It was just a matter of time. From the OhNo!Doom Collective:

What else can you say?

The premise, from Preston Gralla in Computerworld:

Apple, Google and Microsoft are locked in a three-way struggle for industry dominance, competing to varying degrees on hardware, computer and cell phone operating systems, applications, entertainment, Internet search and more. Today, Google owns Internet search, Microsoft owns operating systems and applications, and Apple owns high-end hardware and entertainment and media devices.

Which will thrive? All are prospering, yes, but which company will thrive in the future? The difference is that Google is a one-trick pony. Advertising (via Google’s search engine). Microsoft prospers on past spoils, Windows and Office. What of Apple?

Apple, far more than Microsoft or Google, has a business model somewhat akin to that of a Hollywood studio: It requires blockbuster hits in order to bring in big profits. When Jobs leaves, those hits will stop coming.

So, let me get this straight. If Apple’s string of hits stop, it’s because Steve Jobs is gone? Forget about the resurgent and highly profitable Mac. Forget about the iPod or the iTunes Store. Forget about the iPhone. Apple will be brain dead when Steve Jobs leaves the company?

The Hollywood analogy is interesting, but not apt. Blockbuster movies make big money quickly—in theaters first, then DVD sales and rentals. A hit movie’s initial revenue gains are lost over time, usually less than a year. Apple’s products continue to grow both revenue and profits and market share over time. How is that like a Hollywood studio? It’s not.

Who will thrive?

Of the three companies, Google is best positioned to thrive in the future. It has a near monopoly on Internet search, the core of the world economy’s greatest growth engine. That gives it both an excellent base to expand upon, as well as a massive war chest it can depend on to fund new ventures.

So, let me get this straight. Google will thrive because it has a monopoly on search advertising, and a massive war chest. Didn’t Microsoft have a monopoly with Windows and Office? And a massive war chest? How’s that working out?

Since when did “the core of the world economy’s greatest growth engine” become search advertising?

Apple is the most diversified of the three companies, and has an even more massive war chest than Google or Microsoft, but will go into a long, slow decline (sounds like Microsoft) after CEO Steve Jobs leaves? What about Microsoft’s fortunes?

Unlike Apple, it doesn’t need big hits in order to grow. With a stranglehold on operating systems and productivity applications, and with solid enterprise tools, it will grow steadily. Google won’t be able to break its near monopoly.

Yet, both Windows and Office are in decline already, Windows Mobile is in rapid decline, and Microsoft’s other ventures have only lost money through the years, and continue to lose money. By the way, Google is an advertising company that runs a search engine. How would they break Microsoft’s so-called monopoly in a market segment where they don’t even complete against each other? The only way to do that would be to give away competing software for free. How’s that working out?

Microsoft won’t unseat Google as the Internet search leader, Bing shows that it can make plenty of money in that business.

Since Microsoft has never made any money in search, when and how will it show that it can?

Gralla’s conclusions are totally lame.

I can only conclude that authoring nearly three dozen books has depleted Gralla’s ability to think and write clearly. What’s fortunate is that he is doing so at a time when Computerworld’s editors don’t need insightful analysis, but are content with occasional hit-whoring articles to drive up page views and advertising impressions.

It’s the 21st century and the Double Standard is alive and well at Apple. Jenna Wortham of The New York Times:

Apple has started banning many applications for its iPhone that feature sexually suggestive material, including photos of women in bikinis and lingerie, a move that came as an abrupt surprise to developers who had been profiting from such programs.

What about the popular Sport Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, and the Playboy app? Apple VP Phil Schiller:

The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format.

What a crock. Apple’s screw ups over iPhone apps are becoming the norm. It’s OK for big media to sell soft porn, but not OK for independent media to sell soft porn. Make up your mind, Apple.

What should Apple do to improve the iPhone, and add to the iPad? Dan Frommer pushes his top 15 list in Silicon Alley Insider:

The most common request was for background processing so that third-party apps could run in the background, while other apps are running in the foreground. The idea is that this will make apps more useful, ranging from Internet radio apps that can keep streaming, to messaging apps that can keep receiving messages while you’re doing other stuff.

A common request, yes, but mostly from geeks and pundits, not average users. My favorites: a unified Mail inbox, and push notifications on the lock screen.

Kirk McElhearn in Macworld:

Google knows more about you than the NSA, and has recently shown that it doesn’t give a hoot about your privacy. The company has gotten too big, and has turned into just another corporation trying to maximize its assets—and those assets are you. Who’s to say Google won’t progressively loosen its privacy controls and monetize more and more personal information?

I’m ditching Google as much as I can, and when a competitor develops a search engine as good as Google, I’ll stop searching with Google, too. The trend that Google has been following has been looking darker and darker as the company nibbles away at the limits of privacy. This is no longer a company I trust.

Well said.

One of the five reasons why Mac users need to buy the latest version of Office. Jeffrey Mincey in Mac360:

Microsoft once helped Apple by injecting $150-million in the company back when our favorite Mac maker was losing money faster than customers leaving a Toyota showroom. Now that Apple has more money than Microsoft, and a string of new hit products which only embarrass the Windows maker’s feeble attempts at marketing a portable media player or a simple cell phone, let’s do our part to help by standing in line to buy Microsoft Office for Mac 2011.

A little satire is good for the soul.

In another sign of the dynamics of online life, Facebook tops Yahoo! From the L.A. Times:

Facebook attracted nearly 134 million unique visitors in January alone. Yahoo’s traffic declined in January to 132 million unique visitors. Google had over 147 million unique visitors in January.

