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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
They haven't yet updated the counter for this paper, so that makes it 23 times in 7 years.
http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell
Cheers,
--Maynard
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.
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