The conventional wisdom, such as it is these days, has it that Apple no longer craves professional content creators, such as audio engineers, video editors and others who traditionally buy Mac Pros, Final Cut Pro and the Logic Studio audio production suite. There’s even a published report from Europe suggesting that the Logic programming team has been cut back to just two software engineers, and the next audio app from the company will be designed to run on an iPad.

Now it’s also true that The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, who is amazingly plugged in to things happening inside Apple, and is just about always correct with his conclusions, states: “There’s no truth to this rumor.”

I suppose for many professional users, the iMac might be an appropriate replacement. Each generation gets more and more powerful, and the 2012 model, with optional Fusion drive (combining most of the performance of a solid state drive with the capacity of a regular hard drive) has the potential of being a very powerful beast. But many professional users still require 12-core Xeon processors, two internal optical drives, four internal hard drives or SSDs, and internal PCI peripherals. You can also outfit a Mac Pro with twice as much RAM as an iMac, and that does make a significant difference for some users.

So is it possible that Apple really wants to lose those customers? Certainly if an office has a handful of Mac Pros, they might have dozens, hundreds or thousands of regular Macs that might also be dumped if the company moves to Windows. I can’t see why Apple would risk such a loss.

But there appears to be hope. Some of the rumor sites are suggesting that a forthcoming Mountain Lion update, version 10.8.3, actually has support for a new ATI Radeon 7000, high performance graphic cards that seem tailor-made for a computing workstation, such as the Mac Pro. Tim Cook has previously promised a big Mac Pro upgrade for 2013. It doesn’t matter what form it takes, but that would seem to mean that professional Mac users will be able to take advantage of the latest Intel Xeon chips and graphic cards, Thunderbolt ports, and all the rest by next June, in time for the WWDC. Apple might even keep those optical drives around, since there appears to be no real reason to remove them on a price-no-object computer where the emphasis on weight and miniaturization is a secondary issue.

That doesn’t mean the Mac Pro isn’t bloated, and that Apple can’t give the thing a diet. Try lugging them around an office, or from office to location and back again, and you’ll see what a chore that becomes after a while, unless you really want to build those biceps and pecs.

Indeed, I have no doubt that it’s possible to substantially reduce the size of the Mac Pro and keep the weight in the 20 pound class without sacrificing expandability or cooling capability. In the old days, the legendary Mac IIx, the most powerful and expandable Mac in its time, weighed just 24 pounds, and that was over 20 years ago. Surely Apple can do far better now.

Now about Final Cut Pro X: It’s true it got a bad rap when it came out bereft of important features video editors required for their workflows. Since then, Apple has released several updates that restored many of the lost features and added others. So it’s hard to say it is slimmed down or dumbed down, despite the more accessible user interface. At $299.99 for the digital download, it is quite affordable for a much larger audience that includes students and so-called “prosumers.” The key question is whether a significant portion of existing Final Cut Pro users, who have avoided the upgrade until now, will reconsider as the feature set is enhanced.

Apple didn’t make the job easier by temporarily removing the previous version from sale and not clearly explaining that the new FCP represented the introduction of a new editing platform, and that it would take time to flesh out the features so upgraders wouldn’t lose anything. That PR debacle likely sent dissatisfied customers to other video platforms, though nothing stopped them from using the previous version of FCP, since it appears to still work with current OS X versions.

And before you suggest that Apple doesn’t care about business or professional users, look at the enterprise (and government) adoption rates for the iPhone and the iPad. As more and more companies let customers bring their own devices, Macs are also being accepted by businesses in greater and greater numbers. It’s absurd to think Apple doesn’t want to expand this important customer base.

I don’t know how much money Microsoft is spending — make that squandering — on the Windows 8 and Surface ad campaigns. But if you counted loudness as a factor in making one product more successful than another, you’d think the world had happily embraced the newest Microsoft products.

But if the latest Black Friday survey of store traffic, from industry analyst firm Piper Jaffray, is any indication, lots of customers were actually visiting and buying gear from Apple Stores. On the other hand, floor traffic at a Microsoft’s retail chain is apt to be far less, and you may not see anyone buying Surface tablets; at best, maybe a few games for the Xbox. Of course, this is all based on monitoring the two stores over an eight-hour period at a Minneapolis shopping mall, and I’ll grant that the survey sampling may be far too little to indicate a trend.

