Apple vs. Google
Posted on June 9, 2008
Filed Under All, Apple, Technology |
So, Apple finally noticed that the Internet is a powerful medium, and rapidly becoming the only way people work and play virtually (at least). So long-time orphan .Mac, which, for $100 a year, offers a fraction of the storage and other features that Google gives away for free, is now MobileMe, and Apple wins, right?
Apple shareholder that I am, I wish that were the case. True, Apple is focusing on the mobile franchise it has so successfully raided with the iPhone, but Google is already a hundred steps ahead. Google’s web-based calendar and email apps - which automatically detect my iPhone and configure themselves accordingly - work at least as well as Apple’s device-resident software, good as it is. Google was there before Apple and I am already hooked on Google’s ‘always-on’ presence in the cloud - and I don’t think that I’m alone.
Google’s spam filter is so good, I now filter all of gulker.com through it (thanks to David Pogue for the ‘how-to‘). I find myself using Apple Mail less, even at my desktop, and the Gmail browser more, as it automatically picks up my contacts. And, oh yeah, I get the equivalent of iWork for free along with 6 GB of free photo storage (compared with .Mac’s miserly, expensive 1 or 2 GB up ’til now).
Steve Job’s Apple is still what it was when he and Wozniak unleashed the Apple II: a hardware-cum-software company. As long as they can find spaces where that formula works - and they’ve done that brilliantly for a decade since Steve’s ’second coming’ - they will keep shareholders happy. But in the bigger picture, Google is the new Microsoft…
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With The Goog & The Apple, we get the vicarious link to Eric Schmidtt’s & Steve Job’s billions. Vicarious wealth is what the future is all about.