Let me quickly explain how many of my blog posts come to be.  I spend about an hour a day on the web.  In that hour I read a lot.  During that time I often read statements that just stick in my head for some reason.  I don't quite know what's wrong with them at the time, just that something is. 

Then I'm off to do research.  Scouring the web to find anything that supports or refutes my theory.  A lot of this is waisted time.  I'm not right anywhere near as much as I'd like to be.  But occasionally I am right and that's when you get posts like the one below. 

I've mentioned before that I'm a fan of Video Blogger Brigitte Dale and in her latest video she gave an "I love the Earth" tip which was that buying vintage clothes was one of the best and most obvious forms of recycling there is.

And it stuck in my head.

So what I did was to take your average Walmart shirt (made in Mexico) and put it against a used one ordered from eBay. If you don’t care about the calculations and want to just trust me...well...you’re probably a little too trusting. But if that’s you the conclusion to all this is in the last paragraph.

And off we go...

Two caveats before I start. First, these are rough numbers and hence probably give a slightly inaccurate picture. That said, I think it’s as close as someone with no ability to get the exact numbers can get. Second, I’m completely disregarding inter-country travel. The logic is a UPS package is picked up then UPS finds the most efficient way to get it across the country. A WalMart product is driven to their warehouse at which point they also find the most efficient way to get it across the country. If anything this assumption benefits the eBay shipped UPS package because UPS is under a deadline so they have to fly most packages (huge carbon footprint) while Walmart can use trucks or trains (much smaller carbon footprint)

OK then…

Obviously the miles driven to pick up and to drop off an eBay purchase vary. So I’ll use UPS averages to get an idea instead. A UPS truck produces 984.8 grams of CO2 for every mile it drives. It took the linked to driver (see last sentence) 22 years to drive 1,000,000 miles which means about 174 miles a day. The average UPS driver delivers about 163 packages a day. So from that we can get a rough number of 1.07 miles per package which means 1,053.7 g of co2 per package (984.8 * 1.07).

Compare that to creating a shirt. Cotton production requires a Cotton Picker and a Gin Mill.

This site gives us an energy calculation for using a sweep tractor (essentially what a cotton picker is) putting it at around .60 gallons per acre. Now a gallon of Diesel produces 2,778g of co2 so .60 gallons of Diesel produces 1,666.8g of co2 per acre. An acre produces about 740lbs of cotton which equals 11,840 oz per acre. A cotton t-shirt is about 6oz . Meaning you can get about 1,973 shirts out of one acre of cotton. 1,666.8g of co2 per acre divided by 1,973 shirts per acre equals .84g of co2 per shirt.

Now to the sweat shop. A sewing machine takes .2kWh per hour . That’s .0033kWh per minute. A clothing worker can produce a shirt in about 3 minutes meaning .01kWh per shirt.

Now Mexico’s electricity is produced largely by Natural Gas at this point and 1 kWh of natural gas produces 204.5 g of CO2. Multiply our .01kWh of sewing by 204.5g of co2 from natural gas and you get 2.045g of co2 per shirt.

(For the record sweatshop labor is wrong. But numbers are still numbers)

Now yes, the new shirt has to be delivered to the Walmart warehouse and that is done on diesel engine trucks. But keep in mind those shirts are driven in by the thousands. So an 18 wheeler can carry one 40’ or two 20’ cargo containers which would give them a cargo hold of 2,261 cubic ft . If you pack shirts tight you can easily get 20 in a cubic foot giving you 45,220 shirts for the cargo hold. That’s at 5.3 miles per gallon which in turn means 1,915.69 g of co2 per mile (10,153 grams per gallon / 5.3miles per gallon). But with the high number of shirts we get .0424g of co2 per mile per shirt.

So even if the truck came from the Mexican border where most of the sweat shops are to a factory in Seattle Washington (the furthest major city going north and unlikely since most warehouses are in the southern U.S.) you’d still only be looking at 190.8g of co2 per shirt for the entire trip (4,500 miles * .0424g per shirt per mile)

(Below is the original last paragraph for those who jumped ahead) 

So in the end we get Cotton Production (.84g) + Sewing (2.045g) + Transport (190.8g) for a total co2 footprint of 193.69g of co2 for a new shirt. Compare that to 1,012g of co2 for a used one off eBay.

