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Welcome to my personal blog. This is full of my opinions. Not Microsoft's or MacBU's opinions - mine. And remember, this is the internet, so I probably have no idea what I’m talking about.

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January 5, 2008

Top 10 things on my wishlist for the Stevenote

We are nine days from the Stevenote at Macworld .... here's the top 10 things I would love to hear (in no particular order, really)

  1. Less than 3 pound notebook. I love my Macbook but it is 5 pounds!
  2. Hi-def video content on iTunes
  3. NBC shows back on iTunes
  4. Hi-def DVD drives in the whole Mac line
  5. Apple TV hardware refresh: 1080p out and a hi-def DVD drive. Oh, and an option to get the 300gb 2.5" drive, too. I dislike manually upgrading
  6. Ability to access the iTunes store from my Apple TVs
  7. iPod Touch with a hard drive - I want to be able to carry all my movies again!
  8. 3G iPhone - please, please, please have mercy and get me off edge!
  9. iPhone with 16GB or even better 32GB
  10. Quad SLI ATI Radeon HD 3800 or NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra gaming cards in the Mac Pro (heck, throw terabyte drives in as an option too)

Can't wait to hear what's new!

Posted by Craig at 10:53 AM | | | Leave a comment

Comments

How about a Rogers iPhone for your friends in Canada!?!!?!

Posted by: Gray | January 7, 2008 11:11 AM

Uh, so you can cross #10 off already, huh?

Posted by: Erik J. Barzeski | January 8, 2008 5:25 PM

Gray - as a fellow Canadian, I feel your pain. I hope you get your iPhone!

Erik - I know, they were damned close! It isn't quite the high end cards, but close enough to cross it off my list. The new Mac Pro should make a kick-butt gaming machine.

Posted by: Craig | January 8, 2008 10:08 PM

Actually, my top wish from your excellent team would be MS Money for Mac. Please... with multicurrency support as it is currently on PC.

Posted by: Marc Denjean | January 14, 2008 3:52 AM

October 17, 2007

nano-nano

It has been a hectic time the past few weeks - so much to do, so little time. Not only are we doing a massive push to get Office 2008 ready to ship, but we are also doing a huge amount of work around our launch of said Office 2008. And we are also ramping up our communications – not only on MacMojo, but with a broad variety of partners. If that wasn’t enough, we’re also preparing for our internal strategy review. So blogging has just fallen off a cliff for me. But I was wide awake in the Sheraton in Palo Alto late last night and I was mostly caught up on email and I couldn't bear to look at another strategy PPT, so I briefly rejoined the blogging world and wrote this post (slightly modified while I wait for my next meeting right now) (written in Word 2008, BTW!)

I have a 4 and a half year old boy named Duncan and an almost 7 year old boy named Angus and I love them both with all my heart. The demands of my job mean that I am only around them for about an hour and a half in the morning during the week – I typically don’t get home until long after they are asleep. And those 90 minutes are harried - we all tend to wake up around 7am, and then it is a mad dash of a blood test & insulin for Angus (he was diagnosed with type 1 (aka juvenile) diabetes last December), then KT & I have to create two breakfasts, two snacks, and two lunches and then I have to shower, shave, dress and roar out the door by 8:20 so they can be at school at 8:30. So on weekends the boys and I make up for lost time during the week by doing what I dubbed years ago "boys day out". We do things like go to parks & playgrounds, we ride the ferry, we explore the Seattle Center, we go to the zoo or the aquarium, we visit the Lego store (I should blog about my Lego habit some day. I have… um… lots), sometimes we go to my office so I can catch up, and oh yes… and sometimes we go to the Apple store.

This Sunday was one of those Apple store trips. Like anyone who paid $600 for an iPhone (for two iPhones in my case) and then saw the price drop to $400 a couple of months later, I was irritated. However, I realized that if I had it to do all over again, it was worth the extra money to experience the early adopter excitement - so I got over my irritation pretty quickly. And then I put two and two together and I realized that I had not one, but two iPhone rebates pending – so a brand spankin' new 8GB iPod nano was a now a freebie. As Mr. Burns from the Simpsons would say.... Exxxxxxcellent!

