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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."
Just when i wanted to get a 17 inch powerbook. Damn those rotten apples
-- -=innocent ramblings from the mind of an insomniatic programmer=-
What you're saying is there's a problem with stupid media journalists attempting to create FUD that apple is going to go out of business simply by stating they will, and people buying it becuase they have this perception of apple on shaky ground simply because they've heard that same thing stated frequently in prominent media positions?
Is giving this front page coverage on slashdot.org going to help things?
The apple may be sweet at first, but it will forever be a curse on you and your children, and your children's children... dare you lock them into a computer platform where the owners, creators and maintainers of it have been on the verge of imploding since three months after they started?
Damn that iMac for being so irresistable!
-Mark
...and if you use it, it kills YOU!
(Especially in Soviet Russia.)
These articles are almost as silly as the old argument that increasing S/N ratios on Usenet are killing the Internet.
This sig no verb.
If the article is considered irrelevant and incorrect, why is it being posted as news?
:)
Don't even start with the "Well it's Slashdot, think about it" arguments
Boss: Robert, we need a sensationalist story that harkens back to the good old dot.bomb days. something to drive up sales.
Robert: I know, how about something about a really big company going under. That'll score big points.
Boss: Thats a good one. How about Sun Microsystems, or maybe Agilent?
Robert: Naw, I was thinking of the good old standby, Apple. I mean, most of the copy is already written and its bound to rile up the fanatics in both camps!
Boss: Good thinking, lets run it.
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
Actually, he does use the word "beleaguered," but in describing his old PowerMac.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
But remember, Safari is based upon open source software. It's not like Apple has to create/maintain it from scratch.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
it seems like this guy is unhappy with this mac, and his "despised" previous one...this isn't enough proof that it's over for apple
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
We never get memos in Canada..
First, we never got the "Mullets aren't cool" memo.
Nor the, "Thou shalt not eat massive amounts of poutine" memo.
and now this, the "Apple doesn't really ever go out of business" memo.
When will this appaling double standard of memo-sending end? Canadians are just as worthy of memos as the rest of the world!
"Peace, Love and Apathy"
4 billion in the bank.
Yeah... pretty low.
If having $9 billion in the bank is going out of business, I'd like to be going out of business too!
...I'm laughing so hard. He spends two paragraphs being mad at his Palm m515 (Software that was not written by Apple) so it MUST be Apple's fault.
I wonder if he is being paid by Microsoft as part of the new "UnSwitcher" campaign? I'd say he should take the fork he was going to stick in Apple, and...well...you get the idea.
In all actuality, I'm curious as to what Apple's market share is now? I don;t know that it has ever been as low as 3%. More like 5%. But I'd venture a guess that with OSX converting Linux users left and right that it'd be around 6-8% by now. Thoughts?
My
This betrays the same sort of misguided thinking that caused the internet tech crash.
Market. Share. Is. Not. Necessarily. An. Indication. Of. A. Company's. Success.
Why can't people understand this? Why do they keep clinging to notions that have been disproved time and time again, are intuitively wrong, and yet people still believe them?
Apple doesn't have to beat PCs in market share. All they have to do is make a profit. That's it. And they don't even have to make a profit every quarter, as long as their cash reserves are large enough (and they are). They just have to over the long run bring in more money than they spend. It's so simple, why can't these people understand it? Why do they insist that "market share" has something to do with it? Enron had a sizeable market share. So did Worldcom. What they didn't have was profitability.
He's just REALLY mad that he couldn't sync his palm pilot. When his temper tantrum is over he'll feel real bad for saying those things. His just a little sore right now. Just think of the article he would have written if he had bought a brand new PC with XP.
Apple may not be going out of business. But lets not forget that as of a little while ago, Linux is on more desktops than MacOS is!
Out of business no, dying a slow painfull death? Maybe.
"Peace, Love and Apathy"
I thought at the time, and I still think now, that if Microsoft has a fairly large amount of money invested in Apple then its future cant be all that dark and gloomy...
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
It is official; some noname journalist confirms: *Apple is dying
;-)
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *Apple community when IDC confirmed that *Apple market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of any computer. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *Apple has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *Apple is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *Apple's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *Apple faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *Apple because *Apple is dying. Things are looking very bad for *Apple. As many of us are already aware, *Apple continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood (and when hasnt it?)
Apple is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Apple developers Some_Engineer#1 and Some_Engineer#2 only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Apple is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Apple leader Theo^H^H^H^HJobs states that there are 7000 users of Apple. How many users of Apple are there? Let's see. The number of Apple versus Wannabee posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Apple users. Apple posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Apple posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Apple. A recent article put Apple at about 80 percent of the *Apple market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Apple users. This is consistent with the number of Apple Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of nobody, abysmal sales and so on, Apple is going out of business and is being taken over by YetAnotherClone who sell another troubled OS. Now Apple is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *Apple has steadily declined in market share. *Apple is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *Apple is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *Apple continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *Apple is dead.
Fact: *BSD^H^H^HApple is dying
(baltantly ripped of the trolls
perhaps if apple pushed a tad harder in the direction of open standards in document creation--xdoc like tools but completely open and transparent--people such as this journalist would realize how ridiculous such pronouncements are. a hammer is a hammer, but i like the cool rubber-handled ones.
xml, java... vs. apple, microsoft...
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!
From the submission:
"If you're a fan like i am..."
Nice to see you've been so impressed with the iMac, iBook, iTunes, et al. that you've adopted similar punctuation in your everyday grammar.
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
Based on what he said:
"Crashes and screen seizures were regular occurrences. And the iBook doesn't play well with a lot of things that are part of the Microsoft world."
It sounds like he might be booting up in OS 9 instead of OS X, and he probably didn't fork out any money to upgrade his MS Office suite.
Makes me wonder if Sun Microsystems will be next
Apple may have problems - but they are small compared to many of the vaporware companies of the late 90's.
With that kind of cash they could buy their way into many new businesses.
