I work freelance at home and have twitter running in the back, it only takes a tweet from “Lebkov” about starting the day with a nice cup of coffee and next I know I’m craving a sandwich and coffee and have decided to get my lunch there. Each week they have a special sandwich that isn’t on the menu and recently they added one of those specials that I liked to their regular menu. As soon as they tweeted about it I had planned when I would drop by to get a sandwich. So I can state those tweets do have an influence on me.

This is a great way to stimulate their business and build client relationships. We had a very snowy holiday here in the Netherlands, which the country couldn’t handle and it was nice that they tweeted if they where open and till how late. The bookshop also kept customers up to date by tweeting opening days and hours. Saves you from the disappointment of encountering a closed store.

And I don’t know about you but I find a twitter message to pass along info nicer then receiving a newsletter. I associate newsletter emails with annoyance while a nice and short tweet as something great and hip.

I want to know what would happen if they tweeted something like “10% discount to first 5 followers to come in withing half an hour”. I’m geek enough that I check twitter on my iPhone as soon as I find myself waiting somewhere. So who knows I might be close by in case of such a tweet.

It won’t be long before I become Sheldon Cooper, saying

You keep in mind that my sharply-worded comments on yelp.com recently took down a muffin store.

Instead of Yelp it will be Twitter. And instead of menacing the company I would be praising having had a nice lunch and/or coffee. I’m going up a level of geek, get my food because of twitter, take a snap shot of said food with iPhone, posting said shot on Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook boring my followers with what I had for lunch.

Claims about Steve Jobs’ health and the decision of the shareholders to re-elect the Apple Board throw a weird shadow on new releases and their _special_ features such as yesterday’s iPod Shuffle update.

With every new release it seems as if the actual Apple team decides to develop less and less for Joe Average but once more opts for their own little nice, a nice of hardcore fanboys and adepts.
The iPod Shuffle headphones conundrum and choice for the glass screen for the MacBook, as well as the decision to drop FireWire on the MacBook and the solitary position of the 17″ MacBookPro seem a clear message to its userbase.

Could it be that Steve Jobs has accepted that his days as CEO are counted but wants to leave Apple, Inc. leaving a battlefield behind: at one side the shareholders who obviously expect that Apple tackles the larger market now and from the other side, the products Steve Jobs and his team want to develop.
Why would Apple decide to launch the new iMac with the small keyboard and lock itself out of the corporate culture, the world of spreadsheets?

Will the new, planned, joint single Blu-ray license be the next step of separation? Can we expect an update to the MB and MBP or will only the MBP receive a BD-RW update after summer?

Their is no doubt that the corporate structure of AAPL split is at this moment. Shareholders obviously want the company to grow, continue it’s market share growth, but does Steve Jobs have the same aim? Does Jobs want to become the next Dell, biggest computer manufacturer and seller, or continue to develop high quality niche market products for a small group of users?

One is sure, Apple lately has decided to take things in own hands again and continue to force the user to be restricted, and _follow_ as Christopher Breen notes

But I’m not the target buyer for this device. If you walk along any city street, ride a subway or bus, or wander through the local gym, you’ll see that nearly everyone uses the stock Apple earbuds. It’s not that their ears are any more ideal for these things than mine, it’s just that most people don’t care or know any better. This is what I got, this is what I’ll use.

And what they get is what Apple decides they get, is what Steve Jobs decides you get. Get on with it.

Until the re-election of the Board.

I don’t particularly follow the mobile phone market unless they are made of Lego blocks, but yesterday I followed the releases over at MWC. Mainly to see what Windows 6.5 would look like and in the hope of more information around the Palm Pre.

For once I must admit that the Redmonders finally got something right with WM6.5. The honeycomb setup for the phone’s homepage looks attractive and most of all usable. That must be a first for Microsoft!
Even though the background of choice too dark is and Windows Mobile still fugly looks with the humongous status bar and its icons, it certainly looks thousand times better than any open source attempt, because no matter whether as full blown distro or on a phone, Tux products always manage to look horrible thanks to their love for thick borders/line on everything.

Obviously nothing beats the looks of today’s most popular and loved phone.

Much has been said about the 7 different editions Windows 7 will be released in. As usual this was a typical example of bloggers complaining just to complain. Things actually are much simpler and we here at Forever Geek will simplify the choice for you and explain why Windows 7 needs different editions.

There are only 3 versions that matter for the consumer

And one probable nuisance for most bloggers.

The most important editions are Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Home Professional. Microsoft has decided to drop the Business label for the XP-known Professional label in a try to simplify the choice for the customer. Differences between both editions are almost the same as in the XP era with Professional having all the features from the Home edition, plus network capacities (join a Windows domain), group policy based management tools, Remote Desktop host capabilities, network-based backup features, and support for the Encrypting file system.

As with XP you will decide for any of those depending on if you run a small network or not. These two editions will be the ones you find on the shelf (in the Western world) and more than 90% of the users will opt for any of those. It’s that simple.

Home Premium edition will be installed on almost all of the PCs you buy at the retailer. I certainly hope that thanks to the Windows Anytime Upgrade program there will be the option to buy your PC with Home Premium or Professional for a supplementary fee. I can perfectly imagine a first login screen with ‘Did you purchase the Professional upgrade? Enter your key here‘ option.
That probably just is wishful thinking from my part.

As with Windows Vista there will be an Ultimate edition. This version is only available on the OEM market or as an upgrade and is nothing more than the Enterprise edition (mainly better encryption options) for the home or small business user.

These are basically the only versions which the regular user will have to work with, chose between. If it weren’t for one edition which will be pushed on users with netbooks.

Windows Starter. Windows starter is restricted to the OEM market and comes with features such as missing Aero UI tweaks and limited to 3 simultaneous applications. For most netbooks users this will be enough because most of time all they need is their web browser, Outlook in the background and maybe an Office program or a media program. But bloggers will grab the occasion to complain about the restriction to 3 programs and the incompatibility with our NADD. Still I think for a majority of the netbook market this edition will be good enough and will have to be good enough as it will come with almost every netbook with Windows.

The last two editions are actually of very little concern for the Western market as they won’t be available to the consumer. Windows 7 Home Basic will only be available to emerging markets and Windows 7 Enterprise is only available for volume license customers. One surprise with the Enterprise edition is that it contains all the features of the Professional version, even the Media Center. As a former system administrator in a building with more than 3000 network clients I certainly wished Enterprise came without Media center, just like Vista Enterprise, because most employee procrastinate too much already. *big grin*

So is this line-up that difficult? Maybe if you can’t decide between these 3 versions, yes Home Premium is what you need or just stay away from the computer.

Should Windows 7 have gone the same way as Mac OS X, only 1 version?

Maybe, although I think there should be a difference between the enterprise and home market (see above). We have seen the disaster with Windows Vista and ‘Vista Capable’.
There is no doubt that for many older computers Vista Basic was the ’saviour’.
In the era of multiple computers at home there should have been no Home edition and it is perfectly imaginable that the installation process has a built-in feature-checker, installing the appropriate version. But imagine the bitching! Mac users (and I have become one of those) are a special breed and they have a much bigger tolerance to errors than most other users. And I still want to see the first Mac network with 3+k network clients.

When I think of my own PC habits, rarely ever do I use less than 1.2GB of RAM in Vista (Enterprise). So yes it would be sensible for me to feature restrictions when on less powerful machines.
Actually I think there should be one more edition: Starter Professional. A Windows 7 version for netbooks without the 3 simultaneous programs restriction and with network capabilities, but without Aero and without Media Center. The perfect option to give to any employee, whether on a netbook or on their desktop PC.