Well, you could try something like this:

So if you can be patient, you stand a much better chance of finding some real deals out there for Apple swag.

Brooklyn-based Dealnews, a deal-hunting site founded in 1997, put together the above graphic to help consumers do just that. The site, which makes its money from advertising and affiliate partnerships, employs about 60 "dealhunters" who scour the web for good buys.

For the above graphic, Dealnews looked at a year's worth of data and calculated how long it takes a new Apple product to generate an actual deal for consumers. For example, the MacBook Pro 15.4" with retina display was released in June 2012 with a starting price of $2,199. The site listed a deal two days after its release for $118 off the initial price. Nine months later, the best deal was $350 off.

In other words, he who hesitates... may walk off with a bargain. (Works for "she who hesitates," too, of course.)

Dealnews offers another tip from its research. If you want the best price for Apple products, don't buy them from Apple! Instead, wait until a new model comes out, then haunt the MacMalls and Best Buys of the world and buy the previous version days or weeks after the new release. You can thank us — and Dealnews — later.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Infographic courtesy of dealnews

Use multiple operating systems at once, that's what! And with advances in desktop virtualization, that's easier than ever to accomplish.

With today's powerful multi-core processors and inexpensive RAM, it is easy to take advantage of a trend that has already swept the Fortune 100. It just needs a little tweaking for the home environment. Let me show you how it works for me.

What Is Virtualization?

First, a quick bit of background. Virtualization is all about separating the software from the hardware, creating virtual machines that act like real machines inside another operating system. Server virtualization is all the rage because it allows companies to create multiple "virtual" servers on a limited number of physical servers, boosting efficiency, adding flexibility and lowering costs.

Desktop virtualization, meanwhile, creates one or more virtual environments on a single piece of hardware. And it's hardly new. In the early '90s we used Soft PC to run Windows on Macintosh computers.

Early virtual environments were slow - and the extra memory they required was expensive. Today, a fussy operating system user like me can build a complex system at home with lots of memory for not a lot of money. And that lets me do some very interesting things.

Obviously it would be simpler to stick with one operating system. But I have developed a fondness for certain programs over the years and some of them are platform specific. I want to use all of them, and advances in virtualization let me have my cake and eat it too.

What Does My Home Virtual Environment Look Like?

I have three screens on my desk, driven by two powerful but inexpensive computers. One is a Lenovo tower PC driven by an Intel Core i5 chip with 8GB of RAM. The other is a Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM.

Total spending - including a new LCD monitor to join the two I had- was less than $1,500. That includes a very reasonable $50 for VMware Fusion, virtualization software. I also downloaded the free non-commercial version of TeamViewer to let me remotely control a desktop computer from another computer.

While all of this may sound pretty complicated, it's actually a fairly simple way to create just the environment that I want.

I love the Linux desktop environment. And AbiWord offers a good balance between advanced word-processing features and simplicity. 

But I don't want to live entirely in Linux. I don't to give up Pixelmator on the Macintosh for my graphics work or Rapidweaver for my websites. And I prefer Microsoft Excel on Windows for my spreadsheets. I also like Postbox on Windows for my mail and Adobe's Lightroom for my photos. I actually run Chrome and Firefox browsers in all three operating systems as needed.

The 16GB of memory in the Mac lets me easily run a virtual Linux environment using Fusion. Teamviewer lets me control my Lenovo PC from the Mac - and run the latest version of Excel and Postbox in a PC Window.

If I want to move files from one environment to the other, I use Dropbox. It is the only popular cloud storage tool easily usable on Linux by someone like me.

With my system it is easy to use whatever tool I prefer - no matter which environment it lives in - with the power of two modern microprocessors and plenty of storage. I can ignore the parts of Windows 8 that bug me while still getting access to Windows programs. I don't have to give up my specialized Mac programs like iMovie, but I can avoid the iOSified version of iPhoto for my daily photography work.

Getting It All To Work

Not surprisingly, there were some hiccups putting this all together. I never got Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client to work with Mac OS X Lion, but Teamviewer worked on the first try. Selecting the right version of Linux required a few tries, but with VMware's installation program you can install directly from a downloaded ISO image.

One of the neat things about virtualization is that my Linux environment is just a file on the Mac. Dedicating hardware to Linux is still not as easy as using a virtual Linux machine that takes advantage of all the hardware drivers that come with the Mac environment.

Cost-Effective - And A Built-In Backup System

I could have also installed a virtual PC environment on my Mac, but when you look at the $99 cost of a Windows 8 license, buying a whole PC got me another CPU, 8GB more RAM, a 1TB hard drive, keyboard, mouse and DVD burner for just $400 more.