What do you expect him to do? He can no longer write stories about "Apple makes a comeback" or "Apple's amazing new success", because everyone and their dog has done that already and people know about it; nobody would read articles like that. The way to grab people's attention is to write an article the predicts something unexpected or surprising, or takes a controversial point of view: and saying Apple will die, when it appears to be at the height of its power, is a good way to do that, as evidenced by the fact that it's been posted to the front page of Slashdot!
Now, maybe this guy's an idiot. I don't know. But whether intentionally or not, he's being the best kind of journalist: the one whose articles people actually read.
Good thing he wasn't writing about Windows 95 with the release of Internet Explorer, otherwise he'd be crowing about Microsoft going out of business.
So this reporter is comparing his clearly outdated Powermac and his new iBook (the weakest, speed wise, branch of the Apple tree) to regular PCs. And the main complaint is that Palm software doesn't work? And Apple created Safari becuase there is no development for browsers on the Apple platform? Please, no one tell the folks reponsible for Chimera, Navigator, Omniweb, et al, about this. If this was a post it would be an obvious -1 Troll. Even IE has an update in the wings. Jeez, with my 6 years life out of each of my Macs (one desktop, one notebook) I only have 3 yeras left until my laptop stops functioning, and 6 years left on my new iMac. Maybe they can oust Steve Jobs, and bring him back again.
Things aren't all bad. It's wonderful having Unix with a really nice GUI. Apple is filling in some of the gaps by writing software like Safari, iMovie and Keynote themselves. The boxes are physically beautiful. But it certainly isn't nirvana. The Mac is in a very difficult transition between OS9 and OSX and it needs to pick up market share before application developers will take it seriously. Dependence on Microsoft is an ongoing problem.
From last quarter
We were extremely pleased with our ability to achieve our revenue target for the first quarter while reducing channel inventories by 11 percent within the quarter, said Fred Anderson, Apple's CFO. Continued strong asset management enabled us to increase cash to over $4.4 billion. Looking ahead to the second quarter of 2003, we expect revenue to be relatively flat with the December quarter, and expect a slight profit for the quarter.
I think they have plenty of reserves...
did the poster even read the article? he used that exact word twice
Heh heh heh. You sucker.
You're going down for that one.
YHBT YHL HAND
Cause it's full of 99% opinion that doesn't matter, and the 1% of news isn't remotely useful.
that's what iThink.
"Life is great; without it, you'd be dead." -Harmony Korine
This is kind of hypocritical. Haven't we been saying the same thing about Canada for years!? :-P
As the owner of a Sony Clie, I do agree that sometimes hardware manufacturers forget about Mac owners. Of course, then someone steps in and creates the excelent program like TheMissingSync, which allows mac users to sync with their unsupported Clies.
Apple, in the meantime, realizes there is a problem with Palm support on the Mac, and creates iCal and iSync.
Imagine that - I have choices when syncing my Clie. I can use Palm Desktop (which I rather like) or I can use iCal/iSync.
Choices are good!
Some argue this is a result of Apple trying to ween itself off of its reliance on Microsoft. Imaging that - Apple big enough that it is willing to start taking on Microsoft. Keynote, which he ignores, can also be seen as a shot across Microsoft's bow. If nothing else, it can at least be seen as Jobs telling Bill to make sure and continue development on the Mac platform.
The Mac platform is a huge money-maker for Microsoft. Safari and Keynote are a win-or-win idea for Apple. Either it provokes competition from Microsoft and others in the field (competition being good for the consumer) or it eliminates some of the reliance Apple has on Microsoft right now. Both of these outcomes are good for Apple.
I notice that he conviniently neglected to give sales figures for all Macintoshes, and ignored Xserve and the Powerbook line, both of which are doing well for Apple. The computers he mentions are also nearing the end of their life cycle. The iBook is in need of an update, and the PowerMac line has not seen a huge jump since the first Quicksilver machines (yes, they have done things like dual optical drives and faster memory, but when it comes down to it, they are very similar). Only recently were the PowerMacs updated with Firewire800 and Bluetooth.
He also neglects to mention that, according to most analysts, Apple is weathering the recession a lot better than most other tech firms.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
1) Mullets are NOT cool.
2) Do not, I repeat, do NOT eat massive amounts of poutine
3) Apple does not go out of business
4) And Canadian bacon is NOT real bacon
I ihate iall ithose inames ithat icome iwith I.
Iapple ican idie.
Maybe the public is realizing you can get a very formidible windows based computer for half the price of a cheap mac.
The public are mostly morons-- and since when have they ever done anything but look for the absolute cheapest of [product]? Quality and longevity are of little or no concern.
They don't realize that while the Mac costs twice as much, it also remains a viable computer twice as long (or longer) and in the long run provides a fraction of the aggravation that comes with dealing with computer problems (thanks to Windows not being in the equation). I'm a system integrator, and I've seen the ugly Windows problems that just occur out of nowhere, and dealt with the people who can't do more than turn their PCs on and type Word documents because the machine intimidates them.
I got more than six years out of the last brand new desktop Mac I bought (a Power Mac 7600, with a few modest upgrades sprinkled into it over the years to keep somewhat current), and could've gotten more but I wanted a machine that would run OS X capably and without me having to resort to any hacks to get it installed and make it work. Now I've got a G4/733, and it will likely last me just as long.
~Philly
macromedia and adobe both commit to the mac, and both have major upgrades of their flagship products, all designed to run on os x. even ms office is native to os x, and is superior by many reports to office xp (though i cannot attest to this, my office experience stopping around 97/2000 era). isync works very well with the palm. but maybe the fact remains that palm is having some problems competing against the pocket pc and other pda's. CS departments are adopting macs, er, pretty unix boxen, and there are plenty of apps. windows is full of crappy, vb shareware apps. (and yes, linux has its share of crappy gpl apps) but, for serious work, the mac is not only equal, but far superior to windows in several categories.
The problem with lacklustre third party development has prompted Apple to create its own browser, which it calls Safari.
pure FUD. apple has decided not to put its lot with m$. IE is full of holes, even on the mac. keynote is designed to take on powerpoint, and apple is even pushing OO.org/X on its site.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
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.