My spankin' new nano is cool – I love how surreally thin it is, I love the look of the anodized aluminum and polished stainless steel, and I love the bright screen. Oh, and I love that I can drop it in the parking lot and barely scratch it (a big oops! yesterday morning). But most surprising to me is how usable it is as a video device. I was skeptical – after using the iPhone for video, I swore I would never use my iPod again for video because I loved the screen size of the iPhone - and the nano’s screen is even smaller than my iPod. However, on my flight to San Jose yesterday morning, I decided to check it out and I watched an episode of CSI: Miami (gotta love David Caruso!) and it was great. The nano is so light that you can hold it forever, and the screen, as it turns out, is big enough. It's no iPhone or iPod Touch, but it is an OK size. I did get irritated by the fact that it was about a gazillion clicks to move between full screen and wide screen (and you have to stop watching the video to do it) when it is a double tap of my finger (without leaving the video) on my iPhone, but that was the only negative part of the experience.

I also have a new 24” iMac (I frickin' LOVE my job!), but more on that later.

nano-nano!

Posted by Craig at 5:08 PM | | | Leave a comment

Comments

Craig,

When I was very small, and my dad had only worked at IBM for a few years out of his 35 year run (so far. they refuse to let him go), my dad had a manager who used to stay at the office until 11 at night.

One day, mom and dad were at a social engagement with manager and manager's wife, and manager's wife said (cue vmarks theatre)

INT. - DINNER PARTY - NIGHT

MGR WIFE, MGR, MOM, DAD are talking, socializing, holding drinks while extras socialize around them in small groups.

MGR WIFE
You know, MGR gets along great with our two boys. He plays with them every day!

DAD

But MGR, you don't have kids, really, do you? When do you play with them! You're at the office til 11 each night.

MGR WIFE
(answering for MGR, as only a wife can)
Oh no! MGR comes home at midnight every night. We wake the boys up, MGR plays with them for an hour, and then we put them back to bed. He's a wonderful father!

MOM
(to dad)
You'll be coming home at 7pm from now on.

END.


I later went to work at IBM with him and saw first hand the toll on family. IBM didn't help matters with the dissolution of things like IBM family day, which was a fair with amusement park rides that IBM set up at each campus around the nation.

I used my $100 iphone coupon on the airport base. hadn't meant to, but needed to when the BRAND THAT SHALL NOT BE NAMED decided to fail.


Posted by: vmarks | October 31, 2007 8:20 AM

waiting on new comments and posts. and office 2008. and windows live messenger for mac with video.

Posted by: vmarks | November 17, 2007 8:44 AM

Hey vmarks - sorry for the huge latency, I've basically ignored this blog the past two months as the drive to ship hit a crescendo – and then I had to dig these comments out from about 700 spam comments that had accumulated.

We’ve RTMed Office 2008, so it is on track to be in stores mid January in the U.S. and a number of other countries. As far as AV in Messenger goes, check out this blog post on Mac Mojo.

Posted by: Craig | December 16, 2007 8:33 PM

June 25, 2007

YouTube, Meet AppleTV; AppleTV, Meet YouTube

One of my AppleTV's popped up with a "hey, there's an update" message yesterday, and I said "sure, I'll take it". I completely forgot that the YouTube update was coming out this month… so I was pleasantly surprised when the reboot was over.

First impressions - it is way, way cool. My expectations were pretty low of what the video quality would be like - people upload some really bad encodings. But the video actually looks surprisingly good. And Apple once again just nailed the simplicity of the experience - looking at clips leads to suggestions of other clips leads to other clips… I spent an hour surfing Conan O'Brian and SNL shorts before I knew it (oh, I should mention that I started at midnight… oops).

Anyway, YouTube on AppleTV gets two thumbs up - it is channel surfing for the 21st century.

Now, if only my AppleTV had a 3.5" 320 by 480 screen, a battery, 7 hours of video play time, weighed 135 grams, and was 115 x 61 x 11.6mm. And could place phone calls. I'm just sayin'.

Posted by Craig at 10:10 PM | | | Leave a comment | TrackBacks (0)

Comments

Can't someone get this guy an iPhone?
I think you are well within your rights to expense this one to the company. Doesn't someone need to... um... test it or something.

