Anyone not in the digital media industry, will likely look at the advert and not be overly impressed, but technically, this ad is very impressive, as it extends beyond what you assume is it’s frame, the iPod covers the menu bar above (which remains active), and that my friend is really neat, in a very geeky way.

I’m assuming it’s done with a combination of still graphics synced perfectly with the video below, but I could be wrong. Although the question to ask now, is whether this is all done in HTML5, or did Apple use Flash?

Here’s to the Crazy One.

The misfit. The rebel. The troublemaker. The round peg in the square hole.

The One Who Saw Things Differently.

He wasn’t fond of rules. And he had no respect for the status quo.

You can quote him, disagree with him, glorify or vilify him. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore him. Because he changed things.

He pushed the human race forward. And while some may have seen him as the crazy one, we saw genius.

Because the man who was crazy enough to think he could change the world, was the one who did.

Check out Scoopertino for more info

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So I took the plunge, I paid my £20 to Apple for OS X 10.7, or in Marketing Speak, Lion, or what Apple like to call “The World’s Most Advanced Operating System”, modest to a T as always the guys from Cupertino!

so was I brave, nuts, wise or foolish?

The installation was simplicity itself, after doing one last time capsule back up, I clicked the App Store icon, hit the Lion purchase icon and it jumped down to my tool bar and started downloading… 3.7Gb, yes that is a G not an M… but after 20 mins it was all down, the install dialogue window appeared asking if I’d like to install Lion. But before I proceeded, I copied the downloaded file onto an external hard drive for safe keeping… as the installer automatically deletes itself after installing and I’ve other Macs I want to upgrade, and I don’t wish to download it all again, plus I can now make my own installer DVD or memory stick (details below).

The installation took about 40 mins to complete. I won’t go into all the new stuff in Lion, there’s plenty of that on the web already, it’s a nice update, but it’s just that, it’s an update, the same as Snow Leopard before it was, but the few elements it’s copied over from iOS are nicely done, although don’t exactly have the same obvious UX as you get using an iOS device, after all regardless of what Steve Jobs says, we’re not completely in a post PC world yet, for real creation and effective work, we’ll going to require real computers, and proper operating systems for some time yet!

Any problems? yep, I’ve installed Lion on my MacBook Pro, for some strange reason my headphone socket isn’t working, plug in a pair of headphones and the audio just continues to come out of the speakers? this isn’t a major problem, as I mostly use my AirTunes to play my iTunes over Wifi, plus I’m sure a fix that addresses this bug will come out soon. More importantly, will my Adobe CS4 still work? The answer is yes, So far Illustrator and photoshop are working flawlessly, I rarely use all the other CS4 apps, such as In Design, After Effects, but I opened them all to see if they work and all opened fine. I have the Adobe CS4 Master Suite if that helps anyone else with this question before upgrading. The odd app lost it’s registration when I opened them, but inputting the registration codes again, sorted them all.

I have had a strange font issue, my Helvetica Neu Bold ignores spaces, in Illustrator all my text is coming out like this “HelloI’maMacandI’maPC”, but changing font and it works fine? So I went to look for the corrupt file, but after 2hrs looking I’ve given up, I had several copies of helvetica installed, all of which I have removed, yet some how or other, Helvetica is still installed!!!!

Oh which brings me onto this little nugget, Lion makes your Library folder invisible, which is a real pain in the arse, but there’s a fix, go to http://www.macgurulounge.com/library-folder-mac-os-lion/ for more info, but all you have to do is open Terminal type chflags nohidden ~/Library and it re-appears

Getting back to making your own Installer disk… locate the downloaded installer file, it’s in your applications folder, locate an application named “Install Mac OS X Lion.app” Yes it’s an application not a disk image! copy this to an external hard drive, or if you want to make a bootable installer disk do the following.

OS X applications are actually folders, so if you right mouse click on the app icon and select “Show Package Contents” you are now presented with the folder contents. Locate the file InstallESD.dmg, it’s in the SharedSupport sub folder. Select this image then make a DVD of it like you normally do. That’s it, you now have a bootable OS X Lion Installer disk

Nokia took the biggest hit of anyone losing $8.8bn in Brand Value last year! The Top of the crop is Google, with a Brand Value (BV) of $44bn

But what does this all mean? To get a bit of perspective, Coke’s BV is now $26bn = 37% of it’s $70bn Market Capital (MC),  Nokia’s BV is $9.6bn = 28% of it’s $27bn MC, Google’s $44bn = 30% of it’s $143bn MC… while the likes of Apple, (whom appear to be in the press all the time) have a BV of $29.5bn which is only 12% of it’s $244bn MC, meaning Coke’s Brand Value is worth 3 times as much to it’s share price than Apple!

While ExxonMobil (the worlds largest company) with a MC of $312bn, has a BV of $14bn, which is just 4.3%

So as you can see, brands are very important, but they can be far more valuable to some companies than others.

more info here

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you should follow me on twitter here

I’ve been an Apple user for 25yrs (since 1986), I’ve bought more Macs than I care to remember (probably more than a 100 if I include my businesses and employees), yes I’ve got several iPods laying around the house on shelves and in drawers, Time Capsules, an Air Express connected to my music centre, a Mac Mini under my TV (no Apple TV), a couple of iPhones and of course an iPad… so yes I’ve bought heavily into the Apple eco-system over the years. I’m not one of those Mac is better than PC bores, each to their own is what I say, I’ve made my choice… the better informed one of course.

