Jackpot!

Finally, somewhere good on Princes Street!

Curse You, Speedy Analyst!

Daniel Eran Dilger prove his prowess yet again today in Why Did Apple Buy PA Semi? Long before I did too. He's pretty much got the important points all covered to head on over to see what I was just about to say about PowerPC v Intel v ARM and all the rest of it; quite likely better stated too.

Like some commenters also wonder: how can someone this on-the-ball be publishing on his own non-commercial site when there's so much guff passing for journalism both online and in old media? I for one am delighted to read his articles whichever way. Sometimes I wonder if some in Apple HQ don't make a point of it too!

videoGaiden do America

As far as I know, the only place videoGaiden ever aired was in Scotland. And even then, I only noticed it when the Christmas Special just so happened to bring the venerable Dominik Diamond – with appropriate fanfare – to my screen while channel surfing. “What on earth is this?”

Way back in the 1990’s: GamesMaster was teenaged geek’s must see TV. I remember complex discussions the next morning in German class at school about whatever games had been dealt with in the last night’s episode. That must have been 1992! It only seemed natural that gaming deserved its own early evening blockbuster. It had the shelf space at the newsagents, and the cavernous bunkers in the high street record shops, so why not? And yet when the show was finally axed after its seventh season, there would not be a replacement. There still isn’t.

Despite the thriving place gaming has today, you have to go online to see it talked about.

Meanwhile, for the last few years, BBC Scotland – the local division of everyone’s favourite state-run media conglomerate – had been sneakily airing this little gem where I’d never notice it. It wasn’t just me either: you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who’s aware of its existence even in Scotland! The special which I fortuitously saw was itself on at some daft time, and our meeting was pure coincidence. But it didn’t take long at all to realise there was something to this that I liked. Best of all, they keep all their stuff on the website. (If your IP address is in Britain, apparently, or of course YouTube may be able to help.)

Another new fan of the show just so happens to be Stephen, the friend who made last month’s machinima with me. After going through the show’s archives – and its online-only predecessor Consolevania too – we had enough to go on to give The Movies another try. Hunter and Rayorg in particular inspired our little endeavour, if you’d like to check it out.

Do beware though: the in-jokes for those not already familiar with Jeff Gerstmann’s infamous departure from GameSpot (and subsequent project: the Giant Bomb), Rab and Ryan’s games critique style, and said Hunter and Rayorg’s great saga; may prove mildly bewildering. We did though ensure that the Scottish dialect component was up to scratch, so if you can put up with twisted textual swearing: have at it.

A message to BBC Scotland: if you keep us plied with videoGaiden, I can forgive you Newsnight Scotland. Do not try my patience! Perhaps putting it on sometime a little less daft – and maybe advertised before its last / maybe even last ever episode – could help bring in those rare viewers? Just a thought.

Someone Please Give Howard Dean a Wedgie

As asked rhetorically in the Times:

Whose brilliant idea was it to leave six weeks open before the Pennsylvania primary?

Probably not Dean's personally, but as the genius who drew up the maddening system whereby Clinton and Obama are heading to a knife edged convention irrespective of who actually votes for them … well thanks a lot, Howard. Relentlessly proportional representation sounds good on paper but is one of the best known recipes for a political fudge wherever it's put into practice. John Kerry's deeply faulty coronation so soon in 2004 before Edwards' star had come to shine was wrong as well, but it was a poor lesson to shape the future. 2008 and 2004 are so different politically, yet here we are enduring an overreaction to mistakes long forgotten and even less relevant.

Something due to be knocked out at Denver will be, I sincerely hope, a correction to the primaries. It doesn't have to be a return to the broken dynamic of New Hampshire or Bust, but it sure had better not remain like this. McCain's elegant stroll to a convincing nomination might not be enough all by itself to level up the precarious slope the last national midterms in 2006 exposed under this trailing president; but it's certainly become a factor thanks to the Byzantine procedure still rumbling on far from conclusion among his competitors.