Posted by: Stefan | June 25, 2007 11:33 PM

EXT. NIGHT - BACK ALLEY SOMEWHERE.

STREET LAMP OVERHEAD FLICKERING

SHADY GUY IN TRENCHCOAT
You can have the 3.5" screen and 7 hours of battery life. In exchange, you have to give up 152 gigabytes of storage.
CRAIG
Hmmm... I don't know... I do like me some storage....

SHADY GUY IN TRENCHCOAT
Deal?

CRAIG shakes his head, begins to inch backwards
SHADY GUY IN TRENCHCOAT
What? Hey, come back here! Opportunities like this don't come every day! It's just gigabytes, and no one really needs more than half a gigabyte anyway, right? Right? That oughta be enough for skateboarding dogs, driving cats, and phone calls to aunt Lulu. She misses you, man, she misses you

Craig turns to run

SHADY GUY IN TRENCHCOAT
(shouting)
SHE MISSES YOU!

Streetlight burns out.

SCENE.

Posted by: vmarks | June 26, 2007 1:33 PM

June 19, 2007

9 days and counting

Watching Boston Legal tonight, I saw something on the order of 50 or 60 iPhone ads. In fact, I think the entire episode was an iPhone ad. I can't bring myself to give up push email, and I still want one. Who do you have to know to get an iPhone?!

Posted by Craig at 11:32 PM | | | Leave a comment | TrackBacks (0)

Comments

I hate to admit it, but the addition of YouTube is enticing. I must get 15 links a day from friends and family.

Posted by: mindflayer | June 20, 2007 9:47 AM

iPhones would make great ship gifts ... ;)

Posted by: Nadyne Mielke | June 20, 2007 10:04 AM

You don't give up push-mail - you use Yahoo's push mail with it.

What this means is that you set Yahoo to retrieve the other accounts you care about, or set those other accounts to fwd to Yahoo, and then use the Yahoo push mail.

I currently have accounts fwd to gmail, and gmail set to send from the account name that email was sent to, so I can use gmail and it looks as if I was using whatever accnt the person sent to. The whole push bit is a standard part of IMAP now, as is the behavior I described from gmail - so it should all be possible to email and not look like it's any different to the person sending to you.

Posted by: vmarks | June 22, 2007 4:37 AM

June 13, 2007

WWDC Day 3

Today has been an interesting day so far. I haven’t had much time to attend sessions; I’ve spent a good chunk of my day with a variety of folks from Apple. What I found is a genuine interest and passion to ensure OS X is a great platform for our software, and that same interest and passion for working with us to ensure our software is great on OS X. At the end of the day, what else could one want in a partner?

Now off to deal with some pressing email and then back to hopefully catch another session at WWDC.

Posted by Craig at 2:11 PM | | | Leave a comment | TrackBacks (0)

Comments

"At the end of the day, what else could one want in a partner?"

Someone who doesn't spell "Mac OS X" as if it were IBM's OS/2 ?

:D - sorry, couldn't resist.

Posted by: vmarks | June 14, 2007 8:08 AM

It was interesting to see a familiar name on the MacBU blog. I currently work at AOL, and it seems like just yesterday that you were speaking about platform services. I also managed ICQ/ICQ Mobile and AOL Mobile operations previously here, so have more than a passing familiarity. ;)

So, to the gist - how about hooking up an ex-colleague with a beta of Entourage 2008? As you know, we just moved to Exchange Server here, and running Entourage on my Intel-based Macs is painful!

I'm also quite jealous of your ability to get a 24" iMac. I end up using my own gear a lot due to the process here....

Posted by: Patrick Scott | June 14, 2007 1:13 PM

DOOOH! I can't believe I did that. PS/2, OS/2 - OS/X. gahhhhhhhhh!

Posted by: Craig Eisler | June 14, 2007 1:16 PM

What about CP/M? I'm not sure you're quite old enough for that though.

Posted by: Paulsc | June 14, 2007 6:29 PM

June 12, 2007

WWDC Day 2 Begins

Okay, I'm a slacker - I haven't left my hotel room yet. I have two good excuses - first is that I am going to check out the graphics & imaging tracks today, and they don't start until 10:30. The second is that I installed Leopard on my Macbook this morning. I'm posting from it right now, in fact - when I'm not randomly switching between spaces just because it looks cool. I'm listening to the Stevenote playing in a separate space - spiffy!

