Slashdot Mirror
Apple is Going Out of Business ... Again
gsfprez writes "Its been a while ... and strangely, the world almost seemed empty without the constant drumbeat of how Apple is on the verge of going out of business. If you're a fan like i am, then you're in luck, because this Canadian tech journalist didn't get the memo that Apple's been going out of business longer than most tech journalists have been in business. And besides, someone needs to let Robert Thomson know: when writing a story on how Apple is about to die,
you have to
call
them "beleaguered". Come on, that's Tech Journalism 101, people. In any case, he brings up no new points to bolster his argument: he confuses his personal inability to use third-party software that works fine for most of us with legitimate bad third-party support, and uses this to draw his illogical conclusion. Illogical because it's the same reasons/unrealized conclusions that were the staple of tech journalism from 1985-1999."
Last time I checked there were several million mac users who range from professional graphic artists, web designers, professionals in the teaching and medical field, the occasional average Joe, and now a new player to the mac field: geeks.
Also to boot the mac has way more software than people give it credit for. It doesn't have half the games as windows, but that's not it's strong point. And with fink and an X11 server i instantly have a BSD machine that can run thousands of qt/gtk apps.
Their desktops are probably loosing tons of market, but they still make the best laptops on the planet.
- tristan
I think I speak for anyone with a rudimentary understanding of economics that just because a company in the past has barely pulled ittself out of financial ruin does not mean it can do it again.
Apple really is in danger of going out of business soon, simply because of the severe economic down turn, and the fact that people just aren't buying computers as much anymore.
Apple's cash reserves are also getting pretty low, if I remember correctly.
Apple is a strong brand, and they're also about more than computers. The iPod is not the last Cool Portable Device (tm) we'll see from them. There's been going some rumours around regarding Apple and Sony Ericsson or just Sony in general. Anyway, I'm waiting for the iPhone.
Apple and Java could also become a strong combination on the desktop. The Apple isn't rotten yet!
Cause it's full of 99% opinion that doesn't matter, and the 1% of news isn't remotely useful.
Apple likes it when journalists claim Apple is going out of buisness. It rouses fan loyalty, raises Apples underdog image, gets other journalists to praise Apples good financial management and gets people nostalgic about their old Macs.
They haven't yet updated the counter for this paper, so that makes it 23 times in 7 years.
http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell
So all the Apple fanboys can snicker and jeer at someone they consider "below them", thus boosting their Apple bravado. Apple isn't in danger of going under, but it's interesting that the author of the submission conveniently ignores the problems the author had with his iBook.
AccountKiller
I figure many people are going to say "what the heck, why is this news??"...but I enjoyed gsfprez's writing there (and the topic, too).
You know, I always thought it was kinda a funny thing. Long ago I was a Mac developer doing shrink-wrap stuff. Apple was at it's peak, and still people said they had 10% of the market share. They said that was pathetic. But, from my perspective it was always encouraging. Because (anecdotally, I know) when I looked around...schools, banks, businesses, friends' houses, etc... I almost never saw Macs. I would have guessed 2%.
I wonder where they are now? I know that a few years ago the flavored iMacs sold like hotcakes and yet did nearly nothing to bolster Apple's percentage. That's partly because each flavor had a different model # and the percentage stuff is tracked by model #. Apparently it was too difficult for IDC, or whoever it was, to add.
My experience in my first year of Apple ownership is that if the games any good it makes it to the Mac eventually. Maybe it's because I'm older (37) now and don't care about getting the game the day it comes out. Maybe it's because I'm playing fewer games altogether than I did ten years ago. Maybe it's the stack of crap Windows games I have sitting next to the much smaller stack of Windows games I actually still play and enjoy.
Whatever the reason I'm thinking that for every "good" game that hits the PC first and then the Mac sometime later there are a hundred lousy games I don't have to sort through to find the better ones. Lousy games that are packaged well with great art on the box and a bought and paid for kick butt review in some magazine but nevertheless still lousy games.
I don't miss them. The Windows crowd can do my beta testing for me. I'll buy the ones that pass muster and actually work.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
2) Intellectual Property and Brand Name recognition - Apple holds a magnitude of patent and liscensing rights. Firewire, Quicktime, FileMaker, PowerBook are just a few NAMES they make substantial money off of just liscensing the name, not to mention royalties they recieve for intellectual/distribution/use/etc. The brand name would ALWAYS exist if even if (doubtful) they ever decided to eliminate the computer hardware biz.
3) Apple has partners, advocates, millionares, billionares, maybe the largest support base of any company that has ever existed - this base would come to the rescue of Apple if the impossible happened.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
10/6/1997 - Sybase's Chief Exec Says Microsoft Faces "Crossroads Crisis" - TechWeb, by Steve Burke (Negative Comments from Dell CEO Michael Dell) Relevant Quote: Faced with a similar question on what he would do if he were acting chief executive Steve Jobs, Dell chief executive Michael Dell said, "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
Of course now, Sybase has released several OS X products. Super funny.
