Having been raised in Switzerland, a country which was never ruled by a king, I have always seen royalty as a ridiculous idea, even though I am Dutch and therefore I am a citizen of a country “ruled” by a Queen.

Since it doesn’t look like my fellow countrymen are particularly interested in getting rid of this ridiculous and expensive remain from a distant past, I am at least glad that in The Netherlands we got the next best thing, a smart royal family.

The proof is that both crown prince Willem-Alexander and his wife Maxima have recently purchased an iPhone while shopping at an Apple Store in the U.S. Even better, it seems that he is an avid Mac user who participates regularly in Dutch Apple Forums. I wonder if he listens to the “One More Thing” podcast, one of my personal favorites.

Even though I am still convinced that my country should be a Republic, it is nice to see my future king making the headlines for his good technological taste, instead of the shameful behaviors displayed by other royal families.

If you have been following the gaming scene you must have noticed it. The mood is changing over the PS3. Just one year after it was introduced, Sony’s latest console is getting better press and less hate from bloggers. As a results sales are rocketing and Sony looks again like a strong contender.

Many credit the PS3 revival on the US$100 price cut recently announced by Sony. My personal opinion is that gamers are finally starting to understand the true potential of the PS3. Since last year, HDTVs have continued to gain popularity and are now becoming mainstream. HDTV owners want high-def content and the PS3 delivers both high definition games and movies right out of the box. Suddenly, the Nintendo Wii doesn’t look as cool as last year and buyers are left with only two viable options and the PS3 is the cheapest. The timely release of some great exclusive titles such as Ratchet and Clank and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is also helping. These games are finally showing what this console is capable of.

Last year Sony got a lot of bad press for releasing the PS3 too late. It turns out that they may have launched it one year too soon.

A week ago Oracle announced at OpenWorld their new virtualization solution, unimaginatively called Oracle VM. I can see why Oracle is launching such a product. After all, customers have been adopting virtualization enthusiastically and Oracle has been extremely slow to adopt to the new reality. In fact, until last week, Oracle would not provide support to customers unable to reproduce a problem on a non-virtualized environment. That was a pretty lame policy, considering that most enterprise customers have ben using virtualization products for years.

While this announcement doesn’t help VMWare customers at all, since that environment is still unsupported, at least it gives them an option and it is a free one, which is always nice. However, many questions remain. The most important is obviously performance. Oracle is quick to point out that their product is three times more efficient than comparable solutions. Note that they say efficient, not faster. What does that mean? Who are they comparing to? Nobody knows. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, we all know that Oracle is primarily a well oiled marketing machine that displays little respect for the truth. Remember Oracle’s Unbreakable campaign? Enough said, I rest my case.

For Oracle customers, this new virtualization solution may translate into some savings which in turn may help make Oracle’s value proposition more attractive. That was probably why Oracle released this product in the first place, and it makes a lot of sense. The software industry is very competitive and that is driving prices down. By delivering a relatively simple piece of software for free that can help customers save money by impacting someone else’s business, they can protect their own products. That is a smart move, at least in the short term.

I just listened to a podcast where Microsoft’s Ken Pawlak was talking about the incredible potential of ultra-mobile PCs connected to the Internet through mobile operators. What struck me was the enormous amount of data he had to back his claims. The company had gone though a tremendous effort to understand their potential customers, interviewing face-to-face 15,000 persons in five different emerging countries. They used the data not only to size the potential market but also to define the devices hardware characteristics. They found out that the screen size should be somewhere between 9 and 12 inches and that customers absolutely want the device to include a DVD player.

My question is, do people really want a DVD or do they think they need one because they can’t imagine a portable device without it. Personally I seldom use my laptop’s DVD burner. In fact I am pretty sure that I have only used it three times over the lat year, just to install software (Leopard, iWork and iLife). That means that if I had been able to download the software quickly from the Internet or get it on a Flash memory drive, my need for a DVD drive would be totally inexistent. I am sure I am not alone.