Mr. Welch - by the time my day was done yesterday, I couldn't find anyone that could tell me where Dave's was - I missed out on the rounds of Diet Cokes. My apologies. I plead multiple counts of ignorance as my defense. Anyway, off to WWDC Day 2!

Posted by Craig at 9:20 AM | | | Leave a comment | TrackBacks (0)

Comments

How are you finding the beta?

Posted by: Jamie | June 12, 2007 1:07 PM

"I couldn't find anyone that could tell me where Dave's was..."

If they don't know where Dave's is, you're hanging out with the wrong crowd. :)

As for buying "Diet Cokes", you have a reputation, as a fellow Canadian, to at least set those deadbeat, mooching developers up with a round. Dave's conveniently lets you buy ahead of time so you don't actually have to be there to buy.

You're welcome. :)

Posted by: Shawn King | June 12, 2007 2:29 PM

That's okay Craig. It's on Third, across the street from the Westin, which used to be the Argent.

You can make it up tonight after Stump :-P

Posted by: John C. Welch | June 12, 2007 2:51 PM

Okay, well now I know where it is, that's a start :-). And thanks to Shawn, I now know that I can pay in advance. I'm not sure I wanted to know that :-)

And for Jamie, I can't say anything about it really because we're all under NDA, but I will say that I used the beta all today and it was great.

Posted by: Craig Eisler | June 12, 2007 6:26 PM

"I now know that I can pay in advance"

Think of it this way - if you pay in advance, you won't actually have to hang out with "those people". :)

"I will say that I used the beta all today and it was great."

Craig, I think you'll find that if you read that Apple NDA you'll find that you can't even admit that you *have* the beta, let alone talk about it. :)

Posted by: Shawn King | June 12, 2007 6:31 PM

June 11, 2007

WWDC day 1

It's not over yet, but I am taking a little break in between meetings. My first Stevenote was definitely a cool experience - Steve is a terrific presenter and the 90 minutes was close to flawless as I have ever seen. And they did a great job herding 5000+ people into one place and then out again.

Safari for Windows was a surprise, and leveraging the downloads of iTunes is certainly a great way to drive distribution. I am fascinated to watch and see where that goes!

That’s about all I think I’ll say – the rest of the conference is confidential and my best bet is to just shut up and attend.

Posted by Craig at 4:24 PM |

Comments

June 8, 2007

Think different

Check it out!

Posted by Craig at 3:05 PM | | | Leave a comment | TrackBacks (1)

Comments

So Craig, about that "if you use someone else's standards, you don't make any bloody money" quote from your interview?

:-P

Posted by: John C. Welch | June 10, 2007 8:19 AM

Oh, yeah, I remember that :-). Yup – those were the platform days: owning the platform was the name of the game. Frankly, platform battles are exhausting. I've been working on end-user applications and solutions the past few years, and I find that I like that a lot. That's one of the many things that appealed to me about Mac BU - than chance to work on awesome products for end-users.

Posted by: Craig Eisler | June 10, 2007 9:49 AM

Hee...actually I thought it was a good interview, especially the parts talking about the joys of the banking industry. Since my current "real" job is with an insurance company that is moving from "EVERYTHING IS COBOL AND COBOL IS EVERYTHING" to WebSphere and DB2, (yes, I do drink a lot more of late), and I am the "not mainframe, not windows" guy, I can relate to that environment....

"What port is the CICS transaction gateway running on?"

"What's a port?"

Oh look, John found that bourbon in the bottom desk drawer.

Posted by: John C. Welch | June 10, 2007 10:31 AM

June 6, 2007

Black MacBook Hotness!

I'm posting this from my hot new Black MacBook - I'm not only on a new laptop, I'm giving ecto for Mac a spin. I ordered my new laptop Monday night from MacMall - tricked out with a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo Intel processor, 2 GB RAM, and 160GB of hard disk.

I've never had an Apple laptop before - just desktop machines. I started playing with it when I got home about 2 hours ago. Man this thing is sweet.

