SPOTLIGHT - In Japan, blood type indicates personality traits

When the atmosphere loosened up at her office, Japanese hospital lerk Makiko Ishikawa knew it was because there was new blood around — literally. Fellow workers with Type-O blood had joined the team, she explained, replacing the Type-A types who strictly follow the rules. “When I meet someone for the first time, like newcomers at work, I usually ask them their blood types. It tells me something about their personality,” said 30year-old Ms Ishikawa. “You would be amazed to find out how much you can tell about a person by knowing her or his blood type,” she said. Such belief in a link between blood types and human personalities is common currency in Japan and South Korea. Television networks and magazines are rife with programmes on the supposed connection, and many Japanese and Koreans casually ask others about their blood types to predict their inclinations. While in Western countries many people are completely unaware of their blood types unless they need to provide it to health workers for medical reasons, Japanese are acutely aware what type they are. But the practice also has a dark side — discrimination against people, particularly children, based purely on their blood.

The issue has become such a cause of concern that a Japanese industry group has asked major broadcasters to stop presenting blood type shows as science. To Mr Toshitaka Nomi, a leading researcher of blood-type characterisation who has studied the link for three decades, people are undeniably predisposed to certain characteristics due to their blood. He believes Japan should recognise the fact and make use of it. “If studies in this area become more advanced, we can apply this to improve product marketing, human resource management, education,” said Mr Nomi, a former journalist who heads the non-profit Human Science ABO centre in Tokyo. In Japan, the four blood types are more evenly distributed than in many countries, although Type-A and Type-O still account for nearly 70 per cent of the population.

According to popular belief, Type-A people are organised perfectionists, while TypeOs are strong leaders. The more rare Type-AB indicates a person is rational and standoffish in public, but in private is creative and full of emotion, typically becoming decorators or gourmands. Type-B means a person puts personal freedom above community order, a taboo in East Asian culture, leading to the bullying of Type-B children at school. Only 20 percent of people in highly organised Japan are Type-B, compared with about 40 per cent in India, Mr Nomi said.

According to Mr Nomi’s research, during the era of Japan’s rapid economic growth after World War II, 36 per cent of publicly traded firms had Type-O, or strong leaders, presidents, more than the 31 per cent of the general population. After the 1970s, the percentage of Type-O presidents fell to 29 per cent. They were replaced by TypeAs, the organised ones whose management skills kept up Japan’s stable growth, Mr Nomi said.

THE BIG STORY - APPLE OPENS DOORS TO MICROSOFT WINDOWS

But even as it introduced the new capability, in the form of a free programme called Boot Camp available for download, Apple tried with not-so- subtle body language to play down its significance. Word of the new offering was not visible on on the front page of Apple’s website, which usually trumpets new products. Instead, to obtain the Boot Camp software, it was necessary to navigate to an inside page on the website, where the download button was buried in a small box.
After long imploring computer users to “think different” and defining the Macintosh as a lone bulwark against the Windows onslaught, Apple Computer has decided to open the gate, at least a bit.

Two decades after the first Mac arrived, Apple said on Wednesday that it would offer users of its latest models a simple way to run the Microsoft Windows operating system as well as its own.
That means a single Apple computer will run programmes written for either the Mac or Windows, though it will have to shut down one system to start the other.
The move was greeted with exuberance even among the loyal cult of Macintosh enthusiasts who sustained Apple through many bleak years before its resurgence on the strength of its iPod music player. Its sleek machines have long been objects of consumer lust but are frequently passed over in favour of more pedestrian computers that run Windows, leaving Apple with about 5 per cent of the personal computer market. Wall Street analysts and computer industry experts also greeted the move as a potentially lucrative one for Apple, whose stock jumped almost 10 per cent, ending the trading day at $67.21, up $6.04.
“The religion has changed,” said Charles Wolf, a financial analyst at Needham & Company, a New York investment firm. “Apple is saying we have the chance to really build the Macintosh platform, and although there are risks, we’re going to do it.” Indeed, although much is still made of the rivalry between Apple and Microsoft, and Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s cofounder and chief executive, has continued to poke fun at Microsoft’s struggles to modernise Windows, Apple has steadily moved to accommodate itself to the rest of the computing world.
Shortly after he returned to Apple in 1997, Mr Jobs persuaded Microsoft to commit to make its Office software run on his computers and invest in his company. More recently, in 2003, he developed a version of his popular iTunes software that runs on Windows-based computers, giving him an opening to sell his wildly popular iPods to tens of millions of PC users. Last year Mr Jobs stunned the computer world by announcing that he would break away from his alliance with IBM and recreate the Macintosh based on Intel microprocessors. It was the switch to Intel chips, long the standard in the Windows world, that opened the door to Mac-Windows harmony.
Through all of these moves, Mr Jobs has managed to maintain his loyal base of customers. In fact the Macintosh religion can still be palpably felt among those who have remained loyal to the user-friendly computer even as its market share dipped below three per cent.
The move also won an important endorsement from Apple’s other co-founder, Stephen G. Wozniak, who long ago left the company but remains a vocal Macintosh user and is idolised by the Mac faithful.
“It’s a great thing for Apple,” he told a reporter by e-mail. “I don’t see the earth being rocked, but I can now recommend Apple hardware to a lot more people. One pitch is that if Windows gets too frustrating and unbearable and unsafe, then they can easily switch.” And Microsoft took the opportunity to salute the move, and itself. “Windows is a great operating system,” a Microsoft statement said. “We’re pleased that Apple customers are excited about running it, and that Apple is responding to meet the demand.” But even as it introduced the new capability, in the form of a free programme called Boot Camp available for download, Apple tried with not-so-subtle body language to play down its significance.
Ever the showman, Mr Jobs had been accused of excess in a recent product introduction, when he called reporters to Apple’s headquarters on short notice for a presentation that included a leather glove to protect the finish of an iPod music player. But he was nowhere in evidence for Wednesday’s announcement, which was made in a simple news release.
Word of the new offering was not visible on Wednesday morning on the front page of Apple’s Web site, which usually trumpets new products and capabilities. Instead, to obtain the Boot Camp software, it was necessary to navigate to an inside page on the website, where the download button was buried in a small box.
Its muted announcement notwithstanding, Apple did a significant amount of technical work to make Windows run cleanly on a Macintosh computer. Part of the challenge was writing software modules called device drivers that connect the Microsoft software to the Macintosh hardware components.
The Boot Camp system makes it possible for an Intel-based Macintosh to start up running either Windows XP or the Mac operating system, OS X. But one system must be stopped before the other can be started.
Apple said it planned to make the Boot Camp capability a standard feature of the next version of OS X, which is expected to be introduced later this year or in early 2007.
A number of analysts said Apple’s greatest risk was that by opening its machines to Windows it might inadvertently chill the enthusiasm of software developers for producing programmes to run with the Mac operating system.