I also could have bought a powerful Mac Pro system to run everything. But the economics of that approach make no sense. A Mac Pro with less RAM and about the same amount of storage costs almost $3,000. Would it be faster? Hard to say. It would certainly be more elegant and compact, but my virtualized setup works great for me.

Having two systems also lets me one as a backup. If necessary, I could upgrade to the Windows version of the VMware product and move over my Linux environment by just copying a file.

More to the point, I love having every piece of software I could dream of at my finger tips.

A.J. Schuler, in his 2003 paper, "Resistance to Change," lays out 10 reasons why people resist change. His first two points may help us understand why we cling to technology that might not be the best for us.

1. The risk of change is seen as greater than the risk of standing still.
2. People feel connected to other people who are identified with the old way.

Why Did Macs Never Rule America?

Dan suggests one reason Americans support the iPhone is because "Apple is an American company, and Americans like to root for the home team." He also says "lawsuits against Android phone makers have been an effective form of marketing" and that Apple fanboys have depicted Android users as "low-class people who are uneducated, poor, cheap and too lacking in `taste.'"

While we might like the home team and being part of the cool-guy club, there is more to iPhone love than Apple and its "superior" marketing.

For instance, when Dan asks, “Why do such a huge majority of Americans go out of their way to choose Apple?” he is talking about smartphones - because as a country we are not really in love with Apple’s computers. According to Ars Technica even at their peak of popularity, the computers of Apple have never even been one third as popular as the iPhone.

From 1996 until his death, Steve Jobs tried fairly unsuccessfully to get Americans public to embrace the Mac the way they now love, love, love the iPhone. (As a former Apple employee, this is a problem that I lived first hand.)

For many years after Mac OS X’s initial release on March 24, 2001, it was arguably the best desktop operating system in the world. For one thing, OS X was far more secure than Windows XP. Whole agencies in the federal government could be taken down by a virus or worm attack, but their CIOs would cling to Windows XP like they were married to it.

Many businesses were even worse. And it isn't all about not liking Apple. Many companies still cling to Windows XP when almost anyone with computer experience will tell you that Windows 7 is a far superior operating system. And let's not even talk about Windows 8.

Because Everyone Else Is Doing It - And They Will Help You

So why are the 11-year-old Windows XP and the no-longer-clearly-superior iPhone still so beloved?

It could be because they were the first widely accepted products of their type. While the Macintosh brought us the first graphical user interface, it was never as widely accepted as Windows. People got used to Windows, and the risk of going to something different became greater than the risk of sticking with XP.

In a similar fashion there were smartphones before the iPhone - but Apple's breakthrough was the first one to be widely accepted.

In technology, "being connected to other people who are identified with the old way" also means that you have a support system of people to call if you screw things up.

If you needed assistance when Windows XP broke, you probably knew someone who could help. And if you have a problem with your iPhone, how hard is it to find another iPhone user?

Fast Food - But Not Fast Internet?

It is not just Microsoft’s operating systems or Apple’s smartphone technology that Americans cling to. We seem perfectly happy with slow Internet access that even Russia and the notably technology adverse British wouldn't tolerate.

“Technology adverse British” is actually a slam our friends across the pond do not deserve. The Brits have adopted smartphones faster than the United States.

It's An American Thing, You Wouldn't Understand

Still, I wonder how America, birthplace to the personal computer and so many other technologies, has become so complacent when it comes to adopting the latest and greatest. I worry about the security vulnerabilities caused by our government’s refusal to aggressively diversify its operating system portfolio.

But whatever you think of iPhones or Windows XP, there is one thing that we should all be able to rally around: faster Internet connections.

Once we see the positive results of forcing change even when we are comfortable hugging our cable modems, perhaps change will come easier to us the next time.

That's important, because a "good enough for me" attitude towards technology is not the best way to keep up with the global economy. And we might fall even further behind if our international competitors can see more on their larger smartphone screens.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Dan Frommer at SplatF lays it all out: The PC industry is in decline. The Mac, which was growing while the rest of PCs were shrinking, is now shrinking, too. But if you add in the iPad and count all of Apple's "computers" at once, the numbers are through the roof.

It's pretty clear what all this means. As Steve Jobs said, PCs are trucks, and tablets are cars. Most people don't drive around in trucks. But the ones who drive trucks need great ones, and that's where Apple is starting to focus its Mac efforts exclusively.

