Schillermania!

Anonymous (make believe) sources have suggested that Phil Schiller may be preparing to demonstrate an as yet to be announced feature of Leopard at WWDC or some other 10.5 announcement event; a built in Windows Migration Assistant.

Migration Assistant, a rarely heralded feature of the “Mac Buddy” Setup Assistant that appears on the first boot of a new OS X system, was introduced as part of the 10.3.4 update. This tool helps users relatively effortlessly migrate all User and Application data from a previous Mac system to a new machine; all done via FireWire Target Disk mode.

The new version of Migration Assistant and Mac Buddy, slated to appear as part of Leopard, promises to capitalize on the “iPod Halo Effect” and hopeful “TV Halo Effect” by helping Switchers move their personal documents from their old Windows machine to a newly purchased Mac.

Details are scarce at this point, and it remains to be seen how this will be achieved. Some speculation is that a Boot Camp-like burned CD of Windows software will be used to configure the host PC to the required settings for data to be transfered over Ethernet, WiFi, or FireWire.

Lately Schiller has been quiet, but quiet like a coiled spring or a jungle cat ready to strike.

We are officially starting the rumor that Phil is on the verge of announcing a major change in Apple’s two flagship software packages. Along with the long anticipated official release date announcement, the rest of Leopard’s features will be announced including the bundling of the latest update to the iLife suite with Leopard.

Steve hinted at it a little at the last WWDC when he mentioned that Leopard will include the whole package of some currently disparate pieces of software such as FrontRow, PhotoBooth, and BootCamp, but few have speculated that Apple would go so far as to bundle iLife. While an update for the iLife suite was expected in January as has occurred for several years running, that software currently sells separately from the OS for $79.

Microsoft’s recently released new OS Vista also comes bundled with their versions of movie editing and photo management software, but they suck.

We’re not sure yet on iWork or if this means a higher price tag for OS X.

Hard to believe this is even real, and there is no way I can even speak to this quite yet, but oh my god!

Schiller University is real!

Google Ads are pretty amazing I guess. Who knew that such a place even existed, but there is was advertised right on the side of the page there. I’m stunned.

More on this soon.

Merriam-Webster, by all accounts a big player in the word game, decreed that the Word of the Day for February 27th was:shill

Apparently a verb (I had been thinking of it as a proper noun, or sometimes just as proper), their definitions follow.

1 : to act as a decoy (as for a pitchman or gambler)
*2 : to act as a spokesperson or promoter

I will focus on definition 2 for now, and leave the first to those more clever than I. Clearly from this information we can see that Phil is the perfect man for the job (of Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing) and the job is perfect for him. It’s what he was literally born to do.

Which brings up the question, is he descended from a long line of spokespersons? Like a long dynasty of protectors of the sacred art of promotion, when you are born into that name it becomes your destiny.

“But wait,” some of you object. “Schiller has a c in it and shill does not!” Well that is easy to explain my friends: the extra c is for Canadia.