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Apple Trash Talk

Question I hear a lot: “If the Mac is nearly virus-free / so great / [insert superlative here], why don’t they advertise the hell out of those things?” Fair question. Looks like they’ve started doing just that with a series of Mac vs. PC ads bound to stir the pot and sell a few pooters.

The dilemma is this: When you’re selling a product where the existing userbase has a well-established superiority complex, how do you push your real virtues without coming off snobbish? It’s one thing to sell advantages, another to knock the other guy. Thing is, negativity works. Patrick Coskren, on the MacOS-Talk list (with permission):

In political advertising, everybody says they dislike negative ads, but results show they’re very effective, which is why you see them so much. Perhaps the point of the ads is to attack the near-universal belief that even though Macs may be “easier” and “better” (for particular definitions of easier and better), Windows remains “good enough.” They want to jar people out of the complacency of thinking Windows is good enough, and push them to re-evaluate their platform choice. Windows is dominant (in part) because it’s … the default choice; if people actually make a choice, the chance they’ll choose a Mac is probably higher than the 3% (or whatever) the current market share would suggest. Just like if you’re running against the popular incumbent, it can be effective to go negative.

Apple also pushes the “virus free” message — a delicate button now that viruses are no longer unheard-of on the Mac. Even if it’s true that 99.72% of viruses are Windows-bound, it’s a bit of a glass bubble. Ars Technica’s John Siracusa:

It’s like an airline advertising that it has fewer fatal crashes than its competitors. This just isn’t done — and for good reasons. Putting aside the moral and ethical aspects, which arguably don’t apply to Apple, there are important practical considerations as well. The new “Viruses” TV ad pulls back a slingshot and holds it to Apple’s face. The backlash is inevitable.

If some portion of the virus-free aspect of Mac ownership is due to OS X being “under the radar,” then Apple has just posted a giant “kick me” sign on its back.

Not to make too big a thing out of it. I think the ads are well done overall, and kinda funny.

Music: Brian Eno :: Compact Forest Proposal, Condition 7

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Helium Hat Revisited

Helium10 Back in February, I was on the lookout for an original Mark V mixed gas hard hat diver’s helmet for Dad’s 70th birthday, but had been quickly priced out of the market. Eventually Dad decided he’d be OK with a replica, and we went for it. This weekend celebrated by sliding the helmet over his head, swinging open the porthole and making him blow out his candles from within the hat. He went straight to brother’s pool to christen it, a kid in a candy store.

That’s me in the hat above — more at Flickr.

Music: Talking Heads :: A Clean Break (Let’s Work)
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Sony Screws Artists… Again

Bands that signed with Sony between 1962 and 2002 hope to get a less-raw deal than they historically have. Selling songs online means no pressing plants, no distribution costs, no returns due to breakage, and so on. New artists benefit from these factors by making 30 cents on the buck when selling online, but Sony wants their bread-and-butter bands to make the same amt/song selling online as they always have (4 cents). Cheap Trick and The Allman Bros. are suing for their share.

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Archaeoacoustics

Over the past few months I’ve been going through the tedious process of digitizing a box of old, irreplaceable cassette tapes, trying to preserve their contents before ferrous particles jump right off the Mylar. It’s an eery feeling hearing my own voice from junior high, my grandmother’s voice as it sounded when I was a child, my first girlfriend singing. Amazing how these voices stir long-buried memories.

Some researchers are trying to wake much older ghosts, attempting to restore sounds from before the dawn of recording technologies. The theory is that a potter’s hands could function as a stylus, leaving an acoustical trail on the soft clay, similar to a record’s grooves. In theory, it might — might — be possible to decode those vibrations back to audible sound. Other attempts involve a painter and his/her brush, working soft paint. So far no dice, according to Hamp, though research into archaeoacoustics has been going on since 1969.

I seem to remember seeing a National Geographic article about this technique as a kid, and in that article, they reported hearing the clear sounds of a dog barking more than 2,000 years ago. Research is also going into extracting sound imprints from cave walls.

A new book on archaeoacoustics is available from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Music: Jack Johnson :: Broken
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World Without Numbers

A pair of stories (reproduced from The Globe and Mail and BBC News) about researchers’ discovery in 2004 that members of the Amazonian Piraha tribe apparently lack capacity for any kind of math whatsoever — not even simple counting. A few relativistic number words – “one-ish” and “two-ish” describe many and few, but that’s it. They are, apparently, alone in the world in their lack of any kind of numerical system.

… the hunter-gatherers seem to be the only group of humans known to have no concept of numbering and counting. Not only that, but adult Piraha apparently can’t learn to count or understand the concept of numbers or numerals, even when they asked anthropologists to teach them and have been given basic math lessons for months at a time.

So can they not do numbers because their language doesn’t contain the concept, or do they not have number words because their brains don’t contain the concept?

“The question is, is there any case where not having words for something doesn’t allow you to think about it?” Prof. Gordon asked about the Piraha and the Whorfian thesis. “I think this is a case for just that.”

Music: Paul Bley :: Line Down
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LightBox, GreyBox

Miles behind rock The trouble with pop-up windows — even benevolent ones — is that they break context. Some users are confused by having multiple browser windows open, and even those who aren’t find themselves one step removed from the page they were viewing.

LightBox nails the problem neatly, using JavaScript to dim the current window and zoom a chunk of content front and center. Elegant and easy, both for viewers and admins. Once installed, invoke by adding rel="lightbox" to any href tag to activate the lightbox. A LightBox plugin for WordPress is available (click image above for demo).

Segue to GreyBox, which uses the same principle, but provides a fully functional browser window in the inset. A GreyBox plugin is also available for WordPress.

Thanks Milan

Music: Bush Tetras :: Too Many Creeps
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Ubuntista!

Many congratulations to Kurt von Finck, Birdhouse’s resident “backup autopilot” and technology gadfly, who’s just landed a job as Senior Systems Support Analyst for Canonical Ltd., who are responsible for the excellent Ubuntu Linux distribution. Icing on the cake is that the job requires a move for he and his S.O. to Montreal, Canada — a double adventure.

Music: Funkadelic :: One Nation Under A Groove

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Patent Busters

The EFF has assembled a list of ten of the worst patent abusers out there, and wants their heads on a platter for “Crimes against the public domain, willful ignorance of prior art, egregious display of obviousness.” Fortunately, fair use has a posse.

Music: Cat Power :: Werewolf
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Wooden Bikes

Woodenbike1 Surfacing one of my favorite highlights from the Maker Faire, woodenbikes.com sports a dozen or so bicycles with frames made from driftwood logs, 2x4s, hunks of plywood, and old patio furniture reconstituted as recumbents, unicycle variants, suspension units. The bicycle is a perfect low-tech hackable for beach bums and weekend welders, and for reasons I can’t put my finger, has got my cranks turning (pardon bad pun). Miles and I could have a gas on the Rear Captain Tandem. Looks like Dylan and Co. got to ride a few last weekend, though they weren’t allowing rides when M and I were there. Guess I’ll just have to MAKE one.

Music: Radiohead :: How To Disappear Completely