Posted by Craig at 11:06 PM | | | Leave a comment

Comments

Congratulations! I'm considering getting one of those myself. But the new MacBook Pros also look mighty tempting ;-)

Posted by: Magnus | June 8, 2007 11:29 AM

It’s Here! It’s Here!

About a month ago, I was figuring out what desktop PC to get for work. I have a laptop that I'm not too happy with and I wanted a little more horsepower. And a bigger screen. And a bigger hard drive. And a real video card. Other than those things, I was perfectly happy with my laptop.

I'd also been looking for an excuse to buy a 24" iMac for about a year - the spot in our kitchen back in VA was about a half inch too short to accommodate it (doh!), so I was stuck getting a 20" one. I have a space now, but the 20" one survived the move and so I couldn't really justify buying another.

So I figured - make it my work machine! Why not find out if the corporate buying process at Microsoft can handle it? I figured it was possible since we have a Mac team. Sure enough, the corporate process handled it, and it just showed up late yesterday afternoon. Whaaa-freaking-hoooooooo! It's fully tricked out, too:

  • 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
  • 2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM
  • 750GB Serial ATA Drive
  • NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB SDRAM

I have meetings, meetings and more meetings today, so I can't do any with it until tonight - bummer!

Posted by Craig at 12:25 PM |

Comments

June 1, 2007

I hate moving

Right before we moved from DC back to Seattle, I decided to upgrade my Mac Cube harddrive to 250gb from 125gb. For some reason, the drive was only recognized as 125gb, not 250 - and OS X wouldn't boot from it. Gah! Then the swirl of moving happened, everything got packed, and I forgot about it.

Fast forward two and a half months, my stuff is all out of storage and unpacked in my spiffy new home office. I just got home from work, all jazzed to get my Cube working again. I got out my stack of harddrives (don't ask), and no joy - no 125gb harddrive to be found. I looked EVERYWHERE - no joy. It has simply vanished. Luckily, I found the original 30gb drive - made in 2000 for gosh sakes - it even has an Apple logo on it (I didn't notice that before). And it still boots - thank god! It is merrily updating to OS X (Power PC version, of course ) 10.4.9 and iTunes 7.2 - with all of 5GB free.

Next stop - my Mac Mini. I have found my power supply, keyboard, mouse and monitor - but no Mac Mini.

I hate moving.

Posted by Craig at 10:01 PM | | | Leave a comment | TrackBacks (0)

Comments

120 GB drive is the max size for Cube. Due to the limitation of the IDE controller larger hard drive are recognized only as 127 GB. Get a 120 GB drive and format it by starting the Mac from the install CD.

Great blog by the way!

Posted by: Teemu Masalin | June 8, 2007 11:51 AM

Welcome (back) to Seattle. If you're looking for a good church, let me know. I know of one. ;)

Posted by: Sean S | June 9, 2007 6:44 PM

You can install a drive larger than 120GB with the help of Intech's SpeedTools ATA Hi-Cap Support Driver ($25). See http://www.speedtools.com/ATA6.shtml and the FAQ at http://www.cubeowner.com for more info.

Posted by: Laurie Duncan | June 26, 2007 7:32 AM

Laurie - awesome tip - thank you!! 750GB drive, here I come!

Posted by: Craig Eisler | June 26, 2007 3:36 PM

Dagnabbit

I figured that I would get a little more time before I got to feel like an idiot for manually upgrading all my AppleTVs to 160gb. Ah, well, almost 7 weeks of feeling good about it, that isn't bad, I suppose .

Posted by Craig at 2:11 PM | | | Leave a comment | TrackBacks (0)

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May 31, 2007

I’m outing myself: The Top Ten Things from Apple I Love

Yesterday was an epic event for anyone who has lived through the personal computer revolution - Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did a joint live interview with Walt Mossberg and Kate Swisher at D. There is no full video archive (ironically, the subtitle of the conference is "All things Digital" - all things but the full interview! (updated 6/1 - they did later post it in 8 segments), but I found the first 15 minutes and an edited down summary. Engadget had a nice play-by-play and I liked the Seattle Times piece. The full transcript was published by the D folks.

