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After the news hit about Time Warner Cable’s intent to charge different rates for tiers of monthly data transfer — and an enormous $1/GB fee for overages — it seems eminently sane to consider the competition.

In Rochester, that competition is Frontier DSL. For a long time, that basically meant there was no competition, I’m very sorry to say.

However, the changes to TWC’s fee structure may be so extreme that even that level of competition is good. While I don’t think our household monthly data transfer is excessive, I’m reasonably sure (based on what I’ve seen from the data I’ve collected from our broadband router) that we’ll blow right past the 5 GB/month tier and maybe the 10 GB/month one. We would have to — and by that I mean, I would have to, really — develop some more austere usage of the family Internet connection that we’re accustomed to. Thus, I’m examining the pro and con positions for Frontier’s high-speed Internet service.

Pro

With Frontier DSL, my family should:

• Not have to deal with the stress of the upcoming 5/10/40/100 GB-per-month tiers from TWC, which will reportedly take effect in Rochester in November 2009
• Get to send a clear message to TWC that metered Internet access is a terrible idea
• Get the peace of mind that unlimited, unmetered Internet access provides — but only if Frontier’s existing 5 GB-per-month transfer cap is eliminated
• Benefit from the refer-a-friend affiliate program — both parties get the $20 referral credit
• Be able to combine the billing with our Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS).

Con

However, there are some drawbacks to Frontier DSL. My family would be concerned about:

• A potential monthly DSL modem rental fee
• A two-year commitment with a $200-300 (I’ve see both figures!) early termination fee
• The 5 GB-per-month unenforced data transfer cap (but that cap may be dropped entirely in an effort to better compete with TWC)
• Blocking port 25 — while there are workarounds, this is just aggravating
• The unknown quantity of Frontier’s technical support, whereas TWC’s has been reasonably good over the years.

Anyway, while we’re mulling this over, the news is playing out on sites like StopTheCap and StopTWC! Meanwhile, I’m more than a little annoyed at the traditional news media avoiding some of the other angles surrounding this topic — the pricing change as a way to protect cable television revenues, the local monopoly (and how cable infrastructure compares to its telephone equivalent), the impact on increasingly Internet-dependent households during a recession, how this might change the habits of people (including employees working at home), and so on.

“Life Balance 3.x customers with Macintosh licenses can upgrade to version 4 for just $59.95,” claims Llamagraphics, the purveyor of the fine time management application, Life Balance.

This sounds like a great deal! Until I remember that the only reason I want to upgrade from version 3 to 5 (not 4) is for compatibility with the new iPhone version of Life Balance! So to get them both, I’d be spending:

Compare that to my current cost for Life Balance — which I’m not currently using because my Treo repeatedly made me want to throw it forcefully into the ground (loved the Palm, hated the defective phone!) and the desktop software looks like crap — which I’ve summarized below:

That’s right, folks. After an investment to date of $89.95 in this software, I’d have to shell out another $79.94 to stay current and get the application on the mobile device I currently use. I’d be paying more for the Mac upgrade than I’ve ever paid for any single purchase or upgrade from Llamagraphics in the past!

I’m surprised I’m even thinking about this. However, Life Balance has always made the most sense of any task management application, and has always done the best job of helping me prioritize. (Of other current applications, OmniFocus doesn’t make sense to me, and Things was great for entry but felt horrid at showing me what I needed to do next.) At the cost of Life Balance, despite how it worked for me, maybe it’s simply time to try something else.

The least expensive overall, and perhaps most interesting because it supports task sharing, is to go with Remember The Milk. I’m not sure I want to use a Web or “cloud” service for this, and there’s no desktop application per se, but I’m at the point in my life where sharing to-do’s with others (and outside the work environment) is compelling. The new Remember The Milk iPhone application may tip me in that direction.

I’ve been a Life Balance user for years. I’m not a devoted user but I’ve found it a useful tool in those phases of my life where I felt the need to use an electronic to-do list. The concept behind the application has always just made sense to me, even if using it in practice is not as easy as falling off a log.

I recall that the first time I came across Life Balance, I devoured the Advice Book over lunch at Wendy’s and was excited by the possibilities the application offered. I am pretty sure this was back before there was even a Mac desktop application.

Now there’s finally a major update to the Mac OS X native desktop application. It’s Universal and is supposed to deliver on a lot of long-standing promises, like the addition of AppleScript support. Looking at version 4, it still seems to have its traditional clunky interface, and that’s been a big drawback to me. I simply find it ugly enough that I dread using the desktop application, and the full-featured Palm application feels cramped on my Treo. However, the new version does show some renewed public commitment to the product, which I would have otherwise said was in doubt.

Enter OmniFocus. I have been using it off and on for about a week or two, trying the “vaportrail” sneak peak versions. I’ve been suffering through the daily updates, which are thankfully handled with such great aplomb (probably by the Spark framework) that I hope more applications update themselves the same way in the future.

