The best article so far on the iPad’s impact; by Dan Moren in Macworld:

Like hot rodders, techies wear their tweaks and optimizations as badges of honor. To me, that’s the chief distinction between power users and your average user: power users adapt computers to the way they work, instead of adapting the way they work to computers.

Money quote:

Much of the negative response to the iPad seems filled with anger—which, as Yoda adroitly pointed out, stems from fear—and it mostly comes from the kind of power users who like dealing with the underpinnings.

For a few decades personal computing has been mostly an evolution. Touch is the revolution.

Verizon’s empire strikes back with a delicious point-by-point anti-iPhone list, most of which won’t and don’t matter to the over 40-million iPhone users. From Fake Steve:

If the only way you can market your product is to compare it to some other product, you’ve already lost.

Is it a wise idea to insult tens of millions of happy, satisfied users about their choice in a phone they so obviously love?

The browser wars continue but this time Microsoft does what other browser builders don’t: advertise. The web only ads tout features and benefits of Internet Explorer, and feature former Superman Dean Cain in a series of video commercials which mix serious camp with attempts at humor, Microsoft style.

Microsoft is only airing the ads online (seen on Hulu), but may consider broader broadcast depending on the public’s reception. With IE’s shrinking user base, especially among the tech-savvy, its clear Microsoft is hoping the ads will gain a viral audience online.

Most memorable? O.M.G.I.G.P. Truly disgusting. The viral campaign is decidedly contagious. Now everyone won’t want to use Internet Explorer.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then Snow Leopard’s performance report depends on who you talk to. ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes:

Over the past few days I’ve been keeping a close eye on the Apple support forums and while there are plenty of issues being raised by folks who have made the switch, there doesn’t seem to be any sign of any serious issues plaguing this latest OS release.

The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Kingsley-Hughes had this to say two days before Snow Leopard actually launched:

There are a whole raft of applications that either flat out don’t work, or just don’t work right… its hard to tell who’s to blame here. Have developers had enough time with the 10.6 code to ensure compatibility, or are developers getting lazy and choosing to wait until the OS is out before working out the kinks?

Before Snow Leopard made it out the door, Kingsley-Hughes was blasting Apple’s new kitty as untested.

At least Microsoft makes betas and release candidate versions of new operating systems available for everyone to be able to test.

Yes, and that worked out so well for Windows Vista, which, as I recall, was smooth sailing for Microsoft’s reluctant customers, right? Or, not. How do guys like him find work?

The Misinformation Police™ is the place to go for permanent employment. Back in June, Peter Cohen in CIO headlined: Apple: Mac OS X Installed User Base Tripled In 2 Years. Tripled? What Cohen is referring to is Phil Schiller at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC).

Schiller produced a chart showing the number of actual active Mac OS X users from 2002 - 2007. By the end of 2007 Apple counted about 25 million active Mac OS X users. In the past two years, there’s been a “huge spike” of new users, according to Schiller, and Apple has seen the user base grow from 25 million to near 75 million users today, in 2009.

The problem with that, of course, is that it is dead wrong. Macs have not tripled the user base in two years. Schiller was referring to OS X, which runs on both the iPhone and iPod touch, not Mac OS X.

Tom Kaneshige of CIO repeats the same misinformation in an article picked up by Macworld, which should know better.

Even though Mac OS X installed user base has tripled in the last two years, from 25 million to nearly 75 million, the number of Macs in the enterprise still represents a paltry sum because they’re costly and not easy to support.

Again, dead wrong. Mac OS X’s user base is approximately 25-million, and OS X in the iPod touch and iPhone represents the other 50-million.

Kaneshige brings up a good point about Macs in the enterprise. Who else was surprised by OS X Snow Leopard’s August release?

Mac engineers and software developers are not given enough advance notice to certify Apple products; they get their hands on new Apple products along with everyone else, as part of Apple’s “secrecy” marketing strategy to create mystery and excitement around new releases.

Perhaps so, but were those same enterprise CIOs and engineers going to put Snow Leopard into their enterprise immediately upon release? Do they deploy the latest Windows version immediately after it’s release? Of course not.

To be fair, the vast majority of Mac apps have a green check mark by their names, meaning that they run on Snow Leopard without any problems. But there are some significant enterprise-type apps experiencing glitches.

To be fair, is this really an issue of concern among CIOs? Do they immediately deploy the latest version of any major operating system in use in their enterprise? Not likely. So, some in the enterprise may want to delay Snow Leopard’s implementation. What happens anyway?

For the Mac engineer who doesn’t plan on upgrading to Snow Leopard, this decision will likely be met with considerable resistance from Mac users throughout the company. Top execs might challenge the decision or install Snow Leopard on their own.

Money quote from a Mac engineer:

One of the challenges for integrating Apple products in a corporate environment is this must-upgrade-now culture.

Italics mine. Somehow that’s Apple’s fault.