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Again, bull shiat. Use google before stating "recent developments."

USB 2.0 was released in April 2000.

Those licensing fees were announced in May 1999.

In Jan 1999 Apple announced that it would be $1 per port. As far as I know it's always been $1 per port. Now I don't know of any devices with 10 ports on them (Making the licensing fee $10). Here's a CNET article from the same time.

Both were before USB2.0 was released and considerably less than what you claim.

Again, bull shiat. Use google before stating "recent developments."

USB 2.0 was released in April 2000.

Those licensing fees were announced in May 1999.

In Jan 1999 Apple announced that it would be $1 per port. As far as I know it's always been $1 per port. Now I don't know of any devices with 10 ports on them (Making the licensing fee $10). Here's a CNET article from the same time.

Both were before USB2.0 was released and considerably less than what you claim.

Yeah, and that worked out really well until the school board decided to sell the outdated macbooks for $50 apiece, resulting in a bit of a mob scene,...

HP came out with a new LCD display and (also in notebook form) that displays billions of colors.

This beats even apples cinelerra displays:
http://www.macobserver.com/review/2008/06/17.1.shtml

HP press release (on the notebook):
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2008/080811xa.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Many people don't know about it yet but it appears to be making waves..

Possibly apple is getting to comfortable with it's new marketshare.

Personally I will be looking at the displays as an alternative, when I buy yet a bigger monitor...

(disclosure: I work for EDS an HP company, as a consultant)

Saying "if you don't like it, don't buy it" is a surefire sign of a weak argument.

Until now, no serious operating system has mandated what is, at best, crippleware sucking part of your resources and limiting your ability to copy bits. This is anathema to what computers and networks are about and is an ugly thing to do. It is also disrespectful to its consumers who clearly don't want this "feature".

Apple is not innocent either, the new macs now support DRM at the displayport level.( see http://www.macobserver.com/article/2008/11/18.9.shtml/. But the offense, while minor, will force the strongheaded consumer to break the law by dabbling in sometimes-illegal warez ever-available.

Linux is free by default. the user chooses whether to install drm plugins. The best option yet, though outweighed for many by the relatively poor user interface and the lack of support for many commercial applications (GAMES!!!). Virtualization within linux could end up boosting it and helping making it a dashboard ontop of which different OSes are running in their little virtual hardware. Who knows when it'll happen...

Imagine you were caught for littering - almost noone gets caught for littering - and they fined you $1,000,000 to cover the cleanup from everyone else. Does that even remotely make sense in your world?

Fry 'em! Littering trash! Fire up old sparkey & destroy their computers.

Oh, sorry, I was channeling Orrin Hatch for a moment.

I'm glad that it's a private university. I'd shit in disgust if Apple's shiny gadgets were being shoved in my face at my public university.

Universities should be OS-agnostic when it comes to student requirements(is it really that difficult to have interoperability with Java and almost universal support of most popular formats and protocols?). Texas seems to be the best(worst?) place for Mac-friendly universites but the madness continues elsewhere...

They also knew that they'd have to wait some period of time so as to not seem overly litigious...

Yeah, because Apple never sues anyone.

Seriously, just Google "Apple Sues" and you'll find about eight million hits.

I run large electromagnetic finite element problems on a machine with 16GB of DDR2 with two Xeon Dual Cores at 2.66 GHz on XP64. One job takes about four days. I can run two in parallel before memory gives out. If my firm had $20K available I'd get a machine with 64GB of DDR3 at "1600 MHz" and dual quad-core at 3.2GHz. I could run larger jobs or more in parallel and they might take only three days - two iterations per week.

For the money, maybe you need to consider a cluster instead. I think 16 to 32 cores may be a better investment for the computing power you need. Pixar is running a large Linux cluster for the rendering farm.

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/02/10.7.shtml

This is no different than any webcam. The fact that it is built-in and constantly connected physically is a problem, but it can easily be disabled.

A short applescript could be make that would enable/disable the iSight with the click of a button. Hella easier than having to unplug a USB cable...less wasted motion and lord knows I hate having to do anything physical because I post on slashdot.

