If I only consider the social web space, you know what my answer will be. But VMware Fusion is the best overall because it showcased VMware's ability to put power and versatility on the OS. And make it better. Virtual machines is my buzz term, and I recently just got an OS book to understand more about this space. To understand the tech space right now (minus some social web) is to understand VMware.
VMware Fusion
- is holy matrimony of the Mac and PC paradigms (and whoever can figure the reverse.. whoa).
- will make Apple an even bigger force to deal with;
it makes Mac > PC.
A few years back, PCs dominated. But in the next few, at least in Silicon Valley, I am predicting a synchronous use of PCs and Macs, and an equal market share in SV of the two.
I stand by my belief that the most interesting problems are going to be a lot harder than LAMP-oriented (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) products. Facebook is filling the social void. There is a plethora of problems out there waiting to be solved, and VMware proves that one of them is.
Here are my tops for 2007:
- Most thought-provoking post: Do you ever say, "MySpace is sooo ugly?" by EIR Andrew Chen
- Who to keep an eye out for: Google alums, esp. the early (2003-2004) and late (2007+) joiners ;)
- Biggest surprise: Facebook (surprise in hype and scale, I have more to say here)
- Best team: FriendFeed (they've proven it once already...)
- Best big company: the Big G! :)
- Best vision of the social future: Loopt. (Privacy will be a huge value-add in the years to come. Privacy is not only privacy per se. Privacy increases relevance)
- Most awaited for release that will change your future: Google's Android
- Biggest trendsetter: iPhone (no brainer)
- (My) Biggest increase in usage: Yelp
- Where to hire the best engineers: Google
- .. and the best marketers: d.school.
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6 comments:
"Privacy is not only privacy per se. Privacy increases relevance."
Excellent! (And I happen to like your product choice, but I may be a bit biased...)
If you take a look at any university class these days, half of the notebooks are Mac. This spells big trouble for PC notebooks. But while Apple has always wanted its user friendliness, I think the big factor here is just size: students love MacBooks because PC notebooks are just too heavy to be really portable.
i agree with college students being influencers. i'm not too deterministic on heaviness, as my non-mac laptop is pretty light, too :)
as you stated, a great user experience is what makes macs awesome, and they have the price tag to prove it, too. i think coming down to it, apple will need to lower their prices a bit more to take up more market share, as they've done with the iphone.
I'm seeing a steady 50/50 on Mac/PC everywhere I go. Airplane, coffee shop, classroom, work, bus. The revolution already happened.
And this is Seattle. Read: that place that exists next-door to Redmond.
Macs haven't penetrated the inertia of the mass market yet. PCs still dominate there. But that's a generational thing: when people change out their current computers for the next one, it looks to me like a 50/50 toss on what a random user will go for.
-michael
seattle (even in spite of ms), SV, college campuses = techie central
let's then go to the midwest, small towns, the south.. i would say a different story.
macs is at about 7% market share with steady growth. 7% is still small, but i _completely_ agree -- the switch is happening.
a stretch and my long-time hypothesis: this was ipod's purpose all along :)
Now THAT is interesting. There are two ways, that I can see, to look at that: the iPod's historical purpose, and the iPod's "current" purpose. That is, why did Apple come up with it, and what is it now?
For the former, I think you're dead on: the iPod didn't work on Windows initially. But for the latter, I wonder. It's its own success, and it's generated its own line of products. I think the iPod can stand by itself, now.
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