Here in the U.S., at the peak of the George W. Bush era (remember him?), a trend began where people whose jobs entailed parking their car, going inside, and doing something on a computer began driving hulking monster trucks designed to resemble military assault vehicles. But after realizing over decades how much unnecessary energy those SUVs consumed, the trend swung back, and now many people conspicuously drive little hybrids instead.

Consumer products can be like that. Trends swing back and forth like a pendulum as new technology becomes available to meet people's tastes.

The Tablet Trend

What we see in Frommer's amazing charts is the adoption of just such a trend. Yes, it may be that Mac sales declined 22% in 2012, the biggest drop in 10 years, but that fall in Mac consumption can't come close to accounting for the soaring iPad numbers.

Certainly, there's a use case for a tablet that replaces the point-and-click PC completely. It does a better job for lots of people, since the battery lasts all day and it fits in a handbag. Apple should be thrilled to sacrifice Mac sales in exchange for selling iPads to those people. The company is even betting that this trend will take a bite out of the enterprise PC market, and it seems a pretty safe bet.

But the iPad was not the first $500 portable computer. It may (seriously) be the best one, but its astronomical adoption rate is not simply driven by the sudden realization by tens of millions of people that they can be more efficient workers on this device.

Tablets are also entertainment systems. They're an elective choice, like the choice of a Hummer or Prius over a used Honda. They're trendy.

Likewise, not everyone who bought a white plastic MacBook needed all its capabilities. They needed some of them, which a $300 Windows netbook also offered, and they wanted some of them, like the ability to watch Netflix in bed. But those people have the iPad now. It's a better choice for those uses. And Apple doesn't have to make that Mac at all anymore.

The Real PC Market

Since the "what is a PC?" argument is not yet resolved, I propose this definition: A PC is a computer with a multi-window workspace and a pixel-precise input method. For now, though I think this part can change with good-enough voice interfaces, let's include a physical keyboard, too.

The PC market is surely subject to trends, but that 22% drop in Mac sales is not the end of the Mac trend. Apple knows that as well as anybody. In 2012, Apple shipped the first Macs with retina displays and a striking new iMac, which, as CEO Tim Cook pointed out in the Q1 2013 earnings call was not available for most of the quarter in which the low Mac numbers were reported.

Why would Apple ship those products in a down year, fighting the clear trend against PCs? Because today's PC market is the real PC market. The people who still buy PCs actually need them. It might be a pretty hard crash for low-margin PC manufacturers, but for Apple, with high-end Macs bolstered by roaring iPhone and iPad businesses, it's just a chance to build the best, most powerful PCs it has ever made.

And that's not to say that Windows PCs are finished, either. It just means they have to be excellent enough for an increasingly high-end market.

Lead image by Eliot Weisberg for ReadWrite. Chart courtesy of Splatf. Bottom image from Apple. 

My Original Tale Of Mac Mini Woe

Here is a quick recap. My new Mac Mini booted for the first time last Saturday night. I went to the Apple App Store for software updates. The Mac Mini came with OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.1. At the App Store it got updated to Mountain Lion 10.8.2.

It appeared to be the same operating system that I was using on an external hard drive which was running my dying iMac for several months.

However, when I tried to boot the Mac Mini with the external drive, it would not boot the Mac Mini. That’s not a normal thing for a Mac. I checked with some folks at Apple and was told that there are multiple builds of OS 10.8.2 out in the wild but only the latest version will boot the Mac Mini. Below is a snapshot of the build on the external drive.

Logically the fix was to download the latest version of Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and install it on my external drive. At that point the story gets weird. The Apple App Store would not let me download it and even told me that what it had just installed on my Mac Mini was incompatible with my Mac Mini.

Discussions with Apple friends yielded no suggestions. They did believe the problem would be fixed when OS X 10.8.3 is released. Clearly - except for in the minds of the most fervent Apple fans - this is a problem with the Apple App Store. My friends at Apple all acknowledged this with the hope that recent management changes might bring more focus to OS X and prevent this in the future.

Never Give Up

Whatever the cause of the problem, I didn't want to give up hope. A return trip to the Apple App Store with the old iMac using the Firewire Drive allowed me to download and install what in theory was the latest release of Mountain Lion. Unfortunately, it was the same version that was already on the external drive.

Next I tried “System Restore” while booting the Mac Mini. This supposedly allows you to install a bootable operating system on either an internal or external drive.

It seemed to be working and indicated it was installing some new stuff on the external drive. In the end, however, it turned out to have the same build number - and it still won’t boot the Mac Mini.