However, it’s not as if there are reports of Surfaces flying off the shelves, or at least the few shelves where one might be found. You can be sure that Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer would want to put a positive spin on things, yet the best he could muster about Surface sales was “modest,” which likely means that the reality is far worse. Also, it doesn’t seem as if folks are crowding the consumer electronics stores to buy new PCs with Windows 8 preloaded, or have downloaded the upgrade to the controversial OS upgrade in high numbers.

It’s not that Microsoft isn’t trying to get the word out. Those loud TV ads for Windows 8, the Surface, and Internet Explorer are certainly designed to grab your attention, but to me they all work against making the advertised products seem warm and fuzzy. The loud procession of Surface tablets a-clicking, and people dancing seems hardly capable of informing you of the virtues of Microsoft’s tablet, or why we should care that the OS on an ARM-based mobile gadget is the same, more or less, as the one on a traditional PC. Well, except for the fact that you can’t run your regular PC apps on ARM hardware unless the apps are converted.

Those high-energy advertising campaigns appear to reflect Microsoft’s belief that, if you throw enough money at a problem, it will be solved. So even if Windows 8 and the Surface both tank this year, Microsoft will continue to invest in R&D to make them better, and hundreds of millions of dollars to get the word out, believing full well that success must inevitably come to them.

The problem in this day and age is that most users of mobile computers have already made decisions to choose the iOS or Android. Despite hopes and dreams that the next RIM OS revision and smartphone lineup will deliver sales magic, that’s yet to be demonstrated. Windows Phone continues to go nowhere, even though smartphones from Nokia and HTC that run that OS are getting surprisingly favorable reviews. That appears to mean that positive reviews may not count for much to customers who have already embraced a mobile app ecosystem and don’t see the need to start over.

I suppose the situation is unfortunate. While I think the execution is highly flawed, Microsoft is at the very least making a huge effort to leave their comfort zone and try something new, well more or less. But it’s still Windows everywhere, and not just special versions for each platform, but essentially the same version. Also, Microsoft has still failed to make the argument that the interface formerly known as Metro can actually deliver a superior user experience and increase productivity.

Indeed, other than a few avid Windows fans, and, unfortunately, Consumer Reports magazine, most people who have evaluated Windows 8 find the OS highly flawed, with poorly-designed touch features. There are also lots of concerns about the highly schizophrenic line of demarcation between the tiled environment and the traditional Windows desktop.

Now I do gather that Microsoft wants you to believe that once you are exposed to Windows 8, and spend the time to learn how things work, you’ll be a happy camper. But there are just too many functions that aren’t intuitive or consistently mastered. Certainly Apple’s iOS is not perfect, and there is plenty of room for improvement, but its discoverability is off the charts. Most people, of all ages, can figure out most of the basics in a short period of time without a user manual or even a simple cheat sheet.

Also consider the low-key fashion in which the iPhone and the iPad are advertised. The ads are designed to draw you in and not turn you off. Look, for example, at the recent iPad mini ad showing the matching musical keyboards on the full sized and smaller version. The message is clear, folks. The new model may be smaller and lighter, but it’s still an iPad through and through. Whatever worked on the big iPad continues to work on the small iPad. You don’t need dancers and clicks and clacks to convey the message. Right now, Microsoft’s ad campaign is the best promotion yet for a DVR and a convenient Fast Forward button.

Conspiracy theories are often entertaining. The conventional explanation about an episode, usually a tragedy, is really a cover-up. There are actually other reasons why things happen that don’t necessary depend on a lone gunman, or some haphazard event over which we have no control.

Certainly in our unique corner of the world, we wonder why Microsoft and Windows chief Steve Sinofsky parted company. Maybe he really just wanted to get out of the rat race, after 23 years at the company, and enjoy his life. Sure, being a high pressure executive can take its toll on a person, and perhaps his family life suffered as a result. Since he is also a very rich man, perhaps it all made sense.

That’s the optimistic way to look at the situation, but maybe Microsoft simply got tired of dealing with an abrasive personality, and used the completion of a key assignment, the release of Windows 8 and the Surface tablet, as an excuse to send Sinofsky packing. It’s not as if he needs to worry about getting an unemployment check.

