Suspended Thoughts

I always though that Apple could use a better web address for their US store. I also thought it was kind of strange that it had a phone number in it. I guess I got my wish. As far as I know, it is new.

Now, when you load the Apple Store page, for just a brief second it displays http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-Apple/WebObjects/AppleStore, before it redirects to http://store.apple.com/us.

In a Growl notification box in Mac OS X, I think I see a grammatical error.

Nick Munce would like you to share their screen.

It should be…

Nick Munce would like you to share his or her screen.

Yeeeeeeeesssssssssss…

Software bundles like the MacUpdate one or the MacHeist one (I’ll be focusing on the MacUpdate one for this post, for no real reason) often cause a controversy. On one side are the consumers. They are getting amazing deals. The one I linked to costs less than a quarter of the price if you would buy all of the apps individually. On the other side, there are some developers that say it devalues the software.

First, let’s look at the consumer side. I can see an amazing deal here. For one app,Leap (which I hear is amazing, but I never have actually used it myself), the price from Ironic Software is $60. For $5 more, you can get it, and nine more apps. I know most people would look at this deal and think it is unbeatable. And that is hard to argue against.

Now, for the other side of the argument. Some developers say it devalues software, and is not a good idea to get in to. Just think about this. You decide not to buy the MacUpdate bundle. Now you want Leap. It seems like a bad idea to buy it now that it costs $60 instead of $6.50, doesn’t it? You might never buy software on the expensive (not hundreds of dollars, though) side because you just don’t see software being worth more than $10.

I can kind of see iLife being like this. When you are getting five apps for $79 (and free with every Mac), it seems like a great deal. iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand seem to be the main components for me (although I use Aperture instead of iPhoto, and don’t really care for the new iMovie). I don’t run my blog off of iWeb (obviously). And iDVD is good for what it is used for, but what it is used for is relatively limited. But just think about this: you are basically getting all of these apps, which are fairly high-end for what they do, for not even $20. Apple really doesn’t sell them separately, and they are made by the same company, but it seems kind of like a bundle. If you do the math, if iLife sold separately like individual apps in a bundle do, an individual app in iLife would be sold for over $30. Would you really buy, say, three of the five apps after the (fictional) promo was over for $90, when you knew that just a week ago you could have gotten two more apps for $10 less?

Well, I guess I’d better have a conclusion, telling you where I stand. I definitely don’t think it is bad for a consumer to buy a bundle. But if you are a developer just getting in to the market, I’m not sure it would be such a good idea to participate in a bundle. It could get your app into the hands of consumers and maybe make you some money from paid upgrades, but there is no question in my mind it would devalue your product, and most likely, products to come.

If this isn’t the best ad ever, what is?

I have been thinking lately… Was the death of TechTV (actually the being bought out by G4 and having pretty much everyone fired) a good thing for the geek community?

It would be nice to still have geeks on broadcast TV, but think about all of the stuff that probably wouldn’t be around if TechTV gave them a schedule or hours to work or whatever.

Here are the people that used to work at TechTV according to Wikipedia: Leo Laporte, Kate Botello, Patrick Norton, Chris Pirillo, John C. Dvorak, Adam Sessler, Kevin Rose, Martin Sargent, Morgan Webb, James Kim, Sumi Das, Stephanie Siemiller, Erica Hill, Victoria Recano, and Jim Louderback. The only people remaining from that list still working at G4 are Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb.

It’s TWiT (Leo Laporte), live.pirillo.com (Chris Pirillo), dvorak.org/blog and Cranky Geeks (John C. Dvorak), Diggnation (Kevin Rose), Revision3 (Jim Louderback), and more vs. a broadcast TV station.

I think TechTV would still be a cool thing to have around, don’t get me wrong. But looking at all of the things that probably wouldn’t be possible if those people still worked at TechTV makes me glad of the merger. I don’t like G4 at all, but I don’t watch very much TV, so that’s fine.

I think the internet is better than TV for distribution of content (I think everyone in their right mind agrees with me), especially for things like this. Geeky things.

I get emails from Smith Micro all the time. I downloaded StuffIt Expander probably about six months ago to unzip .sit files I downloaded.

Now Smith Micro emails me at least once a week with their software deals and such. Do they really think that their downloaders of the free version of StuffIt Expander are interested in their disc label maker that is only $19.95 now?

I think they are giving their brand a more negative reputation than customers they are gaining, by a lot. It is kind of like spam from companies that make good software. I don’t like it.

Ugh… the weather in Wisconsin isn’t too great right now. We still have a few inches of snow in shaded areas, and looks like we are getting rain or sleet all night. Maybe not. Hopefully not. And hopefully that snow that appears to be hovering over western Minnesota doesn’t get to us… I’m sure it will though.

Stuck in Customs is a very cool site with very good photos from Trey Ratcliff. Probably the best collection of photos I’ve seen.

Why don’t CEOs or executives of companies (tech would be most interesting) blog like FSJ does? Posting what they think, not filtered, could get a lot of traffic to their site, and make them well known.

They think they will lose customers from being too aggressive / strong languaged / whatever. I’ll say this: they probably will lose a few. But they will probably gain a few, too.

I think it would be an interesting experiment for a not very well known company to non-geeks, such as Oracle (and make sure they have Ellison do it).

Ok, maybe not a good idea… but it would be a good experiment.

What does Microsoft really see in Yahoo? I’ll go down the sidebar on the Yahoo! (I’m not sure why they have an !) homepage and tell you if I think Microsoft could see value in that particular part of Yahoo!.

Answers: I don’t think so, but more than many things there

Autos: no

Fincance: no

Flickr: yes

Games: no

Groups: no

HotJobs: no

Maps: maybe a little

Mobile Web: maybe that oneSearch search out loud thing

Movies: no

Music: no

Personals: no

Real Estate: no

Shopping: no

Sports: no

Tech: no

Travel: no

TV: no

Yellow Pages: no

Shine: same thing as MSN, it seems, from the little I know

Search: people just used what is built into their browsers (Google)

So… yeah… is Flickr (whose members will hate you) and an out loud search thing that I haven’t tried but probably doesn’t work worth $44.6 at the original offer?