Analysts Not Optimistic on Corporate Macs

I'm back! Sorry to have missed Friday's post, but I warned that I'd be MIA ahead of time. The Sinus Show I saw on Friday was really hilarious though (it was on Footloose), so it was worth missing the post and paying the $13. Tubing on Saturday was pretty fun, too, but it tired me out so much that I didn't go party or anything on Saturday night ( plenty of time for that in the fall). I was also pleased with the result of today's game, but I'm sure that a lot of French fans feel robbed. It's not my fault Zidane is a jerk. Anyway, Macworld had a slightly provocative article on Friday quoting analysts who don't think that the ability to run Windows on a Mac will affect its corporate sales at all. The bigger deal is that they found out that, despite the rumors, Leopard will not have virtualization built-in because the R&D would set back its release so far. That is kind of a bummer, but I don't think it means that they're not investigating it or trying to hold back third parties from releasing such products for Macs. I guess it makes sense that a company wouldn't up and switch to Macs just because of dual booting capabilities if they're already vested in Windows technologies, but I think that smaller companies who many be frustrated with Windows will take the dive. I suppose that this wouldn't be too significant, but I think that Intel has a lot of street cred and may help bring more businesses to the table who want the power of their Windows machines but with a different face. I'm no expert on corporate matters though (not even close), but I really just wanted to point out the article and the virtualization tidbit that was snuck in there.

I'm going to continue this post by covering the highlights from the weekend rather than every intriguing article I saw. I have one more Apple article: the educational Mac apparently has more problems than just having most of the internal parts replaced by lower quality stuff. Still, those oversights don't sound like they'll be a big deal for educators, and many of the issues seem to be related to booting in XP. Meanwhile, the Vista team blog has a new post claiming that the current basic theme (i.e. for systems not Aero-optimized), which beta testers have been less than enthused about, is actually getting a makeover before release. It doesn't look all that different to me, but you can be the judge of that. Bad news from AMD: their sales fell from the first quarter and they missed their financial forecast due to Intel cutting its prices, but odds are good that they didn't come out on top either. The pricing war is really hurting them (especially when you announce it early and cause a demand stall), but I guess that it's inevitable in an industry like microprocessors. A Japanese electronics company may have the solution to enthusiasts of the next-generation DVD formats (the few that are out there): a player that can read both formats. They'll be showing it off in Tokyo very soon, but I imagine that it'll be pretty pricey. CNet has its list of the worst products from the second quarter up, and I agree with several of them; especially the X-men game and the Wii name change. If you've ever been curious as to how Firefox catapulted itself into stealing gradually more and more market share from IE, you should check out this article pointing out its strong points. I just love promoting Firefox, especially since so many of my readers (44%) use IE. If you've ever wondered how to tell if you're a die hard geek, you'll get a kick out of this article listing the top ten signs that you're tech obsessed. While it is humorous, some of the items are real and have been a problem with people before, so don't take it all with a grain of salt. Lastly, I never mentioned this before because I didn't think it would ever happen, but, a long while ago, a guy started a quest to trade a red paperclip for a house because he wasn't doing well enough to buy a house of his own. Well, it worked and he managed to get a very small role in a movie in exchange for a farm house. I applaud him for actually pulling his quest off.

This past weekend was a pretty big box office weekend with Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest (yes, this warrants the full title) making more money on its first weekend than any movie ever with $132 million! In fact, that's only a few million less than Superman Returns has made since its opening last weekend, which ended up in second place at a little over $21 million. The only other movie that has done better as a whole than Dead Man's Chest did this weekend was Cars, which maintained its claw-like grip at 5th place. If you haven't seen the movie yet though, make sure you stay until after the credits. IGN has several new pictures from Lady in the Water, but you've likely already seen them in trailers and commercials. In case you actually care about Rocky Balboa, some snippets from the upcoming trailer has hit the Net as pulled from ET. It doesn't look horrible, but the scenes don't get me pumped for it either. Lastly, Lost fans will be interested to know that a movie finale may follow the next couple of seasons according to a usually reliable source. However, JJ Abrams has scoffed at making a movie based on the hit series in the past, so don't get too excited or upset about it yet.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Face it :: The music


2. Healthy :: Appetite


3. Cartoon :: Network


4. Device :: Electronic


5. Raider :: eReader


6. Closer :: TNT


7. Admission :: Ticket


8. Culture :: Shock


9. Stakes :: High


10. Heartbroken :: Me