(The true irony is even if you buy vintage clothes from a store the person who dropped it off there better have driven less than 2 miles to get there.  The best selling car in the U.S. at this time last year was the 2008 Toyota Camry which gets 25 miles to the gallon meaning it produces 165g of co2 per mile)

How is this Tech... One of my constant annoyances as a "computer person" is people's misunderstanding of electricity and how much the items in their home or office consume.  I am constantly having to remind employees at my agency NOT to turn off their PCs at night because it needs to virus scan, backup, etc...  But they think they're "saving electricity".  I then have to pull out the ol' chart and explain to them that their toaster uses 9 times the power of a PC and that's while the PC is actively working.  Drives me nuts.

I know this seems like a weird "techblog" post but I think the death of Michael Jackson warrants a post even if it's only partially tech related.

Michael Jackson's music defined the style by which all the music of my childhood was based on.  He was a talent beyond words.  Not only was he a singer, songwriter, dancer, choreographer, and a businessman but he was the best or near best at all of those vocations.

(anyone who doubts his "businessman" credential needs only look at his decision to purchase the Northern Songs Catalogue)

More importantly he was a true humanitarian. I don't know if he was a child molester or not.  We may never know.  But there's no question he worked tirelessly on many humanitarian causes and for that he deserves admiration.

As for the child molestation claims we'll never truly know.  Logically I tend to believe those claims were parents taking advantage of a man who was clearly stunted in his emotional growth.  I suspect his interactions with those children were perfectly innocent though still slightly inappropriate.

By all accounts he was simply someone who reverted to a child like state in adulthood and I suspect his indiscretions simply boil down to him not accepting the idea that an adult can't act like a child when interacting with other children.  On that note, Yes, he was one weird guy.  But when someone has given so much to the world I'm not sure they haven't earned the right to be a little weird.

To bring this back to tech I find it interesting that, as Techcrunch is reporting (with a lot of great screen shots), the web is almost collapsing under the weight of all the news seekers.  It's a reminder that the web still has a long way to go before it can replace one way venues such as television.

In fact I'd go further and say the technology industry needs to take serious note of this.  As the industry pushes more and more into programs and services that require greater bandwidth it's instructive to see how even people seeking simple text can bring the biggest sites to their knees.

We are living on borrowed time bandwidth wise and, as Robert X. Cringely is so fond of pointing out, a web where everyone is streaming in HD is not something our current bandwidth capabilities can support.  That's something we should all take notice of.

Addendum: This post's time has come and gone but I read an article today that had a very telling quote in it and I thought it was worth sharing.  It's from Ian Halperin of the U.K. an investigative journalist who did a piece on Jackson and who now famously claimed Jackson would be dead in 6 months.  What seemed like a shameless publicity stunt sadly came true as his prophecy was fulfilled 6 months and 1 day later with Michael Jackson's untimely death. 

In today's article he says this about the Child Molestation claims against Jackson...

Michael had not helped his case. Appearing in a documentary with British broadcaster Martin Bashir, he not only admitted that he liked to share a bed with teenagers, mainly boys, in pyjamas, but showed no sign of understanding why anyone might be legitimately concerned.

I had started my investigation convinced that Jackson was guilty. By the end, I no longer believed that.

I could not find a single shred of evidence suggesting that Jackson had molested a child. But I found significant evidence demonstrating that most, if not all, of his accusers lacked credibility and were motivated primarily by money.

Jackson also deserved much of the blame, of course. Continuing to share a bed with children even after the suspicions surfaced bordered on criminal stupidity

So anyone who claims Michael Jackson was a Child Molestor like it was a fact should probably do a little more research.   Again, I think anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows I've called people out for far lesser sins.  If I felt Jackson was guilty I'd do the same here, dead or not.  But  I've never seen any substantial proof of his guilt and given the huge finanacial incentive and the number of children Michael Jackson surrounded himself with I think 2 public claims aren't enough to indict the man (especially when one went to trial and he was acquitted of the charges)

ReadWriteWeb has their take on Facebook's decision to allow user's to make status updates public.  This would allow anyone (not just friends)  to see the user's updates.  The part I find the most telling though is the update ReadWriteWeb received from Facebook (which obviously came after the initial post)...