Step away from the tinfoil, man. Are you a little concerned that people can study your online habits because you broadcast that information over the World Wide Web? A webcam is a useful thing, and all useful things can be used or abused; that's a fact of life and there's no getting around it. So either put up with some security concerns or live your life in a padded room (though, admittedly, this will only mitigate security risks, not eliminate them...)

It might well be time for them to consider doing what they could have done years ago, realeasing a general version of Leopard that will run on non-Apple PC's. They might even consider doing an "Apple Certified" program for Dell and other companies wanting to offer OS X as an option for their customers. If their hardware is truly superior, then it won't cost them much hardware business and will cut deeply into Windows' market dominance. In the end, everyone would win--most noteably the consumer (and those who like building their own machines).

Slashdot comments often forget to differentiate between "worldwide" market share and "U.S." market share. That iSuppli report refers to "worldwide" market share:

• For just Q4 2007, Apple had a 2.9% share of the global market.
• For the entire year 2007, Apple has a 2.8% share of the global market.

The Mac Observer's news article about this report says "Apple's Macintosh market share in the U.S. has been climbing and is at about 8 percent," which is a pretty big chunk for a single PC manufacturer, but maybe not so big for a "platform." The Mac Observer doesn't say where they got that 8% number (it wasn't from that iSuppli report).

So says the Omniweb browser, with its unparalleled cookie controls.

You've already conceded that Apple would probably make needless restrictions. In the meantime, Symtella works just fine on AT&T's network. Enjoy writing crippled apps for your iPhone. When they revoke your key because they want to Sherlock your Watson, enjoy explaining where it went to your user base. Only a hater would worry about such things instead of blindly trusting Apple. <sarcasm />

Back in 2000, if you installed MacsBug on a Mac you couldn't play DVDs. When you opened the DVD Player you got an error message telling you a debugger was installed. In these pre-memory protection days, MacsBug was the only debugger low-level enough to catch a whole mess of problems. Unfortunately, MacsBug was loaded when the system booted, so the only way to play a DVD was to remove MacsBug and restart your machine.

Long time Mac developer ally Bare Bones Software (they have a great text editor) created a patch that "fixed" this limitation. AFAIK, Apple never said anything about their patch and just quietly let it exist. http://www.macobserver.com/news/00/april/000418/dvdplayerhelper.shtml

This whole message mess came about because Macrovision didn't want people disabling their protection on video-output (there were Macs you could literally plug into VCRs then), and I suspect it was also to guard the CSS "encryption."

When Blu-ray movies finally show up in Macs, this kind of thing is probably going to get a lot worse than patches to D-Trace.

A "true port" would not help at all.

The parent wrote that, essentially, if you want to take best advantage of the video card in your Mac, crappy or high-level though that card may be, you need to run DirectX. Apple does not provide drivers, code example and extra software needed for new, serious game developement compared to Windows/DX. Apple's OpenGL drivers are not even up to spec with what Nvidia provides in their driver for Linux.

Hence a port of any game to OS/X is going to be painful and run slowly anyway. It doesn't just suck for games authors, but for users as well. Apple is not seriously interested in games and have shown it over and over again.

In general Apple is very annoying in the way they control their hardware. They don't even let Nvidia or ATI provide an independent driver for OS/X. It's very obvious that Apple's drivers implement only a subset of the cards capabilities. This also explain why Apple never rushes to the latest and greatest graphic cards even for their PowerMac workstations : their driver is incapable of taking full advantage of them.

It'd be even funnier if Macs didn't catch fire too.

It's again the wrong reason for a lawsuit so Microsoft will win again. The problem with Microsoft is not software bundling but API's accessibility and interoperability with other 3rd party softwares. This can be solved by forcing royalty free documentation and API access. Last time EU tried to impose unbundling of Windows Media Player but at the time the only alternative was RealPlayer and they have been bought . The resulting decision was a joke for Microsoft and was forgotten.
Another big problem is hardware/software bundling. I will like to see an injunction for all computer sellers to provide at least one alternative OS for every computer type they are selling for maximum the same price. If this is not possible the computers should be provided "without OS" alternative with a reduced price that is really matching the price paid to Microsoft OS (the minimum of 1/2 from the retail price of Windows).