Continue Reading…

Let me say at the outset that I’m posing this question not because I truly believe that Microsoft would actually give money to Consumer Reports, or that the publication would even accept such a donation, but I have to wonder about a few things in the December 2012 issue. This is the annual product wrap-up edition, where the best picks in a number of categories are listed. The electronics category covers tablets, cameras, TVs, phones, personal computers, printers, and lots more.

No, my friends, I’m not about to suggest that CR is obligated to favor products I like, and to denigrate products I do not like. They claim to be incorruptible, largely because the magazine is run by a non-profit corporation that doesn’t accept advertising and buys all tested products at retail. That includes luxury autos, meaning CR has a budget in the millions of dollars to make those purchases. And, yes, autos are sold off after testing, so it’s not as if the investment is a total loss.

So whenever CR says a car is unacceptable, because of a safety problem, or generally inferior design, you can bet the auto makers are listening. Take the 2012 Honda Civic, that company’s flagship compact vehicle. While most car magazines called it a yawner, CR really singled it out for the inferior and jiggly ride and evidence of severe cost-cutting, particularly when it came to the dashboard and controls. As a result, they couldn’t recommend the car. Well, Honda noticed, despite high sales, and rushed to deliver a 2013 version with loads of major changes.

Indeed, when a car is rated unsafe, perhaps because it may tip over or slip out of control during an emergency maneuver, changes will usually be made. CR’s verdict is rarely disputed, even though a few auto companies have sued them over the years.

But in the interests of appealing to a large non-technical audience, CR sometimes glosses over fine distinctions among products, or generally fails to explain key differences between, say, a Mac and a PC. But when it comes to Windows 8 and OS X Mountain Lion, things have changed somewhat.

In a feature in the latest issue entitled, “Computers,” CR promised to tell you “What to expect from Windows 8, plus Ratings of Apple models.” A curious juxtaposition, don’t you think?

In the Windows 8 section, CR provides a general description of the vast changes and why, frankly, “upgrading might not be worth it” for those with a Windows 7 computer. This makes sense for a variety of reasons, but CR concentrates largely on the lack of touch capability, the loss of the Start menu, and possible application incompatibilities.

All right so far. But there is a curious paragraph earlier in the article entitled, “Its touch capability is a hit” that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. CR claims Windows 8’s touch features are “quite intuitive,” and that they could perform various tasks and move “almost effortlessly from touch screen to keyboard to mouse as needed.”

Those talking points sound as if they were written by Microsoft, because the conclusions are polar opposites of what both reviewers and regular people are saying about Windows 8. The big problem is that the touch features aren’t always obvious, and that it’s not altogether clear what function does what without a cheat sheet. Worse, without touch capability on your PC, you may find a standard input device sometimes misses the critical hot spots to deliver a feature, such as the Charms settings panel, or when switching from desktop back to the tiled interface.

Some of the swipe routines to access a given feature, in fact, come across as downright wacky, and that’s not just my conclusion. This week, on The Tech Night Owl LIVE, we’ll be featuring usability expert Jakob Nielsen, who has done a pretty thorough study of the Windows 8 Modern UI interface and come away highly disappointed.

Now as you’ll learn from the article and the upcoming interview on my radio program, Nielsen is a long-time Windows user who happens to like Windows 7. He called upon 12 “experienced PC users” to evaluate Windows 8 on regular PCs and the Surface RT tablet. And by the way, Nielsen is no fan of the iPad either, and I’d be inclined to disagree with some of the conclusions he made with that survey, conducted some time back.

But I would certainly grant Nielsen far more credibility than Consumer Reports. When you read the CR paragraph, and the conclusions Nielsen draws about Windows 8, you’d almost think they are writing about two totally different operating systems. Sure, opinions are a dime a dozen, and differences are to be expected. But if you examine a lot of the Windows 8 discussion out there, you’ll see that CR appears to be in lock step with some of those avid Windows 8 fans, rather than the larger portion of people who had serious problems with the new interface.

CR seems also curiously uninformed about another key issue. Consider the ratings of laser and inkjet printers that gave high ratings to several models from Lexmark. The text says nothing about the fact that Lexmark announced last summer plans to discontinue the manufacture of inkjet printers, and shave some 1,700 jobs from their worldwide workforce as a result.

While it’s quite possible that you’ll still be able to get service and consumables for your Lexmark inkjet for a number of years yet, why wouldn’t CR mention it, at least in passing as a cautionary note? Or maybe I’m just off-base, or living in the wrong reality.