Frank Shaw, Corporate Vice President of Communications at Microsoft, writing on The Official Microsoft Blog:

So, when I see Apple drop the price of their struggling, lightweight productivity apps, I don’t see a shot across our bow, I see an attempt to play catch up.

In other news, the iPhone is just an attempt to play catch up to BlackBerry.

Why do they let these people write on the Internet? Don’t they know anyone can actually read these posts? Someone at Microsoft needs to get their house in order, now.

Another year, another OS X release. And, of course, another epic review by John Siracusa. Enjoy.

Yesterday, October 22, Apple held a special event to announce significant updates in their lineup of software, hardware and services, and unveil what they have lined up for the holiday season.

They have been busy.

Practically everything was upgraded, and some new products were introduced as well. Each announcement deserves praise in its own right, but it’s only by looking at the whole picture that the tremendous scope of yesterday’s event becomes obvious.

I’m sure the new MacBook Pros, the completely redesigned Mac Pro, the new iPad Air and the iPad mini with a Retina Display will all be incredibly popular. This coming holiday quarter is probably going to be the best ever for the company, and that’s saying a lot. But I think these new products distract attention from something else that happened yesterday with the potential to be huge for the company.

Yesterday, Apple decided to kill Microsoft.

I know, it seems strange to think of Microsoft in this context. When Apple ended the famous “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ad campaign, they shifted their focus and moved on, and they practically stopped referencing Microsoft altogether. Instead of promoting Apple products as being better than Microsoft’s, they decided to simply promote them as something else entirely. The original iPad perfectly embodied this change of attitude. It was the beginning of the “Post-PC era” and Microsoft was no longer relevant.

What was different then, during yesterday’s keynote? Well, for all their talk, for the past few years Apple has avoided a direct confrontation with Microsoft. The thing about Microsoft is, they may not be a credible threat in the Post-PC era, but they remain the dominant player in the traditional PC industry. Until now, Apple’s strategy was to end this dominance with their Post-PC devices: the iPhone, and specially the iPad, have become mature enough to serve as a primary computer for many, many people. Apple has been playing to their strengths, trying to cannibalize the PC industry, and the results have been remarkable.

On the other hand, Microsoft is struggling to gain momentum in the Post-PC world. They are still holding on to their two main businesses to maintain profitability: Windows and Office. Even though they’re not growing anymore, the enterprise market and the traditional consumer PC market are still huge. This is where Microsoft rules as undisputed king (at least in terms of market share). Yesterday, Apple decided to attack them on their home turf.

Think about it for a moment: iLife and iWork are now free with every new Mac and iOS device. OS X is now free, not only for every new Mac, but also retroactively for every Mac that supports it, going back as far as 2007. Apple just commoditized Microsoft’s two main businesses, and they’re not even breaking a sweat.

At a consumer level, this move gives people another great reason to buy a Mac instead of a PC. If you factor in the cost of the Windows and Office licenses (including future versions), the price difference between similarly specced Macs and PCs is going to be significantly reduced. Not to mention all of the great features that are Mac-only, like the Retina Display or the great battery life under OS X. The Mac has been a better computer for years, but now, it may even be cheaper in some cases.

For the enterprise and for small businesses, the implications are equally huge. Free OS updates across the board means everyone gets to be on the latest version, which should make life a lot easier for IT departments, and the ease of use and installation should greatly reduce support needs. This is going to be a big factor whenever a company plans to invest in new computers for its employees, because the potential for saving money down the road is huge. Free productivity software that works across all devices (desktop, laptop and mobile) with 100% compatibility is the holy grail in the enterprise world. Soon, people could be sending Pages documents instead of Word files, simply because it will be the file format that you are 100% sure you can read and edit on all your devices.

Of course, this has been years in the making for Apple. Like a great chess player, they have been laying the groundwork for a long time, they’re now simply revealing their big move to the enemy. By building an impressive ecosystem and tying everything together in a way that only Apple can, they have put themselves in a great position to take down the Windows empire once and for all. The fact that they make their profit from selling hardware means they can afford to give the software away for free, which leaves Microsoft with no possible answer. Well, other than to start making their own PC hardware on a massive scale, of course. Good luck with that.

