Can Apple leverage their iPod success to desktop computer success? I think if there's been any time for this to happen, it'll be this school year/Christmas buying season.

Apple has the cultural mindshare. It's a well respected company, with one of the most recognizable brand images. It has achieved unexpected success with its iPod line of music players and iTunes music stores--something that was not predicted because of the proprietary nature of their software and music licensing format.

Apple has the right products at the right time. Jumping on to the Intel processor bandwagon with its first machine introductions earlier this year and embracing the dual core processor  ("Core Duo" in Intel-speak) designs which allow the processor to do more things at the same time, matches and exceeds what Windows users expect from their machines. However, coupling this more standard hardware with an operating system (Mac OS X, pronounced "Mac OS Ten") that is built on a secure, stable, multi-user, multi-tasking branch of Unix and has a well-designed user interface that's easy to use and navigate through, gives the Mac user a machine that works more like an appliance which "just works" rather than a classic Windows PC.

Microsoft's new Vista operating system, delayed until 2007, seeks to emulate the graphics and usability of Apple's OS X, but currently appears to be a cheap imitation. By missing the next round of school/Christmas buying, Microsoft is leaving open a gaping hole for the consumer user that Apple has the opportunity to drive right through.

Furthermore, Apple will be announcing the next version of OS X (codenamed "Leopard") in early August, which is expected to extended Apple's lead and advantage over Microsoft's Vista offering. Apple's marketing plan should be to target the consumer and school users with a highly price competitive computing appliance that's here today and which "just works."

Interestingly, the move to Intel-based CPU makes the ability to run Windows in an OS X window even easier using what is known as a virtualization software product. A company named Parallels has created such a product for the Mac OS X called Parallels Desktop for Mac. Extremely easy to install and configure, Parallels provides a simple way for Windows users to still use their Windows applications on the Mac, by simply running them in their own Window. Of course, in August, we'll find out if Apple might have something even more devious up their sleeve for Windows application support--stay tuned!

Finally, it may be time for Windows users who are just plain sick of dealing with the annoyances of Windows (security issues, clutter, network and system configuration, too basic of included applications), may decide to "Think Different" and make the switch to Apple this fall.

For myself, for the last several months, I've been using an Intel Core Duo-based Apple Mac Mini with Parallels to install my Windows software development environments and really couldn't be much happier with how it's been working for me. I'm looking forward to what Apple announces in August and how it will help me even more.

UPDATE: Investors Business Daily: Mac The Apple Of More PC Buyers' Eyes

Why has society become so risk averse?

Certainly, with the Space Shuttle, if there are known critical problems, we should do our best to fix them. However, there are absolutely no guarantees. Travel outside Earth's atmosphere is still just plain risky.

The launch delays, seemingly at times through the media lens, appeared to possibly cause the latest launch to be on brink of being scrubbed (perhaps forever). I was definitely fearful that NASA was going to get caught in analysis paralysis, preventing this and any future launch from occurring.

The eventual successful launch of the shuttle (despite some known issues) gives me hope that, as a society, we're still willing to take calculated risks and move forward in the name of progress and discovery.

I look forward to seeing much more of that.

It's fitting that the launch occurred on July 4th, on an anniversary date that the founders of this country truly did take great personal risks to secure the freedom and rights that Americans, all too often, take for granted.

What if your local public school district offered a program for high-achieving high school students that required:

1. In-depth, college-level study of core fields (biology/chemistry, mathematics, history, literature, language) and elective fields (economics, computer science, physics),
2. An integrated curriculum where connections and common threads are woven between the fields of study in the students' coursework,
   
3. A focus on critical reasoning and analysis skills (including discussions on differing points of views), including a course dedicated to the philosophies of knowledge and developing such critical reasoning skills,
   
4. A graded, lengthy essay on a topic of the student's choosing, requiring independent research and critical analysis,
5. Hours of community service,
6. Oral and written competence in a non-native language,
   
7. And, a final exam for each course that is common to and graded against all students taking the same courses throughout the world?
   

To me, I'd hope that my children would have the benefit of such a program in my public schools.

Unfortunately, for other conservatives, such a program is a sign of anti-American influence on the American educational system.

The program is called International Baccalaureate (IB, for short).

I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to earn an International Baccalaureate Diploma from Wausau East High School, as part of my education. I found the coursework to be rigorous, the teachers to be involved and connected, and completion of the program to be very enlightening, clarifying my thoughts on how I look at world events today, as a conservative. I very much wish the same opportunity for other students to help them separate the wheat from the chaff, fact from fiction, truth from propaganda.

More school districts (including my neighboring Minnetonka, Minnesota school district) are including this program into their course offerings, but some groups like EdWatch are shamefully raising suspicions and FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) to scare parents into rejecting the program outright, because of concerns about its connections to the United Nations and the program's global (and, therefore, supposedly implied anti-American) nature.

Our public educational system needs more courses and programs like IB to educate our youth in the areas of critical reasoning to separate the facts from the opinions and to make informed decisions about the future. Opponents of these types of programs really appear to be barking up the wrong tree if they want to improve the American educational system.

I was recently leaving Chicago on the Northwest Tollway (I-90) and stopped to refuel at a gas station just outside the greater Chicago area (near the tollway's intersection with US-20, west of Elgin) and was a bit surprised by what I saw near the fuel pump: an anti-bacterial lotion dispenser.

Of course, if the owner of the fuel station was germ-obsessed and wanted to prevent the spread of bacteria, I could (perhaps) see the usage. Although simply wiping anti-bacterial lotion on your hands after pumping gas may make them smell better and may kill what germs resided on your hand or picked up from the pump handles, it certainly does not remove (or "kill"?) the benzene and other chemicals that may get on your hands from pumping the gasoline (which, ironically, probably have their own anti-bacterial qualities anyway).

I really cannot attribute the installation of the anti-bacterial lotion dispenser to anything but ignorance about the extent to which such lotion can "clean" the hands. But, then again, maybe it is there to placate the germophobes among us.