Based on some benchmarks, it looks like the updated mid-2014 MacBook Air’s use slower flash. And they’re about $100 cheaper. Interesting because, Apple in the past, has always been about premium quality at a premium price. This is a substantial change (lower quality / price). Still above broader market averages, but it just feels ‘different’

Copying 6GB of files and folders took 28 seconds on last year’s 11-inch MacBook Air, but took nearly twice as long (54 seconds) on this year’s 11-inch model. With solid-state storage, lower capacity drives are often slower performers, and last year’s 11-inch had the higher capacity 256GB of flash. However, the new 11-inch model was also slower than last year’s 13-inch model with 128GB of flash storage.

Is this tantamount to an admission from Apple that they have a pricing problem in the MacBook range?

SSD replaced, is the CPU next?

If Apple perceives a pricing problem, this gives more credence to my idea that Apple could switch out of $INTC chips from the Air.

It’s clearly no secret that MacBook sales are not growing as fast as expected; sales seem to be stalling. … (4.13M units sold versus 4.07M units in 2Q last year)

Perhaps this is just confirmation bias and I’m reading more than I should

I prefer Windows Apps to Web Apps. While I’m all for web-apps (and I use gmail near exclusively for my email) I still prefer Windows apps. Perhaps because I am currently in India and nearly all connections have huge latency making web-apps a lot more annoying. I think people will start to rent servers in India making Indian data-centers more valuable over time and perhaps helping lower bandwidth pricing for everyone. Go mass market!

BTW: If you wanna serve web-apps to India, put ’em in your London data centers. LDN is closer than NYK. Ping times to LA probably are similar since packets go via SGP -> TKY -> LA … but nothing beats the BOM -> UAE -> LDN speeds. Reliance Flag beats Tata Teleglobe hands down. Go RCOM!

File Storage: Windows Live (SkyDrive), Google Docs, Roll your own (Amazon S3 and equivalents including Google Storage for Developers beta), Box.net etc

I never really got around to creating a box.net account though I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. Could be they really are good or could be that that they have a very good social media management team. Somehow, I’m not terribly excited. I use a lot of disk. I need terabytes and I don’t think box.net is trying to service customers like me.

I don’t really like any of the alternatives at the moment. Sometimes I think JungleDisk + S3 will do the trick, but then again, S3 means that it is not really possible to copy deltas. You have to copy the whole file across even if you change just one miserable byte. There is some kind of commercial service at rsync.net that would probably work, but then, they’re charging more than 50 cents/GB/mo. So that won’t work either.

I think I have the perfect storage solution – and there’s an empty space here — but it’s going to be a lot of work to develop. If you are a VC looking for new ideas, contact me!

I currently use Roll my own, with a Sharepoint based WebDAV shared “drive”, backed by a Kimsufi.co.uk server. Can’t get cheaper than kimsufi though you do have to buy in chunks of 1Tb. Easy-peasy to install Proxmox or VMWare though, so you can install your choice of Windows + “app server”. I suppose I could try OpenFiler, but then again I think it’d really be useful only for people with high bandwidth, low latency links. I have “medium” bandwidth – 2Mbps/high latency. I suppose over time I will get higher bandwidth, but unless I find a cheap’ish datacenter in India, there isn’t any way to get around the latency issues.

Backup: I also pay for a Mozy.com account. Mozy rocks for Windows clients. Mostly, till you decide to restore and find it is slower than molasses. Really. Slow. SugarSync rocks too (or so I’ve heard)… I’ve heard a lot of “small medium” businesses are moving to Mozy/Druvaa. I don’t like Vembu’s offering but they seem to have some traction too.

(Update 1 – June – 2012: Dropbox is the winner!)

Music Management: iTunes, Windows Media Player, WinAmp ….

iTunes is getting bloated. Wish there was iTunes light. Still works nice (though very slow) has a decent COM API and is supported by millions of third party apps. And you don’t have to jailbreak/fsck around with your iToys … though you do hate Apple every time you use it. Like for example, when syncing photos to my iPad, why the fsck do I have to delete existing photos when syncing to a new computer? I own my photos. They’re not MP3s <which also I own:)>. I hates you Apple. Still there’s safety in numbers. Millions of iPads being sold. Sure to be plenty of third-party development. Linux drivers. You know…

However, a really complete Windows solution needs:

ffmpeg, Media Player Classic – HomeCinema, xvid, Quicktime Alternative, Real Alternative and Songbird (or other open source) to really work well. There’s just nothing in the purely commercial space that meets my needs.

