Category Archives: Current Affairs

Apple/Mac, Computers/Technology, Current Affairs

I’m a PC

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Microsoft are in a strange position. Despite still producing the operating system that holds the dominant position in the market, still producing the office platform that holds the dominant position in the market, and still producing the dominant web browser, they are seen as being under threat. The reason? Their share of the market held by their products is not as high as it used to be, as the competition is making gains. More than that being the dominant platform they are the prime target for a variety of viruses and malware, and if they aren’t being criticised for the security issues in their software, it is their business practices that got them to the dominant position in the first place.

Being pragmatic you could argue that with the position they held about the only way their share could go is down, putting aside the interventions of the EU and the US government, even in a market that they dominate quite as much, competing companies can still come out with innovative products and change the balance. For example Google came out of nowhere and Microsoft were left scrabbling to compete. However you could also argue that Microsoft themselves have caused some of their problems. Vista was very poorly recieved by many people, both in terms of performance where it was visibly slower than XP, and from simple usability where the security features were downright obstructive. So many professionals ended up sticking with or rolling back to XP. I can also show you a number of end users who are continually frustrated with their Vista machines who wished they could have XP instead. The latest Office wasn’t quite so bad but the ribbon bar didn’t go down well, nor did the new file format – for example one member of the church regularly has to send round documents twice because he is using Office 2007 and his documents are incompatible with the older versions in use by other people.

Probably the most high profile perceived competition to their core product is the ever resurgent Apple. While it is certainly not making much of an impact in the corporate world, Apple is certainly making inroads into the home PC market. Whether it is thanks to their advertising, the much vaunted halo effect from the iPod, the distinctive design of the products, or a combination of all three, Apple computers are selling in larger numbers than they ever have.

Looking at the Apple advertising campaigns that directly targeted the PC market, first off we had the switcher campaign. This consisted of a series of real, sometimes celebrity users talking about their experiences and why they switched to the Mac. The Microsoft response was frankly an embarrassment, with them being caught faking a Mac to PC switcher.

Since then we’ve had the Get a Mac campaign. All the adverts follow the same general structure, opening with a relaxed looking casually dressed man introducing himself as a Mac, and a more straight laced man in a suit introducing himself as a PC. The advert then compares some aspect of the PC with the Mac, including crashing PC’s, changes in Vista, and numerous other perceived issues with the PC platform compared to the Mac.

Interestingly, Microsoft haven’t repeated the direct attack on the adverts as they did with the old switcher campaigns. We’ve had a bit of a mix, including most recently the criticised Mojave Experiment. Even with their latest campaign, it didn’t seem they were going to do that, as they started off with two adverts featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld that were frankly bizarre, before moving on to phase two.

Phase two for the first time seems to directly attack the Get a Mac campaign, opening with someone who has obviously been cast to look just like the PC in the original adverts (although certain people seem to think he looks a lot worse) and then follow that up with a large variety of other people, including celebrities again, who also say they are PC’s.

Interesting things to note are that there are Microsoft employees in there, whose e-mail addresses are posted on the screen during the advert, but also note that Vista isn’t mentioned at all, and also that aside from addressing the stereotype in the Apple advert, it doesn’t address anything else in those adverts – the message of the advert is basically that lots of different people use a PC.

It has to be said, that after the fallout from the Mojave Experiment, and the bemused responses to the Jerry Seinfeld adverts, the response to this advert has been pretty good, and I’m pretty sure that given that the Get a Mac campaign has been going for two years it will bring a new campaign from Apple in response. But then is the new Microsoft campaign saying anything other than lots of people use PC’s?

Update: A little post-script to this story – a revelation that has caused much merriment amongst the Mac faithful – the advert may show lots of people who use PC’s, but the people who made the advert aren’t one of them, as the advert was put together on a Mac.

Church, Current Affairs, Politics

Divine Intervention

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Now I’m certainly not the kind of Christian who believes that God is some kind of cosmic puppeteer, and that he will manipulate the rules of the world at the request of his followers. There are however some who do, check out this video from Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family, the conservative evangelical group headed by James Dobson in the US. Here he is calling for a massive storm to hit the open air acceptance speech by Barack Obama – thereby sending a message as to who God wants to win the election.

As everybody now knows, there wasn’t any kind of storm that hit Denver on that night, but for those God fearing Christians who believe in an interventionist God who will show them who to vote for in the upcoming election, Michael Moore has pointed out that there is a big storm on the way. Hurricane Gustav is currently heading straight for New Orleans, a city which need anyone forget was decimated by Hurricane Katrina three years ago, whilst George W Bush and Senator McCain celebrated McCains 69th birthday in Arizona. Not surprisingly although some of New Orleans has been repaired, residents are once again fleeing the coast.