--> http://lowendmac.com/brierley/06/0824.html

by your assertion, let's look at the numbers you're suggesting:

According to this --> http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/03/10.6.shtml -- article, Apple's market share was at 3.5% in 2003. That's nearly 5 years ago. Let's just go with the lower estimate of 20% year over year. (You cited a LOT of wild figures you know... going up 20 times over 5 years? Are you saying it went up 20 x 3.5%? Isn't that 70% market share? And if it tripled, wouldn't that be 10.5%? But then your metrics are also all over the place...) but at 20% compounding, we're looking at 4.2% in 2004, 5.04% in 2005, 6.048% in 2006 and 7.2576% in 2007. That does seem like a reasonable figure, but we're not looking at the staggering numbers I'm predicting. I'm predicting a great deal more than that. I'm looking for numbers that will actually humble Microsoft to the point of actually having to listen to Apple's demands rather than the other way around as it is presently.

Admittedly, I'm unable to quickly find any useful information indicating present market share, but in a conversation I had with an Apple store employee recently, I recall a statement of around 6 or 7% market share which doesn't quite reach your assertions even with a conservative interpretation of your numbers. (If I went with 40%, it'd be WAY off...) And to say "fairly steady" and "20-40%" is an oxymoron! Care to cite your references?

Upgrading the cameras with microphones and sound dropped crime even further. When is Apple releasing the teleview screens? http://www.macobserver.com/article/2006/04/27.13.shtml

There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards. When Apple first started out, "People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this." "We look at the tablet and we think it's going to fail." Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already. "And people accuse us of niche markets." I get a lot of pressure to do a PDA. What people really seem to want to do with these is get the data out . We believe cell phones are going to carry this information. We didn't think we'd do well in the cell phone business. What we've done instead is we've written what we think is some of the best software in the world to start syncing information between devices. We believe that mode is what cell phones need to get to. We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA. -- Steve Jobs from a 2003 Mac Observer interview

DRM could of course be at the root, Vista has taken a beating in the press regarding the overhead all the additional DRM code takes. However there were two unrelated articles that I read in the last two days that may have a bearing on this, first this:
          http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=288/
which talks a little about audio in Vista and one tagline being "Audio in Vista: more Hell than Heaven". Then there's this:
          http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=663/
which while not Vista specific talks about silent data corruption on machines using a particular Realtek Gigabit ethernet chip and driver.

    So I have to wonder if these audio problems are not just one specific issue but some combination of O/S, hardware and driver related issues. I haven't been brave enough to try Vista given all the incredibly bad press, the endless complaints of Drm problems, poor or no drivers for both the standard and x64 version and reports (possibly just alarmist fud) of Vista being no less than an MS / Government spy in your home reporting everything you do. On top of that there was also this piece:
        http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/08/17.10.s html/
stating that after nine months former editor Jim Louderback gave up on Vista and went back to XP, he was quoted as saying "So why, nine months after launch, am I so frustrated? The litany of what doesn't work and what still frustrates me stretches on endlessly.".

    Add all this up and you couldn't pay me enough to try and use Vista, I'm sure that at some point I'm going to be forced to have to deal with it but not anytime soon I hope.

Surprising that Apple only has 6% to 7%? It was only a couple years ago that Apple hat 3%!
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/01/15.15.s html

In three years they have doubled their share. If they can keep this pace they may be able to hit 10% in another three years.

The Microsoft CFO seems to disagree with you.

Maybe it's like iTunes where you pay extra for the non DRM version of the song.

The economics of the iPhone is interesting actually. I read that since the operators don't subsidise it, they pay Apple a cut of the monthly bill. Someone pointed out a $500 phone and $60 a month for one year minimum means people are actually paying $1220 for a phone. Or $1700 if you go for the $100 per month contract. In which case, a $1000 unlocked cellphone seems like a comparative bargain.

