One thing that has always stumped me, and many others I bet, is how Apple has risen to become such an admired and respected company while essentially limiting their customers choice to zero. The most anti-competitive computer company in the world is also the most admired... how odd!

For instance, in 2006 Apple was the PC World Hardware Company of the Year. Fortune named it the Most Admired Company in Innovation of the Year in 2006 as well. And almost daily consumers are faced with "Hi I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC." ads that despite their gross inaccuracies and untrue claims, are generally thought of as an advertising success story.

But then you compare their actual product offerings with what competitors offer, and you're left wondering why their customers are often repeat buyers given the way the company treats them sometimes.

* The iMac is a beautiful machine. A computer hidden inside an LCD monitor. But as a PC owner, I upgrade the memory, hard disks, DVD writers, and video cards on my machine every so often. Sometimes I get a new LCD for my computer, as the prices of large 21" LCD screens have dropped a lot. How do you upgrade an iMac? You don't. You buy a new one every couple of years for $1,500-$2,000...

* In the time it took Microsoft to go from Windows XP to Vista (Oct 2001 to Jan 2007), Apple had 5 versions of OS 10 (10.0 to 10.4) and is expected to ship their sixth one this year. That's five times the Windows upgrade costs. Outraged that Vista Home Premium Upgrade costs $149.99? OSX users pay $129.00 for each version, or $645 for those 5 upgrades from OSX 10.0 by the end of this year. Microsoft releases service packs for free, while Apple rolls it into a DVD and calls it a new version.

* Apple TV looks awesome. Even I've been at the Apple Store watching the demo. But just like its iPod cousin, it only works with iTunes and iTunes Store. And iTunes Store has almost no video content in Canada. So while Americans are happily paying for and downloading TV shows and the like, Canadians do not. So why by an Apple TV for which there is almost no content?

* Speaking of Apple TV, it falls into the same no-upgrade trap as the iMac. It comes with a puny 40GB hard drive. In a world of 1000GB hard drives becoming affordable, why should Apple limit you to 40GB? And when they release the 80GB version later this year and then the 120GB version next year, what about the poor saps who bought this version? Sorry, you'll have to throw away this one and buy the next release...

* Which reminds me of the iPod. For years the iPod has been part fashion-accessory, part-music player. It seems like people were waiting for the iPod Video for years, and even when it eventually came, it wasn't the full-screen device consumers wanted. We're on the 5th generation iPod now aren't we? I own a 4th generation one (iPod Photo) that can't play videos. Wait, why can't my device play videos? There is apparently no technical reason. People have hacked their iPod Photos to do it. I guess Apple wants me to throw this $400 device away every year and buy a new one too. I hate when a device CAN do something, and the only reason it doesn't is that the company wants you to buy a newer model.

* Let's not get into the famous Apple FairPlay issues. Apple (the dominant music seller on the Internet) refuses to license the technology to other companies, thereby enforcing its MP3 player monopoly. And the only reason they are beginning to offer DRM free music is because consumers and governments worldwide are starting to complain. It's like throwing a dog a little bone, hoping he'll be distracted enough for you to get away. Meanwhile their monopoly persists.

So I ask - why is this company still so highly regarded and loved? Are consumers really so enamored with the shiny packaging to ignore the handcuffs packaged inside?

 

Every once and a while I like to post my XBox Live Gamer Tag, since I'm too lazy to update the template this website to permanently display it.

 

For fun I'm going to try this. Google has a new service that lets you create your own search engine. As an example. .NET web developers will find http://www.searchdotnet.com/ useful as it only returns authoritative Microsoft sources. MSDN, microsoft.com, MS blogs, etc. I've added that to my custom Google homepage.

So what should I create a search engine for? How about poker - a search engine that will search only the top poker blogs nd ignore the ads and such?

Check http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=007309252445351814162%3Aym0xcd0ajbk in a little bit to see how that goes. :)

 

The next adventure in my journey from Visual Studio 2003 to the wonderful Visual Studio 2005 is to convert our large source control repository from SourceSafe (VSS) to the new Team Foundation source control. This should be fun.

Visual Studio 2005 comes with a tool called VSSConverter which analyzes your existing VSS database, and then when things look good it migrates it for you. Very handy.

VSSConverter will migrate the files, including check-in history, to a new project in Foundation Server. In my practice, the migration happened almost flawlessly. The one big hiccup for me is that there are some developers who have left the company, and since Foundation Server is built off of Active Directory, I had to map those users to Guest. So you lose some user names in the conversion from people who have left.

Is there any way around that? Any tips or hints would be appreciated.

Those that know me know that I am not in the greatest of physical shape. My fitness is actually improving as I get older, and I feel like I am in better shape today than I was even a year ago, but I don't do any sort of regular physical exercise.

So it came as a great shock to me when I decided to sign up for the bi-annual World Wildlife Fund CN Tower climb http://www.wwf.ca/cntower . It also came as a great shock to my wife who I signed up to do the climb with me.

Tomorrow's the big day. I should be able to scale the 1776 steps of the tower in 30-40 minutes. My time really isn't important to me, I just want to make it to the top without dying. But it should be fun, and if I complete this I will feel a huge sense of accomplishment. I will feel like the guy who climbed Everest, even though climbing the CN Tower takes 30 minutes and climbing Everest takes a week.

Wish me luck.

Heroes is an interesting show. I'm still not totally caught up. I think I'm at episode 14 or so. And there have been something like 18 episodes so far.

Heroes takes longer to watch partly because the show is 1 hour in length (versus Entourage's light 30 minutes), and partly because it is more complicated and I can't seem to watch too many episodes in a row without getting tired.

It seems Hiro Nakamura is emerging as the fan favorite. He certainly is one of mine, mostly because he has such a positive outlook on life and provides a lot of the comic relief of the show. And this is a show that sometimes needs relief.

But all of the characters are starting to grow on me a bit. Looking forward to getting completely caught up.

A friend of mine turned me onto the HBO show Entourage. He called it "the best show on television". This is the same guy who turned me on to Lost, so I took his recommendation seriously.

On Saturday I was in the Chinese mall in Toronto, and saw (pirated versions of) the first two seasons of Entourage on sale. For $20, I could pick up both seasons on 5 DVDs. So why not try it?

I ended up spending Saturday night, Sunday, Monday night watching the first two seasons. Its a very interesting show, and I can see why he likes it. On Monday I downloaded the third season from a bittorrent server.

And as of last night, Tuesday, I've watched all three seasons. I'm completely caught up with the show.

Its amazing really, to see in 4 days what most other people took 3 years to watch. It's really a good way to watch television, because with a well-written episodic show, everything from earlier on in the season and earlier on in the series is fresh in your mind. Ari never says "Let's hug it out, bitch" any more.

Good show. Next up, watching the complete first season of Heroes.