While it’s taken as writ that we cultists tend to be creative types, a recent study from the Fuqua school of business at Duke University seems to indicate that simply seeing an Apple logo makes you more creative.
The researchers conducted a number of experiments, one of which was showing the logos for fractions of a second to create a subliminal impression, and in all cases those who’d seen the Apple logo scored higher on standardized creativity tests than those who’d seen the IBM logo or no logos at all.
Keith Sawyer in his Creativity and Innovation blog has got a great write up on the paper if you don’t feel like sorting through all the academic stuff in the published paper (I managed to get through 5 whole pages before turning to Keith’s excellent article).
Written by Leigh McMullen on May 3rd, 2008 with no comments.
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Very interesting cover story in BusinessWeek about soaring demand for Macs inside of companies. In some ways, this is an inevitable outgrowth of the success of the iPod. Sales of the iPod goose home sales of Macs, and once you’ve got a Mac, you never want to work in Windows again. Writer Peter Burrows says it well:
But now the call is coming from mainstream users, people who may have started off with an iPod, then bought a Mac at home and no longer want a “Windows-by-day, Mac-by-night” existence.
This may be a sign of hope for all of us Mac users-in-exile. I work in an all-ThinkPad office, and dream of getting to live an all-Mac life. But since we’re consultants, we use the same machines that our clients do. What does that mean? Buy more Macs, corporate world! Then we can ditch Windows for good!
Written by Pete Mortensen on May 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
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Leigh looks over at fellow consultant Pete M., “if this is true, buddy, we’re going to be RICH! RICH beyond our wildest dreams…”
Fake Steve, in a recent story, referred to an article by Dev Corvin, which was breaking news about the forthcoming Windows 7 (which has moved its ship date up to 2009 as a result of the spectacular results Vista has demonstrated in the market…). Found amid the usual Windows blah-blah-blah, which I suffer through so you don’t have to, was this tasty quote:
Dev Corvin, thebetaguy.com :
Windows 7 takes a different approach to the componentization and backwards compatibility issues; in short, it doesn’t think about them at all. Windows 7 will be a from-the-ground-up packaging of the Windows codebase; partially source, but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows.
Now I didn’t just take FSJ and this Dev guy’s word for it, I employed minimalist “journalistic” research and went ahead and Googled “Windows 7″ “Not Backwards Compatible”, which yeilded some 1.8 million hits.
This has me literally giddy with anticipation, see I am a consultant, which my mom thinks is code for being unemployed, and about 55% of my firm’s business world-wide is Microsoft-related. I have half a mind to switch practices from Strategy and Transformation to MS (though those practitioners do look hostilely at my Blackberry let alone my Macbook Pro).
In short, fixing all that broken .NET code out there in corporate America will be tantamount to the Y2K effort 10 years ago; a license to print money for consultants. From the bottom of my heart, Thank you Bill.
Now why should anybody who reads Cult of Mac care about this, other than some kind of surrogate pleasure to be gained from my anticipated financial success?
Because, friends, Microsoft’s lock on corporate IT has every everything to do with backwards compatibility. Should Redmond choose to proceed with this folly, our ranks (of Mac loyalists) are destined to swell such that I might have to consider something other than my MB Pro to make me cool and hip in the eyes of our college hires (as-if… might I suggest a really expensive (and thus exclusive) accessory, like a tablet. –ed)
Written by Leigh McMullen on April 6th, 2008 with no comments.
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In a clear sign that everyone is really frantic to get Super Tuesday over with already, the New York Times has published the article contrasting Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama the world wasn’t waiting for. Noam Cohen has the temerity to ask: Is Obama a Mac and Hillary a PC?
I started cringing before I even started reading. Essentially, it comes down to the idea that Obama’s website looks like Apple’s (it doesn’t - looks more generic Web 2.0), and that Hillary’s looks like a typical business-solutions provider (maybe? I’d say it looks more like Foxnews.com). Some of the quotes are quite hilarious.
With Obama’s site, all the features and elements are seamlessly integrated, just like the experience of using a program on a Macintosh computer,” said Alice Twemlow, chairwoman of the M.F.A. program in design criticism at the School of Visual Arts (who is a Mac user).
And what does this mean for those of us voting on Tuesday? Absolutely nothing. The story doesn’t even bother to mention if either Obama or Hillary use Macs. Seems like that might have proven relevant…
On a more relevant front, I’ve reposted the Hillary 1984 video after the jump.
(more…)
Written by Petemortensen on February 4th, 2008 with no comments.
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Anyone who has followed Apple for long has seen activists from Greenpeace or other environmental groups bash the company’s use of toxic or difficult to recycle materials in its products. The company recently trashed Apple’s iPhone for what it claimed were extraordinarily high levels of toxic chemicals the company had pledged to stop using. Of course, Apple only promised to stop using them by the end of 2008, so…
Those clever troublemakers over at Gizmodo cited an industry group that challenged Greenpeace’s methods for determining the contents of the iPhone — they only detected Bromine, not which compounds were present. This led to a lot of furor from Greenpeace, as you can imagine. The rebuttal is quite long, but the last quote from its spokesperson is worth the reading:
If you think we just protest against Apple then look out for soon a report covering a wide range of manufacturers as we have done in 2006. While it might not make as many headlines as the iPhone it doesn’t mean that we are not focusing on all manufacturers to remove toxic chemicals from their products.
That sounds like an admission to me… Apple is moving out ahead of its competitors here. Maybe it would help the cause to admit that, guys…
Via Slashdot
Written by Petemortensen on October 23rd, 2007 with no comments.
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