Windows 2 Apples

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I apologize for taking so long in releasing this episode but this tis end of year and we have been plowing through the increasing stack of government mandated paperwork.

The end of 2007 saw Apple shares reach record highs rising just above $200 per share followed by 2008 which ushered in a precipitous fall in share values. Microsoft stock fell, as well, but with a considerably less impressive thud. In spite of its slide down, Apple continues to be the darling of technology growth stocks while Microsoft seems to have matured to the point that its value is relatively stable exhibiting neither stellar gains nor traumatic losses.

One of the reasons Apple seems to have been able to gain market share and stock market glitter is the series of clever and entertaining commercials promoting the Macintosh as the best and coolest solution for disgruntled windows users. Apple continues to focus on the growing market of so called windows switchers. When I began this journey, I saw myself as myself a switcher; however, I now feel that label implies I have abandoned Windows which is far from my reality.

I do use native Macintosh applications but I find the majority of the time I’m simply using VMware Fusion to run Vista Business and Linux on my shiny white iMac. Should I or anyone else be considered a true switcher if they use their Macintosh as a means to run Windows? Apple is making much ado of a recent magazine article suggesting that Apple hardware is a better platform for running vista than competing computers specifically designed to run Windows. It seems that they are trying to attract new users by suggesting that the Apple hardware rather than the Apple operating system is the reason they should switch.

This argument loses much of its appeal when Apple offerings are contrasted with the impressive selection of low cost, high-performance native windows systems. I believe Apple can make a strong case for offerings excellent Windows-compatible hardware; however, this is not what will make true converts of seasoned Windows users. The Macintosh operating system must stand on its own and offer the same or superior quality and quantity of applications and services currently available to Windows users without the hassles and security issues that continue to plague Windows in all is incarnations.

One of the areas in which windows excels is the availability of accessibility options such as speech recognition and control. As you know from previous podcasts I have found iListen, by MacSpeech, to be essentially useless. Fortunately, MacSpeech has been able to secure a license to distribute the Macintosh port of Naturally Speaking by Nuance (a.k.a. MacSpeech Dictate) and hopefully Macintosh users will finally have a viable speech to text and control option. With the proviso, several weeks rather than several hours are required to train the iListen as opposed to Naturally Speaking, MacSpeech shamelessly promoted iListen as equal to the Nuance product up until the announcement of Dictate where they also discontinued distribution of iListen. It is unfortunate that iListen was not pulled from the shelves much earlier and that many loyal MacSpeech customers wasted money and, more importantly, time trying to make iListen work.

The port of the Nuance speech engine to Mac is encouraging … an important step in making the Mac OS more competitive with Windows and certainly pushing it far ahead of Linux distributions. The challenge still remains for the porting of many business applications as well as internet based services such as cross platform audio / video messaging services in order to shift the Mac to an uncompromised stand alone replacement for Windows machines. Add Apple’s continued commitment to offering excellent on line video tutorials aimed squarely at existing Windows users and more competitively priced system and you have the ingredients for a steady growth in market share.

In episode 20, I recommended using the PnP option in routers to allow the HP Windows Home server to be accessed via the Internet. Recent postings by reliable security gurus claim there are active exploits that use a combination of Flash and PnP security holes to essentially take control of your router and DNS sever addresses if visiting a compromised web site. Unfortunately, these kinds of exploits are becoming more and more common and are OS independent. In light of these warnings we have turned off our router PnP option and manually forward the ports when exposing our server to the Internet.

Dictated using Vista Speech to Text, Recorded using MixCraft 3, Tag Edited Using JetAudio

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