The interesting thing is the current prediction of when Hurricane Gustav will make landfall – just around the time George W Bush will be speaking to the Republican faithful at the upcoming convention. The timing isn’t lost on the Republicans either, who are even now talking about postponing the conference – whether it is postponed or not, the news media is already reporting that Bush will now not attend.

Now if I believed that God would manipulate the weather to influence the result of the US election, the idea of sending a repeat of Hurricane Katrina, something that produced significant criticism of Bush in terms of both preceding policy and over the response does seem to indicate a rather perverse sense of humour on behalf of the almighty. But seeing as this is hurricane season, as far as I am concerned it is just a rather ironic coincidence. Whether the Focus on the Family on the family crowd will have some great epiphany as a result I seriously doubt as well. All we can do is hope that the US is better prepared this time and that the loss of life can be minimised.

Church, Current Affairs

The Message of Small Scale Protests

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After hearing about Gene Robinson being heckled during his sermon in Putney yesterday, an interesting question has been bobbing around. Although with events like this, and the installation of Jeffrey John in St Albans, there is always preparation for some sort of big protest, and quite often the press turn up in force, conservative groups seem to stay away with any sort of official protest.

As to why, I’m thinking that perhaps those groups realise how such a protest might be portrayed. Whilst in the main, their views are that they do not think that Gene Robinson should be a bishop, it wouldn’t take much for such a protest to be shown in the media as being along the lines of the well known protests by the Westboro’ Baptist Church in the USA, or the Christian Voice protests in this country. Certainly any protest will highlight the presence of Gene Robinson more than no protest, and the press would love a large group of crazy Christians waving placards. As Gene Robinson himself said on his blog, the media are looking for a story.

And that is exactly what they got last night. Had a biker not started heckling Robinson, his sermon probably would have merited a few words, and certainly nothing on the TV news – instead, his sermon was elevated to one of the top stories of the night, and his presence highlighted even more. What the protest of the lone biker seemed to highlight even more is that it was just that, a lone protester amongst a congregation of hundreds. It is interesting to note that the point where the man starts shouting is just as Gene Robinson is talking about fear, and ironically the heckler quite neatly provides an example for the point that is being made. Also worth noting that Robinson doesn’t argue back, he stands quietly and takes the shouting from the heckler, and then asks the congregation to pray for the man. In an age where media perception is everything, what message is that sending?

If you want to judge for yourself, many of the news sites have clips of the heckle. Alternatively, a video of the whole sermon, including the heckle, is online. I would highly recommend watching the whole sermon too, at about thirty minutes it’s a bit longer than your average Anglican sermon, but well worth the effort. It speaks so much more about the calling of the Church than one bloke heckling, and really shows why the people of the Church in New Hampshire chose to elect Gene Robinson as their Bishop.

Current Affairs

A Positive Story about Teenagers

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I’m not sure if Ian has picked up on this, but in amongst a whole load of bad press about young people, BBC Home Affairs Editor Mark Easton has blogged Ten Reasons to Cheer Our Teenagers.

Number one on the list, and a point to be bearing in mind in amongst talk of ASBO’s is that teenagers are much more likely to be doing voluntary work than people from any other generation, indeed they are ten times more likely to be volunteering in our communities than regularly being antisocial in them.

Needless to say some of the statistics quoted have produced negative comments – the record levels of teenagers achieving 5 GCSE grades for a start had produced accusations that the exams are now easier, however the article finished up with an important comment putting the list into context:

This list doesn’t mean teenagers are all little angels. They aren’t and they never have been. But it would be a shame to demonise a social group that is actually happier, achieving at a higher level, with better health and more opportunity for travel, sport and cultural activities than any previous generation in our history.

Church, Current Affairs

GAFCON Announces a “Split” on Peter and Paul’s Day

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As I watched the news yesterday morning with the announcement of what is effectively an Anglican split – the GAFCON group is saying that they will stay within the Anglican Communion, but will operate independently of the instruments of the communion – I couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony of the day on which they chose to make the announcement, the day of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.

It may seem slightly odd that with many of the obscure saints across the Christian calendar who have a day to themselves, the church chooses to celebrate perhaps two of the most important saints together – but when you consider that these were the two people on whom the Church was built you can maybe start to understand why they are considered together. It is especially important when you start to look at the evidence within the New Testament and realise that whilst in later times the official recognition of Christianity in the Roman Empire needed some degree of orthodoxy to be imposed, back in these early days, Peter and Paul had significant differences in their opinions on a multitude of subjects in particular as the Church started to draw in Gentile converts alongside the original, Jewish membership.

Check out Mum’s sermon from yesterday that explores further the differences between Peter and Paul.