UPDATE: After we wrote this post, Facebook HQ emailed to tell us that the first wave of users who get this feature will have their messages made public by default because their profiles were already marked as public, but that when they open the feature up to subsequent users - those users will have default privacy settings that match their pre-existing profile privacy settings. Unfortunately, in our tests so far (see our screencast) - we haven't been able to successfully change our default message settings back to friends-only, it stays stuck on public. When we switch our test account from profile public to profile private and then back again, the default for message posting gets stuck at "friends of friends!"

For anyone not catching the not-so-hidden agenda here this is obviously a move to target Twitter.  Or at least that's how I and just about every other blogger I've found are choosing to interpret it.  But here's the distinction...

Twitter is public by default, Facebook will require the user to choose to make their updates public

That's important.  There are about a million studies out there on software design that all agree most users will retain the default settings on an application (web or otherwise).  That's why Internet Explorer still defaults to MSN and Google Chrome opens to Google.  So this move probably won't amount to much.

In the end I suspect the impact of this will be almost nil.  Moreover I think it's a mistake for Facebook to start competing with sites like Twitter.  Facebook's future is much brighter as a platform.  Meaning they should be embracing applications like Twitter not trying to compete with them. 

Don't get me wrong, it's a nice feature and for the life of me I don't know why Facebook hasn't had it from the start.  I just think everyone, including Facebook, is making too big a deal of it.  It's certainly not a Twitter killer and I don't see why Facebook would want it to be.

There's a lot of talk out today about the "Health Data Bill of Rights" which Google has chosen to endorse.  Tim O'Reilly endorses it as well saying...

I was surprised then, when I met recently with a congressman in Washington, a former physician, to talk about healthcare reform. When we moved to the topic of portable health care records, I was quite startled to hear him say "When I was practicing as a physician, I considered those records to be my property." After all, he said, they were his notes, his analysis. He obviously still felt this way.

Given this disconnect, I was glad to endorse today's Health Data Bill of Rights:

OK.  Let's take an example here.  What about Mental Health patients?  Under this proposed law patients would have access to all their Therapist's notes.  What happens when an already depressed patient learns their Therapist is concerned they might commit suicide?  Might they get so distraught over the thought that they actually go through with it?  Might that be why Psychiatrist, Psychologists and Therapists generally don't share their notes with patients?  I think it probably is.

But, you say,  maybe that's an isolated problem.  Normal medical situations wouldn't suffer from that same problem.  Right?  Let's take another example.

I go to the Doctor complaining of stomach pain.   The Doctor sees me, writes a prescription, and asks me to take a blood test.  Well, I don't like needles and I just had a blood test 3 months ago so I explain this to the Doctor and he relents.  He tells me to come back in a few weeks and we'll see how the prescription is working.  Great.  I pick up the prescription, head home and since I'm living in this brave new world I pull up Google Health to review the day's session. 

Then I see this annotation on my chart "Patient was extremely agitated to the point of being irrational."

What?!?  This is what my Doctor thinks of me?  Well screw you Doc, I'll find a Doctor who doesn't think I'm "irrational" thank you very much.  And off I go.

Where's the problem here?  Well it turns out I have lead poisoning.  The Doctor wrote the annotation not to insult me but to remind himself to check again when I return in a few weeks.  That annotation would be crucial to diagnosing what's wrong with me but it got lost in the shuffle as I went on to see another Doctor out of anger over a perceived slight.

(For the record this is a true story based on me.  My family physician discovered lead poisoning by putting the very same annotation in my chart years ago.)

So what's the solution here?  The answer is I honestly don't know.   But what I do know is that this is a far bigger problem than the "throw open the doors to data" crowd wants to believe.  Google's post on the subject cites HIPAA as if it currently gives the patient carte blanche access to their medical records but that isn't the case.  HIPAA is designed to regulate Insurance Companies and as such is a companion piece to other legislation that sets these standards (legislation which is different from state to state).  I'll quote from an article I found on the web...