And if you don't have the cash up front, Apple has a credit plan with a 180 day no interest payment intro period -
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2001/12/06.4.sh tml

Gotta love Steve Jobs.

iTunes is a piece of shite http://www.macobserver.com/columns/devilsadvocate/ 2003/20031007.shtml. The only reason is it successful is that iPods suggest using it and probably distribute a CDROM with this garbage on it at purchase time.

Quicktime is only distributed with iTunes whether you want it or not. http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/850/download_apple_ quicktime_without_itunes Rather than live with iTunes, I removed quicktime and found an alternative. Both of these .... "programs" are complete shite VLC and gnump3, xmms, amarok, etc ... work for me and don't completely take over my desktop to run.

Let's see, how else is iTunes forced onto users? What is the easiest way to get legal music? Why, the iTunes store, of course. What other programs will an average user (your mother) use? None. The iTunes store ONLY works with the iTunes client for some reason http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ storeFront. Since I **will not** run iTunes on a desktop, I'm stuck purchasing music CDs and converting those songs into MP3s myself.

Saying that iTunes is used by users is like saying that Toshiba remote controls are used with Toshiba TVs or Sony remote controls are used with Sony equipment. There is no other choice.

Yes, users can and do replace iTunes, but most simply give up and assume the only real purpose for their PC is to run this piece of shite from Apple.

What's the big thing that seems to have changed at Apple over 30 years?

In 1977, Apple Computer included the schematics for all of the motherboard and CPU design for the Apple ][.

In 2006, Apple Ceased & Desisted a site for merely linking to a service manual.

Please come back Woz, we miss you.

If anyone cares.... Can't get to technical cause I am quite drunk n' I wasn't payin full up close attention to the verbosity of the reboot after the installation... But I ended up getting a second reboot... On both my machines I have updated so far... This has got to be the most updates in a year ever with Apple, to my best recollection... Is it cause the user base is getting bigger, or the nIx flavoured underpinnings allow for so much more fine tuning, tweaking, n' progging finesse, or is it just that more employees @ Apple == more updates/visibilities into holes??';!$I think I found something of a lil bit of interest... A story about someone elses blogging, linkin, on macobserver, about sec fixes and apporximately how long it takes apple to fix them.. According to the research that Brian Krebs did into Apples security fixin's... He foudn that the average company took 91 days to fix n' meanwhile apple took around 50 for most.. He discovered this from Bud Tribble, VP of software technology over at Apple.. He was then quoted to say, " "[A Mac user] simply expects things to work with single button click, and that means we have to take time to do that correctly,""... I dunno why but that makes me gigg.le... Heres a direct link to the article... http://www.macobserver.com/article/2006/05/02.10.s html Here... So if anyone would like, I can post the reboot logs from the install, to allow people to know what exactrly happened rat eboot... Hope I taint oo f thopic... Peace n Grease.: TeH Daem.On.

No links forthcoming to back up the claim that "Linux isn't taking more ground"?

Frankly the statistics vary greatly. IDC said in 2004 that Linux market share exceeded that of OS/X. Other research focusses on hit counts to their sites and generate statistics as vaired as the content and readership demographic. We can conclude that Linux seems very popular amongst web developers. Independent statisticians place Linux and OS/X at about the same on the desktop while IDC's own competitor says Linux sales are at less than 1% of other operating systems.

Given 'market share' is often mistaken for actual install base (very few home users pay for Linux) a more reliable means of counting is perhaps provided by reading package repository server logs. ">Here's one case of that in action regarding a distribution very popular amongst this so called 'average user'.

It's tricky without the benefit of more probabistically centric records like those of Google's Zeitgeist anymore.

Your reply while partly true, has absolutely nothing to do with market share. Microsoft as a brand has been around since `81, Linux has been around since `92. Windows has been a household name for around 26 years, Linux is only begining to gain relevent mindshare.

Regardless, I would contest that all things considered, Linux market share is anything but "less than impressive". Here's a study indicating that Linux's market share is at least comparable with Mac OSX.

