Translated material
Laptop for Barbie
IT manufacturers started the new year in Las Vegas and San Francisco
It is stupid to wait for technological news from Russia during the winter holidays. By the end of January, the domestic IT industry - as well as the country in general - is just coming to its senses. But this is not scary for progress. January became a busy month in the United States, where the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES, Las Vegas, January 7-10) and the Macworld Conference & Expo (San Francisco, January 14-18) were held.Surprisingly, CES, with its 2,700 exhibitors, more than 165,000 square meters of exhibition space and 130,000 visitors, was comparable in popularity to Macworld, an event that featured fewer than 400 companies and was dedicated exclusively to Apple technology. Perhaps this happened because the main IT news of the year 2008 had just begun - the Macbook Air laptop - was traditionally born from Apple. Or maybe due to the fact that no truly revolutionary technologies were demonstrated at CES. Which does not mean that Air became such a technology.
It is unrealistic to announce all the main news from Las Vegas in one article. Of course, it is worth noting the latest appearance by Bill Gates as an active businessman. He will leave Microsoft midyear to focus on his charitable foundation. Paul Otellini, Intel's chief executive, also spoke to an enlightened crowd at CES and promised new processors for mobile devices - this is where the company will focus the main efforts of its engineers.
To pick out the ones worthy of everyone's attention from the vast number of CES exhibits, we'll use a fun list from the popular IT news site gizmodo.com. Among other things, it included a Panasonic television receiver with a 150-inch screen. The largest in the world, its side is longer than human height (“he made us small,” writes gizmodo). The antipode of this giant was also spotted at CES - a tiny media player produced by iRiver, which looks like a laptop for a Barbie doll. The “cutest” laptop is the Asus Eee PC, whose only problem is its 8.9-inch screen. The children's book from Microsoft “Mom, Where Do Servers Come From?” was recognized as the best propaganda exhibit.
However, it’s easy to make jokes about any participant in the IT market, but try speaking about Apple products without sufficient respect! The Macbook Air laptop, presented at Macworld by Steve Jobs on January 15, evoked a variety of feelings among the public, from contempt to adoration, but irony was extremely rare. Although, it would seem, what other feelings should the world’s thinnest (two centimeters) laptop without a disk drive, but with one USB port and a non-removable battery, evoke?
Let us refrain from our own assessments and give the floor to the experts. Leading analyst of the Mobile Research Group Eldar Murtazin notes that last year to Russia “suitcases”, i.e. 60 thousand Apple iPhones were imported by private individuals for the purpose of subsequent resale (for comparison, official sales in France amounted to 70 thousand). "Air", i.e. Air will inevitably be sold regardless of its technical characteristics and price, since fans of Apple products are “religious,” the expert believes.
Nikolai Dobrovolsky from the software company SWSoft (thanks to which it became possible to use Windows operating systems - in particular, Vista - on Mac computers), in fact, confirms what Mr. Murtazin said. “When Apple switched its computers to Intel processors in 2006, it became possible to port many applications developed for the PC to the Mac. Doing this work has given me a better understanding of why people are so enthusiastic about this technique. "Excitement" is an accurate word, but it alone is not enough to determine how strongly Apple apologists are committed to its products. In their love for everything “Apple”, they are an order of magnitude superior to “Linuxoids” (adherents of the Linux operating system. - Ed. ). Try disparaging a Mac in front of its owner! The person simply changes his face. He sincerely considers you a blasphemer! I think Jobs is to blame (Steve Jobs is the founder and current head of Apple Computers. - Ed. ). He managed to make sure that his company’s beautifully designed business turns the consumer into its ardent supporter. Each of his performances at Macworld is a well-staged one-man show. And all of Apple works in the same style. A simple seller in an Apple store doesn’t just sell equipment, he arranges a presentation of it for you. You start to believe that owning something from Apple is happiness, but once you buy it, you don’t change that point of view.”
When asked whether the iPod and Mac crowd can be “converted” into corporate consumers (which would mean recognizing the functionality and reasonable price of Apple computers), Mr. Dobrovolsky does not answer directly, but says that there are many first-time Mac users representatives of the largest IT companies. Let's say Paul Otellini (Intel).
Mac machines, however, have not been widely used in corporate environments, and this indirectly confirms the conspiracy theory about the “religiosity” of iPhone and Macbook buyers. Perhaps the spread of Apple technology in offices is objectively hampered by the fact that the Microsoft Office software package running under Mac OS operating systems does not have a full-fledged Microsoft Outlook application. And for a business person it is a standard tool for planning time, maintaining a list of contacts and working with e-mail, Mr. Dobrovolsky believes.