Recently San Francisco was the location of the Macworld 2007 event. Steve Jobs, Apple Inc. CEO, performed a remarkable keynote and presented the iPhone, which is buzzing all around the internet now.
Even though, that’s only a few month that we got our first Macintosh computer, I fell in love with the look and the use of those devices long before when once – around 15 years ago – there was one of those machines for a few days at home (my father brought it to work on it a couple of days). Since then, I long for having one.
Fifteen years ago PC (DOS+Windows) based computers were clearly ugly. From the hardware design to the Graphical User Interface (GUI), PCs were no comparison to Apple Macintosh and their Operating System (OS). Nowadays, the look of PC (Windows XP or Vista) is clearly improved, both hardware and software. But oddly enough and for my own taste, I consider Apple design still more recherché (sought-after).
The funny part of all this, and which is what triggered this post, is the difference in keynotes from both Microsoft and Apple. Get the full article to know more…
One of the slogan of Apple is just that their systems simply work out of the box. Interesting enough, it seems that their demonstration of pre-release or newly release system just work too. I look thoroughly on internet, and I could not find a demonstration of Apple (even of pre-release software or hardware like Leopard or the iPhone) that failed at some point during the presentation. Like advertised, it just works. The two given video later are good example. Whereas, if you look on video content websites for Windows+Blue Screen returns a joyful amount of links, most are old stories but if one digg a bit he can still find one 2 years old at the during the CES 2005, when the new Windows XP Media Centre was presented.
Just another small demonstration of the difference of approach for conferences. The first one is part of Microsoft 25th Anniversary, whereas the second is the whole keynote from Apple Macworld 2007, which was also Apple 30th Anniversary. Those were intended for general public.
The second example is about specialised conferences dedicated to developers. There is Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) of 2006 and Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) of 2003 (most probably as I had quite some trouble to find the exact source of this video).
OK, I’m done ranting on Windows :-p and as a goody to thank you reading me, and as I love things that just work, check this incredible, short advertisement film from a car manufacturer. Actually, they had to do 606 takes to get it perfect according to Wikipedia.