MS Office on the iPad

Suite anticipation – WWW.THEDAILY.COM.

File this under “What on earth is Microsoft thinking?”

I like it and it will spur even faster iPad adoption in the enterprise but it really doesn’t do a whole lot for Microsoft’s own tablet efforts.  Maybe that doesn’t matter as much as continued Office dominance.

The move also makes the iPad even more of an education powerhouse.  While I love Keynote, nobody but other iOS and OSX users could get any of my presentations except as PDFs.

Powerpoint isn’t as good but is everywhere.  With a clean template it’s good enough to make great presentations.

That’s another checkbox checked for an edu tablet.  Coupled with AirPlay and a aTV device attached to a projector and student presentations become even more of a snap on iOS.

Apple sold more iOS devices in 2011 than all the Macs sold it in 28 years | asymco

Apple sold more iOS devices in 2011 than all the Macs sold it in 28 years | asymco.

Folks are looking at this chart oohing and ahhing about the vertical slope of the iOS ecosystem.  I’m looking at this chart thinking “Damn, I was in college when the Mac first came out…that was 28 years ago?”

Apple’s Toughest Competition in the Fourth-Quarter Tablet Market Was…Apple

Apple’s Toughest Competition in the Fourth-Quarter Tablet Market Was…Apple 

Looks like the iPad 2 and the Fire both did very well this Christmas.  No surprise there.  40M iPads in 2011 is fantastic growth for Apple.

I passed on both waiting for the iPad 3.  I passed on the aTV 2 waiting for…whatever it is they have waiting in the wings.  The waiting is starting to get to me.

*twitch*

I hope the rumored March iPad event happens.

*twitch*

Daring Fireball – Mountain Lion

The recurring theme: Apple is fighting against cruft — inconsistencies and oddities that have accumulated over the years, which made sense at one point but no longer — like managing to-dos in iCal because CalDAV was being used to sync them to a server or notes in Mail because IMAP was the syncing back-end. The changes and additions in Mountain Lion are in a consistent vein: making things simpler and more obvious, closer to how things should be rather than simply how they always have been.

…

This is an awful lot of effort and attention in order to brief what I’m guessing is a list of a dozen or two writers and journalists. It’s Phil Schiller, spending an entire week on the East Coast, repeating this presentation over and over to a series of audiences of one. There was no less effort put into the preparation of this presentation than there would have been if it had been the WWDC keynote address.

Mini-Apple event given for John Gruber:  A preview of OSX Mountain Lion.

Wow.

From an enterprise development perspective I do wonder if there will ever be any support for an private enterprise iCloud or Notification Center inside the firewall.

via Daring Fireball.

Cramer: The Best Super Bowl Ad – TheStreet

But there was one ad that struck me as the most honest, most riveting and most compelling of all. You see, the game had just ended, and Colts great Raymond Berry ran the Giant gantlet with the Lombardi Trophy. Suddenly it seemed like every other Giant pulled out an Apple(AAPL) iPhone to snap pictures of the moment. One after another after another. And I said to myself, there it is, not some pet dangling a bag of chips or some headlights killing vampires or King Elton getting trapdoored. Nope, there was an ad worthy of Steve Jobs and the company he built.

To see the clip click on the image.  Pretty amusing given the “over the top” Samsung commercial.

Warhol Quote (also from DF) that applies to the iPhone:

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

And that is pretty awesome.

Cramer: The Best Super Bowl Ad – TheStreet via DF