Watching the video and reading the transcripts inspired me to out myself - so here we go, here are the top ten things from Apple I love:

#10) I loved my Powermac G4 (RIP). I bought it in 2000 when my first son was born to do video editing.

#9 ) I love my Mac Cube - in all its hugeness compared the Mini. Over the years, I have upgraded it with OS X, 1.25 GB of RAM and 125 GB of hard disk (I tried a 250GB drive in it about 2 1/2 months ago right before I moved but something went horribly, horribly wrong). I will never get rid of it, ever.

#8) I love my Mac Mini. Even though I bought a PPC one right before Apple announced Intel based solutions. Like my Cube, it is with me to stay. I may even buy an Intel based one (before they go away) and put Vista Media Center on it.

#7) I love my iMacs (all 3!) Beautiful. Elegant. Why can't PC makers take a page from Apple's book - design MATTERS.

#6) I love OS X on my iMacs. It is very pretty. I wish more of the software I use ran there.

#5) I love that my iMacs dual boot between OS X and Windows. That's why we now have 3 in the Eisler house - I can have my cake and eat it, too.

#4) I love my 80gb video iPod. Its battery life for watching shows on cross country flights kicks ass. It got me through a lot of DC/Seattle commutes back when I was at AOL.

#3) I love the Mac/PC ads. I know I shouldn't. They hit us where it hurts. But they make me laugh. Every time.

#2) I love, LOVE My AppleTVs. All 5. Plus one at my office. All but the one in my office manually upgraded to 160gb - just in time for Apple to announce a 160gb SKU. DOH!

#1) I love, LOVE, LOVE iTunes + iPod + AppleTV. I buy a season's pass through iTunes and then it is magic - my new shows show up on my PC, my iPod, my AppleTVs. What's on my AppleTV? 24, Battlestar Galactica (no new episodes until October, dammit), CSI Miami, The Dresden Files, Heroes, House (at LONG LAST!), Jericho (canceled after a cliffhanger season closer - sometimes I hate networks), Law & Order: SUV, the Mac/PC ads (yes, I edited all the metadata to make them into a TV show), Monk, My Friends Tigger & Pooh (my kids love it), The Riches (Eddie Izzard ROCKS), Southpark, and Spin City (okay, not on iTunes, but I ripped my 2 "best of DVDs", made h264's out of them, and then mucked with the metadata so they looked like TV shows - I'll stipulate it's not a consumer scenario).

I work for Microsoft and love the company and our products- so don't get me wrong, I will take all that I love about Apple's approach and strongly encourage my colleagues around the company to learn from it and do it better. And for the record, I should mention that I am also living the Vista Media Center Dream: I have as many Xboxes as AppleTVs connected to 2 Vista based media center PCs (each w/ 2TB of storage) because iTunes doesn't have nearly everything we watch as a family - and I don't want to pay $1.99 for every episode of something I watch. Oh, and Xboxes are DVD players, too (and for $199, they can be HD-DVD players). Oh, and my Xboxes play games. And they cost the same as an AppleTV - $299. And they are only... ummm... a TEENY bit bigger than an AppleTV.

Truth is, both companies are great companies in their own right. Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gates both can be proud of what they have built - they both already have amazing legacies. Look at me - I'm trying to have my cake, and eat it too!

Posted by Craig at 6:44 PM | | | Leave a comment

Comments

Don't you mean have your APPLE and eat it too? I agree the AppleTV & Xbox combo rocks it HARD.

Posted by: The Wife | June 1, 2007 3:49 PM

Question: how did you edit the metadata to have iTunes recognize the videos you wanted as movies/series/music videos and whatnot? I have several music video clips that I want to add to iTunes for use with Front Row and I can't find how to do it; any help is greatly appreciated:)

Posted by: Spyros "Flareman" Smparounis | June 8, 2007 12:39 PM

The entire interview, and question and answer session is now available on iTunes at:
>http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=256972720

I found it quite interesting, and i'm proud that both Bill and Steve had the courage to do it, knowing they would have to confront each other on a variety of topics.

Posted by: Ron Manke | June 8, 2007 2:35 PM

*What I love about the Mac is that I can easily move applications from one machine to another.
*I can easily video edit/music edit. I still have problems with my new Vista machine.