Why Boot From An External Drive?

Why would anyone want to boot from an external drive? First, it is a way of preserving your software investment. It gets you off the forced upgrade roller coaster that software companies seem to love so much. Second, if you ever have a problem with your internal drive or a new system install causes hiccups, you can boot from the external drive and get back to work quickly.

Years ago I paid $900 for raster image processing software only to watch it break on the next Mac OS upgrade. Fortunately I got a free upgrade that time, but I learned a valuable lesson. When the software broke again on the next major upgrade and there was a huge cost attached to the software upgrade, I was ready with a second drive that did not have to be updated. That way I could keep using the software I needed.

I will keep my fingers crossed that I don’t have a problem with my Mac Mini. The App Store doesn’t seem to be able to create another bootable drive, so an internal hard drive problem would be serious.

It appears that at least some things that once were easy don’t even work at all now on the Mac.

(For the technical details of the latest efforts on the Mac Mini, check David's post on his own site:  Loving My Mac Mini, But Questioning Apple.)

Lead image courtesy of Apple.

Upgrading To A Mac Mini

As I was coaxing the last few DVDs out of my iMac, the infamous iLemon (see My iMac Has Turned Into An iLemon, And It Makes Me Concerned About Apple), I placed an online order for Apple’s least expensive Macintosh, the Mac mini.

For those not familiar with Macs, the Apple store price for that model is $599 and it comes with 2.5 GHz I5 processor, lots of ports, but almost nothing else except an HDMI-to-DVI connector. I also ordered additional memory from Amazon Prime. And I bought an external Samsung DVD drive, for a lot less than the Apple model.

My growing frustration with my dying iMac meant the Mac Mini rested on the sofa in my office for just 24 hours after it arrived.

My Mac mini with DVD drive just behind the keyboard, and an external LaCie Firewire 800 hard drive on top of the Mac mini.

Easy Digital Migration?

One of the great things about Apple products for the last several years has been the migration assistant, which helps you move everything from an older Mac to a new one. I used it with my iMac and it worked flawlessly. However, given that my iMac had problems that even Apple couldn’t solve, and that I was running it off an almost completely full external hard drive the same size of the drive in my new Mac Mini, I thought it best to start from scratch.

I sort of expected there to be some conflict when I plugged the Samsung into the Mac mini, given all the court cases, but it worked great as I installed my Microsoft Office 2011 for the Mac. My other software, Rapidweaver 5, Nisus Writer Express, Fetch, SnagIt, Chrome and Firefox were all downloaded without a hitch.

But when you get a new Mac, you almost immediately end up at the App Store. Surprisingly Apple’s App store was where the real pain started.

My first shock came when I arrived at the App store and clicked the “Update All” button. It didn’t take long before things ground to a halt. The first thing I noticed was a message “We could not download iPhoto” because OS X version 10.8.2 or later is required.

Next I got a message that I needed to do an EFI firmware update. For those not familiar with EFI, it is basically today’s version of the BIOS. Of course, the EFI message immediately made me think I had slipped back into the world of DOS. But the Mac Mini that I purchased was introduced on October 23, 2012, not even three months ago.

Anyway, the EFI update wasn’t a problem other than it had to be done separately. Then I went through a huge system update to bring my brand new Mac Mini from OS X version 10.8.1 to 10.8.2. Only then would the App Store let me update my iPhoto. The net of this was far more rebooting than I normally experience when bringing up a new Mac.

Mac vs. Windows, Redux

It occurs to me that maybe Microsoft should shoot a new version of the old iMac commercial where a boy and a dog race a man and a desk full of boxes to see which can get on the Internet first. I think Windows 8 might win. I say that because I got my Mac mini only a week after I first booted up a new Lenovo desktop tower PC. I know this will bring howls from the Apple crowd, but it was easier to get started using the Lenovo PC than it was to get the Mac mini going.

There were more challenges along the way. Apple’s Mail wizard did not know how to configure my old .Mac email accounts. I did a Google search to find the right settings. Postbox on my Windows 8 machine did a better job.

The surprises were not over. As I've noted before, my decision to stay on the Mac platform was largely based on the tight integration of the iLife products, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD. While I checked to make sure iLife was included, I didn’t think to check to see if the definition of iLife had changed.

I was floored when I found out that iDVD not only wasn’t included, but it no longer exists. A little searching confirmed that Apple had indeed ditched iDVD. I missed the news because when I migrated to my iMac in October 2010, the migration assistant brought iDVD along. Given I was using iDVD on my external drive just before I started unpacking the Mac Mini, I was floored.