Look Apple lovers can't bear the thought that their favourite computer company is dying. Yet those buyers just like PC users cannot buy a new computer every year. Given twelve months and good solid hardware, enough of the initial iMac crowd will buy another to prop up Apple. In the end though unless Apple begins to make huge inroads they will die.
This article is news in that yet another journalist is getting sick and tired of a second smaller tier computer platform and the lack of third party love and consideration. Remember when they media swooned over a game called Myst and helped propel it to greatness? Even then part of that was the lack of Mac games to choose from versus their IBM compatible counterparts. If Apple loses the media, they may well lose everything. Media used to be Apple centric but it is moving toward the commodity IBM compatible PC.
The other thing that keeps most of the big computer makers in business is spin. Yes the real thing that keeps them in business is sales but in a commodity market spin determines whether I buy a computer from you or your competitor. Each will do the same. Further this article again points to the lack of inroads that Apple is making into corporate offices. Why the heck is this reporter's company getting a budget iBook instead of a higher priced product targeted at journalists? Why the heck don't they have a Palm based PDA that rocks and is compatible. I mean even Sony has been able to do this and it is still a growing market that businesses will buy into. And it's not just the portable market that they have problems with corporate sales. Despite a markedly better OS they still have not really got onto the corporate radars with a compelling solution for servers, storage or services (like email). Until they think of some good marketing and launch with a fair bit of fanfare to promote new business solutions and get them adopted they will lose even more market share.
Apple is not dead yet, but they aren't growing and are losing market share in every segment they are in. It is not enough for them to have another iMac launch, they need a coherent strategy that is both flashy and compelling.
The only two choices are continue to lose or expand.
pingmeep
They haven't yet updated the counter for this paper, so that makes it 23 times in 7 years.
http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell
Mac sucks, it's all closed proprietary stuff. They should switch their operating system to UNIX or something like that. Then I think Macs could be really useful.
Maybe now Apple will hold a going out of buisness sale!
In the last recession a decade ago apple machines were faster, had much better graphics thanks to windows3.1 in the pc world, had more software like word perfect, and most of the photo editing software was only available on the mac or was several versions behind on the pc. They were worth their price if you were a graphics firm or if you had people in advertising.
Today Windows machines are cheaper, mcuh faster, and integrate well with the the proprietary Microsoft products running everything from VB client-server apps, to running Outlook with groupware functions that hook into MS Exchange server, to running ms access, to integrating with MS active directory. Notice how many times I used "ms". That is the other problem besides cost cutting. Its standardizing in proprietary environments.
The bussiness world is now in paying for their mistakes in standardizing in Microsoft products. Its a proprietary mess that they need to support and eliminating the amount of platforms to support is what the CTO's want to lower support costs.
Unless apple hurries up quickly with the powerpc970 they will be in big trouble. Motorolla screwed them royally in the ass. If I were Steve Jobs I would never do bussiness with them again no matter what they offer. The opensource movement hopefully will stop the proprietary invasion that started with Microsoft in the 90's. That has hurt Apple more then anything. Now people are not so blinded by fud and hype but these places that use to purchase macs now purchase only dell's or hp's based on company policy.
http://saveie6.com/
> The public are mostly morons-- and since when have they ever done anything but look for the absolute cheapest of [product]? Quality and longevity are of little or no concern.
Yes, that would be why Yugo decimated Honda and Toyota a decade ago.
> I'm a system integrator
Wow!
If it's a stupid ill-conceived article, why the hell is Slashdot linking to it? Are they going to post links to every misguided editorial on the internet? I thought Slashdot was about linking to interesting stories, not bad ones... who knew?
Damn, you beat me to it, I was going to point out iSync. Palm is a special case, their engineers are primarily some ex-Apple employees, and they hate Steve Jobs. They deliberately botched Mac compatibility. So Apple stepped in and fixed the problem with iSync. And it's FREE.
But it doesn't seem like iSync is this guy's solution, he sounds like he's running OS 9. Yes, OS 9 is dying, but not Apple. By this same logic, Microsoft is dying because Windows 95 is losing market share.
--No, author used old PowerMac until the day his iBook came in.
Author gets new iBook.
--Just so; very good!
Author can't run Palm 515 software on new iBoook.
--Correction: author can't get Palm 515 software to run properly on new iBooook. But he sees enough to know it doesn't "just work".
Author sees release of Safari. Author extrapolates that since Apple is releasing own web browser, Apple can't get decent third party software support.
--Actually, author sees that Apple can't get decent third-party support, considers Safari evidence that Apple sees same problem.
Author sees this as imminent demise of Apple.
--Right again! But it's only one man's opinion.
It's interesting that so many true believers rise to the bait yet again. Don't you people have any faith?
To paraphrase the article:
I don't know how to use the computer that my company bought for me, so l'll go write an article about how Apple is going out of business. That'll teach 'em.
Everyone that gives crap one about this 'news' report raise your hand. Anyone?
Thought so.
Take the pro/anti/confused/whatever apple crap to frikkin usenet where it belongs. This is not news.
Losing. Market. Share. Is. An. Indication. Of. A. Company's. Failure.
.5% or even lower, but that doesn't make it a non-issue.
Why can't you understand this? If Apple loses all of its market, it will no longer be in business. Profit isn't some magical thing that comes from the profit fairy, it's produced by doing business. If Apple stops selling stuff, it will go under.
They can't make a profit otherwise. Furthermore, there is a limit to the minimum profit a company can have in the computer industry because expenditures aren't zero, so there is a minimum market share.
The question, as always, is how close Apple is coming to that line such that they will no longer have the funds to compete?
I personally think it's closer to
Also, there's the question of third-party support which is invariably tied to market share, except for in a few cases. Take Linux, for example. How many software manufacturers put out a Linux version? Very few because there is a negligable market share in Linux, but its usually the apps that make the system desirable.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I don't get the article. The author claims that his Palm doesn't "just work" with his Mac. I'm confused. Apple has been telling us OVER and OVER again that Macs "just work." We don't have to tweak. We don't have to search for drivers. It JUST WORKS!!!