-- Chris Martin, System Administrator
...almost made me spew Dr. Pepper all over my monitor. I'm a PC user. I would've NEVER been caught dead with a crappintosh as recent as two years ago. I mean, you could have had a computer that was: a) faster, b) cheaper, and c) with a more stable OS that d) gave you more control over your own computer that was e) put together with the parts you, not the manufacturer wanted....or you could have a Mac. Microsoft's OS, in my not-so-humble opinion, peaked around about Win 95 OSR2 or a late stable NT4. Windows 98: still waiting on that beta. Windows ME: abomination. Win2000: 5 years later, and it's almost as good as Win95. WinXP: spyware. And then...Apple releases OS X. A stable, usable GUI on top of...my god...A command line on a friggin' MAC! Couple that with a G4 powerbook (yeah its slower than the fastest wintel notebook. But not nearly enough to offset unix vs WinXP) and you've got the best *ever*. If I wasn't a poor student, instead of upgrading my PC two months ago I would've gotten the G4 powerbook. But someday I'll finally escape grad school and I'll be able to afford one--provided Apple doesn't "go out of business" again.
They better still have the sexy titanium powerbook line...and by then it'll be at least a G6.
Cheers,
--Maynard
The reason that Mac products don't bode well with Microsoft stuff is not because Macs have a problem dealing with Microsoft but because Microsoft has a problem with dealing with everything else.
Hell! Microcost has a problem with itself!
You can't Microsoft Windows 95 box to share files with a New Microsoft Pocket PC!
And both products come from Microsoft!
Hell Windows 95 isen't even seven years old, and they doen't even suport it.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
While iTunes doesn't have the nice skinning support that X11amp (or winamp) has
Do you actually see this as a disadvantage? Apple has a set of UI guidelines which, if followed, result in a a consistent look and feel across the entire platform. My experience with skinable apps is that skinning is usually added as an excuse for poor UI design in the first place, and results in a more complicated and less consistent end user experience.
I use *nix a lot, and use a roughly equal mix of gtk1, gtk2 and qt apps. Each one of these toolkits applies its own theme to the apps. Add on OpenOffice, with its own widget set and the whole thing looks a mess. Windows is traditionally better at this, but looking at the apps I have open now, not one of them actually uses the standard windows widgets (yes, I'm running windows, so expect to be moderated as troll). Not being skinnable, but having a well designed UI to begin with is a point in iTunes' favour, as far as I can see.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
As a fairly non-political news junkie in Canada, I can say that the National Post has been factually erroneous (eg. here) more often than any other paper I've ever read here, has never declared a profit since it's conception, is declining in circulation (used to be #3 nationally), and this is all probably resulting from the fact that their news & editorial pieces are generally out of touch with the opinions of most Canadians. Near-xenophobic opinions on refugees & immigrants, (see here and here, for example), as well as intolerant & exclusionary views on the issue of Quebec are all examples of this.
I wouldn't be too worried about yet another jump-to-conclusions inflammatory article from someone at the National Post.
If there's one group of people that would be especially sad to see Apple's demise, it's the music industry. Due to stability and management of multimedia, the vast majority of composers, producers, engineers, film scorers, and even wannabe dj's tend to choose Apple OS over anything else. Two of the most popular music sequencing programs - Mark of the Unicorn's Digital Performer and eMagic's Logic - are Mac-only. If you ever catch a live electronic band in action with laptops, chances are those laptops have a big blue piece of fruit on the front of them.
The big news about the music world this year is OS X, which included MIDI drivers built into the computer's capacity so that the consumer doesn't need to play with the bulky OMS (Open MIDI System) freeware commonly used by most programs. New MIDI-run synthesizers can be created with OS X in mind to optimize compatibility with sequencing programs. On the one hand, every company who wants to produce music software for the Mac has had to rewrite their best software to take advantage of this fact, but now that most of this software is coming out and running smoothly, most users are extremely pleased with the update. And Apple has solidified their support for the musician by purchasing the aforementioned eMagic, a company that makes several unique and useful products for the musician. Logic was one of the first major music programs to have an OS X upgrade produced.
The professional music world is a fairly small market in comparison to the standard consumer world that the PC dominates, but its a professional world that relies on Apple almost exclusively. There's gonna be a major outcry if Apple really starts going under.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
My favorite line from the article:
...appears to have no influence on the market...