Boot Troubles

This turn of events made it essential that I boot my Mac Mini from my external Firewire hard drive so I could use iDVD. This being a Macintosh, I thought it would be no problem. After all I have been booting Macintoshes from external drives of one sort or another almost since the Mac was introduced. And my current external drive was successfully running my dying iMac just a few minutes earlier.

But apparently thinking that it would work easily pushed me into some sort of reality distortion zone. It's time to admit that some things no longer just work on a Mac. My new Mac would just hang when trying to boot from the external drive. Given that both drives have the same version of the OS, I knew talking to first-tier Apple support was a waste of my time, so I went a little higher up the ladder to find out the real scoop.

Turns out that the Mac Mini requires the absolute latest build of OS X 10.8.2. My external hard drive likely has an earlier build. I bought Mac OS X Mountain Lion for my iMac this fall and it got the update to 10.8.2 on October 4, 2012. Who knew we had to keep track of build numbers for Mac OS X?

Well I thought, no big problem, I paid for a copy of Mountain Lion, I will just go download the latest and greatest version from Apple’s App Store. Sorry folks, this journey into the magical mystery world of Apple isn’t going to end that nicely.

Just to be sure I did not dream the whole thing, I just tried downloading it again, and the message is still the same. “Mountain Lion isn’t compatible with your computer.”

Well this is actually a pretty ugly turn of events. I checked back with my Apple contact. He too was mystified, but assured me that all will be well whenever Mac OS X 10.8.3 is released.

Really, that's what he said.

There are more adventures in this, but here's one more tidbit. During all of this I installed VMware’s Fusion software. With zero challenges, I got Xbuntu Linux running on the Mac mini. Maybe Linux running perfectly on Mac is a message from Steve that the gnomes in Cupertino need to focus a little more on OS X?

While I installing the last piece of software on my new tower, I read Brian Profitt’s ReadWrite post about the current infatuation with touchscreens (see Hey PC Industry: Stop Being So Damn Touchy-Feely).

But my experiences have convinced me that the ride into the new Windows 8 world is not going to be that bad. And more to the point, the touchscreen interface isn't the biggest issue.

Touch Is Not the Problem

The problem is not that Microsoft is dragging us kicking and screaming into the world of touch interfaces.

The real challenge is more complexity. To a certain extent I see some similar challenges - albeit on a smaller scale - in Apple’s Mac OS X Lion. They both offer too many different ways of accomplishing the same thing.

One of the first things that I do when setting up a Windows computer is to get rid of the free trial subscription to some bloatware security program. Windows Defender is free and has worked well for me. We all know security programs have big enough egos that using two at the same time will cause problems.

Uninstalling a program on Windows requires you to go to the Control Panel. That used to be fairly straight forward on Windows 7 and earlier operating systems. You went to the Start Menu. When I tried setting up my first Windows 8 computer, I had not figured out that you could get to the Control Panel multiple ways. Even once I figured it out, I learned that getting there was context-sensitive - and confusing.

Complexity With Strange Options

If I am on the Windows 8 Start screen with the tiles and I move my mouse or finger to the upper right corner of the screen, the soon-to-be-famous Windows 8 "charms" come out. One is Settings - which you might think would take you directly to the control panel, but it doesn’t. At least not in that context.

When I am using a regular Windows desktop application like Firefox, going to the upper right corner of the screen also reveals the charms. Select Settings here and you will find the Control Panel listed as the number two item on the right of your screen.

Just to make it a little more confusing, if I am running an application like Google’s Chrome in its Windows 8 mode when I do the same thing, the Settings charm that shows up is for Google Chrome - and there is no Control Panel anywhere around. However, if I run Google Chrome in desktop mode, the Setting’s charm that shows up does lead to the control panel.

As I was working on my new tower PC, I also discovered that if you go to the lower left corner of your screen and right click with your mouse, you will get a pop-up menu which has the Control Panel.

It would be far easier have one simple, consistent way to get to the control panel. It does not matter to me if I get to it with the mouse or my fingers. That choice I can handle. Among my current choices I will likely remember going to the lower left corner and right clicking. It makes the most sense to me.

When I first started using Mac OS X Mountain Lion, I had some similar concerns. If I want to open and application, I am not exactly sure why I need Launch Pad, the dock on my screen, recent applications under the Apple menu, the Finder sidebar, and the ability to double click on an application icon. However, I have learned to ignore the ways that don’t work for me.

