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Next-Gen Apples To Include 1394b, USB 2.0
seletz writes: "According to this article on The Register, Apple will ship its next-generation PowerMacs with USB 2.0 and double FireWire.
USB 2.0 boosts data transfer up to 480Mbps, FireWire 1394b goes up to 3.2Gbps." It may seem a minor point, but the more and faster connections are built in, the less frequently the upgrade gremlins have to strike. 3.2Gbps!
So now the mouse will have the bandwidth to have more than one button?
Actually, it will be nice to have the speed for video editing on external harddrives without having to use a firewire one.
Remember too that SuSE and some others have PowerPC versions of Linux for these boxes as well. Imagine Linux on this? Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
It may seem a minor point, but the more and faster connections are built in, the less frequently the upgrade gremlins have to strike. 3.2Gbps!
Yeah, I remember back in '89 when I upgraded to a 40MB hard drive and said the same thing. The upgrade gremline will never stop striking!
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
They build their computers to last
Good troll! I nearly ended up exhaling 7-up.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Geez, get it right if you're going to bait Macolytes.
--Nik
I know a lot of Apple users, and I know a lot of Windows/Linux users, and each of them love their own systems, but the other thing that I can't understand is how Apple can stay in business when their computers cost a hell of a lot more than the Intel based PCs?
<disclaimer> I hardly use Macs any more because I have to work with and support Windows users </disclaimer>
If you actually worked for a while on a Macintosh you would probably be willing to pay a premium.
Neal Stephenson once compared OS vendors to car dealerships. He was concerned with the marketing of OSs rather than the user experience. Imagine instead a business where you go to have an experience -- say a dance hall which provided guests with professional dance partners.
The Apple-land dance hall had beautiful hostesses who danced so gracefully they made an ordinary jerk feel like Fred Astaire. The Microsoft-land dance hall had ugly hostesses who stepped on your feet unless you shouted directions to them for where to put their feet. The owners of the Microsoft-land had managed to prosper in business by convincing its customers that real men had loud voices, but they knew this couldn't last forever. So they replaced the ugly hostesses with prettier ones that also stepped on your feet. And it didn't matter, because in time people got so accustomed to this that they think it's normal to buy throat lozenges when you go dancing.
The Unix-land dance hall? It is chock full of ugly but muscular hostesses that will have sex with you if you know the right way to ask. The ones in the Linux and the BSD rooms will even do it for free (in the Solaris room, you have to pay if you want more than eight girls at once). The fact is that Unix started out as bordello and added dancing as a gimmick. As a result the dancing is a bit awkward, but you can get any kind of sex you can imagine, provided you can master the technique. As you might imagine, this has attracted a loyal customer base.
But the management's been trying bring in new business by dolling up the girls and teaching them a few new steps.
The Apple-land customers who wander in to the "new" Unix-land are dance snobs who look around, decide the dancing isn't up to snuff, and go back to Apple-land to cut a rug. This mystifies the regulars, who say, "Some of our hostesses look just as good as the Apple ones, maybe better! They'll even let you dress them up any way you like!" (This last point is a common fetish with the Unix crowd). Of course the Unix-land regulars really only come for the sex. These days most Unix-land customers spend a little time dancing, but they aren't very demanding about that and don't let it distract them from their real interests for long. For that reason they don't understand that for the Apple market segment, the core experience isn't about sex. The Apple experience is about gliding over an expanse of mirror polished bakelite floor with a responsive partner who can almost read your thoughts. It's a wonderful thing -- almost as good as sex (OK I'm a Unix guy). For the Apple-lander, it's nice that the girls are pretty, maybe even essential, but it is not enough.
Having good looking hostesses is not core to the Unix-land experience either -- it's more of a competitive bullet-mark. The Unix-land crowd's a pretty relaxed judge of pulchritude. For years the standard management trick was to stick a polka dot dress and yellow bow on a one-eyed bull dog. Many of the customers judged the results to be "real purty.."
Of course, those days are over (except for a few incorigble retrograde types who cannot be persuaded to give up their dogs). Now when the Microsoft customer wanders in,he looks around and is maybe impressed by how much better the hostesses look than he expected. But he also sees that by in large his usual crowd isn't there, and usually heads out. The Unix-land regulars are puzzled by this. Why would anyone walk out on sex, especially when you can get fairly sophisticated sex for free? Again, it is because the core experience for the Windows-land market segment is not about sex; nor is it about dancing. It is akin to the schooling instincts of fish. There is safety in numbers -- the sharks won't be able to eat all of us at once etc. Everyone has a little bit of this instinct in them. This is why the Microsoft-land dominated press likes to spread rumors about the imminent closing of Apple-land. But by now the remaining Apple-land regulars have heard this story so much they're pretty much immune. In fact the clever ones probably start buying Apple stock when the rumors reach fever pitch.
So, there you have it. Why the typical Apple customer is willing to pay some premium for Apple hardware.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.