Some books you have to buy, others you have to have stuffed down your throat by friends. One such friend who is a business student at Reykjavik University recently sent me one of his favorites: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding.

He assured me that even if the cover is ugly, the content is good.

The book’s introduction gives its geographical origins away:

What is branding? From a business point of view, branding in the marketplace is very similar to branding on the ranch.

Branding on the ranch?

All jokes aside, the book is quite interesting. One of its themes is that a brand’s scope effects its impact. A strong brand has a narrow focus. Broadening the base of a brand and widening its appeal may yield a short term increase in sales but on the long term it often undermines the brand and decrease sales.

This theory is interesting in the Rails vs. Java debate. It certainly seems that 37signals and the Rails team have grasped the concept of the power of a narrow focus when it comes to “branding” Ruby on Rails (see: Are you sure you want to be mainstream? and Distinguishing power from versatility).

It seems that the “laws of branding” apply as much in the market for programming languages as they do in retail.

When Apple’s market cap rose above Dell’s on Friday the 13th of January this year, Om Malik commented that what really makes Apple tick is software and the user experience (see: So Long Apple Nay Sayers).

The release of Boot Camp, which will allow Apple users to boot Windows XP, seems to justify Tim Beyer’s article on Motley Fool in June 2005 called Apple’s Real Target: Dell, which contends that Apple still sees itself as a hardware manufacturer.

The next step for Apple might be to provide their Mac OS X operating system as an alternative operating system to Windows on any Intel machine.

Better yet, if they would provide it for free (or just cheap), Windows would have a very serious challenger to its desktop dominance. On the other hand, people would not be forced to buy the premium priced Macs to enjoy the user experience Om Malik talks about.