Your Request Can Be Turned Down...

There are multiple reasons why a request for your medical records can be turned down by a covered entity. A doctor or other covered entity can decide to withhold certain information found in your records if it could endanger your health or someone else’s. If this is the case, the doctor must still provide you with safe information for you to view.

Another reason for not receiving your medical records could be when the request is frivolous or vexatious. Repeatedly asking for your medical records is one example or requesting them simply for amusements sake is another sure way to block your access.

(For the record this just corroborates what I already know, I didn't get the information from this web site)

In closing my main point is a simple one: You can't go around applying simplistic solutions to complex problems.  When you do it blows up in your face and when the problem is health related that explosion can cause lives to be lost.  As I said, I don't have the answer here.  But I know it's out there and that it lies in a long and serious discussion between technology experts and Medical personnel.

I'll say it again...Wow.  Henry Blodget has another piece on Microsoft today and it has again blown me away (not in a good way).  I feel bad for picking on the man and in fairness he did put up some competent financial analysis for his conclusions.  But statements like this still boggle my mind...

Search just isn't strategic to Microsoft, no matter how obsessed Steve Ballmer is with beating Google.  Microsoft can't do everything--no company can--and winning the search war is not critical to Microsoft's long-term survival.  Protecting its operating system and office suite monopoly is critical, however, and that business is also under attack.

This leads him to the conclusion that Steve Ballmer is wasting Microsoft's money by putting 5 to 10% of their operating income into Search technology.

Now on the surface what Mr. Blodget is saying seems to make sense.  But if you (a) have a decent knowledge of Microsoft history and (b) understand the changes in the technology field you start to realize his logic is flawed. 

In order to explain that statement let me quickly lay out the primary anti-Trust allegations against the Microsoft Windows monopoly.  They were...

1.  Microsoft uses the Operating System to boost other products (e.g. bundling products like Internet Explorer into the Operating System).

2. Microsoft creates hidden APIs in Windows that are used to make their products work better than competitors (e.g. Microsoft Office was enjoying speed and functionality it's competitors couldn't duplicate because of these hidden APIs)

3.  Microsoft pushed it's weight around with OEM PC companies by creating restrictions that favored Microsoft Products (e.g. companies like Dell would be forced to make Microsoft products the default on new computers or be punished with higher fees for Windows)

So what do all these have in common?  They are all situations created because the Desktop OS was the gateway between the user and other products.  This allowed Microsoft to steer users into their own products which in turn created other monopolies.  But that advantage always came from Windows (via the desktop) being the starting point to the rest of the computing experience.

The problem now is more and more people are bypassing the desktop and heading straight to their web browser.  This makes the first web site they go to of tremendous value because it, and not the desktop, is now the gateway between the user and the rest of the computing experience.  It, not Windows, steers the user to other products and services. 

That is why Microsoft is determined to conquer the Search market.  Because they realize (from personal experience) that controlling the gateway largely determines whose products win in the long run and right now that control is almost all in Google's hands. 

As an example of how this works you can easily see Google's office products starting to do to Microsoft Office what Microsoft Office did to Wordperfect and Lotus 1-2-3.  You see the beginnings of this in Google leveraging it's search engine to create Gmail and then leveraging Gmail to promote Google Office (when you get an office document in Gmail it asks if you'd like to open it in Google Office)

So in closing the Windows monopoly is simply not where the gateway is at anymore.  Which makes fighting to control search not only a strategic goal for Microsoft but the same strategic goal that made the Windows monopoly worth protecting in the past.

I've got iPhone on the brain tonight.  My pre-ordered 3GS just escaped from Kentucky a few hours ago and is finally making it's way to my house as I type this.  That preoccupation (and yes excitement) is probably why this short article from Engadget caught my eye.

Basically they show two side by side pictures of people waiting in line outside an Apple store in the U.K.  The first has what looks to be hundreds of people waiting for the original iPhone while the second has only a handful waiting for the 3GS today. 

In response to that the article says...