Social Information Overload Management:
Nutshellmail, Gist, Ping.fm, Pidgin, Twhirl, UberTwitter and the “many” many RSS readers and aggregators out there …

Google Reader (which replaces StumbleUpon for me) + NutshellMail + Ping.Fm + Gmail + Rapportive + Pidgin is my choice du jour. I think Google has all the pieces now and could oneday soon, create an app that works with IMAP/RSS/ATOM/NNTP/TWITTER/FACEBOOK and like the magic ring “binds them all”. Wave isn’t it.

Not even sure there is competition in this category. A lot of people love Gist. I don’t.

I think a Pidgin client with twitter + facebook + lnkd.in + other apps would rock. Perhaps one written in C# though. C# on Mono (ie !Windows.Forms) if you swing that way.
Photo Management: Picasa/Flickr/Windows Live Gallery/iPhoto…

This is one category with a clear winner. At least for me. Picasa it is.

It’s a combination Windows App + WebApp unlike the other contenders. This does mean that only the first “sniff” is free (ie you only get so much free disk space, after which you have to pay).

Flickr is probably the most popular in this category (sez wakoopa) but I like Picasa because it’s also got a real Windows app that is beautiful, fast, smooth and integrates brilliantly well with Windows. Picasa is available for Linux too. Not sure about Macs, assume it is available.

In terms of usage charges, Picasa is probably amongst the lowest cost. Something like 10 cents/GB/month. USD 20 gets you 80GB for a year.

 

Development : Eclipse? Visual Studio? MonoDevelop? SharpDevelop? Argh.

Nothing is a clear Winner. VS2K8 rocked. VS2K10 sux (well its really good, but really slow. You need a machine that can run Crysis at 50 fps).

I think the language of the future is Javascript. Everything will be JS + PHP. Even local apps. C# 4.0 with “dynamic typing” is close, but no cigar. C++ is for masochists and banksters who like to complicate everything…(and in turn have developed an incurable passion for obfuscated everything – balance sheets, term sheets, derivatives, employment contracts, etc)

I’ve been using LINQPad more and more these days because it loads so much faster than VS2K10.

 (Solved the VS2K10 speed issues with a new SSD. Time to start hating VS2K12)

 

Office / Productivity: MS Office, Open Office, Google Docs, Zoho?

OpenOffice is not a patch on MS Office. Google Docs is still in the “getting there” stage. And it’s not really free anymore. You kinda have to pay cuz this feature or that is only available to “premium” and “educational” users. And that makes it worse than a pirated <— err borrowed –> copy of Office. So I think Office wins and will keep winning for the near future. I’ve had “free” copies of Office (courtesy MSDN subscriptions from employers, universities and the like) most of my life, but even so I’m beginning to wonder if it is worth even the near “zero” cost.

I think the Office Web-Apps are a disaster. Even with a decent JS engine the OneNote WebApp is slooooow. The Word WebApp is hobbled to the point that it can’t even create tables. And the need for Sharepoint + a Windows Server to run it on just makes the whole setup “hopelessly” expensive. Powerpoint renders well but who cares? Slideshare renders well enough for me.

Perhaps, perhaps, there will be an offline Google Docs effort? Something like Picasa? A combination web-app + windows app? Hope lives eternal and all that.

Onenote/Evernote/Something else?

Something else. Evernote is good, but I want more. I want the OneNote experience with the ability to embed activex/COM and JS. I want to embed Excel. And Word. And other docs. And really embed, where they become part of the DOM. For example, if I have a table on a OneNote page …. Why can’t I stick an Excel function in it? Why can’t the table (secretly) be a Excel sheet? Then I could use some of the kewl Excel-Addins to do kewl stuff.

Tomboy may get there someday. If I was to place bets…..I’d say tomboy, but for now OneNote. Unless there’s a sudden crush of developers TomBoy is going to take ages ….

Evernote… just not sure… it’s good’ish. Works on Blackberry’s, IPads and what have you’s. But, there’s something about the editor. It’s good’ish not great. I like the OneNote integration with Windows Text Services and Windows Automation. I love the depth of “Ink” Support. I heart the magic “autocorrections” and the reasonable heuristic based guess about what I’m trying to do. I mean I like that pressing TAB will do the right thing most of the times (like indent a para or bulleted list, or create a new table…). It kinda reminds me of the commandline.

Just wish OneNote used more of Word’s editing, embedding and programmability.