Learning Curve On Windows 8 Not So Bad

That's slowly happening with Windows 8, as well. When I started working on my first Windows 8 system, I got so frustrated that I finally installed Start8 from Stardock. It gave me back the old Start Menu and let me gradually become accustomed to Windows 8. I did not bother installing Start8 on my second system. I learned enough to not need it. (For more, see Could Restoring The Windows 8 Start Button Fix Everything?)

Having used Windows 8 very successfully with a mouse, I’m not very concerned about being stuck if the touchscreen capability is not there in a system. The Intel Core i5 Windows 8 desktop tower that I bought came with a 1TB hard drive and 8GB of memory and a nice keyboard. The cost before taxes was $499. That is a lot of computer for less than $500. Who cares it if doesn't have a touchscreen?

All-In-One Computers Are Wasteful

I am more worried about all-in-one computers than touch interfaces. I have seen some reports that LCD screens could last for up to 20 years. We all know that even the best of computers become functionally obsolete in three to five years. If you buy an all-in-one computer, your screen is going to outlast your computer by more than a decade.

Our family has purchased seven iMacs since 1998. All have been retired except my iLemon which is just waiting for my new Mac Mini’s arrival to give up the ghost. All the screens were functioning perfectly when we gave up on the computers and recycled them.

When my new MacMini shows up this week it will be hooked up to an Apple 20-inch flat panel Cinema Display that I purchased in December 2004 for close to $1,000. I suspect the old screen will outlast the new MacMini. The iMac I bought in 2010 will be our last all-in-one computer.

Touchscreen Price/Reliability Not A Big Issue

I doubt that touchscreen pricing and reliability are issues that are going to heavily weigh on the success of Windows 8. Touchscreens have proven themselves in some very rugged scenarios and the prices are dropping quickly.

The key point for the Windows 8 user interface isn't worrying about too much dependence on touch vs. the mouse. It's about whether the user interface is simple to use and doesn’t confuse us with too much choice.

So far I am not enthusiastic about the latest releases from either Microsoft or Apple in that regard. Maybe I will go have a look at KDE in the Linux world. It is hard to believe that Linux has come so far that I might be looking at it as relief from Mac OS X or Windows 8, but who knows?

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Flash forward a few weeks and it's looking like Windows 8 will indeed be a tremendous gift to the folks in Cupertino. 

That's what Apple pundit (and former top Apple executive) Jean-Louis Gassee claims in his "Monday Note" blog today. Gassee says Microsoft's recently departed Windows boss Steven Sinofsky, who pulled off a miracle with Windows 7, fell short on Windows 8, perhaps because the task he was given was too large and unwieldy. Windows 8, Gassee says, is "a 21-blade Swiss Army knife: a great list of features on paper, dubious usability in practice."

And that opens the door for Apple. "The `re-complicated' Windows offers Apple an intriguing opportunity," Gassee writes. "They can capitalize on Microsoft's misstep, extend a welcoming hand to the Windows users who intend to switch to Apple, and make the iPad the sine qua noon of what a Post-PC device should be."

Windows 8: Sales Ain't Great

So far Windows 8 seems to be off to a tepid start. Sales of Windows 8 have been below Microsoft's internal projections, according to Paul Thurott of Supersite for Windows.

That jibes with what our Microsoft reporter, Mark Hachman, is hearing. A top exec at retailer NewEgg told Hachman that Windows 8 has been "slow going." 

We might have seen this coming. The day before Windows 8 shipped, a survey of Windows users showed that one-third of them planned to buy an iPad, and 12% were planning to switch to a Mac.

It's not that Windows 8 is terrible. It's just that it's so different that people who have been using previous versions of Windows will have a lot of learning to do if they want to move to Windows 8.

If you're going to have to learn a whole new operating system, you might as well take a look at a Mac or an iPad.

That's the theory, anyway. And, unfortunately for Microsoft, the theory seems to be holding up.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock. 

Monday morning, Google's Chromebook team announced the Acer C7 Chromebook, a 3-pound notebook that is one inch thick and boasts an 11.6-inch high-resolution screen. The Chromebook runs Google's Chrome OS and Chrome browser. It's meant to be used online. You can get all the specs here.

In the "good news, bad news" department, the C7 boots up in 20 seconds (good) but has only 3.5 hours (huh?) of battery life.

The Acer unit comes on the heels of Samung's $250 model announced last month: See Finally, A Properly Priced Google Chromebook. 