I love OmniFocus for its native Mac OS X feel. It’s fast, it shares a lot in common with OmniOutliner (which I already use frequently), and it looks like you’d expect a modern Mac OS X application to look. There’s also a good deal on the licensing right now, running until Macworld Expo.

But it still frustrates me. I’m not doing anything complex with OmniFocus, but I keep wishing it was Life Balance. Perhaps it’s because I’m not into the GTD meme; I’ve seen someone say that Life Balance is more Covey-based. But it feels as if Life Balance could do almost anything that OmniFocus could, and yet do more. So I feel that I should look at Life Balance again, especially with the discovery of the new version.

One big Life Balance advantage, from what I have seen so far, is that I can quickly get a flat, prioritized list of what I need to do in any given context. And, I can do that from a hierarchical outline of all of my projects and tasks. I’m having difficultly getting the same output from OmniFocus.

I wish Life Balance would become an application more like OmniFocus, or vice versa. I’d love it if the developers worked together. Sigh.

Reading the Macalope’s ACME Pundit Saws post — wherein he skewers David Berlind about his ZDnet post, Is Apple getting dragged (kicking, screaming, or suing?) into licensing OS X? — I haven’t written down my own thoughts regarding the sale of Mac OS X to regular PC owners.

I think this is a situation where Apple could get in front of the market. Even though their sales are booming, Apple has taken a few risks that might have eroded their position. There was a quote where the company’s CEO said that if someone were to make their products obsolete, it should be them. I think this is telling — to get on top, you make risky moves like replacing a successful iPod mini with the iPod nano, or the iPod nano with a wildly different model. Living where I do, I can’t help but contrast this to a company like Kodak that practically begged everyone to take its core business away by not reinventing itself and its products. A cash cow product like film photography can go out to pasture more quickly than you think.

I’m not sure Apple has made this kind of move for the Mac, at least not yet. In fact, ever since the Intel transition, they’ve mostly sat on their Mac lineup. The MacBook was brand new, but derivative, and has seen several updates. The MacBook Pro is very close on the outside to the PowerBook G4, and has also seen several updates. The iMac, Mac Pro, and Mac mini have been quite static.

To get back to licensing, one area where Apple could do the unexpected would be to sell Mac OS X for generic PCs. I think to offset the potential for considerable support costs, it could be a separate edition of the operating system that sells for a higher price — maybe on the order of the current Mac OS X Family Pack or Windows Vista Ultimate at retail. This extra cost might also cover some aspects of software piracy, even to the extent of a system to attempt to lock the OS to a specific PC, similar to Windows activation.

The benefit, I think, of having Mac OS X on more generic hardware is that this might create a larger Mac community. I don’t think it would create a majority, by any means, but it would tap users who wouldn’t have run Mac OS X otherwise. And, it would allow those people who kitbash computers together some leeway in building their own systems.

Give customers one more reason to choose your system, because people who choose computers seem to be choosing Macs in increasing numbers. I don’t see Apple winning the managed IT space where computers are selected for the users, but I do see Macs being chosen by more people for their own purchases.

As long as Apple provides some compatibility information on what is known to work, this could effective get Macs into form factors where Apple isn’t. The mid-range headless desktop is one such place that the company fails to address, and yet I know many people who stress over the lack of hardware in the $900-1500 price range. In my observation, there is overlap between the people who don’t use Mac OS X today, UNIX/Linux users, and people who build their own systems.

New hardware options might also spur developers — and the community of users that surround them — to create drivers for the hardware that currently lacks it and improve existing drivers for everyone. This may be especially true for open source drivers.

One way to limit sales while tapping this homebrew market would be to require even a free ADC subscription (and the concomitant NDA) in order to buy through that non-retail channel. You can already buy upgraded ADC accounts there — and discounted developer hardware, if you have that option on your account — so why not sell Mac OS X for regular PCs there? Give it a trial run and see what happens.

I have long hoped that Apple would someday embrace people who build their own systems — I wrote a position paper about this for a marketing class back in the 90’s and my thoughts haven’t changed much on that score since then. I believe that selling Mac OS X to at least a section of the PC market makes sense. Given Mac OS X’s broadening appeal and its apparent reach into the power user and alpha geek markets, it may even cement Mac OS X as the operating system of choice.

I got together with some folks to stand in line for the Leopard release on Friday evening; we went camping in Victor outside the Apple Store Eastview. I wanted to jot down a few observations of the outing, and I’ll do so in no particular order.

It was fun, both for the event itself and to spend time outside the home with friends. (Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — Christen was stuck at home with Elijah.)

