Marcus Hamaker is The Sleepy Geek

I have been thinking about the way Apple has been operating their company in the past while and I think that they have a major strategy in place that we aren’t thinking about. At their release for the iPad, Steve Jobs started to change the way in which we think of Apple. Always a computer company that made laptops, desktops and some accessories – Steve is saying that their main business model is now that of a mobile device company.

More than 50% of revenue is now thanks to the sales of mobile devices but I think that there is something still to be said for the core of the company, their computers!

Here’s where the conspiracy theory comes into place. Apple has taken a lot of decisions in the past few years that align them closer to their Windows based competitors, of course the biggest to use Intel CPUs. The decisions to start moving toward the same hardware as the Windows machine manufacturers always felt downplayed to me – they always have a great reason that feels convenient.

Apple’s EULA is quite clear that you are not allowed to install OS X on a machine that isn’t made by Apple. We have all heard of them taking down the various clone manufacturers by suing them into submission, and yet for some reason there are a multitude of web resources built just how to tell us how to make a Hackintosh. I haven’t heard any buzz around that Apple or Steve Jobs has actually gone after one of these sites. They are big and if you search Google you find them right away and at the top of the search list: www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=hackintosh&aq=0&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=hackint&gs_rfai=&fp=ae8f9588018abe0f

So why doesn’t Apple care? Let me first say that they have to care about the companies who actually make products and market them as Apple or OS X machines. They have a duty to the company and their shareholders to do so. But this underground movement seems to be doing something in their favour. Because of the shared platform, it is increasingly easy for other major Windows manufacturers to build their machines that are “Windows compatible” but then conveniently share the same specs as some Apple machines. If Apple uses a SigmaTel 9200 audio chip onboard and then a Windows manufacturer uses the same chip (revisions may matter) then it will work.

Why does all this matter… “You’re rambling Marcus!!!”? Well I have noticed an increase of models (mainly laptops) and hardware components that work with OS X. This increase is good for hardware manufacturers because it gives them a little niche sell for Hackintosh users and it’s also really good for Apple. The people who are going to use these components to install OS X on are not the type of people who are going to affect your end of year numbers.

Well not directly anyway.

These are the people that influence the buying market. They are the 24 year old geek of the family that everyone gets to fix their computer. They are the 32 year old IT pro that works in a major company who still happens to be the geek of the family that fixes everyone’s computer. They are the guy that does a little side work in IT. Funny how I happen to be all 3 of them, at least at one point or another.

Simply said – Apple is not worried about these people because for every geek who is building a Hackintosh, he or she is probably influencing about 10-20 others to buy a Mac. Apple’s market share for computers keeps increasing. It’s interesting to see what Apple things is part of the energy that is pushing that wave and what they try to kill as energy that holds it back.

Geek on!

Google has just release Buzz. This is a new service for sharing things and it’s built right into Gmail. The first thing that I looked for was how long it would be before they would roll this out in Google Apps for people who have hosted email for their own domain. Answer – a few months. From their enterprise blog:

Today the Gmail team introduced Google Buzz, a new feature that lets individuals share links, photos, and other updates with their network of contacts – or with the whole world – right within Gmail. Google Buzz helps people kick off conversations around information that people find mutually interesting.

Within a few months, we also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within your organization. Stay tuned, and for more information about using Google Buzz with your personal Gmail account, head over to the Gmail blog or visit buzz.google.com.

The service itself looks really cool. They have done something far more simple than Facebook and their typical simpler approach to things quite often works well in the real world. Time will tell.

I like this video they put together to show how it works -

Geek on!

Looks like Ebay won’t be tying Skype into their site – ever. I remember when they purchased Skype some time ago and also remember it being a bit of a strange buy in my mind. But I was willing to keep an eye on things and see what genius they had in store for us. To me it really feels like both Ebay and Skype have been stagnant for quite some time. I don’t know many people who run to Ebay anymore to buy a new gadget or find a deal on something. It is definitely not the buzz it once was unless you are looking for cell phone accessories. I am still not sure how anyone makes money off those insane prices.

I have read a couple of articles on this and from what they are saying, they sold for 2.75 billion which means they only lost ~$300+ on the deal. Not too bad according to those same articles. Can I have some of that please? I have a mortgage I would love to pay off :)

This is some of what wired.com had to say about the deal:

But the underlying technology has been widely accepted and is no longer a geeky novelty. Skype is now the largest provider of international calls in the world. It has apps for the Blackberry and iPhone, and the world’s largest handset maker, Nokia, announced in February that it would preload Skype software into some of its new smartphones starting from the third quarter of this year. And in March Skype made a bid to enter the enterprise space with “Skype for Sip.”

So an interesting turn of events for something that still feels like a geeky novelty for me. I think that it is mostly to do with the fact that North Americans don’t need the service as much as the rest of the world unless you are calling the somewhere out there. Americans and Canadians benifit from pretty cheap phone service and so the people I know who use it are Europeans who have family still in their home country.

That being said – I hope we don’t lose Skype due to financial problems. We need someone to keep our phone companies in check and services such as these that are free will do just that.

Geek on!

Let’s face it! Google Reader was a pretty slick interface before they went and made any changes this week. I wasn’t expecting it (probably was mentioned on the reader blog RSS feed) but it is a welcome update.

I am a huge fan of clean looking interfaces. I supposed that is why I like OS X and some of the simpler applications out there. They have taken away some of the colouring that they had on the left side and replaced it with white backgrounds. The sections are separated with lines rather than a background colour difference which looks much nicer. My biggest pet peeve of the old version was the green background under the ‘add subscription’ button and now it’s gone.

Before:

After:

I have been using Google Reader for quite some time as my RSS reader. It’s a great way to read RSS feeds and I like the fact I can log in from anywhere with internets access to take a peak if I have time. It’s nice to know that Google is keeping an eye on their existing products and trying to find ways at making them better.

Some of the other cool features include the ability to collapse sections on the left side, the ability to turn off unread counts, updated friend sharing tools and they have added more bundles to their list.

I must say that I am happy with the graphical update and look forward to making use of the new features. If you don’t use Google Reader and are looking for a good web based RSS reader, give it a chance. You won’t be disappointed.