Jobs/Apple Speculation Frenzy

Some of the wild speculation surrounding the health of Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, has been shameful. He's a human being, and now that he's stepped aside as Apple CEO for a while, he deserves some level of privacy and respect. The speculation about Apple's future has also been rather bizarre, and I'll be discussing some of that in this rant.

The revival at Apple since Steve Jobs returned as CEO has been in large part due to his efforts, both direct and indirect. He's assembled a great team of talented people, for example: Jonathan Ive, Tim Cook and Phil Schiller. Obviously, having such an influential CEO stand aside will have an impact on Apple's day-to-day operations. But there are about 35,000 other employees who've had a hand in producing great products too.

Some may point to what happened to Apple after Jobs was ousted in 1985. There are several factors that need to be considered, however: Jobs went on to start NeXT Inc, "taking several Apple employees from the SuperMicro division with him" [Wikipedia]. Then-CEO John Sculley didn't waste time reorganising (de-Jobsing?) Apple. Other top Apple personnel also left around that time (notably chief Macintosh engineers Andy Hertzfeld and Burrell Smith). And in 1987, co-founder Steve Wozniak left Apple. Quite a brain-drain, I'd say.

The current situation is quite different. Jobs has stepped aside, but his hand-picked team remains in place. As has been noted recently, "although the co-founder has been critical to the company's resurgence, his spirit and drive have since been instilled in thousands of other Apple employees".

Perhaps a more appropriate guide is Pixar. Steve Jobs is no longer CEO of Pixar, yet WALL·E (released last year) did rather well. "It grossed $521 million worldwide, won the 2009 Best Animated Film Golden Globe Award and is nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature" [Wikipedia]. After the acquisition of Pixar by Disney in 2006, most of Jobs' creative team has retained control.

In stark contrast, Microsoft's situation does seem to have greatly deteriorated since founder Bill Gates left the company. The past few years have been rather underwhelming for the company: Vista, Zune, Xbox 360's "red ring of death", SPOT, Windows Mobile, Origami/UMPC, PlaysForSure (to name a few problems, failures and missteps).

[Would you believe, another hot day in Adelaide. Today's maximum temperature was 41.1 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit)!]

SMS - It's been great but ...

According to various sources, it's clear that SMS/text messages are very popular: "SMS revenue to ring up $50bn by 2010". I accept that they can be convenient and good value, but every time I send one I'm reminded of how frustrating they can be, especially when compared to e-mail.

Here's a list of some of my grievances:

• Entering the text is a pain on a standard phone. True, T9 (predictive text entry) is cool, but it depends on how good your dictionary is, and sometimes I want to use a different language. I'm sure I can change the appropriate setting, but that takes time. Also, I hate how my mobile uses T9 by default in some places, and multi-tap in others (e.g. phone book search).


• You don't get (free) notifications of receipt/failures.


• They're limited, not so much in length, but in content. E-mail is obviously much richer. And don't even talk to me about MMS! I hope ubiquitous mobile net access finally renders MMS redundant.


• Messages can only be stored on the mobile (either on the SIM card or the phone's memory). So I have to constantly vet the messages to free up space. E-mail messages need not be stored on the device, and messages stored on a server can be accessed by other devices.


• Messages can (ordinarily) only be read on mobile phones. (Yes, I'm aware that you can jump through hoops to use a PC to send/receive messages, but these techniques are not as simple and widely-known as e-mail).


• They cost money. Sure, it's only 25 cents in Australia, but e-mail is free.

Another silly thing with my phone is that it doesn't filter phone numbers to prevent accidentally sending messages to a non-mobile number.

SMS messaging hearkens back to a time when internet access was tied to desktops. It's been a great technology, but I can't wait to see e-mail usurp its role.

[Yet another day of extreme heat in Adelaide. Today's maximum temperature was 43.1 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit)! I hope the above 40C heatwave ends soon, otherwise I'll run out of things to complain about.]

Inefficient Medicare Cheque Payment Process

In Australia we are lucky to have a universal health system. You can go to any doctor and the government will cover the scheduled fee. Many doctors "bulk-bill", that is, they send the bill directly to the government and charge only the scheduled fee. The government will pay the doctor directly. Very cool.

However, sometimes a co-payment is necessary. Ok, this is understandable to cover doctor's admin costs and prevent abuse of the system. But an extra hassle is introduced for the patient. He or she pays the co-payment to the practice, then the practice makes an application for payment to Medicare for the scheduled fee. A few days pass, then the patient (yes the patient), receives a cheque made out in the doctor’s name. So then the patient has to forward the cheque onto the doctor! Why involve the patient again? Also, in the modern era of electronic funds transfer, the use of cheques sounds arcane.

And here's something I just found out while researching this post: if the patient doesn't forward the cheque within 90 days, the doctor can apply to Medicare to get the money owing via EFT! So obviously Medicare is willing and able to use EFT, so why not skip the cheque-handling and 90-day provision?

If you're unfamiliar with Australia's Medicare system, check out this page: "How does Medicare work?"

[Another day of extreme heat in Adelaide. Today's maximum temperature was 43.4 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit)!]

DVD Anti-Piracy Measures = Anti-Consumer

Why do movie studios insist on forcing legitimate viewers to watch those anti-piracy spots after a DVD is loaded? I personally find it a bit insulting that someone would insinuate that I would want to pirate a movie.

The irony, of course, is that people who actually watch pirated DVDs don't even see these ads! Pirates would obviously exclude them from the copies. Anti-piracy? More like anti-consumer.

To rub more salt into the wound, some DVDs now play previews of other films after the anti-piracy ad. Aargh! More precious time wasted! Please, just let me watch the movie I want to watch.

I know, this is not exactly an original complaint, e.g. "Intrusive anti-piracy". But I just wanted to get it out of my system.

Perhaps they could at least make the ads more interesting. For example, make them funny and/or in the style of the content they precede? For example, here's one from the opening of The IT Crowd. Other suggestions have been put forward.

[The extreme heatwave in Adelaide continues. Today it was 45.7 degrees Celsius (114 degrees Fahrenheit)!]

Kings of Leon? - Meh!

The Australia Day tradition continued at alternative youth radio station Triple-J, with the annual countdown of the previous year's "Hottest 100" songs as voted by the listeners.

Obviously 2008's hot band was the Kings of Leon:

#1 - Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire
...
#3 - Kings of Leon - Use Somebody
...
#24 - Kings of Leon - Closer
...
#70 - Kings of Leon - Crawl

Once I was at a record store and the song "Sex on Fire" was playing. Not knowing who it was, I assumed it was the latest single from Australian idol alumnus Shannon Noll, or perhaps some other graduate of that "music" franchise. Whoever it was, it actually made me fell quite nauseous.

Later when I found out it was that supposedly credible alternative band Kings of Leon, I was shocked. Maybe it was a one-off concession to the mainstream taste for overblown drivel? But no, hearing "Use Somebody" confirmed my dislike for the music of these alternative darlings.

I'll have to put it down to outgrowing Triple-J's target market. Some great alternative music from 2008 didn't even get a look in: Mogwai, The Raconteurs, Elbow, Goldfrapp and Portishead all failed to make the top 100. At least Nick Cave and Sigur Ròs managed to get a song each on the chart.

[This is the first rant in over six months - blame it on the extreme heatwave we're experiencing in Adelaide at the moment. Today it was 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit)!]