Denver doesn't even happen until late August. What's the betting both candidates are still running by then? What a bitter denouement for what had been until Super Tuesday the most lively and uplifting contest in a generation.

Still, it is of course the stuff of journalistic as well as dramatist's dreams…

And In That Vein

Looks like a good time to be speculating along the lines I just did. Interesting indeed…

Mergers and Acquisitions

Adobe is worth $36 billion and change at today's price. Yahoo is pretty similar, boosted of course by recent interest. Adobe's price to earnings ratio is twice as sane as Yahoo's. I wonder why Microsoft are hot on the trail of buying one instead of the other…

All right, I'll admit it: I'm a software guy. I can see a lot more value in companies like Adobe and Autodesk than I can in Yahoo. The former pair turn healthy profits from selling software to industries that they dominate: publishing and graphic design in Adobe's case; 3D modelling, animation and engineering in Autodesk's. They're a pair of little giants compared to the market's valuation of internet firms like Yahoo. If I were in charge of the itchy leviathan of Redmond, I'd be more interested in them than a distant rival to Google, essentially well past its prime.

Of course: I'm overlooking the mess of antitrust consequences too, as I'm not really that committed a Microsoft watcher!

What interests me about Adobe is what they're up to. Everyone knows Flash and Photoshop, and they've taken what they won in eating up Macromedia to the next level with this AIR platform they're weilding, and the much praised Photoshop Express. I'm no fan of proprietary extensions to the web – Flash being the example par excellence. But I can see what they're up to, and recognise it as one way to try to own the future which we all know is coming: where the internet is the platform and whatever way you're getting to it is but a minor detail.

In a way, Adobe are trying very hard to be the new Microsoft. Their web strategy looks a lot better than Microsoft's own, or indeed Yahoo's for whatever precisely that may really be worth. I don't particularly wish them well for it, but I recognise that it's definitely in their interest.

Adobe have been in the news lately because of a nasty surprise coming in their flagship software suite: Create Suite 4. The Windows version will be 64 bit, but the Mac version will not. This comes down to an ancient rivalry regarding Mac OS X. Adobe have stuck with Carbon while Apple have been calling everyone over to Cocoa, and last year's fait accompli at their developer show left Adobe in this particular lurch. Or rather their many professional users on the Mac.

That the two biggest developers for Mac software outside of Apple: Adobe and Microsoft, just so happen to be two competing platform companies – albeit of very different sorts – remains a sore point.

One of the defining changes Steve Jobs brought with him when he returned to Apple a decade ago, was a push to develop platform-critical apps in-house. Open source code and technologies from outside were and are welcome of course – as few things are as destructive as the Not Invented Here syndrome – but when it comes to your platform, you really have to keep the wolves out. Apple's apps dominate the Mac experience now, and keep many a professional served too. There are however a handful of remaining exceptions. Those are owned by Microsoft, Adobe and indeed in the field of animation so well known to Pixar: Autodesk.

The iPhone's continuing snub of Flash and this CS4 / Cocoa affair indicate that not all is well between Apple and Adobe. Microsoft ought to be exacerbating that. Apple, meanwhile, may well just have a skunk works or two busy on competitors to Photoshop and Illustrator.

I'm not one to give stock advice to anyone – especially not now we're in some choppy water – but I've a feeling Adobe and Autodesk are out there to be bought by interests greater than themselves. Bear in mind though that I am but a humble blogger…

The Tech World's Cassandra

It's articles like this which keep me reading RoughlyDrafted. Daniel Eran Dilger memorably dismissed the Zune just at the peak of its pre-release media hype with as well a reasoned an argument as I've ever heard in future telling. He did it again in the magnum opus Why 2007 Won't Be Like 1995, which I commend to everyone and ask could you have done any better? He’s a top notch tech commentator, and RoughlyDrafted continues to be among my top RSS favourites.

More on this later.