Robert Thompson must be an idiot, unless maybe, just maybe, Apple has been lying to us for the last decade.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Well, some software changes. Much rarely does at a visible rate. But people just never do learn to avoid common superstition unless they're taught reality.
Hmm. Maybe he's right. But then again, at $8-45M a quarter, it can take a long time to lose all your nut.
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.
Hmmm, if you look at what Apple is offering against another reputable PC notebook manufacturer I think you'll see a big difference in price, features, and quality...
Here is a 15" Titanium PowerBook's price and features:
$2,799.00
15.2-inch TFT Display
1280x854 resolution
1GHz PowerPC G4
1MB L3 cache
512MB SDRAM
60GB Ultra ATA/66
SuperDrive (DVD burner + CD burner)
ATI Mobility Radeon 9000
64MB DDR video memory
Gigabit Ethernet
FireWire 400
AirPort built-in
Bluetooth optional
DVI & S-Video out
I tried to spec out a Dell Precision M50 with similar specs:
2ghz Pent. 4
512mb RAM
60gb HD
Something called a 8-24-10-24x SWDVD/CDRW (guess this is a DVD burner + CD burner?)
Wireless LAN card
(not sure if it had gigabit ethernet on the wire or not)
(not sure what size screen or resolution it has)
(not sure if it's bluetooth capable)
(not sure what it's video output is... probably vga?)
(note: I think Dell should put more info about their machines on their site)
Anyway, the final price: $3934.
Granted I'm not sure how the new P4 processor stacks up agains the latest G4 chip... I know it's difficult to compare based on mhz alone so I could use some help with speed comparisons.
Should the performance come out about the same, I sure as hell would go for the PowerBook (in fact I did). Looks like I saved over $1000 and got more for my money.
I am very critical of Apple, but I think they have finally started to get their act together... I for one don't think Apple will be closing their doors anytime soon.
I have an idea. Maybe Apple can save the company by making computers that look cool and by using free software for an operating system. That would save them money in development, as they would have the support of a large community behind them in this development, and it would give them a lot of advantages as you'd be able to run a lot of programs from UNIX-like systems and such. I think I'll email Steve with this idea. He'll like it.
And I believe it's only morons that read the National Post.
AC comments get piped to
No, Macs are not blatantly overpriced, because PCs are a commodity whereas Macs are not. A commodity, as you and the entire Slashdot community are well aware, I trust, is a product differentiated only by price. Like PCs. Whereas a Mac is an entirely different beast.
must... stay... awake...
I for one am sick of half-hearted, poorly researched , and blatently inaccurate news articles. I read articles from all over the place, including large newspapers and they seem to just get the wrong end of the stick. If the author had actually researched the articles, it would be clear: a) PowerMacs came out at about the Internet boom. b) The PowerMacs of this era were stable. (the performas were not as stable unfortunately) c) Word versions >6 etc work fine on all PowerMacs. d) Which latest software is he referring to exactly? e) has the author actually tried the latest updates, or did he just try the earlier ones that perhaps came with his PowerMac? f) Which other sales does Dell rely on? I only thought it sold hardware? If someone can enlighten me (I really can't be bothered to check, since this is what the author did!) then plesae do so. g) Well done for remembering the sales figures etc. They could well be wrong though since you didn't actually describe your sources. blah. Canada.com, get some decent writers. On a side note: I can see what the author means about Apple going down the pan. Before they do, can they sell the interface or something please? Thanks ;)
The average joe will never understand why he isn't getting a good deal when he spends less than $1000-$1500 on a computer. Remember, computer usage is an alternate dimension unto itself where all of the basic economic rules like "you get what you pay for" don't apply. If you want quality hardware, tough luck getting it for less than a few grand off the shelf.
My parents paid $2000 for a new Dell PC because they were terrified that a new PowerMac or PowerBook would not have been compatable with my unversity's software requirements. Ironically, my PowerBook G3 which runs at 333mhz is a better development box for my school work than my PC. I know many geeks that want a Macintosh so badly they can't stand it.
Projects like OpenOffice will make the PC irrelevent as a platform. I predict that OpenOffice, Mono, Java and Mozilla will go a long way toward getting people off the Microsoft plantation. What I think will be the watershed moment for Apple's reemergence will be the first major roll-out of Palladium PCs. Microsoft is trying to force users to upgrade both the OS and the hardware, how is that __any__ different from what they say is the biggest problem with buying Apple? Apple doesn't fistfuck its users with concepts like Palladium which are blatantly anti-individual property rights.
My parents are perfect examples of users who "don't care" about technology. I described to them what Palladium is really about and asked them if they'd buy a PC like that to which they replied "Hell no!" Microsoft is seriously underestimating how much its users like their freedom. We have a whole generation of up-and-coming users who will have major purchasing power in the next few years. Microsoft would do well to remember that most of the Napster crowd is in college now, getting ready to leave college or has been out for a while. Those users believe, and rightly so, that it is their God-given right to listen to MP3s that they have. I wouldn't go so far as to say they have a right to get them for free, but I'll be damned if I'll give Valenti the time of day when he says that I can't view my movies and music anywhere and however I choose to.
Microsoft cannot and will not sell the average user on why they need DRM. If people really cared about audio quality they'd be using DVD-Audio over CD-Audio and would be ripping their own CDs at no less than 192kbps VBR. The content cartels and Microsoft as I said, will not be able to justify why the "sharecropper" model of IP ownership is better than the (Classical) Liberal system we currently enjoy where you have a de facto ownership of the IP in your possession.
