I enjoyed the show this week. MBW is weekly habit for me, but I think hearing from both sides these past two weeks should firmly place MBW in the middle of the Mac community…if it’s not there already.

Now, Yojimbo is one of my top three apps, and it has been worth every penny I paid for the family pack at full price. But, that didn’t sway me to Rich Siegel’s perspective. His arguments were almost all pointed toward why a developer shouldn’t participate. Considering that the developers agreed to their terms ahead of time, and especially so this year even after the critiques from last year, I didn’t think his arguments had that much merit.

dude, i loved the episode. mbw is a weekly habit for me as well.

I’m glad Merlin got his Skype sorted out in time to pose a few harder-edged questions to Philip Ryu. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the tone of the interview until then. I think Philip acquitted himself well by answering most of Rich Siegel’s criticisms, but there’s still something about the philosophy of the Heist that bothers me. In a way, it reminds me of those companies that profit by selling a slightly customized version of OpenOffice, ie, they are making money simply by coming up with the idea of packaging it, not by doing any of the hard work.

I look at the two interviews this way: imagine you were putting together a team for something BIG, say a run for public office, where a single misstep might cost you the election. For me, there is no doubt at all that I would want Rich Siegel on my team, maybe even running my campaign. Philip… I’m not so sure. This is why the slight whiff of something being a little off (or a rank stench in the case of the malcor stunt) matters.

I wonder if there is a better analogy then someone putting together a campaign for public office. What MacHeist is doing seems to be what most middle-men do in business, namely, act as a go-between the consumer and the producers. In a business like paper products, they would be the distributors. Now as someone who has a brother in the paper distribution business I can understand why one might have a problem with these businesses. They don’t produce anything, they simply advertise and bundle products. Maybe what Merlin and others are reacting to is the archaic feel of a 20th century mode of distribution. As web saavy 21st century individuals, I think many of us may feel that producers (developers) shouldn’t have to go through distributors and subsequently lose a portion of the value of their product. While I can understand the intuitive negative reaction MacHeist might engender as a distributor, there doesn’t seem to me to be anything inherently wrong with developers going that route - a route which does in this case benefit consumers.

Seeing as Merlin is still talking all about the 12” Apple laptops in MBW, and I believe he (and Leo) was tossing around figures like $600 bucks, I just wanted to put my two cents in… First off, I agree, the form factor is far more appealing to me than the Air (for the record I own a 17” MacBook Pro and I own a 12” Aluminum Powerbook for the already obvious reason that the 17”, while a great machine, is too damn big to be convenient for travel.) Back to the point at hand though… I do travel a lot for work, and the use of a superdrive is very handy on flights, as is the ability to actually open it on the tiny tray table and see what you’re doing. But seriously, who the hell is paying $600 for one? Here in RI I often see on Craigslist 12” iBook G4s in the $250-350 range and 12” PowerBook G4’s in the $400-450 range (usually they’re the aluminum version.) Hell I can get a Intel Macbook for around $700(white)or $800(black) If I watch Craigslist closely enough for a week or two… with that kind of pricing differential, all I’m trying to say here is I really wouldn’t advise anyone to be paying in the $600 neighborhood for a 12” Powerbook… Unless it’s some Magical 12” that can boot Leopard without giving you enough time to take a shower, shave, and get dressed (okay, I’m exaggerating here, that would be the Mac Plus booting system 6. :-) But just so we’re clear here, were there to be a 12” Intel MacBook Pro available to buy, were’ talking removable battery, 2+ or more gigs of RAM versus 640 MB, and of course blazing fast Tiger or Leopard… If there was one available… Damn straight I’d buy one…