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Microsoft has recently awarded a $300M account to a star ad-agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Bogusky is like a new icon of the Ad industry, having under the belt such successful projects as Mini Cooper campaign, the revival of Burger King brand image and many others.

Of course, the hypocrisy of the story is that Crispin became successful using all-Mac technologies... And now they are trying to help Microsoft battle Apple. But let's not go into that. Let's just think for a second - can even the most edgy, "cool" ad agency help Microsoft's image of the out-of-touch, obnoxious, nerds-run company?

No. And here is one clear example of why. Watch this commercial from 2007 (which was not made by Crispin):

What's wrong with it? Nothing! It's actually really good - moderately self-promoting, supposedly facts-based and re-ensuring... Except it's a lie. A complete lie at that. Yes, the image in the commercial is how Microsoft sees itself, or wants to see itself - long-time innovator and industry enabler, but there are solid facts, experiences of people that prove: the truth is different. When your software sucks, hangs every five seconds and gets on anybody's nerves that has ever used it - well, commercials can't help it.

Microsoft execs, write it down: outright lies do not sell!

Advertising is powerful, but it is not almighty. Microsoft's problems are far serious and deeper than a question of what Ad agency to choose. When are they going to realize it? Ever?

MacBook Air is undoubtedly one of the most revolutionary gadgets released lately. Could even be the most revolutionary one, if not iPhone. Hold! Before you attack my statement about "undoubtedly", keep in mind - I don't mean it's something you should jump on buying. All we mean is that it's a revolutionary design (with outstanding implementation) that makes a breakthrough in a consumer product class and forces the entire industry segment to make a big leap forward. Now you do have to agree MacBook Air is a revolutionary product.

Anyhoo... That is not what I wanted to write today about. The subjects of the today's post are the two versions of MacBook Air: the affordable $1,799 one and the insanely expensive $3,098 one. Aside from some other minor differences, the biggest difference between the two, affecting the price is the Solid-State Drive featured in the expensive version. Basically, the cheap one has good, old hard disk, expensive enjoys a disk produced with the technology similar to the one used in Flash drives (found in USB dongles and iPod nanos).

Big question - is it worth it? Honest answer - HELL NO!

I do usually try to not bash any particular company, in my blog posts. Every so often I may critique somebody and I like to think my criticism is factual and constructive. This time around, though, I will allow myself to go into a full-on ranting and smirking, because the person we are talking about is Mr. Steve Ballmer, the infamous CEO of Microsoft, and the subject is - his ridiculous "predictions" about iPhone.

I mean, we all understand why a Microsoft CEO would not love iPhone. It's also clear why he would try do diminish the importance of this revolutionary device. Still, the job of a CEO, especially a giant like Microsoft, is to be at least close to reality and not blurt random stupidities publicly.

Let's see what Ballmer was saying just a year ago:

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance," said Ballmer. "It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."
--- Source: ArsTechnica, April 2007.

And a year later, according to the report from Net Applications (Feb 2008), Safari on iPhone has 71% market share among mobile web-browsers in the US, leaving only 12% to the next runner-up, the child-product of Microsoft: Pocket IE.

Similarily, Canalys reports that as far as overall US "smart phone" market goes, iPhone, in just over a year, has gained 28% market share, only second to RIM (producer of Blackberry) that has 41%. If you take into account how long have the competitors been on the market (and those are wildly well-known brands like Palm, Nokia and others) and the fact that RIM has been selling its Blackberries to corporate clients in large bulks, for a while now and has tremendous head-start, the results are just amazing.

Back to Ballmer's "2-3% forecast" . Well, what can we say? Except state the obvious and say that we can't help feeling sorry for Microsoft when Bill Gates fully retires and the software giant is left to the mercy of Ballmer.

*smirk* (sorry, could not help it).

Fortune Magazine published a great article about the legend, the Steve Jobs:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news/companies/elkind_jobs.fortune/index...