The last time I checked, the CBDTPA was not even before a committee to vote on because it still has such an extreme taint of public hatred on it that makes most Congresscritters squeemish about even looking at it. Palladium is a voluntary enforcement of the CBDTPA. It won't keep aunt sally from getting Outlook worms because crackers are invariably more resourceful than their adversaries at Microsoft. And in all of this there is still one issue where Microsoft just doesn't get it. Hardware can have problems, look at some of the early Pentiums and some of Intel's PIII chipsets. You can't say "oh I'm sorry" and release a "service pack" for the hardware unless it's something like a ROM that needs patching. Palladium PCs will probably have hardware problems communicating with a wide-variety of peripherals and that will negate the biggest "advantage" PCs have: that you can buy components off the shelf and use them instead of buying from a select few vendors.
If anything Apple's star is getting brighter. I'm writing this from a box running OSX and I've used Linux for 4 years off and on. I recently used KDE 3.1 and RedHat 8.0 which anyone with a basic sense of reality knows are now for all intents and purposes the vanguard of Linux in the mainstream. KDE 3.1 can't hold a candle to OSX on the desktop. RPM and RedCarpet are jokes compared to Apple's updater. Java on Linux compared to OSX? Puhlease! Almost every UNIX geek I know locally now uses or plans to use OSX as their main OS. There is something irresistable about being able to run GCC in one window and WC3 in another. The nerds that think that blackbox, windowmaker and afterstep are real desktops aren't on Apple's radars and they shouldn't be. They're a waste of time for a company that makes a real desktop platform.
Linux desktop developers should quite frankly give up and ask the OpenBeOS team how they can help if they really want a good OSS desktop. Linux isn't faster than either OS X or WinXP on the desktop and only BeOS is arguably archetecturally superior to all of the above. All too often I've found that the only people who really think that Linux or BSD is the universal hammer fit for every nail mankind encounters are people whose boxes are running Mandrake, with graphical login and never touch the command line. Don't get me wrong, Linux is great for a lot of things, but it shouldn't even try against OS X. It's a battle Linux will lose before it even gets to the start line.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I don't understand either. I'm currently looking for a notebook myself, and although people claim that a similarily configured PC is much cheaper then an Apple system I just am not finding those prices.
In fact, not only can I not find Windows based notebooks for half the price, but I'm not even finding them cheaper. I just priced a Dell for comparison. Even with Dell's rebates and free upgrades right now, their Inspiron 4150 sells for $1,813.00, compared to Apple's iBook for $1,728.00. And the iBook *still* has an extra 128 meg of RAM.
If you compare desktops the numbers are slightly in your favour. A comparetively priced Dimension 8250 is priced at $1,397 after all the rebates and free upgrades available. The G4 goes for $1,599. Although that's just a tad over $200, I would not consider that 'blatently overpriced.' Also, I would guess that the hardware that Apple uses is slightly higher-quality then Dell's hardware. Enough to make the $200 worthwhile anyways.
I'm not sure if I will buy an iBook, but based on price alone, Apple seems to stomp anything that the PC world can provide. I'd like to see Dell or someone massively undercut Apple, because I like good deals too, but until now I haven't seen it.
-BrentAnd because it doesn't have a girl on page three like the Sun! ;^)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
They don't realize that while the Mac costs twice as much, it also remains a viable computer twice as long (or longer)
I'd like some justification as to why and how an Apple laptop remains viable "twice as long or longer" than a non-Apple laptop. The technology is going to get faster and larger no matter what platform you use. Furthermore, let's keep this non-OS specific.
"Schools are throwing out their apples..."
"...new computer users seldomly even think of Apples anymore;..."
"...the only new people moving to Apples nowadays are geeks..."... etc., etc., etc...
These statements are unsubstantiated to say the least. Where do you get your numbers? (2%, 10%, etc.)
Apple is in fact becoming more and more of a performance competitor for the PCs, they're getting cheaper (actually, pretty comparable in price to PC-clones considering what you get for your money in laptops: battery-life, design, weight, screens, well-functioning software, connectivity to external devices, etc., etc.); and with OS X and X11/fink/OroborOSX, it also has access to a vast amount of open source software (M$ doesn't).
Apple computers have droped in price and increased in performance compared to last year.
:)
It must their going out of business sale.
Wouldn't it be very funny if the whole market would follow the furniture store business model?
I, too, have seen the ugly Mac problems that just occur out of nowhere, and dealt with the people who can't do more than turn their Macs on and type Mathematica labs because the machine intimidates them.
Which is why your whole post is hypocritical because "the public is stupid" would explain why one would have trouble with a Windows system in the first place.
There are three labs on two floors. One is the Windows lab (99% use it), a Linux (two people use it), and Macintoshes are never used.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
I'd just like to take a moment to commend you on your outstanding journalistic ability, as displayed in your recent article regarding the future of a beleaguered Apple.
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It seems natural to me that one would come to the conclusion that a beleaguered company was failing because they were having difficulty figuring out how to get their system to work.
Third party support for Apple's platform is of course, terrible. I mean, just look at Office X! It's clearly a horrible hack-job that Microsoft just tossed together in the middle of the night to shut up those whiney Apple zealots. Never mind those broken implementations of Photoshop, Illustrator, et al.
I commend your journalistic foresight, for despite the fact that Apple has forecasted a profit in the second quarter -- something pretty rare for this industry right now, they're apparently beleaguered, and going down in flames. The fact that they have become the world's largest provider of UNIX systems certainly tolls the bell for the beleaguered company. Who wants to use technology originally developed in the sixties? Those beleaguered Apple-hippies!
Your article has been noticed by the community, and it would seem they may not agree with us. They mentioned something about journalists predicting a beleaguered Apple's demise for the last fifteen years of the century past.
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/
I suggest that you switch platforms. I've discovered a far more durable, user friendly, and powerful computing platform. You may find information and an emulator to evaluate it's capabilities at the following URL. Unfortunately, I believe it lacks a thesaurus.
http://www.speaknspell.co.uk/
Newsflash: National Enquirer and Penthouse both have better journalists than the New York Times!
A columnist can say whatever he wants, but the best kind of journalist reports the FACTS. Too bad if it doesn't get read by the masses; more often than not the problem lies with the masses that anyway (proof: Joe Millionaire).