The Affordable, Connected Computer

The notion of a lightweight computer that's constantly connected to the Internet has long held appeal, in theory anyway. Others have tried it, including New Internet Computer (NIC), a startup funded by Larry Ellison and run by my pal Gina Smith more than a decade ago.

But nobody has ever been able to make this idea work in real life. Customers just don't seem to want these machines.

Google positioned the original Chromebook as a low-cost and low-hassle solution for busineses. Why dish out big bucks for a bunch of Windows PCs or Macs, and then spend even more money paying techies to keep them updated, when you could just buy a low-cost Chromebook that had all its apps in the cloud and could keep itself up to date?

Great pitch, but it didn't work, partly because initial models were far too expensive. And partly because the hardware itself lacked polish. Many units went out with faulty trackpads, for example. All that improved somewhat this spring with the introduction of new Chromebooks and Chromeboxes - but even those machines got mixed reviews: See new Chromebook & Chromebox Are Good Enough To Grab Minds & Market Share and Why The New Chromebook Still Doesn't Cut It.

Aimed At Entry-Level Consumers

Now Google is focusing the new Chromebook as a machine for mom-and-pop home users who just want a simple way to get online, where "your stuff is always available and everything just works." 

Google is touting a feature that lets you create multiple accounts so that mom, dad and kids can share a single machine. 

Will this thing take off? Is the world finally ready for a network-attached computer? For $200, it seems like a no-brainer.

What do you think? Would you buy one of these? Let us know in the comments below.

Image courtesy of Google.

One person who wasn't surprised by Cook's toughness was David Sobotta, a former Apple sales executive who just published The Pomme Company, a memoir of his 20 years (1984-2004) at Apple. Sobotta didn't report directly to Cook, but as director of Apple's federal sales group he had a lot of contact with Apple's current CEO, who joined Apple in 1998 to run operations and, later, was executive vice president of worldwide sales.

Since 2005 Sobotta has written an Apple-centric blog called Applepeels. Last fall he wrote to Cook informing him that he also intended to write a book about Apple. Sobotta quickly received a letter from Apple's legal department, one that left him "extremely upset" and ready to abandon the project, he says.

If you're a hard-core Apple fan it's a good read, if only to get a little taste of what life is like inside Apple. (In a word: Tough.)

Sobotta insists that he has no ax to grind even though he remembers Cook humiliating Sobotta's team at a sales conference by putting up a slide with a picture of a toilet plunger as commentary on the group's performance.

I emailed Sobotta and asked what he thought about Cook getting rid of Scott Forstall, who ran iOS development, and John Brownell, who Cook had hired to run retail less than a year ago. Via email, Sobotta shared the following:

Not A People Person

"Well, for starters, Cook is not a people person," Sobotta writes. "He certainly will not stand behind someone if the going gets rough. He is not that kind of guy. I sense no personal loyalty in him, and I suspect employees already understand that.

"Tim will react to the numbers or his fear of being wrong quickly. Fear of being wrong is a managerial trait that runs strong and deep in Apple because of the way Steve ran the company. Even the appearance of being wrong when in the end you might be right is dreaded at Apple.

"You don't make mistakes at Apple and get a second chance. That often hinders decision-making and creates a lot of passive-aggressiveness between teams that should be cooperating." 

A Poor Judge Of Character

"I haven't followed the saga of the new retail guy so he might have been a terrible hire, but that would also fit the Cook pattern. The people I saw him hire were not good ones. I don't think he relates well to people. Based on some of the people he has stuck with, I think he is poor judge of character. 

"Apple never had a disciplined way of making decisions. It was always whoever got Steve's ear that won. Certain people always had the inside track. Likely the way to win now at Apple is to blow in Tim's ear."

Tim On Tech

"Technology-wise, I think Tim Cook is a lightweight. I never felt passion for technology from Tim like I did from Steve and some of the great engineers."

A Manager, Not A Leader

"I would expect that Tim is having a hard time herding the chickens. From what I saw of him, he was something of a loner. He is not a warm guy nor is he the type to go wandering the halls or Caffe Mac to find out what is happening. His preference is to tinker with spreadsheets and numbers. He is not a natural leader. He's a manager.

"From what I saw, Tim is the kind of guy who would just fire some folks rather than try to sort out what is working and what isn't working. I never felt like he wanted to get down into the details unless they were numbers. I also think he can easily be swayed by someone who protects him from the messy parts of running a company."

