Tag Archives: featured

The Difference Between Apple and Microsoft When It Comes to New Products

by thomasfitzgerald on 11. Nov, 2009 in Apple, Microsoft, Technology

profits vs market share

Something occurred to me today as I was reading a piece about Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. Sometimes it seems like Microsoft acts like the bitter older brother or sister who can’t stand its siblings having anything that it doesn’t have. When someone makes something successful, Microsoft has to have it. Then I began thinking about how this contrasts with the way Apple does things. If you look at the way both companies develop new products, or bring new technologies to the market you see a stark difference in approach.

Apple identifies technologies that are in their infancy or are relatively unexploited and finds away to give them mass market appeal. Examples: iPod, iPhone, The GUI, iTunes, Multitouch

Microsoft on the other hand identifies technologies that are established and successful, then decides that it want’s part (or all) of that success and uses its size and power to chip away at the competition until it gains market share. Examples: Xbox, Bing, MSN, Windows, Windows Mobile, Zune.

I’m speaking on general terms here of course, obviously there are exceptions.

Another interesting point is that Apple almost always seems to approach new products with the goal of making a profit from whatever that product may be, whereas Microsoft seems to approach a product line with the goal of dominating that market regardless of profitability.

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Some thoughts about Blu-Ray on the Mac.

Some thoughts about Blu-Ray on the Mac.

by thomasfitzgerald on 12. Oct, 2009 in Apple, Blu-Ray, Entertainment, Mac, iTunes

I really believe that there is a growing interest for blu-ray on the Mac. One of the things that leads me to suspect this is that the number one search term and link that is bringing people to this site at the moment is blu-ray. In particular Final Cut’s Blu Ray support. More and more people keep asking me: “when do you think the Mac will get blu-ray?” which is usually followed by “should I wait?” To be honest I doubt it will come this year. I suspect that when Apple does their widely rumoured Autumn Mac refresh, blu-ray won’t be on the cards (and John Gruber says so, so it must be true). I suspect that Apple’s primary focus will be keeping costs down for the holiday season, and although blu-ray burners are much cheaper than they used to be, they’re still more expensive than a normal superdrive. Unless they add it as a build to order option, I can’t see it coming before January.

Incidentally, for those claiming that iTunes downloads offer everything you need for your high-def movie satisfaction, here’s a few points to consider. Firstly, there are still very few sell through high-def movies on the iTunes store. I guess the movie studios aren’t that interested, or the initial take up by consumers has been low and the studios haven’t bothered pushing the format any more. I’m sure if they were selling well they would be falling over themselves to get more content available, but on the US iTunes store there’s only a small few titles available for purchase, and most of them are back catalogue or b-rated movies.

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Lightroom Vs Aperture: Giving Lightroom another look.

by thomasfitzgerald on 29. Apr, 2009 in Photography, Photoshop, Software, Technology

In my previous articles on this subject, I did my best to give you a reasonably objective opinion on the relative merits of each programme, however, I will admit that as I am an Aperture user, and I have preferred Aperture for a long time, I think that I was a little biased in that direction. However, recently I have started to give Lightroom another look for my full workflow, and I have to say, I’m beginning to see that maybe it might be the better choice for me after all.

I had been using Lightroom for its excellent print module but not much else. Lately though, I’ve been using it as my primary workflow tool. It started when I took some landscape pictures and I had some images with some mis-matched exposure between the top of the frame and the bottom. Normally I would have to export the image to Photoshop and then maybe do another version, export that and do a blend between the two. It occurred to me though that the gradient tool in Lightroom would handle the situation perfectly. So just as an experiment I brought my whole set of images into Lightroom.

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Lightroom Vs. Aperture: The Continuing Saga

Lightroom Vs. Aperture: The Continuing Saga

by thomasfitzgerald on 30. Dec, 2008 in Aperture, Apple, Photoshop

aperture_v_lightroom.jpg

Ever since Adobe Lightroom shipped there has been a long running debate as to which was the better piece of software for managing your photos, Adobe’s Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture. Apple actually started the “Photography Workflow Tool” race with Aperture. While many billed it as a professional version of iPhoto, it was a whole new class of application. Just as Aperture introduced the world to this concept, Adobe jumped into the fray with their own tool, Photoshop Lightroom. Since then the two have been battling it out as the workflow tool of choice for the professional and advanced amateur. Deciding between the two however has not been easy. Both offer distinct advantages and both approach the concept differently. Adobe has the largest market share (more on that later), but Apple has the more mature application. Choosing between these two applications is a struggle that I have raged over back and forth for much time, and I still have difficulty reaching a firm conclusion. What follows then, is not a direct feature for feature comparison of both programs but rather a discussion of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each application.

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Making the case for iWeb Pro

by thomasfitzgerald on 16. Apr, 2008 in Apple, Mac, Software, iLife

I’ve played around with iWeb several times since it first came out, but I never really gave it much thought, as it always seemed pretty limited for what I wanted it to do. Recently however I was having a conversation with a friend who showed me some of the things they were doing with it and I was pretty impressed. So I decided to give it a second chance and have a good, deep exploration of the software’s capabilities. I have to say, I was really impressed with what I found. But this is not a review, because there are plenty of those around the internet already, instead I’d like to discuss what I think iWeb could be, because iWeb has, in my opinion huge potential. There is nothing really like it on any platform from what I can see, yet it is limited, partly for the audience it is aimed at. But with maybe 10 percent more functionality, iWeb could be 100 percent more useful. With that in mind, rather than cannibalize the iLife suite, I think Apple could really shake the web design market up if they came out with a professional version of iWeb.

iWeb

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