How would your mac be a better development box than that PC running Linux?
sigh OK, he said, drawing a deep breath, let's try this one more time. The 3% figure is derived from a subset of PC pollsters polling PC sales outlets that also may or may not carry some Apple equipment. Of that subset of reality, 3% is quoted back, and journalists run with it ever since, causing PC fanboys to gleefully shout, "You Apple fanatics only got 3% of the market. Talk to the hand!"
What is reality? Not sure. But let's now add in sales from the Apple retail stores. Oh yeah, let's throw in Apple web sales. Oh, and don't forget that Apple users routinely keep their machines longer than the Windows Users Uh Oh A New Version Came Out and I Have to Upgrade crowd. That's right, if you want to figure market share, you need to figure what is actually out in the marketplace. Not just what was sold from CompUSA that month.
But I realize this requires imagination and independent thought, and thus most computer journalists are exempt.
----
Thanks for the great laugh. Apple has $4.2 billion (4,200,000,000 = 10 digits) in cash and cash instruments. They have about $400M in obligations. They also own a big piece of Akamai, still have ARM Holding stock, and have small holdings in many other firms which may still result in something more than their minimal early investments.
If you take the last few recession years, Apple has, overall not lost money, even though they've had small profits some quarters and small losses others. Even during the time they were investing heavily in research and development.
So how long does it takes a company with four billion dollars and no losses to go out of business? My calculator can't figure it out, but I'm off to use iMovie and Safari and iSync and AppleWorks and figure it out.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
Maybe stock price? One of the things I find most amusing is how the stock always crashes within 6 months of a stock split. I guess I'm just a little bitter, since I bought in back in the 80's, and I STILL haven't made a profit...
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
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.
Did you ever notice how much of a drag updating Windows 2K / XP is? I know I'm sick of sacrificing chickens and goats just to make my service pack, critical updates, and other fun stuff (like that plus pack thinger for XP) install without fucking up everything else.
.app's hierarchy.) This is a bug which fuckin pisses me off, as it precludes me having a neat Applications folder, because I have to leave the apps that come with the system where they are.
The only problem I have ever had with OS X's update utility is that (GRRRRRRR!) when I put all of Apple's utilities and programs away how I want 'em, Software Update just applies the changes in a newly created folder where the app used to be (obviously traversing what it thinks is the
Oh, and Steve, thanks for having the last Software Update spray icons into the dock. I love surprises.
Seriously, I ramble. The point is, every Software Update has been smooth for me (as I don't move the default apps) unlike with Windows 98 - XP Windows Update which has always been an incredible pain in the goat ass.
I personally like the versatility of OS X...
I like the way it is based on UNIX (BSD) so that the *NIX gurus can use it comfortably, especially now with the addition of xfree86 with a quartz window manager.
The integration of the smb protocol allows easy integration into a windows environment. (or a *NIX environment running samba)
The programs are easy to use and the GUI is nice. The filemanager is certainly better than any GUI filemanager in *NIX that I've seen.
I've had many windows users ask me for help installing drivers that conflict with other drivers. While the mac typically doesn't work well with older hardware it usually works well with new things.
I got a powerbook G4 and I love it, it runs OS X well (not slow) and when I got a digital camera, I just plugged it into one of the USB ports, iPhoto opened, I hit the import button and it downloaded all my pictures.
However when I got a new scanner, the software that came with it was confusing and a little buggy. An update fixed most of the problems but it still isn't as userfriendly as most of the apple programs.
This has been my only bad experience with hardware/software on the mac so far. I primarily use Linux but I couldn't pass up the powerbook when I looked at laptops. While I wish I had a new one with a better resolution screen and the superdrive, I still like it. I also couldn't pass up getting an ipod as well. Now I wish I waited for the 20gb iPod, I didn't know it was coming and instead got the 4gb one. While iTunes doesn't have the nice skinning support that X11amp (or winamp) has, it's nice and the browse feature is really nice when you have a large collection of music and it integrates well with the iPod.
I haven't had any problems with the Palm Desktop software though I can't seem to sync it with the iCal program. (Though Palm Desktop works well and easily syncs my Palm 515)
-Chris
[sniff, sniff] I smell a laptop Linux user!
My post was referring to desktop Macs, and viability relative to Windows PCs. Apple laptops, however, are much more price-competitive with their Wintel brethren, so how long they remain viable does not need to be debated.
I am well aware that the average 486 can probably still run Linux quite capably, and that you can pick up an old ThinkPad on eBay for chump change and make a decent Linux laptop out of it. I neglected to mention that because we're discussing this article, which acts as if Windows and Mac OS X are the only two operating systems on the planet.
~Philly
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
People who are intimidated by a Mac fall into three groups:
1) They were taught to use Windows, as opposed to being taught to use a computer, and fear and loathe anything different.
2) They work in IT, and are afraid that replacing their Windows boxes with more reliable Macs will weaken their IT empire.
3) They are too damned dumb to use any computer, and should stick with a typewriter and a calculator. Or in some cases a crayon, circle of paper, and abacus.
~Philly
I've been using macs for 4 years, and in that time I've had my share of frustrations with hardware and software incompatibilities. My long-used Palm no longer worked in OS X as it did so effortlessly in windows.
Then I discovered Virtual PC. Suddenly, AutoCAD, Risa2D, MATLAB 6, GRE PowerPrep software, and a host of others were no longer a problem. With OS X, I could run MORE PROGRAMS THAN ANYONE ELSE. I can run Cocoa programs, Carbon programs, Classic programs, UNIX apps that are recompiled for PPC, and almost any windows app that wasn't a 3-D game. Sounds to me like my software selection is better, isn't it? Okay, so I have to pay $200 for a copy of VPC. How much would you pay to be able to run ANY consumer program on your computer, even with a slight performance hit?
An important thing I've learned as a mac user is how to get along well with what I've got. Its made me a more skilled computer user. When something isn't available for mac, I get online and look for a program that does a similar function. When a company won't write a driver for the mac, I buy a different product. Its not such a big deal, and I usually wind up with a better product by a company that cares enough to support it.
