You’ve probably heard the news, that the Toshiba — or rather Microsoft — Zune player will cost $249.99, within pennies of the current 30GB iPod. Microsoft admits it’s losing money, but is prepared to take a loss in the hope that it will, some day, catch the iPod.

But the form and features and even pricing of the Zune player aren’t important. Although Microsoft wants us to think that it is willing to risk tons of cash to gain market share, there is one area that is, so far, in the hands-off department, and that’s the Mac.

Yes indeed, like other music players that use one of Microsoft’s failed DRM schemes, there is no Mac version of Zune. What’s more, it doesn’t seem to be on the radar. In fact, Microsoft seems to have been trimming its Mac offerings of late, with the departure of Virtual PC and, more importantly, Windows Media Player. I won’t dwell over the fact that a third party is distributing an add-on for QuickTime to support older Windows Media versions. The encrypted stuff won’t play on a Mac without a Windows virtual machine, such as Parallels Desktop. So much for that.

Of course, if you ask Microsoft why they killed these products, they’ll give you excuses. Virtual PC would have required a complete retooling to function on an Intel-based Mac. That would be like building a 1.0 product, but the key element of their response is that there are already other solutions to running Windows and Windows software, from Apple, Parallels and so on and so forth.

In other words, Microsoft just couldn’t compete with smaller companies. Or chose not to.
Windows Media Player? Well, that’s not developed by the Mac Business Unit, so there’s another division to make excuses, and I haven’t seen any that make sense other than the fact that Mac users just don’t seem to care.

Of course it’s not just Microsoft that chooses to ignore the Mac from time to time. I saw an announcement the other day about a new media streaming device from Netgear, perhaps designed to steal thunder from Apple’s iTV. Or at least some of the published reports I read about the product made that claim. Except that it won’t run on Macs either.

Now with Windows occupying over 90% of the personal computer market, I suppose I can agree with industry analyst Ross Rubin, who talked about the matter on this week’s episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, that these companies would prefer to go after the low-hanging fruit. Besides, Mac users wouldn’t necessarily be tempted, since they’re used to the seamless integration with Apple’s software and hardware.

Of course, that raises the biggest question of all about these alleged iPod “killers,” and that is why most of these companies have, so far at least, pretty much stayed clear of the Mac market. If their products are so impressive, so compelling, why not go for the gold, or the brass ring?

When it comes to the hardware, nothing needs to be changed. But they would have to build drivers and software that runs on both the PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. Is that such a hard task, to build a Universal binary version?
Apparently not, since there are now over 3,500 Universal applications, and the list is growing rapidly, almost every single day. In fact, Microsoft has already made one small move in that direction, with its latest instant messaging software. Oh yes, it doesn’t do audio or video yet, although iChat and even Skype can perform those worthy tasks. To be fair to Microsoft, they say they’re working on it.

Understand that Apple wasn’t afraid to build Windows versions of its products where it felt it could make a killing. In fact, there are far more Windows users with iPods than Mac users right now. But many of its competitors are clearly afraid to move in the opposite direction.

Related Articles

• The Mac Clone Controversy Rears Its Ugly Head
• Apple Versus Microsoft: The Great War Enters a New Phase
• The Apple Attack Dogs Become Desperate
• Five Bogus Reasons to Ditch the Mac!
• Yes, Microsoft Loves Apple’s — Money!

When I wrote yesterday’s commentary on the subject, a few folks felt it was just another Mac OS versus Windows Vista comparison, but it’s easy to pluck a paragraph or two out of anything, and make a few pithy comments about it. That’s going on now in Washington, but I’m definitely not going there.

Instead, I’ll just talk about one more Tiger element, and that is Dashboard. Yes, those little widgets that can fill your screen with the appropriate keyboard shortcut, and may actually provide some useful added functionality, or a little eye-candy.

The issues on this software’s origins as a Mac shareware product called Konfabulator and the fact that Apple came up with its own variation on the theme without giving credit or cash to the original creators is yesterday’s news. Of course, I will say that Apple messed up not making some sort of deal, but who listens to me anyway?

In case you’ve just tuned in, Dashboard is a collection of tiny programs, widgets, that resemble those old Mac OS desk accessories in some respects. They are single-purpose applications, and can provide such services as looking up a word, a phone number, or checking news at your favorite information site.

Opinions on Dashboard are rather polarized. Some just adore them, and stock up with abandon. And with several thousand to choose from, there’s apt to be something that suits your fancy.

In my case, I’m rather conservative in my choices. I use iStat Pro to monitor all the things my desktop Mac, a Power Mac G5 Quad, is doing at any particular moment, such as the amount of resources an application is hogging, the temperature of the processors and other components, and the speed of the eight cooling fans.

Perhaps the most ego-satisfying component of iStat Pro displays your uptime, which is how long your Mac has been running continuously since the last restart. Once this figure hits a few days, you gain a great feeling of confidence about your computer’s ongoing reliability. Of course, the fact that I put my G5 to sleep when not in use, rather than shut it down, is sure to put my numbers in a higher tier than some of you.