What a difference 18 months makes, eh? The relative short line for today's iPhone 3G S launch at Apple's flagship Regent Street store in London could be attributed to any number of factors: the economy, the steep cost of upgrade for iPhone 3G owners, or the fact that Apple allowed for advanced iPhone 3G S orders with home delivery. Or maybe people just aren't willing to wait in line for a bump in speed, improved graphics, and video recording. We wouldn't call it apathy but the iPhone halo doesn't seem as shiny beneath a spotlight now shared with Android and the new Pre.

I think it's time for a reality check here.  At best the number of people who waited outside Apple stores for the original iPhone is comparatively small.  Maybe 4 or 5 thousand people out of the 30 million iPhone users that eventually materialized.  That's a very, very small sampling and really isn't indicative of anything.

That leads to my second point.  The iPhone 3GS will almost certainly outsell the original iPhone when comparing first weekends.  Yes regardless of how many people are waiting in line for it the 3GS is expected to sell at least 500,000 units this weekend as opposed to the original which sold only 270,000.  So there's really no contest.

This again shows how the tech industry has an unrealistic and frankly unhealthy obsession with the edge case early adopter.  That obsession leads to a whole bunch of misconceptions which in turn warps the way tech people see the world.  That's an important realization, imho, because the result of that world view is a bunch of technology (created by the tech community) that never reaches the mass market. 

Never reaches the mass market because it's focus is narrowly aimed at early adopters.  Anyway, something to think about...

A comment in the last post asked this question and I wanted to share my answer.  The questions was...

I'm not sure what you think you are trying to accomplish here.

You speak of taking the time to document history from the comfort
of ivory towers, whilst Rome burns. How much time have you spent
on this so far? how is your cynicism being constructive?

 My answer was...

"As far as your questions I have one answer which is that I believe there is inherent value in the truth and so I seek it out. Plain and simple. Be it a truth I like or a truth I don't like."

That pretty much sums up this blog.  If you've ever wondered why I post the things I do, why I criticize, etc... that is basically it.  Note I'm not saying I always know what the truth is.  My posts are as much a request for critique as they are a sharing of my ideas.  But in the end that's what this blog is all about to me. 

I don't have much to say personally about the Iranian election.  It's sad but what can you do.  But as the story has morphed into one that involves the tech community I thought I'd jump in.    Here are a list of conclusions based on about an hour of research I did on Sunday morning.

Well-Backed Speculation: I don't like it but it appears Mr. Ahmadinejad won the election fair and square.  Important to remember in regards to this is that both sides monitored the Iranian election closely yet Hossein Mousavi has provided no concrete proof (like exit poll results) that back up his claim that the election is rigged.  Beyond that the international community is hedging their bets which means they too doubt Mr. Mousavi's claim.  There's no point in hedging if you think there's a legitimate revolution about to happen.  In that case you want to fuel the fire.

Fact: Every ACTUAL-Iranian I've spoken to (6 at this point) says they aren't surprised by the elections results.  Though Tehran is very liberal the rest of the country is not meaning Ahmadinejad has broad support.  The only reason it looks otherwise is because western media spent the week hanging out in the capital interviewing people under 25. 

Fact: CNN is being maligned unfairly.  CNN is a TV network which means it needs video footage to cover something in depth.  As the video below shows Iranian police are confiscating Cameras and arresting Camera Men. 

So their ability to cover the event is limited.  But if you think for one second that the liberal media isn't interested in covering riots against Ahmadinejad you're out of your mind.  They want to they just can't.

Fact: Anyone saying Twitter has been a source of news during this is lying or being deceived.  Twitter is blocked in Iran (see comment by Michael C. Hough), Cell service including SMS is shut down and Satellite dishes are banned so no Satellite Internet.  People want to believe Twitter is a great news source so they're ignoring the facts.  In reality it was almost impossible to get accurate info out of Iran yesterday (which was of course the point)

***Inline Edit***

For those coming to this from a search engine or some other source please take note of the date on the post.  The above paragraph was written the day after the election and refers only to the Saturday niight when all Internet and Cell Phone service was cut off in Iran.  Of course things like Twitter and Youtube are playing a part now that they are turned back on (that's the whole reason the Government shut them down in the first place).  My point above was a counter point to those who were claiming Twitter was a good source of news during that night and all I was saying is that those tweets had to be fake because there was no internet access to post them.