And while you are at that, checkout today's iPhone SDK Announcement Video, as well. Some AWESOME announcements!

Apple's products are usually of high quality, on the bleeding edge of innovation and always - cool. None of these characteristics are applicable to Apple retail service. Yes, stores are clean and cozy and the online store - very intuitive, but those are about the only positive things anyone can say about shopping at Apple. The producer of iPods has very outdated (hence weird) distribution rules. They are trying to protect regional distributors from the cannibalization of each-other's businesses, by enacting a plethora of constraints, governing who can sell what, where.

Couple days ago, I was looking for a Macbook Air with French keyboard layout for a buddy of mine. I called a local Apple store (one of the largest in the area) and inquired about the availability of a French layout. I got a very cold "no way" in response. Not willing to give up, I asked what would somebody need to do in the US, if he or she wanted to get a laptop with French keyboard layout.

"In order to get one, you will have to fly to Paris or Canada, at least" - was the "response of reason" that left me speechless.

Cruuuuhaaaaazyyyyy

Just how addicted to Apple are you?

Apparently, I am 94% addicted.

Not really a surprise to anybody who knows me :)

Since I was one of the roughly 1 million fanatics, that against all rational arguments, bought iPhone early, I became eligible for the $100 Apple credit. I got it back today from Apple website (look in the footer). It took me about 40 seconds.

Now the big question is - what to buy with it, since I already own like half of anything at the Apple store? :)

The much awaited first software update of iPhone is out!

One of many novel things about iPhone, setting it aside from the CellPhones 1.0, is that it is supposed to be frequently and significantly improved through a series of software updates. This first update is not that exciting - just a collection of bug-fixes, but marks a point in the history. I installed the update - the phone still works, so - good news :)

I wonder if the update will shut down some of the breaches the community was able to make into the closed world of iPhone.

There's been plenty of whining going on the Net about "iPhone does not do this" and "iPhone does not do that", so I am not going to bore you with all the known shortcomings like: half-ass (even less) bluetooth support, no Flash support, yadda, yadda, yadda. You've heard it, you know it.

However, having been using iPhone, for a while, I found couple of new suckers, that I have not seen mentioned elsewhere, yet, so I will annoy you with those.

First of all, aside from all the criticism that very naturally accompanies something so innovative, I must declare - iPhone is an amazing phone and you do want to have it. I know it, you know it, your mom knows it, so - stop pretending. The touch-screen keyboard is extremely usable, very easy to get used to, AT&T Edge is not too slow for a mobile network, zoom and pan finger-gestures are sweet and the screen quality is amazing.

Now, in addition to other goodies, iPhone is capable of displaying MS Office attachments in Mail. However, and this is when we approach the subject of my complaint, for some obscure, unfair and completely unjustified reason you can not view the e-mail attachements in wide-screen. As you were repeatedly shown, when you turn iPhone 90^o, iPod and Safari re-adjust to display content in wide-screen and give you more horizontal room. Guess what? Does not work for the attachments. No matter how many times and how I turned the iPhone, the Mail attachment viewer kept displaying the Word file vertically. Such a small detail, such a huge disappointment! :(

Oh, and one more thing: in case you missed it, iPhone has no file browser, repeat - none. You can not download anything from the Web, or otherwise store and view later. Wow!

The confusion is over - Apple revealed the secrets of creating slick iPhone applications.

When Apple announced iPhone in January, this year, the shocking news and the source of much speculation became the alleged lack of third-party application support. An intelligent cellphone without Java/J2ME was so unusual that for a long while it gave Apple-haters a thing to wave in front of everybody's face and left Apple-lovers confused and curious for what it really meant.

The first clarification came during the Steve Jobs's WWDC keynote on June 11th and once again proved how risky it is for mediocre minds to challenge the design decisions of the Cupertino-based centre of innovation excellence. The message was quite short and ambiguous, yet loud and telling: the future of the mobile applications, as Apple saw it, were Web applications.