 

Windows / Suse / Ubuntu / Mac OS ?

Windows for now. Suse is a close second. Give it another 5 years. And short MSFT in the meantime if you have SIPP that you don’t intend to touch till you retire 😉 (et plus since any profits you make will be denominated in USD, you’ll need to swap your USD for INR every now and then)

Reliance/Vodafone/Airtel/MTNL/Tata/Other?

If you’re in Mumbai and use a Berry and are willing to live with CDMA –> Reliance. Just no competition here.

If you’re anywhere else in India –> Vodafone (which strangely isn’t dying. I’ve been predicting its collapse for years now. Like they say the markets can stay irrational far longer than you can stay solvent. I wonder where they’re funding the enormous losses they’re surely making in India, in Africa etc? I haven’t looked at a Voda balance-sheet recently, but surely someone must’ve noticed the “massaging”? Even in their home-turf, in the UK, I’d bet on ‘3’.)
 

 

migueldeicaza Social media experts for hire: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="social+media+expert"+site:twitter.com 
Fri 05/21 12:22 AM

I wonder how much content on an average Windows machine is “truly” unique. I wonder if there’s any easy way to find out … I suspect there is very little “unique” content on most machines. If its a home computer then there’s probably a bunch of MP3 / Vidz and other Warez on it …. but nothing much that won’t be there on other computers….

The power of advertising!

People (including my own parents!) pay for stuff like QuickHeal when there are perfectly good free alternatives such as Microsoft Security Essentials and AVG out there. Mainly because QuickHeal advertises a lot. Wish they’d asked me (maybe).

Anyways:

You can download “Microsoft Security Essentials” from here: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

And AVG Free (Personal use only) from here:
http://free.avg.com/ww-en/download-avg-anti-virus-free

Both are excellent. You should have one of the two installed at all times! Both have been installed on millions of machines and are relatively stable, known to be solid (not crashy) and won’t slow your computer down too much.

Mao’s blog is at: http://blogs.msdn.com/mao_chen/default.aspx

 
 

Mao Chen is one of the developers on the OneNote 2010 Linked Notes team. He has written plugins Chrome and Firefox “Linked Note” plugins which can be downloaded from here and here respectively.

 
 

BTW: If you aren’t using OneNote you are missing out on the greatest productivity booster ever! OneNote is now included with all versions of Office.

 
 

While there’s a lot WIMWI doesn’t get quite right, there’s a lot more that it does get spot on! This blog post from Prof. J. R. Varma is an example …

I am humbled and honoured to have been in his class.

To put matters in perspective, $40 billion was roughly equal to the total shareholders’ equity of Barclays at that time (according to the June 30, 2008 balance sheet, shareholders’ equity was £ 22.3 billion or $40.5 billion at the exchange rate of 1.82 $/£ on September 18, 2008). In other words, Barclays was willing to take an unsecured intraday exposure to another bank equivalent to roughly its entire worth. I am sure that an overnight unsecured exposure of this magnitude would be regarded as reckless and irresponsible, but an intraday position was acceptable.

Read the original here: http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/~jrvarma/blog/index.cgi/Y2010/prudent-night-reckless-day.discuss

Interestingly, the $40B exposure seems to have had a positive (short-term) impact on BARC.L.

 

Noticed this article on BCG’s website: http://www.bcg.com/expertise_impact/publications/PublicationDetails.aspx?id=tcm:12-38221

"Private equity and other investors have learnt from the crisis. They will increasingly base their investments on the question: “Is the owner engaged as true owner that creates operational value rather than value driven by financial levers?” This report is based on our private equity database, interviews with private equity investors and over 100 academic articles. Developing a framework for operational value creation, it addresses the question what owners (public, private, family) can learn from private equity firms in order to improve the competitive position of their company."

IMHO: This is why Indian companies are doing well now and will do even better in the future. Our companies are mostly promoter (family) owned, unlike most British companies. American companies are mixed. Plenty of family owned companies still around (Dell, Walmart for example) and plenty of “no one really” like the much despised (at the moment, anyhow) GS.

It would be nice if Indian MBA colleges (like say WIMWI) spent more time talking about the good bits of family owned business instead of sticking with the “professionally managed is the best” spiel. We do eulogize the family owned businesses that do really well … we’re all proud of Wipro and Reliance-ADAG and yet we’re not proud enough about the small/mid caps that are family owned and that are capable of investing for the long term. For taking real risk and reaping real reward, not merely “accounting” gains.