***End Inline Edit***

Fact: The tech blogosphere is willing to twist the facts to boost Twitter and indict CNN.  Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb says...

One quip we've seen is that "Tienanmen + Twitter = Tehran." Twenty years ago this month, CNN brought live news about the Tienanmen Square uprising to the world. It's really strange that the network is absent from this story.

It's actually not strange at all.  CNN did get a significant boost from their coverage of Tienanmen square but it was because they could cover it.  As CNN themselves put it...

For CNN, it all started in early April when Alec Miran, CNN's special events producer for the Gorbachev visit, went to Beijing to propose an "outlandish idea" to the Chinese authorities -- bringing in the network's own transmission equipment to beam live television pictures from China.

...

The Chinese gave CNN permission to bring in their own "flyaway" satellite dish and additional microwave gear to be able to transmit live -- a permission unheard of at the time in closed, Communist China. CNN was granted exactly one week's permission, timed to coincide with the Soviet leader's visit.

So CNN, through a stroke of luck, was allowed to broadcast the events at Tienanmen square.  They were only granted permission because of the Gorbachev visit and because there was no time to revoke that permission when the protests started.  Mr Kikpatrick doesn't mention that.  He's not alone in the practice of ignoring the facts here.  CNet states...

Yet even as word of the urban strife, seemingly led by those posting to Twitter, spread next around the world on news networks like the BBC, NPR, and the Times, CNN remained mostly mute. Even when the network's Internet site finally posted a story late Saturday, the network's first "story highlight" was, "Ahmadinejad plans rally after winning second presidential term."

Notice he said "mostly."  A quick search of CNN's website shows they've continuously had Iran related stories on their website since well into last week.  What CNet is probably referring to is this article (which is the first that comes up when you search Google) which is dated 11:37pm EDT.  But follow the link and you'll notice it says "UPDATED Saturday 11:37pm EDT."   The fact is, CNN.com was covering rallies in Iran since before the election even begun.

Oh, and on the personal blogger front Scoble still preaches Twitter's power even as his Iranian wife (who is by all accounts very tech savvy) can't get through to her own relatives.  So how are all those tweets from Iran getting through?

Well-Backed Speculation: As far as we know, the protests in Iran are no bigger than other protests that have happened around the world.  According to the BBC about 100 people have been detained in Iran.  This is similar to the number of people detained for protesting new car import fees in Russia or the number detained for protesting over the murder of an innocent girl in China.  It's significant for sure but not really a sign of a revolution.  To try to extrapolate hard numbers the protests in China numbered about 30,000.  If the same is true of the protests in Iran that would mean less than .5% of Tehran residents are protesting against the election (based on a total population of 7,088,287)

Well-Backed Speculation: The statistical report going around claiming to have proof the election was rigged is almost certainly inaccurate.  For more on that I direct you to fivethirtyeight.com (a site that has earned my trust over time)

Addendum: I just thought of a question that I wish I'd been asking throughout the day but I wanted to put it up here now.  To anyone who disagrees with me I have a question.  Has it occured to you that, if the election wasn't rigged, the people trying to overturn it are the dictators?  All the disagreement I've gotten in the comments or via e-mail has hinged on the idea that this election must have been fixed.  But no one at this point has shown me one shred of proof that it was fixed.

Again, nothing would make me happier than learning this election doesn't represent how the iranians really feel.  But I also know that democracy is about allowing people to live in the way they vote for even if you don't like it and there's nothing I can see that says this election isn't how the nation of Iran chooses to live.

Dan Frommer of Silicon Alley makes a post in which he admonishes Apple for not growing at the rapid clip it did last year.  Here's a quote...

A year ago (and for several years before that), the Mac business was growing at a 20% to 50% clip. It was also rapidly gaining share in the personal computer market. It was a major factor in driving Apple's stock price toward $200, and it was scaring the pants off the rest of the PC industry.

This quarter, Apple's Mac business, measured by revenue, could shrink more than 10% year-over-year. And the company no longer appears to be gaining any share at all.