The reason mac zealots are always saying "there isn't anything you can do with your PC that I can't do with my mac" is because its almost entirely true. I may not be able to use your particular model of MP3 player, or your particular FTP software, or run the first version of SomeNewGame(TM), but I have my iPod, Transmit/Fetch/Interarchy, and the latest console system. And my frame rates don't make me feel like less of a man 8-)
Furthermore, people don't buy Macs because they aren't smart enough to use Windows, they buy Macs because they'd rather put their brain power to use doing something other than getting the computer to cooperate with them.
I make my living supporting Windows crap all day, I see everything that can go wrong with them. When I go home, I want a machine I can rely on. A fraction of the viruses, no spyware worth mentioning, no worries about script kiddies and their Trojans, or Windows Messenger popup ads, or security holes you can drive a truck through. I turn the thing on, I use it, I turn it off. Mind you, my first computer back in '85 was a PC, and I also have a couple home-built boxes running XP Pro, so I kinda think I know what I'm talking about. I use both, but I vastly prefer my Macs.
~Philly
They need to combine two or more overused stories into a single one. My person suggestion is:
Apple is going out of business because of the end of Moore's Law.
Slashdot critisizing bad tech journalism? Talk about the speck in your brothers eye! I can't count the number of biased, duped or outright false submissions slipping past the editors during the last months. Makes me wonder about what submissions they reject.
Honestly, I'm mostly here for the comments. For tech journalism, see El Reg
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
My new iBook won't crash ever, it works perfectly with Microsoft Word and my Palm worked first time I plugged it in. Software support for it also seems to be on the increase. Therefore, due to this "great" journalists help, I have come to the conclusion that my iBook has something seriously wrong with it. Oh well, I'm off to call Apple and get them to break everything for me! :-)
... was this statement:
Unlike competitors Hewlett-Packard Co. or even Dell Computer Corp., Apple relies primarily on personal computer sales, often to graphics and business professionals.
OK, I buy this for HP because they make a ton of crap from test equipment to computers. But Dell doesn't rely primarily on personal computer sales? Let's see about that...
According to Dell's 10-k for fiscal year 2002 (page 54 in the PDF version, page 53 here we see the following (total net revenue broken down by product group):
Desktop computer systems: $ 16,516
Notebook computers: $8,829
Enterprise systems: $5,823
Wow, you're right Robert. Dell doesn't rely on PC sales. And 2+2=5.
My dorm room was only big enough to fit one full size box and that means that I need a box that can be both a regular desktop and a development machine all in one. I have a few old PCs that I could have used for a development box if I had had more room. I could have installed Debian or RedHat and simply compiled most of the stuff over SSH. I wanted a Mac then and now because for me OSX does everything I could want and I love how Apple is taking OSS and making really cool stuff from it like Safari. Safari is unbelievable. All in all I have to say that Linux would be great for a lot of development, but I do a lot more than write software for my own use and class. Cygwin is really slow in WinXP on my PC (1.7Ghz P4, 256mb of RAM) and no faster than GCC/Make/Autoconfig/etc on my PowerBook G3.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
...it doesn't remain viable twice as long. The festering wound in your bank account is still throbbing from the last time you bought a mac and it takes twice as long for the pain to subside to where you actually let yourself believe it may be a good idea to buy another one. That and the incident rate of cool, NEW software to appear on the mac is so infrequent that it takes twice as long for something to come along that makes you think you need to upgrade. If it wasn't for this sudden influx of iWhoopdiefrickindoo from Apple, you'd still be on your powermac.
Apple put out Safari to show the finger to Microsoft in not one but three ways: 1) It's not OS X that causes crappy IE performance. 2) We don't need you to make our browser for us. 3) BTW, it seems a vendor of proprietary software CAN INDEED benefit from using software released under GPL. I suppose the clueful may read in there something to the effect of M$ can't even write tight code on a good OS. Anyway, all three of these fingers are designed in a very calculated way to discredit Microsoft and send their PR guys scurrying back to their secret contingency regroup coordinates. That's the real story here.
cat
If someone says something beginning or ending with the phrase "if I remember correctly," it is most assuredly false.
Talk about jumping to conclusions based on limited information. Maybe the Mac Palm desktop is pretty dubious (it's, actually, oddly overcomplicated for a Palm product) because the Palm people got wind of Apple's sync application and didn't bother trying to fix their own .
Apple is producing interesting hardware package designs, but more to the point, they and various third parties are producing software that I would once have called "great". The word "great" applied to software gates on me somehow... er...
mt
They don't realize that while the Mac costs twice as much, it also remains a viable computer twice as long (or longer)
Dur...*what*?
That's ridiculous. You can use either platform for *ages*. There is, as far as I can tell, very little difference.
I've seen the ugly Windows problems that just occur out of nowhere, and dealt with the people who can't do more than turn their PCs on and type Word documents because the machine intimidates them.
You know, I see the same thing with OS X.
What you're talking about *are* issues, but they're issues that affect everyone, not just x86 users.
May we never see th
The opensource movement hopefully will stop the proprietary invasion that started with Microsoft in the 90's. That has hurt Apple more then anything.
Um...at the time, and to a large extent even today, Apple is more "proprietary" than Microsoft, in their absolute control of their platform in both hardware and software.
That was, in fact, what killed my love for Macs -- back when Apple killed off Power Computing and friends, I decided that I really didn't want to hang around any more.
May we never see th
[sniff, sniff] I smell a laptop Linux user!
Couldn't be further from the truth. Not only do I not own a laptop, my one desktop has Windows 2000 installed on it.
My post was referring to desktop Macs, and viability relative to Windows PCs
OK, why are Mac desktops so much more viable then?
...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.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
He bought the Gateway laptop a month ago, and it has been in the shop for three weeks because of a defective fan problem. Who would pay $1,700 for that? In comparison, my Powerbook has ran flawlessly since it arrived.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Cheers,
--Maynard
It does remain viable twice as long. I make very good money, and I could buy a new Mac anytime I want. The need wasn't there, because my older machine was still doing everything I used it for, which was a lot-- programming, pre-iMovie video capture and editing, image editing, web design. Lots of stuff.