Posted by: 8string | June 8, 2007 4:17 PM

If you're using the Vista media center as a PVR, why aren't you having it record the shows you watch and then put those shows into iTunes for AppleTV?

Posted by: vmarks | June 8, 2007 5:13 PM

oh, right. Vista MCE records in DVR-MS format. It's MPEG2, so you'd have to strip out the MPEG2 and then encode that to h264. Sounds like a less than desirable choice by the MCE folks. (If you record it with your own tv tuner, why should it have DRM?!)

Posted by: vmarks | June 8, 2007 5:24 PM

Hallelujah! Someone who thinks the same as me! I have a mixed Mac and PC home and smile to myself every day that I have the best of both worlds.

Welcome to the MacBU too. I hope you are able to bring more convergence to the experience so that it becomes less of a "Mac vs PC" thing, and more of a "I use Microsoft products" thing.

Posted by: Alan Hamilton | June 9, 2007 1:17 AM

Jericho was renewed...8 episode season 2. Hope you enjoy it on your AppleTVs :D

Posted by: stephen | June 9, 2007 2:20 AM

Hi Craig, congratulations on the new job and good luck! We posted a quick welcome at

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/08/microsofts-macbu-gets-new-gm-craig-eisler/

Posted by: Mike Rose | June 9, 2007 5:54 AM

In response to a previous question (second comment above, by Flareman) about meta-data, I suggest looking for some scripts (Search Google for "Doug's Scripts") that you can use with iTunes that will modify video metadata, among other things, much more efficiently than with iTunes.

Posted by: Kyle | June 9, 2007 10:14 AM

I am glad to see your enthusiasm for Apple, but unless its something like helping to bring DirectX to Macs I am not so sure I can be as excited :p

Posted by: Jeff | June 9, 2007 4:26 PM

for a guy who has 5 apple TV's and 5 xboxes and, and and...
it's weird to see that 2 dollars for an episode is too much...

Posted by: kermit | June 9, 2007 10:52 PM

After reading this, I'm really glad that you took up that position. :)
Cool.

Posted by: Vidd | June 10, 2007 7:15 AM

@Mike Rose: Thanks for the tip, much appreciated:)

Posted by: Spyros "Flareman" Smparounis | June 10, 2007 8:28 AM

Hey - I posted a response to some of the comments here.

Posted by: Craig Eisler | June 10, 2007 9:55 AM

Hopefully you can get a non-crippled version of MS office released. ie one with full scripting built in. That way I can not only purchase the Upgrade, I can recommend it's purchase to my customers who need 100% compatability with MS Office 2007.

Posted by: Jen | June 10, 2007 10:48 AM

Glad to see someone like me at Microsoft Mac BU.
I was an Appe Dealer (like Great Plains Software was... now MBS), I own company that is Microsoft Certified Partner with competencies on Dynamics GP, CRM, RMS and I am an MCP myself also a Small Biz Specialist.
AND I LOVE MY MACS too!!
I have a 24" Intel and 20" G5 at home plus a few iPods.

I would like to see further usability and support for Exchange 2003 / 2007 on the next version of Entourage.

Thanks!

Enrique

Posted by: Enrique García | June 10, 2007 7:35 PM

About Jericho... there are some news.


LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- "Jericho" fans who slammed CBS with protests over the drama's cancellation have won the battle: It will return next season, the network said Wednesday.

Posted by: Tom Gerhardt | June 11, 2007 9:20 AM

OMG, Mother our son is... a Mac user! What did we do wrong! lol

Nice to see that you love Macs like I do.

Posted by: meinrosebud | July 13, 2007 1:32 AM

I hope you'll give us a beautiful and powerful new mac office version soon. Good luck:)

Posted by: tnlavie | August 3, 2007 12:16 PM

July 9, 2005

The Mac mini


I was in CompUSA today and I saw one of these, and it is unbelievable. These Apple guys really get design. You can configure this teeny thing (6.5"x6.5"x2") with a gig of ram,a 1.4ghz PPC G4 processer, bluetooth, 802.11, an 80 gig harddrive, and a DVD/CD burner. Fully decked out it is $1049.

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