Linked List: September 9, 2007

Sunday, 9 September 2007

John Welch on Mike Elgan 

If The Macalope’s deconstruction of Mike Elgan’s “Apple Is the New Microsoft” wasn’t enough for you, be sure to read John C. Welch’s take, which includes comments from Elgan himself.

The Macalope on Mike Elgan’s Absurd ‘Apple Is the New Microsoft’ Thing 

So last week Mike Elgan wrote a piece for IDG titled “Apple Is the New Microsoft”. It was, as you might guess, craptacular. There is a core tenet of truth to his premise, in that success breeds enemies and resentment, and Apple has been very, very successful this decade. (As Dave Winer often quotes former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée: “As the monkey climbs the tree, more people can see his bottom.”)

But what Elgan misses, by a country mile, is that the core problem with Microsoft was that they broke the law. The problem wasn’t that they built a monopoly. The problem was that they abused their monopoly powers.

As for the specifics of Elgan’s crummy article, just read The Macalope, who, bless his heart, picks it apart perfectly.

SourceListView 

Open source implementation of Apple’s current style for source lists, by Mark Alldritt.

Can Michael Dell Refocus His Namesake? 

Steve Lohr of The New York Times examines the problems Michael Dell faces trying to turn Dell around:

[Chief marketing officer Mark] Jarvis, a former Oracle executive, says Dell’s brand is widely known and respected, but often not linked to a clear message. So he wants to give the brand a makeover, saying that in the consumer market, it needs to be “much cooler and go away from low prices; a lot of people see us as a cheap PC company, and that’s not where we want to be.”

It’s hard to differentiate your computers by anything other than price when you’re shipping the exact same software as every competitor other than Apple.