Slashdot Mirror
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!
Probably takes someone like Apple to be the first to make boxes with USB 2.0 and 1394b. Hopefully, PCs will have them too, in a not-too-distant future.
From what I remember (from the distant 20th century), Apple where first with "regular" USB too. Some PC:s had it (I had an old pentium MB with a USB bracket (sold separately)), but noone where able to use it (no drivers or hardware).
Think it was the same with FireWire too.
Why is this? Are Apple more daring and adventureous than all PC manufacturers? Or is it because noone wants to spend money on a technology that might not be "wanted" (meaning: Windows won't support it)?
There are 010 kinds of people. Those who understand octal, those who don't, and 06 other kinds of morons.
The speed of the bus in a computer is a big point these days. Processors and RAM are getting so fast that now the limiting factor on overall speed is the device that moves data around in a computer: the bus.
~ now you know
Sorry but Apple's overall head count has been increasing. While Dell, HP, Compaq, and so on have been laying off literally thousands of employees Apple has laid off 50 or so. But they've hired more than 50 or so in that same period.
Apple has over $4.2 billion in the bank. When Steve Jobs originally took over they had like $200some million.
Apple is an extremely efficient company these days. When their CFO last spoke recently (about a month or so ago) he remarked that they had their inventory down to 2 days. Apple is efficient for the same reason Dell is efficient: excellent inventory management.
There are also a number of major factors which are working toward's Apple's favor. OS X 10.1 is coming out and within the next year virtually all of the major applications will be converted to OS X. Because of its UNIX and NeXT roots and Java capabilities OS X appeals to a much wider crowd than Mac OS 9. Also, while Apple has languished somewhat with their G4 processors (2000 was not a good year) Apple will actually be in a better position going forward with the G5. The G5 is 64-bit and also runs existing 32-bit Macintosh applications. While the Wintel world will be split between the Itanium, P4, and the AMD Sledgehammer architectures, the Macintosh will on one chipset architecture.
Apple most certainly won't be crushing the Wintel world but they will most certainly continue to survive and yes, thrive in the marketplace.
I tend to go to a lot of Apple seminars and follow the Mac world pretty well and I would be exceptionally surprised if Apple was laying off employees at this stage. They are really working hard to get OS 10.1 out the door on time and make sure it's really polished. I have certainly seen no indication that they are slowing down at all. I would say if there are any lay offs they'd be in marketing/management positions rather than the research and development areas.
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?
There have been a large number of studies which suggest that the total cost of ownership of owning a Mac is significantly less than owning a Windows based PC. Admitedly, people and business' don't tend to notice these things, and go for the immediate lower price. Apple stay in business by actually making a profit on their systems rather than trying to continuously undercut the competition - note how many PC manufacturers are going out of business.
The number of units you ship is far less important than whether or not you make enough profit to cover your development, production, management and other costs. Apple's pricing does this, Gateway Australia's pricing didn't (hence they've gone out of business). Apple has made a profit for something like 11 out of the last 12 quarters which is better than most PC manufacturers.
Apple also has a very dedicated (fanatic) installed user base which helps a lot. Mostly though they have innovation. They put firewire and USB in their computers, they popularise wireless networking and "Apple ignited the desktop publishing revolution" (to take their marketing speel).
was pricing laptops a couple weeks ago, and for the money it would have cost me to buy a moderately loaded iMac, I could have gotten a Thinkpad for roughly half the cost, comparably equipped.
This surprises me, though it obviously depends largely on what you want from your laptop. I went out pricing laptops about 6 months ago (long time in IT I know) and found that Apple's laptops were far and away better value than the PCs. Not that they were cheaper, but they were clearly sturdier, more feature packed and most significantly had better screens and battery life. The cheap PC laptop world makes a lot of sacrifices in functionality. Either they have ridiculously small screens or poor quality screens and two or three hour battery life was normal. Then you tended to give up a CDROM to make the laptop smaller and many PC laptops (nowhere near as many these days though) don't have ethernet as standard. Then there's the lact of dual head ability (most do video mirroring) or a lack of video output options (note that the iBook does not do dual head either, which is why I type this on a Titanium PowerBook). Now, for some people these trade offs are worth the cost savings - for some people they aren't even trade offs, but just remove unwanted features. For many people (including me) these features are invaluable.
The final big advantage that I find with Apple is the OS. Mac OS X is a joy to use (I look forward to the reported responsiveness improvements of 10.1 naturally), there are rough edges and it is not perfect but the combination of UNIX and a solid, simple, clean, user friendly GUI is an absolute God send. I can happily use vim to hack away my perl scripts, test them with apache and postgresql and follow the design document which was written in Word. The lack of responsiveness that is currently in OS X is more than made up for by the fact that I don't have to reboot between Linux and MacOS anymore (for the record I don't remember the last time I booted into OS 9).
The morale: sometimes paying more in the short term is worthwhile in the long run, but it all depends on what you want to do.
"It may seem a minor point, but the more and faster connections are built in, the less frequently the upgrade gremlins have to strike."
Yet another reason the industry hates Apple. They build their computers to last, even moreso than other manufacturers.
You wish - as much as you may hate it, it wasn't mainstream until M$ caught on.
Given that Microsoft represents such a large share of the market, it's true to say that USB couldn't be described as "mainstream" until Windows supported it. However, neither could it become mainstream without a large pool of useful hardware being developed for it. This latter category was very visibly driven by Apple, and specifically the iMac.
Intel will tell you that the introduction of the iMac led to an explosion in the demand for and development of USB devices, from hubs to floppy drives, CD burners etc. USB usage on the the PC took off more slowly, but it would have taken off a lot more slowly had it not been for an existing pool of useful hardware. Intel hadn't been having much luck promoting the technology on their own, and although I'm sure they could have pushed it into the mainstream with Microsoft's help, USB was given a serious shot in the arm by Apple.
Apple may have a tiny market share compared to Microsoft, but they still sell machines in enough volume to spearhead new technologies like this.
Usability studies from 30 years ago, when people were still having trouble with the abstraction of a video screen instead of working right on a real sheet of paper.
Fewer and fewer people are so unfamiliar with computers that multiple mouse buttons confuse them.