Another widget that I find mostly useful is Package Tracker, which is designed to keep tabs of the items you’re expecting or shipping via Federal Express, DHL and UPS. Alas, the latest version, 2.1.9, seems to have troubles with UPS and it would be nice to be able to display multiple packages without having to create multiple instances of the widget, but it holds promise.

Being able to check the current temperature and forecast in your city, or selected city, is also a neat idea. I could, of course, go on. There’s a widget that lets you search for the special T-shirt of your choice. Another, called Calorie Tracker, displays nutritional information for many foods. And if you don’t care about your diet, there’s a Krispy Kreme Widget that lets you locate the nearest source of your favorite donuts.

Now Dashboard does have its detractors. The fact that widgets exist on a separate layer, and don’t remain on your screen when you’re working in a regular Mac application, can seem limiting at times. Of course, if you want that, you can always use a shareware utility, Amnesty Widget Browser, which allows the little devils to exist on your desktop.

Even Microsoft has been influenced by the concept. Windows Vista has its own variation on the theme, only the tiny applications are called Gadgets. How original! The implementation does leave something to be desired, but I’ll set that aside, since this isn’t a Vista-bashing commentary.

For Leopard, Apple has new developer’s tools to simplify widget creation. You’ll even be able to take a page in Safari and build it into a simple widget known as a “web clip,” essentially a live Web page. The 10.5 version of Dashboard will even include a handful of themes with which to customize your creation.

As for me, I find myself mostly ignoring Dashboard; that is, until I need to call up my favorite widgets for one purpose or another.

Related Articles

• A Fast Look at the Apple Hardware Upgrade Equation
• The MacBook Pro: Two Years On
• Is Mac OS Classic Nostalgia a Bad Thing?
• The Leopard Report: It’s All About Customer Satisfaction
• Microsoft and Mozilla Updates: One Minor, One Awesome!

With so much attention devoted to Apple’s latest efforts, you can easily forget that there is actually another product that’s bundled with every new Mac, still available on the store shelves, which you may be taking for granted these days. That’s Tiger.

Tiger? Well, yes. After all, Leopard is still just a dream and not a real product, and won’t be out until the spring of 2007. And that’s assuming that Apple has established a realistic schedule to get the thing done. Although they have been able to meet or exceed their deadlines in recent years, nothing is precise when it comes to software development. Microsoft might be an extreme case, of course, but that’s another story.

When Tiger first came out in 2005, I felt it was unfinished, that it had been rushed to market with a few too many bugs. The most serious stuff had to do with networking, particularly connecting to private office networks. Here Apple’s built-in tools were broken, and third party stuff had to be updated for compatibility. There were other troubles too, which is why we’re at 10.4.7, with rumors of a 10.4.8 and even another one or two additional updates over the next few months.

However, that didn’t stop me from recommending Tiger to most people, and I haven’t been second guessed very much. In fact, I really never had most of the problems people talked about, although I’m certain most of the complaints were valid. I work in a home office, so I don’t need the tools that left some of you irritated that Apple didn’t wait a few more months for Tiger to come out.

What isn’t mentioned as often as it should is that there are, in fact, two distinct versions of Tiger. They look the same, they work the same, but they are quite different, with one compatible with a PowerPC Mac and the other designed for the Intel-based version. True they may now have synchronized development cycles, but you can’t get a single, Universal installer for both. Or at least not yet.

That may not seem to be a huge issue, but it is a significant irritant in a company where both types of Macs are being used. You can’t, for example, create a unified installer disc or image for everyone, so you’re left with two versions, labeled PowerPC and Intel for clarity. Or you have another DVD to lose if you just file your installation media somewhere in case you need to reinstall something.

On the positive side, Tiger remains the operating system to which you still compare Windows Vista. Both have fancy user interfaces, although you need some awfully powerful hardware for the latter to get the best, or at least most blatant, visual special efforts to appear.

When Apple demonstrated the most obvious resemblances during the WWDC keynote in August, you had to wonder what Microsoft was thinking. After all the delays, and features being cast aside, the Vista interface designers gave you the impression that they developed a spreadsheet (Excel of course) with Tiger in Column A and Vista in Column B. Microsoft simply added a few things to make their stuff look sort of different, and made everything more complicated to create the illusion that you could do more. In fact, it just took longer to do the same thing.

But, when you come down to it, the best computer operating system is one that should get out of the way, more or less, when you want to get some work done. It shouldn’t intrude, call attention to itself, or behave erratically when you are rushing headlong towards an important deadline.

When it comes down to it, Tiger, while far from perfect, is really a superlative operating system. After all of Mac OS X’s growth pains, Apple is going to have to work awfully hard on Leopard to provide a follow-up that will truly make you want to upgrade without a second glance.

Related Articles

• The iMac Report: Apple Left the Proprietary World a Decade Ago
• Apple Needs to Open Up!
• Newsletter #440 Preview: The Mac Versus PC Hardware Wars Continue
• The MacBook Pro: Two Years On
• Apple and the Enterprise: A New Focus?