It’s obviously too soon to tell if this means checkmate in the long run, but Apple certainly shot to kill yesterday: If I were working at Microsoft, I would be scared shitless right now.

He walks, he talks and he has a beating heart, but hes not human — he’s the worlds first fully bionic man. Like Frankenstein’s monster, cobbled together from a hodgepodge of body parts, the bionic man is an amalgam of the most advanced human prostheses — from robotic limbs to artificial organs to a blood-pumping circulatory system.

See? I told you. I fucking told you. Skynet is here. Now what do we do?

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — October 15, 2013 — GoDaddy, the Web’s largest platform for small businesses, has acquired mt Media Temple, a Los Angeles-based Web hosting and cloud services company focused on the creative class of digital designers, developers, entrepreneurs and innovators. The two companies will continue to operate independently. The strategic acquisition provides GoDaddy with direct access to Media Temple’s hosting gurus, who will share knowledge and insight on how GoDaddy can better serve Web professionals and developers. GoDaddy provides scale and investment for mt to accelerate its growth and further expand internationally.

That’s unexpected. I don’t know why, but I have a weird feeling about this. Whenever a big acquisition like this happens, the buying company always has nothing but the best intentions for the other one, but things can change very quickly once a few months go by.

Maybe I’m being over critical of this whole thing. Perhaps the most appropriate reaction would be to congratulate the folks at Media Temple for a job well done. This could certainly end up being amazing for them in the long run. However, to be honest, as a customer I don’t like the fact that Media Temple is no longer an independent company.

Analog Senses is hosted by Media Temple. My personal site (in Spanish) is, too. I hope things don’t change much, but I’ll have to think about a backup strategy, just in case things don’t go entirely according to plan.

We’ll see.

Amazing new documentary about one of the greatest comic strips ever made: Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson. Available in theaters and as a digital download on iTunes on November 15. Here’s the trailer:

Calvin and Hobbes is my favorite comic strip of all times. Hands down. No other strip comes even close, and there are a few great ones. But Calvin is special. Like they say in the trailer:

I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like Calvin and Hobbes. I can’t say that about any other strip.

Exactly. Calvin and Hobbes is pure genius, art and craftsmanship at their very best. Bill Watterson is one of my heroes, and I can’t wait to see this film. As an added bonus, he was born on July 5, just like me. To be honest, I can’t think of better company to share a birthday with.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body

Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD), Roman dramatist, philosopher and politician.

Marco Arment:

Josh’s position seems to be that for most publishers, permitting a news aggregator to reproduce their full-text feed is like a large-scale version of those “offers”. I’m inclined to believe him: navigationally and conceptually, people who browse in Flipboard are browsing Flipboard, not browsing the individual target sites within it. If you aren’t profiting directly from that browsing such as with sponsored links right in the feed or articles, I don’t see how you’ll ever see much of an upside.

Most news aggregators are explicitly designed to take advantage of other people’s work. Moreover, they even have the nerve to spin it as if they’re doing the authors a favor. I, for one, would rather keep my tiny audience and work it up on my own merits, instead of being routinely exploited by one of those services.

Marco Arment shares his thoughts on whether it makes sense for iOS developers to target well-established, popular markets in the App Store:

Whether you should enter a crowded market is complex, and it deserves a much more nuanced answer than simply, “No.” Yes, there are a lot of to-do apps. But Justin’s representative for this category, Clear, was released just a year and a half ago, and there were a lot of to-do apps then, too.

John Gruber takes on the 3 most popular arguments of the “Apple-Is-Doomed” discussion. A great read:

I agree with Blodget in one regard: the Mac, and its decades-long competition against Windows and the commodity PC industry, serves as a useful example. But I disagree what the Mac proves.

John is killing it lately.