When it comes to Mac applications, the ones that get talked about mostly are the ‘big brands’ as it were - MarsEdit, Netnewswire and so on. Apart from those, I am in love with these nifty little applications:

GimmeSomeTune
I like my iTunes Library to be organized - replete with detailed information: album artwork, lyrics and so on. After toying with several applications and Dashboard widgets that help you enhance iTunes’ features, I finally settled on GimmeSomeTune. (For more ways to extend your iTunes experience, check out our post on iTunes extenders)

Safari Stand
While I wanted to check it out for it’s sidebar tabs feature, I particularly like the ease with which one can download YouTube videos. Being a fan of TV ads I find it quite handy. Safari Stand also features a bookmark shelf, enhanced search features, and a whole bunch of other tweaks. Of course, there are other Safari enhancers (I have tried Saft for Panther) but Safari Stand is free.

Sniper
Think of it as iPhoto and an offline version of Flickr combined. Instead of clicking on links, Sniper allows you to download photos of your contacts and favorites right into iPhoto. [Ed: Unfortunately, there is no search feature which takes a way a lot of the Flickr experience. There is also no editing feature for tags or descriptions, and the interface is a bit windowsy.]

Pic-a-Pod
I am a sucker for good photographs and Pic-a-Pod makes downloading ‘picture of the day from sources like National Geographic and Wikipedia, a breeze. You can then directly set the wallpaper as your desktop background or switch between days. 

Which ones would feature in your list?

Apple has posted another ad in the ‘make fun of vista problems’ series, also known as the ‘Get a Mac’ ads. This one, called ‘Bake Sale’, exaggerates the extent to which Microsoft is relying on an advertising blitz to fix Vista problems. An earlier ad (Bean Counter) also followed a similar theme but this one is not-so-subtle. This one will continue to rile Windows users but seems like a conscious strategy from Apple and its advertising agency to create even more dissonance about Vista and thereby urging the fence-sitters (not to be confused with the fence shitters) to make that switch.

Personally speaking, the earlier set of ads that focused on a specific feature or benefit of using a Mac (e.g Magsafe connector translated into the ‘Accident’ ad) or a specific drawback of the PC (trial software or bloatware translated into the ‘Stuffed’ ad) worked better for me. Nevertheless, Apple should continue with this strategy of creating a certain discomfiture about being a PC owner among potential Mac users. The executions may vary in the ‘likeability quotient’ but this strategy is likely to pay dividends, even if it means pissing off many PC users. Take a look at some of the usual ‘insult comments’ over at YouTube.

What do you make of the ‘Get a Mac’ ad series? Time for Apple to let go of this strategy or should they keep at it?

Ahead of tonight’s big Apple event, where it is widely rumoured that they will announce their first sub-$1000 notebook, Microsoft has gone for a surprising PR drive. In an interview to CNET, Brad Brooks, VP of Windows Consumer Product Marketing repeated the favourite argument against Apple - they are expensive and one has to pay hidden costs. Microsoft has also sent an email to technology writers that even provides a detailed comparison of Mac products (the current range) and ‘equivalent’ PC machines. 

While Apple fans will rubbish these claims (they already are responding in droves), I thought it was remarkable because it is an acknowledgement from Microsoft that Apple is a threat to both their market share and mind share. Both the CNET interview and the email from Microsoft are a treat to read. In the context of the recent ‘I am a PC’ effort which again was acknowledging that a smaller competitor is running circles around him, this smacks of desperation and falsehood. I am sure it will get nods of acknowledgement from die-hard Windows users but how does one explain the un-taxing experience of using an Apple to them?

So, the Android has finally landed on planet Earth. The phone, called G1, claims to be yet another “iPhone Killer”. The list of features in the phone is drool worthy and it has received favourable reviews by and large.

But there is that niggling doubt already: Can it really beat the iPhone and its holistic approach? From the first looks, it appears not. And many of the features are a direct result of Apple ‘showing the way’ with its iPhone. Anyway, I am digressing. The point is that it’s amazing that a relatively small player like Apple is demonstrating a leadership stance that is forcing competitors to follow suit.

Apple has truly been a change agent in almost all its areas of business, specially of late. True, Apple did not invent the MP3 player or the touchscreen smartphone. It has simply been inventive. Whether it’s the concept of the App Store or integrating music, enterprise email, and phone into one device or rendering web pages like computers on the phone, Apple has ‘seen what others could not’. No wonder there are attempts like Skymarket and phones that offer “full HTML browser” (as one ad for LG’s mobile phones claimed). Has anybody even heard of the Dell DJ line of MP3 players?

It is said that, at Apple, new product development starts with a gut feeling about what is right for ‘us’ as consumers. In business, it is usually the upstarts that carry the innovation flag. But the track record of Apple has been amazingly consistent, even as it grows. As the 2007 article of The Economist pointed out, the four tenets of Apple innovation are:

• Network innovation
• Designing new products around the need of the user, not the demands of technology
• Ignore what the market says it wants today
• Fail wisely

All this is surprising given the emphasis on ‘gut feel’ in developing new products.

Apple scoffs at the notion of a target market. It doesn’t even conduct focus groups. “You can’t ask people what they want if it’s around the next corner,” says Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO and cofounder. At Apple, new-product development starts in the gut and gets hatched in rolling conversations that go something like this: What do we hate? (Our cellphones.) What do we have the technology to make? (A cellphone with a Mac inside.) What would we like to own? (You guessed it, an iPhone.) “One of the keys to Apple is that we build products that really turn us on,” says Jobs.

And yet, the razor sharp focus the company brings in on the few products that it chooses to create and promote is amazing. And therein lies the consumer connect.

“So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘a faster horse’.”