I think that Microsoft’s approach is totally wrong. People who don’t know computers tend to ask for advice from those in the know. It is those trendsetters who need to be convinced that your products are good. They will be the ones selling these benefits to all the followers. Those designing products based on followers feedback will fail because improvements over existing wares will be marginal compared to what can be obtained by applying radical new designs that challenge the status-quo. In mature markets where trendsetters aren’t as important (think soap or toilet paper) since there is no such thing as product specialists, focus groups and surveys may still play an important role, but certainly not in the high-tech industry where capturing the interest of early adopters is crucial.

Today I had turkey for lunch. Nothing out of the ordinary for most Americans, but for me it was a first on this particular date. Like most of the world, I do not celebrate Thanksgiving. Having lived most of my life in catholic countries, where people are more used to ask for divine help than thanking God, the idea always seemed a little odd to me. Add to that the fact that I am a convinced atheist and you will understand why I haven’t really paid any attention to this festivity.

Today was different though, that turkey made me think (at least it did not die in vain). In a world where most spend too much time complaining about all the things they cannot afford, it is actually good to spend some time analyzing all the good things that surround us and that we too often take for granted. This shouldn’t turn into a complacency exercise though. We should always do our best to improve our life but that effort shouldn’t be motivated by living in a constant state of misery, thinking that happiness will only be achieved when all our goals are met. The way I see it, Thanksgiving is a pause to remind everyone that everyday life can and must be enjoyed, even if we haven’t reached all our goals yet.

So, today, even though I do not have a God to thank, it doesn’t mean that I have reached my current situation (whatever that is) without any help. That is why I want to thank my parents, my wife and kids, my friends and colleagues for the life I have enjoyed so far. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Yesterday Apple finally opened a Mexican on-line store. There is still no iTunes store, but this is a great (unexpected) first step.

The good news is that on-line prices seem to be reasonable. While it still is cheaper to buy in the U.S., the difference is now much smaller. This is good news because it may encourage many customers to shop locally. Until now, Mexico has been a minor market to Apple if you look at the sales numbers. However, that is not really true because wealthy Mexicans (those more likely to buy from Apple) tend to buy their mobile products (those that can be easily smuggled through the customs) in the U.S. and that skews the numbers significantly.

For example, if you were to walk into any Starbucks in Mexico City today you would have a good chance to see Macs outnumber PCs. The same happens with iPhones and iPods which can be found everywhere. Most of these sales never go through Apple Mexico and are therefore accounted as U.S. sales.

While this new on-line store may actually have a negative impact on both local dealers (used to low unit sales and high margins) as well as the physical Apple Store sales in the U.S. it may give Apple Mexico a chance to grow significantly beyond their current small local market (desktops used by graphic designers and universities). If this turns out to be true, we may finally get better local support, which is badly needed.

I am somewhat disappointed that Apple hasn’t announced some kind of upgrade to the Apple TV so far. Sure, the device works as advertised and I am extremely pleased with mine, but the fact that the device has not been updated to support the new iPhoto events made me expect a product refresh for the holidays.

Right now, the Apple TV is still a good value proposition for those who store large amounts of pictures in iTunes and buy TV episodes through the iTunes store. However, since TV shows are only available in the U.S. and in the U.K. (although there doesn’t seem to be a large selection available there) that severely limits the potential of the device.

It seems that Apple is working with the movie studios to offer online movie rentals. That could prove to be a smart move as it it obvious that nobody wants to go to Blockbuster to pick a movie and deal with late fees. Such an initiative could provide a much needed boost to the Apple TV sales. I am not sure that it will be enough, though as competitors are moving fast too.

For example, DivX recently announced that Sony had licensed their technology for the PS3. That means that PS3 customers will be able to use a single device to play games and view both blu-ray high-res movies as well as DivX content downloaded from the Internet (not that I would ever do that…). That is a great value proposition. You can now get a PS3 for US$499 and that includes 15 Blu-ray movies if you buy the device from Wal-Mart. Even if you price each movie at US$15, that puts the cost of the device at US$275, that is US$24 cheaper than the Apple TV.

From what I have been reading, I am not the only one doing the math and many are seeing the value that the PS3 delivers. It seems that Apple needs to do something quickly if they want to move more Apple TVs during the holidays and extend their current lead in the digital download market to the living room. However, time is running out, only three days to black Friday, and if Apple doesn’t release any updates to the device by then, we can be quite sure that there will be no updates until next year. That could be a big mistake.