The social networking site tops all sites except Google.

I love cars—especially when they’re slick, sassy, full of gadgets, run like hell, and don’t break. So, whose cars are the most innovative since 1978? American? Russian? Japanese or German? A little auto history from i am bored:

Is your Mac safe? Siobhan Gorman in The Wall Street Journal:

Hackers in Europe and China successfully broke into computers at nearly 2,500 companies and government agencies over the last 18 months in a coordinated global attack that exposed vast amounts of personal and corporate secrets to theft.

Sounds ominous, right? A closer look revealed this:

They also broke into computers at 10 U.S. government agencies. In one case, they obtained the user name and password of a soldier’s military email account…

I love investigative reporting.

I’m trying to understand the math. Dan Frommer in Silicon Alley Insider:

What’s the biggest difference between Microsoft’s newest mobile operating system and the Google version that it will be competing against?

I dunno. What?

Microsoft will charge carriers for its OS, while Google is giving Android away for free. (The other big competitors, Apple and RIM, don’t license their operating systems to third parties.)

In other words, Apple and RIM (BlackBerry) sell handsets and include the operating system. Google gives away Android to any cell phone handset maker. Free. Microsoft wants to charge for Windows Phone 7 Series. Frommer again:

That’s just silly. Microsoft is dead in the water in this business. If it wants to get moving again, it needs to do everything it can to help itself. And in mobile software, that means competing with free with free.

How can Microsoft make money in the smart phone market?

Instead, Microsoft should give Windows Phone software away for free, with the hope that manufacturers will use it to make more Windows phones than they’re previously planning to make, that they’ll charge lower wholesale prices for them, and that carriers will charge lower retail prices for those phones. That could drive up Microsoft’s market share, with little negative effect on Microsoft’s financial situation.

The numbers don’t add up. Even if Microsoft can get a $20 per cell phone sold for Windows Phone 7 Series, they would have to sell more units than Apple’s iPhone (average selling price is over $500) and still never crack a billion dollars in revenue (vs. Apple’s $15-billion in 2009). How can Microsoft make money?

The options range from taking a cut from selling mobile applications, to subscription fees for Xbox live and Zune music accounts, to mobile search and display advertising, via Bing and potential ad network acquisitions. Sure, those revenue streams will be minuscule to begin with, too. But they will grow with time, and with a bigger user base, which the no-license-fee phone business should provide. Or Microsoft could take the route that Apple, Research In Motion, Nokia, Palm, and others take, which is selling their own hardware and software.

This has all the makings of a slow motion train wreck.

This is the first of what I’m sure will be many comparisons between the iPhone user interface and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Series. The differences are pure Apple vs. Microsoft. Luke Wroblewski on the iPhone:

The differences in information resolution between the iPhone and Windows Phone are even more stark in the application store features. In addition to seven ways of finding & filtering apps, Apple’s App Store displays four apps complete with icon, title, publishing, average rating, number of ratings, and price.

Lots of information, easily understood, easily navigated. Now, Windows Phone 7 Series:

Marketplace on the Windows Phone features one application with an icon, title, and one-line description. One touch gesture (drag/flick) later, there’s a menu consisting of six items. Tapping on “applications” takes you to another featured application. One more drag/flick and you are finally seeing three applications you can download. Contrast the amount of information present on this screen (the fourth in the process) with the amount shown on the iPhone’s initial App Store display.

Microsoft’s Phone interface gains kudos for eye candy design, but appears weak in usability.

This is why people don’t trust journalists. Ryan Tate’s headline in Valleywag does not match the so-called article (two paragraphs does not an accurate accusation make):

Apple and Google are among a handful of tech companies who fought to hide the race and gender of their workforce from newspaper reporters. And no wonder: Their diversity probably went from bad to worse.

Probably? Not one fact to back up the headline. Not one.

The headline is based upon a San Jose Mercury News report that the largest Silicon Valley companies have just 7-percent black and Hispanic employees (about half the national percentages), and that Apple, among other companies, refused to divulge race and gender statistics, calling the information ‘trade secrets.’

I’m convinced that Apple’s employee race and gender stats are somewhat below the national average, particularly for black and Hispanics. Roughly half of all Apple employees are retail workers, which would skew those statistics. I wonder what percentage of Apple’s customer base is black or Hispanic.

How does a reader juxtaposition Tate’s misleading headline with his summary?

It’s entirely possible that Apple CEO Steve Jobs, for example, is hiding a very diverse workforce behind this management team.

John Nack on Adobe’s attempts to sabotage HTML 5:

Bullshit

Adobe representative Larry Masinter:

No part of HTML5 is, or was ever, “blocked” in the W3C HTML Working Group—not HTML5, not Canvas 2D Graphics, not Microdata, not Video—not by me, not by Adobe. Neither Adobe nor I oppose, are fighting, are trying to stop, slow down, hinder, oppose, or harm HTML5, Canvas 2D Graphics, Microdata, video in HTML, or any of the other significant features in HTML5. Claims otherwise are false. Any other disclaimers needed?

Uh, yes.

Let your actions speak louder than your words. Adobe products are proprietary, slow, bloated, buggy, and expensive (can you say Flash?). Adobe as a company is self serving to the detriment of official standards and customers. Adobe’s products attempt to circumvent both Windows and Mac user interface standards with a proprietary UI design, again, to the detriment of customers.

I will not believe what Adobe’s representatives say while the company’s actions are so obviously corrupt.