TechRadar just put an opinion piece online sure to grate with the Apple faithful. Rob Mead asserts that Snow Leopard is “little more than a service pack” and that “Windows 7 has raised the bar—and OS X 10.6 can’t reach it”.

The article goes on to lambaste Apple for having the audacity to release a system upgrade that doesn’t have any huge new features, and suggests that because of this it will “inevitably be crushed under the wheels of the mighty Windows 7 juggernaut”. I find that viewpoint perverse in the extreme.

First and foremost, criticising Apple for Snow Leopard being all about architecture rather than new features is rather like having a go at the driver in front of you for turning left after they’ve had their left-hand indicator flashing for the last quarter mile. Apple has been upfront about Snow Leopard from the start, saying that it’s about next-generation technologies and not new features.

Mead claims that this will make it a tough sale, and there at least I agree. But the fact that Snow Leopard looks much the same as Leopard isn’t something we should complain about. While I’d love to see a unified UI, I’m glad Apple—with the exception of QuickTime X—has avoided yet more pointless ‘make it look different in screen grabs to make people think it’s new’ gimmicky UI changes (see: the hideous Leopard ‘glass’ Dock and the semi-transparent menu bar, the latter of which subsequently caused much back-peddling).

Also, I’d sooner see Apple plugging the gaps for once, rather than losing focus by concentrating on the next big thing. It’s done the same with OS X iPhone 3.0, largely making important tweaks rather than wowing the audience. Likewise, Mac OS X 10.6 improves Stacks, Finder and Mail. AI for ‘intelligent’ PDF text selection in Preview might not be a show-stopping feature like Time Machine, but it’ll certainly provide the “real world benefits these changes will bring” that Mead thinks is missing from this release. The same is true for the 6GB you’ll claw back on your hard drive, the video-editing and sharing now built directly into QuickTime X, out-of-process Safari plug-ins, and the Exposé/Dock mash-up that obliterates one of the consumer-oriented Windows 7 features that had stolen the limelight—its revised taskbar.

Mead also complains about PowerPC support being ditched, and here I just say: tough. Technology moves on, and we’re three years past the Intel switch. It’s not like you have to bin a PPC Mac if the latest operating system won’t run on it (in fact, my sole PPC Mac quite happily waddles along on Tiger and is still regularly used), and to attack Apple by claiming people who splashed out on powerful Macs three or more years ago will lose out is risable.

Apple is a company that has always moved forward far more quickly than the likes of Microsoft, and it doesn’t look back. Apple shouldn’t compromise its important ‘overhaul’ upgrade, which sets the foundations for its future, just to cater for products that were end-of-lifed three years ago.

When Tim Kring’s Heroes first aired on British TV, I admit I was hooked. Despite being in my 30s, I’m a big fan of comic books (albeit mostly those written by Brits, and not the ‘superhero’ genre), and this series looked like it could be an exciting and different television adventure.

Initially, this was the case. Although lumbered with a US-style season, there was relatively little padding, and a genuine feeling that anything could happen. The nature of the series—combining various elements of ‘real life’ drama, superhero-style powers but without the ‘superhero’, sci-fi and imagination—meant I always tuned in to see what would happen next, and the series culminated in a suitably satisfying finale.

Since then, it’s all gone a bit wrong, and I found myself genuinely bored with the last series of Heroes far too often. I think I know what the problem is: Heroes has become too much like a US superhero comic book.

Some explanation is clearly needed here, so: generally, in British comics a character gets killed and stays dead. There’s mercifully little retconning, and stories are typically pretty linear, taking into account past history. Things happen and they affect what subsequently happens. In the traditional US superhero comic, this isn’t the case. Major characters are often killed off (such as in the Death of Superman) or their histories massively changed on a whim (such as in Spider-Man: Brand New Day), largely to boost sales, after which point there’s usually a return to the status quo via typically convoluted means.

The difference is stark: in the UK, you never entirely know who’s going to be safe; in the US, even death is not the end. Sadly, the US model is now endemic in Heroes. The stars have become too big and the characters are too popular, and so Kring and his team refuse to take risks. Only minor characters get the chop (in fact, they might as well dress them in Star Trek-style red jerseys), while the writers dream up increasingly implausable means of bringing back the leads time and time again. Net result: you know that major character will almost always survive, which leads to a lack of tension in the series, no real suspension of disbelief, and, eventually, boredom.

If Heroes could inject a little more of the British sensibility into its ethos, it would become more like the show I always assumed it was trying to be: “What if these people exited in the real world?” As it is, we’re increasingly getting a marginally more plausible version of X-Men, crossed with the worst facet of Star Trek, and sooner or later that’s going to drive even relativly dedicated fans away.

So, the new touchscreen Zune is on its way, which Microsoft believes is going to give Apple’s iPod touch a serious kicking. Aside from the fact that the new Zune looks a little too much like a lighter, I’m still confused regarding Microsoft’s strategy for this product.

On the face of it, the Zune has a lot going for it: strong media support, a decent screen, HD out, WiFi, a built-in HD radio tuner. But many reports suggest it’s still going to be a US-only product, which seems absolutely bonkers if true—after all, I’m pretty sure Apple sells one or two iPods in Europe, Australia, Japan and elsewhere around the globe. (Some rumours contradict this, suggesting Microsoft is planning to release the new Zune in a ‘limited number of European markets’.)