After the success of the initial iMac, EVERY DAMN THING came in 5 plastic fruity colors that, oddly, matched the origional iMac colors. You could not escape Apple's market influence. Even now their design's are copied. XP looks like OS X if they just ass slacked on it (And has that edgy X in the name), Vaio's have tended to look like PowerBooks, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Tux gets a Aqua makeover... No, wait, to late.
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
I think there are a few possibilities:
1) Newer Apple stuff does run on older hardware
I think that basically anything with an older G4 might run OS X, though sometimes in an unsupported way and might be slow. But a lot of older slower users (like 333mhz users) seem fine with running OS X.
2) Hardware quality is high so components last longer
So the machine is probably going to be in a better condition to sell.
3) Early adopter (some would say driver) of new standards. Apple is a lot of times the first company to push new standards like USB and firewire in a big way. So even a mac from a few years ago will probably have decent options for interfacing with newer peripherals. In my opinion, that might even be the primary reason why older machines sell so well.
4) OS does not degrade much over time.
This might not be true of Windows 200 or XP so much, but older versions of Windows simply get more broken over time, as evidenced by my old Win98 box at home... I also have linux in it and that at least as remained usable over the years while the Win98 side is barely functioning. Sure you can reinstall and reimage, but as a seller why would you bother (if you can find the software) and as a buyer you are probably looking for something that works for you as-is.
People ignore the resale factor, but I find it nice to know that if I do decide to buy a newer Powerbook someday, I'd be able to sell my current one and not loose too much money... PC's depreciate at a worse rate than cars.
You could also probably learn something by examining the sales for other sorts of computers - a few years ago a friend of mine was lamenting she couldn't even give away an older 486 PC she had, while I was able to sell my old Atari Falcon for a few hundred bucks to a musician. And from the look of things it seems to be selling for about the same price still!!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One thing I never see tossed around, when discussing just how pitiful Apple's processor speeds are, is that the license for OSX allows for up to *5* machines. This means that a small office, currently running OS 9, can upgrade *1* machine for $1000 to a new G4 running OS X, and the rest (well, 5) of the machines in the office (assuming they're G3s with sufficient memory, or some old G4) are free to join in. This means your hardware investment of 3 years is still valuable. I don't think (but please correct me if I'm wrong) that Microsoft offers the same kind of licensing terms for Windows XP. One copy per CPU, and legal threats if you violate the license agreement. Apple's liberal licensing terms allow for a certain amount of guerrilla installs, which can only increase their mind share, if not their actual measured market share.
He inadvertantly brings up one decent point although he did this indirectly: The "average" person just cannot keep up with computer technology. I mean, we laugh at the fact that this guy can't even operate a Mac but there are a lot more of him than there are of us.
It is still not fair to pick on Apple for his ineptitude. I'd hate to see him try to run MS or Linux. I would sure hate to be his neighbor or pal he uses to fix his problems. He seems like a needy kind of PC guy
Mac is definately the closest thing that a consumer can get to easy to use. But when I talk to my elderly aunt she just wants something where she points at something and it works. She does not need the configuration options we techies want. When are the PC companies going to realise that there is a huge market out there of guys like this weiner who want a PC black box. Just a simpe to use, flip it on and go sort of machine. I would not even say this type of thing would be a computer. Rather more of a PDA style box that allows internet, word processing and maybe a few other things like picture and video viewers and allow him to Sync his Palm.
Maybe it sounds stupid to us but my aunt would buy it in a second.
I know there were things like the Audry but I guess I mean something with a little more beef than that. I am sure she wold like to write a few letters once in a while and put some pictures in it but not much more than that.
Maybe some thing like an embedded Linux set top box. But the interface is the main thing. I mean she can't even program her VCR and her DVD player has dust on it because she can't use it so this thing would need to just be turned on, have like 4 or 5 huge icons that told her what she could do, she pushes them and then it just does its thing.
"Laugh, and the whole world laughs with you. Cry, and they still think its funny." - Mr. Boffo
the iMac? pah.
;)
I got my paws on a friend's new 12" powerbook yesterday. holy crapola, those things are gorgeous. as an owner of a relatively cool pc laptop from a couple of years ago (800Mhz, 384M ram, 20G HD, DVD-R/CD-RW, 15" screen) this thing impressed the hell out of me.
the attention to detail is astonishing, for instance, the clasp which connects the screen to the body when it's closed, gets recessed when the laptop is opened, only emerging again when the screen is almost shut. the keyboard is exemplary, and the screen doesn't feel small, being an incredibly sharp 1024x768.
oh, and did i forget to mention, it has a dvd-writer, 640M of ram, 40G harddrive, 54Mbps wireless, and weighs 4 and a half pounds!
and of course we all know about OS X.
apple is really doing something right, i think next time i get round to upgrading my machines, i'll be supporting the company myself.
as soon as the 64bit processors come out, and as long as it can run doom3, that is