• http://www.macobserver.com/stockwatch/2007/04/30.1 .shtml/ - Mac to Gain More Market Share
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_%22Vienna%22/ - Microsoft Already Working on Vista Replacement
• http://www.breakitdownblog.com/2007/01/22/why-vist a-sucks/ - Why Windows Vista Sucks

Dell poo-poos retail stores.

"We have stores; we call them online stores. Dell.com will generate close to US$20 billion in revenue for us this year. We think the best computer store in the world actually is at dell.com. Physical stores have been tried by a number of our competitors, and generally, actually I would say universally, that strategy hasn't panned out."

Nice shot at Apple, but who's laughng now?

Net Octopus?

Who else thinks that BootCamp being in the top 20 best OSX products is kinda silly?

Computers have moved to a point where different people use them for wildly different purposes. As such, you simply can't have "top X products" for an entire OS. If on Mac it's not the same, it's that much sadder.

Remember, Enderle is the guy who's predicted the demise of the Macintosh more than anyone else. If there's a topic involving the Mac, Windows, or Linux, there's no question he'll be on the wrong side of it. It's amazing to see a pundit come in at a full 1750 MiliDvorak's on the Idiot Tech Pundit Scale.

But don't take my word for, as Google confirms the objective truth:
Rob Enderle insightful: 9,270 hits, Rob Enderle idiot: 32.200 hits

Anytime I read the phrase "Rob Enderle says," I know I can stop reading right there.

That's pretty much the subject of the new Apple commerical....

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/02/06.2.sh tml

2 cents,

QueenB

Whatever happened to... Apple is going out of business, again, oh no!

http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell/

In 2002, Apple made it up to 5th place in servers with a 1.5% US market share. (Outside the US, zilch.)

By 2005, they were in 10th place with an 0.5% worldwide market share. (Article title: "Apple gaining momentum in server market". Maybe 2004 was worse.)

Disappointing that Fred Anderson is at the center of this. Anderson did a bang up job as CFO. He created the company's large cash reserves by liquidating unnecessary capital investments (plant), issuing a convertible debenture and selling some of their valuable ARM holdings. Then he managed the investment of those funds astutely enough to make the conversion of those outstanding notes to common stock a huge win for both the company and creditors. That 1999 conversion alone eliminated about two thirds of Apple's long term debt (conversely that means the issue had assumed most of Apple's debt). Really, this guy did an outstanding job. Apple can thank him for their sound financials.

Now it seems the financial genius is another self-serving, crooked corporate scumbag.

"I notice there's no mention of ANY of the Apple viruses/worms or malware out there"

Where are the reports of thousands of OS X desktops being compromised and bank accounts being emptied.

http://www.macobserver.com/editorial/2003/08/29.1. shtml

was Re:A bit of bias from the press?

Well, if you read it, it must be true then.

4.8% in July, with a strong upwards trend.

6.1 % US market

multiple sources report the share of the notebook market at 12%.

Questions?

I would argue that it's common knowledge
that Firefox
doesn't have
anything like
50% of
the browser market,
with most estimates
coming in
at less than
25%.

Their share has moved from 2% to 6% already gartner You'll need a new line now.

More importantly, their share of laptop sales is 12%, and growing rapidly.

It will be 18% in 3 months timen (Based on surveys of planned purchases within 3 months, which are alot less likely to change than the 1+ year buyer self assessments of 37%, many of which will actually not buy an apple computer).

They are rapidly moving to becoming a, if not the, serious choice for the home user. (Lots of those PC sales are to big corporations, for desktops - and Apple is going to struggle to sell corporations that they need iMovie, iTunes or iPhoto, no matter how good they are as apps).

Combine visible laptops with visible iPods, and alot of consumers are going to be viewing an apple computer as a normal purchase, rather than something obscure and unusual. In fact, if you haven't seen lots of apple laptops around the place, you probably aren't looking around much in the last year or so.

Anyway, my 2c worth, and its an easy bet because I'm not really saying anything other than extrapolating current market growth.

Michael

Jobs requested it during development (and, like I said above, Jobs is apparently a little hard of hearing); the iPod is the best-seller and most people don't relise that it's dangerously loud. You're right to say that people should make sure that the thing is adjusted best for their own comfort.