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Between my day job, my writing for the Petri IT Knowledgebase, and attempting to have a personal life, I rarely get time to read outside of a vacation. However, I recently started attending and presenting at a roadshow for my employer around the island of Ireland, where this series events is punctuated by mindless driving on boring motorways that needed to be filled by entertainment.
I was switched on to Audible, Amazon’s audio book company, a couple of years ago when they sponsored the Windows Weekly podcast, which is hosted by Paul Thurrott and Mary-Jo Foley. I’ve used these long commutes as an opportunity to listen to books. I purchased a new book, Digital Wars: Apple, Google, Microsoft and the Battle for the Internet by Charles Arthur last week, and I’ve listened to just over half of it over a few days of travelling.
I used to read a lot but a full life means that when I hit the sack, I’m usually snoring within minutes. There’s little time to read outside of those occasions when I can sit by a pool on vacation, or I’m sitting in doing some remote photography waiting for some wildlife to do what it does. I commute to work and from time to time, I’m sent on the road for a few weeks to meet as many customers as possible to evangelize about things like Microsoft Azure or the end of life of Windows Server 2003/R2 as I am on this current roadshow.
On my normal commute, I’ll listen to podcasts but they run out quickly when the miles clock up. I had thought of buying digital books before I heard of Audible, but they were way too expensive. Then I heard about Audible. You can start a subscription for free, which gets you one book and depending on the plan you choose, you can get one or more credits per month, which you can accrue. Each credit gives you one free book purchase, which is yours to keep. For example, I am on the Gold plan, costing $14.95 per month, which gives me one credit per month. If I buy a book, I either pay for it (30% off), or I use one of my credits and get the book for “free.”
The narrators are usually actors with engaging voices. From time to time, you’ll get a famous TV or movie actor. Other times you’ll get some narrator that you’ve never heard of before. You’ll find that you’ll recognize the protagonists from the acted voices. The actors are usually retained to read an entire series of a book — Petyr Baelish sounds particularly creepy in the A Song of Ice and Fire in the Game of Thrones series.
I’ve only listened to a couple of industry history books such as this before. I was tempted by the concept of this book. It starts at an interesting time in our industry. Microsoft is in the midst of an anti-trust investigation, and there is a threat of Microsoft being split into two companies. Apple is nearing bankruptcy and has had to be bailed out by Bill Gates after a failed experiment of letting OEMs sell Mac clones with the Mac OS, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin are about to rent their first office after leaving Stanford University.
Digital Wars by Charles Arthur. (Image Credit: Amazon)
The carefully designed original Apple iPod was intended to be an accessory (Image Credit: Apple)
There was no big vision for the iPhone or iPad. And now we have the news that the iPhone is Apple’s biggest product and the smartphone is the most used personal device, where this device serves as the center of most people’s lives. This is yet another lost opportunity for Microsoft because they were in the smartphone business long before Apple. It was something that could surf, use apps, play music and video, but Microsoft never made it something that people desired; my memory was that things like an XDA were the disappointing alternative to a Blackberry for business people.
The chunky and unattractive Dell DJ fared poorly against iPod. (Image Credit: PCMag.com)
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