So with Windows 8, Microsoft is pretty much on its way in being a trendsetter quietly while the rest of the markets are going ga-ga over mobile devices and what not. Microsoft, is doing good, and they are being very innovative the experience from Windows 8 as a beta user for six months hasn’t been frustrating at all. And it doesn’t stop at Windows 8, as we see it in newly launched MSN, Office 360, and apps for Android making Office more accessible and productive than ever before. I now prefer using Windows 8 more than Mac OS X. For many reasons, the latest Mac OS X has sucked out all the energy from my powerful Core i7 running 8 GB of RAM – compare this with my Windows 8 Machine running faster on Centrino vPro 2 with only 3 GB of RAM. Why am I not surprised? Without getting into too much details, just say my Mac has more apps running at the same time than Windows machine, but its a power horse then shouldn’t it be able to handle it well?
Apple, has become a major disappointment in past year and plus. Apple, is not innovating. They probably stopped innovating right when they launched iPhone, the generation that brought everything, and since then we’ve been seeing their relatives and cousins and what not in the form of iPad, iPad Mini, iPhone 3GS, 4, 4S, and now 5. Need I say more. They thought they had the world at their feet begging for more. And now they have a lost cause with OS X, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Dashboard, Safari, iTunes, and Mail. iCloud at its best is the low end of any cloud service that we could imagine. So why I am bashing Apple? I’m not. I love Apple, and have always loved it since I got my first Apple Macintosh Classic. But I’m highly disappointed, with what has transpired in past few years, and now with Jobs gone I hope its not the demise of the company on the lines of pre-iMac era. Steve Jobs is not coming back, though we all wish if he could be back from the dead.
Amazon is another major innovator, with Amazon Elastic, now with Kindle line of devices the company has been constantly on innovative path. And now, with aspirations to be a retailer than a mere bookstore, I cannot imagine the envy building up with other retailers. But Amazon deserves it. They’ve built a company on innovation, technology, people, and innovation, technology and people, and it goes on.
With both Microsoft & Amazon based in Seattle, I am forced to think whether people in the Silicon Valley have kind of lost it in all the buzz and the cocktails? May be Seattle is ‘the’ place to be in.
Ah, but I hate the weather, and I love California. So I guess, I’ll have to wait and see if some innovator enterprise could turn things around. And, for the record, I am not counting on Apple anymore. Apple needs a major transplant, and Tim & Co. aren’t that team. The clock is ticking.
