Brian Grey Blog

It’s a small blurb for sure, but today’s Wall Street Journal highlights an interesting spat between old friends Microsoft and Apple.

The rift centers around Microsoft’s recent ad campaign that features everyday consumers walking around a Best Buy (or some similar big box consumer electronics retailer) in search of a PC for a really low price. Apparently, Apple takes exception at the characterization in the ads that the everyday consumers in the spots discount buying a Mac because they’re too expensive.

Well, I have to say I am surprised to see Apple responding to a competitor’s ad campaign — and a Microsoft campaign no less.

Hey, it’s not like those Mac vs. PC ads in which the PC is portrayed by the dorky nerd (is that redundant?) and the Mac is played by Mr. Urban Hipster Guy (who probably doesn’t have a job in real life) aren’t a bit unflattering to Microsoft. But I don’t recall hearing that attorneys from Redmond were calling Cupertino to complain about that characterization.

Now the WSJ blurb is not super descriptive as to Apple’s beef with Microsoft, but it appears to be along the lines of Apple taking exception to the claim that Apple laptops cost way more than a PC loaded with Microsoft’s award winning operating system.

Maybe in a recession there’s Marketing Law exception and competing on price is the way to go, but why would Apple even go there? How about the old adage “you get what you pay for”? My 3-year old Macbook pro still hums along like the day I bought it while my Dell laptop with XP gags and coughs its way with every reboot (thank goodness I have avoided Vista).

If Apple was being Apple they’d not waste time having their lawyers ask Microsoft to stop an ad campaign (particularly given how successful those requests usually are) and they’d apply their creative genius at parodying the spots somehow in ther Nerd vs. Cool Guy ads.

You know, something along the lines of showing the happy family trying to boot up their new PC laptop with their baby on their lap and then showing the kid heading out the door for college just as the desktop is fully loaded.

Remember, always compete on quality and performance, not on price.

Dropped by my first Mobile Meet Up SF tonite in South San Francisco.  Overall seems like a good event — heavy on the developer front, not necessarily “investor friendly” in that the discussion is pretty deep on product (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and less focused on the business aspects of the presenters and their potential funding needs.  Of course, this was the only one I’ve been to, so perhaps tonite was a special case due to the focus on Twitter.

After sitting through a handful of mini presentations from early stage companies, the big takeaway is that Twitter is fast becoming a significant part of the Internet ecosystem.  They are thinking smartly about how to embrace the developer community — enabling all types of services to be built on top of Twitter in a way that increases the importance of Twitter not just to early adopters but ultimately every day Internet users.

Based on a sampling of tonite’s presentations Twitter is getting some early traction from developers. A quick run down of a couple of the examples that were showcased this evening:

• Mosio is a mobile community that enables questions and answers — their interesting implementation is on Twitter at twitter.com/qna.  Once you’re signed up at mosio and you start following twitter.com/qna you can ask questions and get answers from the Twittersphere.

• Twittelator is a do it all Twitter app — hard to even explain all of the things it enables you to do in concert with Twitter…I would recommend downloading it if you have an iPhone and just start banging around on it.

• TwitterFon is a slick iPhone Twitter app that enables a robust set of Twitter functionality on the iPhone, while TwitterFox (from the same developer as TwitterFon) is a FireFox plugin that lets you track your Twitter feed from the friendly confines of FireFox browser.
  

• TwitPic — This is the Flickr of Twitter …embedded in to multiple Twitter clients, they got a server crushing boost after the US Airways plane landed in the Hudson last month.  And the guy running it — Noah — is a hoot!
  

Oh, and one other thought from tonite’s gathering:  Apple may want to throw it’s hat in the “who’s gonna buy Twitter” ring if they haven’t already.  Beyond the obvious driver Twitter would be in iPhone handset sales, the real potential upside for Apple would be in Twitter’s ability to bring Apple in to the media business — the new age media business.

If Twitter becomes the conduit through which users communicate, publish and access content, and they do this on the iPhone, well…AAPL at under $100 may be a major bargain right now?

No, I’m not pissed at Apple because their stock chart over the last 30 days looks like a Swiss Alps ski slope. I pissed because my holy grail of being able to finally make the full switchover from PC to Mac has been blocked.

You see, I spent the better part of this evening trying to get the synchronization going between iCal, Entourage and my iPhone for my contacts and calendar. Oh, it was going to be glorious. A single laptop, a single mobile device, all tied together seamlessly by the eloquence of Steve’s hardware and software wonders.

But no. Much to my chagrin, iCal and Entourage don’t talk to each other. And not just in my OS X 10.4.11 version. This seems to be a problem that a lot of people are encountering. I guess you could blame some of it on Microsoft. It is afterall their Entourage software that is in the chain here.

No dice. I expect more from Apple. I expect perfection — a perfection that would enable them to work around whatever Entourage “issues” might be at play here. So now what do I do? I guess I have to dial back my aspirations for a single, super PIM (e.g. Entourage) and live on my laptop witch the more basic Mac address book and iCal?

Wait until I get up the nerve to try Mobile Me!