Although they’re not the first to do so, even Apple did it themselves by adding an iPod to the woman to launch the iPod, plus see DoubleTwist’s Choice video below… but Motorola’s Xoom advert that aired during yesterdays’ Super Bowl and parodies Apple’s 1984 advert, by turning it on Apple becoming the very thing they poked fun at originally, is very clever, or is it? As a longstanding Apple user, yes I understand the sad truth that Apple has changed, and not for the better… plus I’ve seen the original advert, but most of the white ear bud wearing iDrones won’t have, these guys are blindly buying into the iOS platform (you only have to see the last video below for a parody of that), these guys will likely miss the subtlety of the advert, or worse still, they may take offence at being portrayed as iDrones?

Either way, it made me smile when I saw the advert, but it won’t make me run out to buy a Xoom

Original Apple Advert

Motorola Xoom

iPod Version

DoubleTwist Parody announcing Choice

iPhone 4 vs HTC Evo AKA I would like an iPhone 4

Why is this happening?

It’s too early to say for sure (this is a very new market space), but general consensus is that Apple’s lack of subscription based payment is a major reason, meaning users have to manually purchase individual magazines rather than automated payments, plus these work out being more expensive. There’s rumours that Apple are about to roll out subscription based payments, hopefully it won’t be too little too late.

But will it be the answer, possibly, but I believe magazines and news networks need to look at the iPad and tablets in an entirely different way, rather than simply a medium for them to spout out digital versions of their print publications.

I’ve read numerous blogs and reports saying print is dead, but there’s new print magazines being released every week, so that doesn’t seem to ring true to me. Consumers still wish to consume, but the way they consume information is different now, it’s available instantaneously from so many sources and with social networks that information is becoming more and more driven by their friends, associates and their own likes and dislikes.

Flipboard on the iPad is a wonderful example of this, never before has my Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds looked so good, and been so engaging. Now if I could subscribe to several news networks, magazines etc all within a single app, and micro pay for each article as I read it, I’d be happy, as I only pay for the articles that grabbed my eye and interested me, and the software would automatically highlight related articles from all my subscribed sources and suggest new ones from other popular sources I may not have heard about and would have never found on my own.

Hands up who has ever read an entire newspaper or magazine, cover to cover? Precisely, so why pay for the whole thing when you only read a fraction of it? So rather than getting what you pay for, how about only paying for what you want? Who wouldn’t pay a penny or a cent or two per news item or magazine article that they read, as long as the payment part was transparent and managed for them, most people would give this a go, especially if they knew they could set a cap, or would have access to the whole issue if they went over a certain percentage of articles. Adverts can still be utilised, they could even be used against payment, watch an ad, get the article for free or at a reduced rate.

The technology is certainly there, the main thing holding it up, is publishers being scared to give it go through fear of losing control of their content and user base, but if they don’t do it soon willingly, then their hands will be forced by market forces, and they’re have less room to negotiate!

Who could pull this off, Apple, Amazon, Google, they could all do it, although I feel Apple is best placed for the micropayments, plus by utilising the iPad and the iOS platform, far more engaging advertising can be achieved than on a Kindle. Google just don’t have the payment side worked out properly. Apple on the other hand do, they have iTunes, ease of use and making micropayments is already there. I’ve read often that micropayments won’t work as users are put off by the fear of accumulating enormous bills at the end of the month, but the success of the App Store squashes that claim, often I’ve purchased apps at £0.59 (the minimum charge), for Apps I know nothing about, or will only use for a day or so.

With rumours of the next iPhone and iPad finally having Near Field chips, Apple are in a prime position to take on the big credit card companies that have been dragging their heels on NF for years.

An application that fuses Flipboard and Apple’s iBook into a magazine / news RSS reader, come social app linked to your Twitter and Facebook accounts, that microcharges you for articles as and when you read them, embedded with iAds, all linked back to your iTunes account, would be a very powerful and profitable application, and would be the perfect way for Apple to build it’s own social network (which it’s hungry to do), and utilise it’s new cloud data centre.

But it doesn’t end there either… Apple also updated their iLife suite but they didn’t include iDVD in their updates, it’s not even on the DVD, although you can still get the old version off their website as a download.

but of course this is Apple, so there’s one more thing!

Apple gave a sneak peak of Lion, it’s next OSX 10.7, but what they also previewed was their new Mac App Store, not to be confused with their App Store (which sells apps for iOS devices, like the iPhone, iPod and iPad)… oh no, this new store sells software for your Macintosh.

So how long before Apple no longer supplies, or start limiting supplies of it’s software on physical media such as DVD’s? This is many advantages, for both Apple and the consumers, limits piracy, and allows the user easier updates and installation. It won’t be long before you can purchase all of your Mac software this way. Note Apple are about to complete building their $1bn data centre, just outside silicon valley.

When Apple released the iMac without a floppy drive the press went crazy, saying Apple was mad, but of course they were bang on the money, (Shift Happens are you ready for it?) then they went after the audio CD with iTunes and the iPod, they’re after the movie industry and DVDs with downloaded movies, direct to your iOS devices and iTunes, plus their hobby the Apple TV (plus it’s worth mentioning they’ve never included any sort of BluRay drive or playback on the Mac)… and now they’re after the software industry and DVDROM. They may not have given the DVDROM a good kicking just yet, but they’ve got their sights on it, and going by past experience, they’re probably succeed.

(and yes I agree, they are ridiculously named products!)