It’s perhaps not the best advertising in the world to have a line 200-some odd deep waiting to get into your store. It becomes a curiosity for others in the mall and a hassle for patrons who just wanted to saunter in but are turned away. Amplify this with a line that is predominantly composed of white males, aged 20 to 60 — and the store suddenly looks a lot less hip.

Those of you who’ve stood in lines for Apple conference or trade show keynote addresses know of what I speak. Though this crowd was less like WWDC’s and a little more eclectic like Macworld’s, it was still a turn-off for the teenage girl iPod demographic.

Speaking of which, some young girls walked up to others in the line behind us, asked what the line was for, and then rolled their eyes and stalked off in revulsion.

Unlike any other retailer I can think of in this situation — a captive audience of 200 people waiting to rush through your doors — Apple didn’t have any other promotions in force. Just a new operating system. They didn’t give anyone 5 or 10% off a new computer, or a discount on an iPod, or any other kind of bundling incentive, as far as I could tell.

Frankly, most of the people I saw walking in played with a computer for a few moments and walked out again with only their free t-shirts. And then a few jumped back at the end of the line for another t-shirt.

Did Apple even make any money on this, after staffing up, closing the store to prep, and then giving out the freebies? It looked like they wanted you to go in and out immediately … preferably with your copy of Leopard, sure, but they weren’t exactly encouraging anyone to get more than that.

The Eastview store has been totally reconfigured. I haven’t been there since its remodelling, but the Genius Bar is in the back now, where the checkout used to be. Now, there’s no obvious checkout so I assume they’ll be heavily using those hand scanners from now on. Overall, it was hard to get a feel for the changes since the Leopard checkout line was roped off through the center of the floor.

The iPod touch, which I saw in person for the first time, is really thin. The outer ring on its face is beveled in a black material, maybe metal, that appears similar in style to the sloping edges on the new iPod classics and nanos.

The store employee I chatted with about the Mac Pro didn’t have much help to offer me about the optional BTO RAID card. In fact, he was just looking up the details on the Apple Store Web site, thankyouverymuch. But, he was pleasant while he was performing that admirable service, and I’ll give him credit that he was genuinely trying to be helpful.

Wow, Apple bought the Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) back in February, and the announcement has just come out. (I have to wonder why the delay … perhaps it has something to do with Leopard?) The software continues to be licensed under its regular terms.

Michael Sweet, one of the principals behind Easy Software Products and developer of CUPS, is now an Apple employee.

I’m sure this all means something.

I don’t know if I will get one. I certainly won’t get one until my Verizon Wireless contract has expired … and even then, there are factors to weigh.

But in the meantime, I’ve been staring squinty-eyed at articles about iPhone objections. You know, the ones about how it won’t work in the enterprise because it’s not secure, doesn’t have a firewall, and lacks critical Exchange support. Right now, I don’t know how we can make any evaluation about its security, other than to guess more of its OS has been written by experienced, senior programmers (sworn to secrecy) than the rest of Mac OS X probably is … and that may be a blessing. Given what’s riding on the rollout, hopefully some serious security audits have been done on the code, too.

How does some yahoo columnist trolling for hits know that the phone has no firewall? Do we have proof yet? Why isn’t the lack of open ports good enough in the first place? Do any phones, smart or otherwise, have a firewall?

We have Mary Jo Foley saying that Apple is rumored to be licensing Exchange ActiveSync. On the face of it, enabling Exchange ActiveSync would not suck at all. However, that would certainly muddy the waters for the local iTunes sync to your data, especially if you’re using Sync Services with Entourage (which itself can be connected to Exchange) at the same time.

Also, I fail to see how local iTunes synchronization with Outlook on Windows, for the people that want data from that Exchange client, is not good enough — even though it tends to be for non-BES BlackBerry users.

My request to Microsoft for “Entourage Mobile” would go “pop,” the need fulfilled.

What about remote wipe? I almost forgot! Who is to say that it won’t be available as some option in iTunes later, sort-of like de-authorizing a computer you’ve lost or sold?

And then there are objections about it being expensive — like duh, smartphones aren’t expensive? With their high initial cost, the regular cost of cell phone voice plans that generally start at $40/month, and the data plans that hover around that much, they are pricey items. Hey, I projected that my lousy, half-broken Treo 650 would cost me a minimum of$1700 over the two-year lifetime of my contract — making it the most expensive PDA I’d ever owned. It would have been, too, if I hadn’t cancelled the data plan and consolidated two contracts into a family plan. I doubt I’ve made enough phone calls to justify it, although I write down a lot of funny quotes in the note pad.

Finally, we have the performance objections. EDGE is too slow, they say. AT&T doesn’t have good coverage. This are both true, from what I can tell right now, particularly in the specific areas I might use a phone.