Let me tell you a little secret that everyone should know: Rapid corporate growth is a Bad Thing.

It seems like it defies logic but it really doesn't.  As  a company that's in it for the long term you don't want rapid growth because then everyone (like Dan Frommer in the article above) will start expecting you to grow that way in every quarter.  Since that's impossible you're best to fight against rapid growth if you can. 

What a company like Apple wants is steady, moderate growth. 

Because they don't need the money.  That's the most important part of this whole equation.  There are only two things that rapid growth is good for and that's (a) to make money and (b) to make a company look successful to the outside world.  But again, Apple doesn't need the money and they look successful just by steadily growing in sales. 

So growing rapidly holds no allure for them. 

With that said there is one more part of Mr. Frommer's article that I want to address.  He gives a list of "growth drivers" that he thinks Apple should push more.  Those are...

Failure to launch exciting new products. (The MacBook Air was the last big hit.)
Failure to play in the fastest growing segment of the market (netbooks).
Weakness in core markets: Education and media/creative.
Failure to make real inroads into the corporate world.
Failure to build a big international business.

Remember what I laid out above.  Apple has plenty of money.  What that means is they can afford,  to a certain extent, to develop products that either don't make a profit or that make a very minor profit.  That's an important point.

Apple can develop corporate products, start meager efforts in other countries and still live comfortably on the sales they do have.  In doing so they can (a) iterate products without pushing them and (b) build a reputation for quality products in these sectors.

That allows them to continue building those businesses at a very slow rate while they get the growth they need from the sectors that they're focused on.  Then, when those sectors become saturated they can turn their focus to the slower growing businesses and use them to create the steady growth they need in the future.

So pushing into every market at once would be a bad idea for Apple because they'd just be saturating markets they will need in the future (look at Microsoft's stock as an example of why this is true)

Microsoft Money, chief competitor to Intuit’s Quicken, is dead.  Many in the blogosphere are painting this as an “Intuit beat Microsoft” story.  I’d suggest those people consult the stock market…

Intuit’s chief competitor dies and their stock does nothing?  Really?  Is that possible.

It is.  But first let me say something quick about the blogosphere’s reaction.

To make this point I’d like to quote one of the one’s making the “intuit’s victory” argument.  Top of the ol’ Techmeme list is Ina Fried so I’ll use her.  She has an article entitled “How Intuit managed to hold off Microsoft” where she tries to make this argument…

Intuit is one of the few companies to take Microsoft head-on on its home turf--packaged software--and come out on top. Even more notably, Intuit has managed to do it several times, with Quicken of course, but also with QuickBooks and TurboTax.

Of course, it was more than just Intuit's success that led to Money's demise, which CNET News first reported on Wednesday. The product was ultimately doomed by several factors, including a shift away from packaged software, the rise of Internet-based rivals like Mint.com, and a brutal economy that has forced Microsoft to scale back ambitions in several areas.

Yeah…well…No.

Now, I’m not accusing Ms. Fried or anyone else of lying.  But they are framing the story in a way that’s dishonest.  That’s a trend that drives me crazy because the whole point of a news organization, of any kind, is to give you the real story.  To put things in perspective for you so you don’t have to hunt down the facts yourself.  In that vein, here’s the truth... 

Intuit did not beat Microsoft they simply hung on to a worthless market until Microsoft gave up. 

(btw – Notice how all the “other factors” mentioned in that quote are factors that work against Quicken too)

Intuit has a reason to stay in the personal finance market.  They have two profitable products called TurboTax and Quickbooks.  Quicken essentially acts as great marketing for those two. 

Basically Quicken puts the Intuit brand in people’s heads and eventually sets up sales for the far more expensive products in the future.  But personal finance is a losing business and that’s why the market essentially didn’t care when Quicken’s chief competitor died off.  Because it probably won’t have that much of an impact on their bottom line.

So what the stock market teaches us about Intuit is that they make most of their money off higher end offerings and that Quicken doesn’t mean much in the long run (at least on it’s own).  Microsoft gave up because it doesn’t have those established high end products which makes Microsoft Money as much a liability for them as it is an advantage for Quicken.