Mostly, though, this appears like the perfect product to kill off the iPod, rather than the iPod touch. This is the device Microsoft should have released before September 2007, not some time in 2009. The reason: objectively speaking, OS X devices aren’t about the hardware—they’re about what you can do with the device. Microsoft can crow all it likes about HD output (especially given that the device’s storage will be filled rather rapidly if you add a load of HD content) and a radio receiver, but until the company has something that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the App Store, Zune will be yet another also-ran.

On Daring Fireball this morning, there was a link to Matt Asay’s CNET feature Google and Apple should join the Firefox party, which in a nutshell suggests Google and Apple should ditch WebKit and instead ‘invest in Firefox’. As someone immersed in the web design industry for much of my life, whether it’s in designing sites or writing about the process of designing sites, Asay’s suggestion made my head spin. Here are some reasons why he’s wrong:

Consolidation reduces software innovation

We see this everywhere, and notably in the creative industry. When Adobe bought Macromedia, it removed the bulk of its competition. Since then, it’s grown fat and lazy. This would likely happen if it was IE vs Frankenstein’s Monster Firefox.

All the competition has rising market share

Asay’s main argument for consolidation is that it’d smack Microsoft hard. He claims splintering efforts is less effective than a solidified counter attack. That must be news to Safari, Chrome, Opera and Firefox, each of which continues to chip away at Microsoft’s lead. Sure, it’s a slow process, but it is steady, and I haven’t seen too many ‘IE market share rises by five per cent’ headlines of late.

WebKit is often superior to Gecko

Firefox and its Gecko engine might be the runner-up to IE, but WebKit is smaller, sleeker and more efficient. If Apple knifed Safari, the Gecko equivalent would be more bloated and unsuitable for iPhone.

Ownership enables optimisation for own services

Google didn’t make a browser because they thought it’d be a fun jape—Chrome exists to be a solid runtime environment for Google’s online apps. Similarly, Safari is a browser but its core is a major component of Mac OS X and iPhone, accessible to developers. Ditching these components would be a crazy decision by either company, just to try and batter Microsoft’s market lead in an area that Apple and Google are only superficially interested in anyway.

IE’s competition is compliant and fast to react

The main concern from a design industry standpoint is standards compliance. When building a typical website, you can be reasonably sure that whatever you do will work fine in Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Google. It’s IE that’s the problem.

Asay argues that “common investment in Firefox […] would leave the industry better off”, but I’d say precisely the opposite is true. It would shackle Google and Apple’s development, leave Opera out in the cold (unless they too threw in their lot with Firefox, thereby obliterating their entire organisation in a single moment of madness), and provide no benefits to the end user.

That all said, there is one argument I’ll make for consolidation: I’d like to see IE9 bin the Trident engine and Microsoft base its browser around Gecko, WebKit or Presto. That way, IE’s odd quirks would be consigned to history, we’d have three competing but excellent rendering engines, and Microsoft could get on with providing a decent Windows-like interface for its users to access the web with. And for all those sites that would explode should that happen, just retain the irksome ‘compatibility mode’ for a couple of versions of IE, but make it a literal ‘engine switch’ to the last version of Trident.

If you’re in the UK, the MP expenses row sparked by the Telegraph can’t have escaped your notice. My current highlight: an MP who claimed for two packets of Tampax for himself. One wonders what a male MP could want with Tampax in order to do his job, but then it’s probably best to stop thinking about that rather quickly.

What grates right now is the typically weaselly manner in which most politicians are addressing this problem, using typical ‘politician speak’. At best, this is insulting; at worst, it’s showing they’ve learned precisely nothing (which is probably unfair—I’ll bet they’ve learned that in future they need to be a hell of a lot more cunning regarding fiddling expenses). So, in time-honoured tradition, here are some helpful hints for our lovely MPs:

When asked about the expenses scandal, don’t look all mournful or forthright (depending on what you think will get more sympathy) while rattling on about how “the system is broken” and how “the system must change”, unless you’ve never made what amounts to a remotely dodgy claim. If you knew the system was broken and you were exploiting said system, you were involved in what’s tantamount to fraudulent behaviour. The correct answer is not that the system needs to change—it’s that MP attitudes need to change.

When asked if you feel guilty about your conduct, have the integrity to provide a straight answer, using one word: ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Either you did or you didn’t do something wrong. Don’t spin the response to say “every MP should say sorry”. You are not every MP. I’m looking at you, Alan Duncan MP—and, believe me, I’d rather be doing something else… anything else.

When considering making claims in future, here’s a handy tip: when working in a job, you claim what’s required to do that job. It’s really quite simple. When I worked in a design agency, I claimed for a graphics tablet and some software. When I did client visits using my car, I claimed for petrol. Things I didn’t claim for, just to pick a few items at random: having an aga serviced, cat food, horse manure, and having a piano tuned. (On the last of those, I’ll forgive the MP in question if they make a total arse of themselves doing a live performance, tinkling the ivories on prime-time television.)

Also, when considering claims in future, bear in mind that since you’re earning at least £64,766, and no doubt have your fingers in lots of stodgy business pies, you can probably afford to pay from your salary for things like a quiche flan dish and a Vileda supermop. It might shock you to understand that not only do most of your constituents earn significiantly less than you do, but they also don’t get to claim for things like a toilet brush holder (unless they clean toilets for a living, and although MPs plumb the depths are are often surrounded by sh*t, that’s usually only in a figurative sense).

Of course, the real way to deal with this scandal is for all you MPs to stop being conniving, manipulative, shallow, lying, cheating, self-serving arseholes (perhaps learning from the rare odd exception lurking among you), but, hey, you’re MPs, right? Good luck in figuring out your replacement expense plan and working out how to use that to exploit the masses!

Love and kisses,

The general public