But then again, I cancelled my Treo’s data plan because the equivalent Verizon network was too slow, the browser too annoying (even for the lightweight Google Mobile), and when I was roaming I couldn’t get data anyway — so I’ve already demonstrated my lack of tolerance for that. The addition of Wi-Fi ameliorates many of my concerns. I do agree with Glenn Fleishmann, who would like to see the iPhone data plan bundle connections to AT&T’s Wi-Fi network; I might never actually use that or be within range of one of their hotspots, but it would certainly sweeten the deal.

Half the places I want to use my Treo, I already get bad or non-existent voice service. I miss a high percentage of my inbound calls. This may be due to my phone, which the service department claims is defective, or it may be due to other factors. The point is that my experience with the almighty of Verizon is substandard now, so if I move to something that’s even close to equivalent it’s not going to break me.

Frankly, I don’t need a cell phone. But if I’m going to have one, it seems like the iPhone isn’t a bad choice. At least the software doesn’t look like it’ll drive me mad, like my StarTAC did. The software looks like it’s the most accessible of any phone I’ve seen.

I might as well chime in on the MacHeist and MacSanta news, since everyone else probably has.

I will preface my remarks by explaining that I’m all in favor of bundles that bring together quality software, particularly from different developers, and save the consumer money. In fact, I built much of my personal software collection, at least on classic Mac OS, through bundles advertised in dead tree catalogs like MacWarehouse, MacZone, MacConnection, and so on.

(Notice that I did not say “MacMall.” As far as I'm concerned, that one order they ruined so badly is the last one they’ll ever get from me. To this day, I make it my mission to avoid them. Boo!)

So, bundles were great for me when I was trying to build a catalog of useful and powerful software. A computer is nothing without software. I don’t see a problem with getting as much good software you can for the money you pay.

Fast forward from 1995 to today, and you have the MacHeist bundle. Frankly, the only thing I have a problem with regarding MacHeist is that it includes at least one application, Disco, which I think barely qualifies as an application.

There is something of an argument amongst bloggers (especially developer bloggers) about Mac applications that are all sizzle and no steak. This argument has spilled over into the discussion of the MacHeist bundle, apparently because of the principals behind it. I don’t think this is any different than it used to be; there have always been the silly apps … the Holistic Sofa screen savers and the Marathon file managers and the SimPig Eliza-type random phrase generators.

The most striking difference—and I think this has been true for as long as I’ve been running Mac OS X—is that Apple has bundled so much raw functionality into the OS that developers are more able to roll out a thin veneer of software than they ever have been before. The frameworks of Mac OS X are there to help developers bootstrap their complex software from the conception of an idea to realization at lightning speed and with high quality.

Unfortunately, that also means that some developers, instead of going further by standing on the shoulders of giants, seem to see the opportunity to make a quick buck with some flashy UI or basic functionality on top of built-in framework features. But again, I feel like I’ve been seeing this on Mac OS X since the beginning. It’s just that today, developers have a tremendous set of tools from which to start—Core Image, Core Data, Core Audio, DiscRecording … the list goes on an on. Intentionally, from all appearances. Mac OS X is very much about the frameworks.

Maybe the only way around this problem, if it is a problem, is to have educated software consumers. Certainly, before I consider buying real goods, I check sites like Epinions for reviews. I consult the ratings in MacUpdate for the same reason.

So, I bought the MacHeist bundle, if you want to know where I stand on laying down plastic. I own a license to Disco … which has its own smoke and mirrors.

Shortly thereafter, I learned of the MacSanta operation. I think this is a great idea. It’s a different marketing-driven move, but it lets people connect with the software they want or maybe need at great prices. In effect, it’s a sale.

I haven’t bought anything from the MacSanta promotion (yet), and I don’t expect that I will (which brings me great pain, since there’s so much good stuff on the list), but it’s simply because it comes at a bad time. First, it appears to be a reaction to the MacHeist bundle, so it came after I’d already bought that. Second, it’s right before Christmas and I’m already spending too much lately. Third, it has a short timeframe; it expires on Christmas Day. If only it had been timed for last spring or summer or …

The bundle and the sale are two different ways to move merchandise. I hope the Mac software market begins to utilize more of each, because we as consumers have been missing these kinds of initiatives for far too long. Sure, there are Macworld Expo sales, if you are lucky enough to go or have a special deal on the developer’s Web site during the show.

The decline of catalog shopping, of mail order software monsters, of boxed retail packaging for a lot of small but innovative apps, has really changed the way I buy—and not so much for the better.

I’d like to see developers working together on inventive new ways to connect me with their applications. Along the way, I want them to make a fair buck. And I want the simplicity and convenience of electronic ordering; there’s no returning to paper catalogs for software purchases in my future.

I also hope that there won’t—or wouldn’t—be such a backlash against marketing related to these promotions. Marketing, if you study it, is simply about seeking to be chosen. Done right, it should be the driving force behind your whole product or service.