Song Of The Day: The Pot - Artist: Tool

I took a brief hiatus from blogging, but have decided to come out of hiding this good Friday. An article that caught my attention recently is the Mossberg article from the WSJ Online yesterday: In Our Post-PC Era, Apple’s Device Model Beats the PC Way. It caught my attention, not because of the perspective per se, but because it was basically void of any specific product review, which is somewhat rare for the columnist. :)

The article declares:

But in the post-PC era we’re in today, where the focus is on things like music players, game consoles and cellphones, the end-to-end model is the early winner.

However, room is left in the article to see if the end-to-end model will prevail in the long term.

As I read, all I could think is that it is much simpler than component versus end-to-end debates. Sure. From a business (aka money-obtaining-entity or MOE) perspective companies like closed, sticky, products to keep customers coming back over and over; howerver, in my opinion it is all about great products at affordable prices. That premise should drive all the other methodologies, debates, and directions. If it is easier to create great products by mostly proprietary mechanisms, then so be it. If it is easier and best by entirely open or component mechanisms, then so be it. However, the original premise is why I bought my first PC and it is the reason I bought my first Mac. As a consumer, I want a great product for a great price! Right now, Apple has a bunch of great products at great prices. Can, or will, that change over time? Of course it will. There will always be an ebb and flow between the two I think. Interestingly, and perhaps obviously, there is room for both models, and it appears to me that the models are converging–not as mutually exclusive as it may seem. Maybe that’s fodder for a future article.

But I must say, I am skewed somewhat now because I’m within the technology industry and have a need to keep abreast of both models and camps. However, if that wasn’t the case, I would probably use my Mac PowerBook–I know, old technology with the MacBook Pros out–all of the time.

Why? Well, as I mentioned, I think the feature set and price points are one aspect. Another reason is the Panera Bread Company. Umm, that’s right: soup, bread, and the occasional pannini sandwich. Okay. Bare with me. There is a point to the second statement. I went to the Panera Bread Company earlier in the week to meet with some folks. And one of the folks held a new technology Intel-based MacBook Pro. Running on this MacBook Pro was Parallels Workstation, which I actually wrote about a while back. That MacBook Pro was running Mac OS X, Fedora Linux, and Windows XP Home. That is pretty much a dream machine to most development-obtaining-entities (aka DOE). ** :)

Anyway, that’s the second reason, and it also seemed to point to, hmmm, some convergence?

600) )4j 31337

** Proverb: the mystery to making moe doe (aka mo’ money) is to be good to your developers. - anonymous

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