The Painful Part

"I use Mountain Lion and Windows 7 both every day.  Windows works better. It pains me to say that. I would rate Apple's screwing around with the 'Save As' command [Apple removed 'Save As' from OS X Lion but restored it, sort of, in Mountain Lion] as one of the dumbest user-interface decisions in the history of computing. I'm not sure pulling DVD drives out of iMacs is much better.  Certainly the maps decision [in iOS 6] will haunt Apple for a long time.

"It is going to get worse at Apple. It is not a sustainable business culture."

Apres Steve, Le Deluge?

"There are three factors that I see, the first being the business culture within the company. While the company needs strong leadership after Steve Jobs, anyone at Apple will tell you that taking risks and showing leadership (rocking the boat, trying something new) are not encouraged. With an environment like that, strong leaders end up butting their heads against the wall, and either leave on their on accord or get asked to leave. The company has a strong 'manage up' culture so it is not unusual for Apple managers to not really have a clue what is happening in their customer base.

"Second, Apple doesn't develop its own talent. The company has a strong propensity to hire folks from outside the company. The new folks come in, spend a year figuring which end is up, and end being very frustrated. [The experience is] demoralizing to the people who now report to them and who already knew what their bosses just spent a year learning. It is a horrendous way to run a company."

What's The Next Great Thing?

"The third is that Apple is a `next great thing' company, and that in and of itself is unsustainable. They haven't found the next great thing after the iPad and iPhone, and their shares in both those areas are slipping. Of course they are ignoring traditional computers to a large extent.

"I could add a fourth [factor] related to the third point, but it's debatable. Always in the past when Apple screwed up or got too cocky, they could fall back on a core group of `prosumers' who were dedicated to Apple's products. I think Apple has lost or is in the process of losing those folks, but I have no way to measure that other than I know a fair number of folks like myself that are no longer Apple products evangelists.

"I got a note from [a former Apple colleague] last night that it was time to replace his wife's MacBook and he offered to get her whatever she wanted. She chose Lenovo."

David Sobotta's book, The Pomme Company, is available in Kindle format from Amazon. Don't hold your breath waiting for an Apple iBooks version.

Top image courtesy of Reuters.

So perhaps there is some satisfaction in seeing Apple get smacked for the very thing it keeps accusing others of doing.

Yesterday a federal court in Dallas ruled that Apple must pay $368.2 million to a patent troll called VirnetX because its FaceTime videoconferencing software infringes on some patents owned by VirnetX.

That's pocket change to Apple, which posted $41.7 billion in net profit on $156.5 billion in revenues in the fiscal year that ended in September.

But VirnetX wants more -- it has filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission asking to have a bunch of Apple products (iPhone, iPad, Macs) banned from the market. 

Apple has no comment. But of course Apple will appeal, and of course the case will drag on.

What Is The Point?

And of course this is all lunacy. The real lesson to this and all of the other Apple-related cases is that the patent system is ridiculous and has become an obstacle to innovation, one whose ultimate victims are customers.

In the tech world it's considered depicable when trolls like VirnetX use patents to shake companies down for money.

But is it any less despicable to cynically use the legal system to put a spoke in the wheel of your rivals? Or to use the legal system as a kind of marketing tool, a way to smear your opponents?

Because that's what Apple is doing with its cases against Samsung, HTC and Motorola. 

Apple doesn't want to set up licensing agreements. Apple just wants to distract its opponents and slow them down. 

Marketing By Lawsuit

Apple's patent lawsuits are also a form of marketing, albeit an expensive one, whose goal is to generate lots of stories in the media and to hammer home, via repetition, the notion that everyone else in the smartphone market is simply copying Apple, producing me-too clones that are poor imitations of the iPhone and iPad.

One court in England saw through the charade and resented the notion of being used as a propaganda tool by a large multinational corporation.

Consequently the court ordered Apple to apologize publicly to Samsung for making false allegations and buy advertisements declaring that Samsung did not, in fact, copy Apple.

Apple shamelessly and brazenly tried to turn that to its advantage, creating an "apology" that was really just another ad taunting Samsung. The annoyed judges ordered Apple to do the apology again, only this time to follow their instructions. 

The good news is that these lawsuits, all of them, are just speedbumps that will not stop the mobile revolution and probably won't affect the balance of power in the smartphone market.

Back in 2010, when Apple first launched its legal jihad against Android phone makers, Android had 23% market share and Apple had 15%. Today Apple still has the same 15% share -- but Android now holds 75%.

So much for the efficacy of lawsuits as competitive weapons. Someday, I hope, companies will figure out that these things don't work. And someday the patent laws in this country will be updated for the 21st century. Fingers crossed.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.