also, there's the matter that Amazon insists on charging for e-books, which is okay so far as it goes, but I only have so much disposable cash. I have a sizable library of CDs that I can load onto my iPod. And while I have a small library of public domain books in .txt format (thank you Project Gutenberg), none of them are in Kindle format. So while I approve of the basic concept, the Kindle wasn't something I sat up nights plotting on how to get my hands on.


Fast forward to a couple of months ago. Apple, my gadget maker of preference, introduces the iPad; a sleek little piece of hardware that does everything a Kindle does, only in color, and with an iPod, web browser and some light laptop functionality thrown in for good measure. This = really good. A starting price of $499 = really bad.

Another point that shouldn't be lost in all of this is I like books. Not text files, not e-readers, but books. The codex format that the early Christians found so useful works just fine for me, venerable as it is. And in some ways, it's infinitely preferable. I would never take a $500 iPad into a hot bath on a Sunday afternoon, for example.

Nevertheless, when the e-mail from Amazon arrived, I finally decided to put a toe in the water. I downloaded the Mac version of the app (free), and almost as quickly, found a book on prayer by Phil Yancey (oddly enough, also free). Yancey is one of my favorite living Christian writers, and I'm still trying to figure out what one of his books is doing floating around on Amazon for free. Yet, there it was, on Amazon's top ten downloads list for $0.00.

And so, I find myself a few chapters into Phil Yancey's "Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?" — exactly 12 percent, as it happens (try judging that with a paperback). And so far, it's had a few differences from a regular book. For starters, it's a little too much like reading a web page. Instead of the satisfying flick of turning a page, I'm obliged to lightly draw my fingers against the trackpad to move on to the next section; not quite the sensory experience I'm used to. On the other hand, it remembers exactly how far I've gotten, so no more jagged bits of paper marking my place. There's also supposed to be a notes feature, which would be a little slice of fried awesome for some texts, but I haven't figured out how to make it work yet.

At the moment, it's a curiosity, and no more. I still think more than $250 for an e-book reader is too much. And even if I didn't, it would just be one more thing to carry. Too much cost, and not enough of a multi-tasker. So while I'm content to add Kindle functionality to my MacBook Pro, I can't begin to justify spending the money to get what would be the coolest thing about it — to be able to take a library of books around with you on a hand-held device a little smaller than an issue of Time magazine.

Of course, there is always the Kindle app for the iPad…

Glad tidings

Slightly less than two hours ago, my daughter was baptized by immersion in the waters of Kentucky Lake. Next week, she will formally join the congregation of the church we attend, along with other members of her confirmation class.

In the words of my pastor, "Let the people say 'amen.'"

Heavy weather

Well, as many of you have no doubt heard, we've had our share of weather this weekend. My family and I have just returned from an overnight 'holiday' at my parents house, after a 10:30 p.m. tornado warning  prompted us to take shelter. I could make glib remarks about the time, or complain about the fact that because it lasted until 5:30 this morning, we weren't able to judge about whether we needed to take shelter or not. I could do that, but the fact remains that I am eternally grateful that I have someplace to take my family in the event a tornado decides to drop in.

And brother, do we get tornados. Tornados seem to really like the town that I work in. I've personally covered five of them for my newspaper, and have developed a deep, abiding hatred for them. And yes, I mean hatred. I know it's bad sport to hate anything, much less something that came from the hand of God, and I'm sure he knows better than me. But I've developed an actual hatred of tornados. I've only seen a handful of smashed houses — places where nothing but the sheer violence of wind created a soggy debris field of wood, insulation, clothing, photos and all the other things that people own spread hundreds of feet across their neighbor's bean field. But those few times have been enough to make me hate the word 'tornado.'

But I digress; the point of this post is simply to let everyone know that we're fine, and to say "goodness, we certainly are getting a whole lot of wet." We were obliged to go to town yesterday, and I must say I haven't seen flooding like that in the entire time I've lived here. We had to take an alternate route at least once because of submerged roads. The parking lot of The Catfish Place, a popular local eatery, was entirely submerged (needless to say, they were closed). And the creek that borders the back yard of my daughter's best friend's home had risen all the way up to the house. When I was there, the muddy water rushing through the yard made it look like they'd built on a river bank.

So we have had an interesting time here, but all are safe. By the way, the title of this post is a twofold musical reference. For starters, Heavy Weather is the title of a Weather Report album (that I do not own).  It is also a lyric from the Jethro Tull album Heavy Horses (which I do own — picked it up in England on my honeymoon). The phrase comes from the title track.

Bring me a wheel of oaken wood
A rein of polished leather
A heavy horse and a tumbling sky
Brewing heavy weather.

Stay dry, everyone.