If I didn't need an OS X capable machine for myself because my clients are migrating to it and I need to learn to efficiently, effectively configure it and deploy it, then my Power Mac would've been fine for even longer. I still have it, I'm going to wipe it and use it as a development station for my home automation system, which runs on an older Power Mac that I bought used for a song, just to run the HA stuff.
~Philly
Stick a fork in 'em -- this Apple is cooked.
No, this Apple is cooked.
True, the public can be moronic, but not everybody looks for the cheapest machine when it comes to home computing. But I personally would rather spend $1500 to get a nice laptop than spend $3000 on a Powerbook that will let me make pretty pictures. About 2 years back I bought an HP Pavilion laptop, at about 750Mhz (which is slow by today's standards), but between making graphics in Adobe Photoshop and using it to program applications, it still kicks. I still expect to get another 2 years out of it before I have to pass it on to somebody else or get rid of it. And even then, it will get some use. And I recently built a 1.7Ghz desktop for under $600. And it's system specs are double that of my roommate's shiny $3000 PowerBook. I can do just about anything he can, and plenty of things he can't. I'm not bashing Mac or its users, but I don't envision myself spending that much on something that limits me that much.
It's funny that any time apple comes up around here, there are at least 10 separte threads that start up on wheather or not Macs suck. It's always the same thing, over anf over agian. Macs are expenisve, Macs are nice macs are reliable, macs are shite. PCs are unreliable, PCs suck for graphics designers, PCs suck, Macs suck...
Well, I've got news for you.
It _all_ sucks.
Everything.
Everything sucks. Macs, PC's, Linux, BeOS, Amiga, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, VMS, CMS, VM/ESA, IRIX, HPUX, TOPS andf MULTIX. C++, C#, C, FORTAN, ALGOL, PASCAL, Perl, Python, Java, Lisp and Prolog. Word, StarOffice, Openoffice, WordPerfect, Latex, Tex, and troff. Emacs, vi, pico, notepad, wordpad and pico.
It all sucks.
Athlons, PIIIs, P4's, Alpha, MIPS, SPARC, PowerPC and mainframes. RISC, CISC, VLIW. USB, PCI, AGP, SBUS, ISA, EISA, Firewire, SCSI, IDE, Fiberchannel, Microchannel.
They are all either overpriced, shoddy, bloated, underperforming, overpowered, hard to use, featureless, poorly designed, poorly executed, shoehorned, mis-marketed, non-compatible, rushed out the door, late or all of the above.
So stop arguing! It's all the same crap anyway, and they all of the same problems. They're all too expensive because they're all worthless. And they're all hard to use because they're designed and built by morons!
As far as I'm concerned the last decent piece of technology is the door stop. It's easy to use, always works, inexpenisve, and never gets stolen. And if by some wild chance it's not properly stopping doors, you need only get a heavier one. All this and they come in any variety of colors.
I bet you get even get one in friggin' translucent blue plastic.
Don't buy an iBook, buy a powerbook 12" instead. I would recommend a 15" TiBook, (which I own and love, TiG4 DVI) but Apple's ripe for a model change there. The 12" is cute but lacks L3 cache IIRC. The 17" has gotta be too big, as my 15" is kind of stretching it.
Maybe the AlG4s will be more reliable / faster / sexier than the Ti, but I remain happy with my decision.
iBooks, on the other hand, are pokey in comparison to a Powerbook. Side-by-side, you really notice the pep of the G4. Used in isolation from faster Macs, you may not care, but I think the couple hundred bucks more you would spend on a Powerbook now will serve you well into the future.
The more articles like this you see, the more money you will make when Apple gets hot again.
Ahh, the typical Wintel user, only interested in the specs.
My statement that Macs are more reliable comes from nothing more than my experiences using both platforms for almost twenty years, and making my living supporting them for twelve years. The Macs I've used and supported have had far fewer problems than the Windows machines. And when the Macs do have problems, they are much more easily fixed. 95% of the time, all I needed to fix any Mac problems at my last job was a Norton Utilities CD, and a book to read for the 5-10 minutes it took for Norton to finish checking the drive.
If you're so interested in the concrete numbers, then you can Google for the independent studies that show Macs have a higher initial cost but lower TCO compared to a Windows PC, once you factor in support costs and longevity of the machine. They're out there, though I'm sure you'll discount them because they usually appear on the web sites of Mac enthusiasts.
~Philly
And the iBook doesn't play well with a lot of things that are part of the Microsoft world.
I really don't want to turn this into an anti-microsoft rant, but here goes.
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.
Let me give you an example:
I recently finished a course in Software Engineering. As many of you who actually work in the field of Software Engineering, it's basically teaching you how to cover your tracks whilst your coding. In essence, building a system for a customer, which requires Status reports, estimations, schedules, meetings, prototyping, etc. etc. etc. etc. Basically, a whole bunch of business stuff.
Now, Our professor wasn't actually a professor but a sessional lecturer who regularily works as a Software Engineer with IBM. Great! No problems there.
The one thing that bugged us was his preoccupation with Microsoft formats. We were told our coding could be done in any format we wanted to... whatever language we wanted... In the interests of our team (consisting of 3 Windows users, 1 Mac user and 1 Linux user) we decided to develop in Java what with it being cross-platform and everything.
The catch was all our documents had to be handed in in Word format.
Now, in most cases, this shouldn't be a problem. The three windows users each had respective versions of Office, the Mac user had Office for Macs, and the Linux user could make do with OpenOffice and just send documents to the others to verify that it looked good on their comps.
Great, wonderful... no problem whatsoever.
So we get going into the term, and eventually the assignments (paper-deliverables in the Word format) get more and more complicated and demand more and more of Word's "features" to get the right look.
About halfway through the semester, the lecturer puts up an example for one of the assignments and says "Go at 'er"
So we download.
4 different versions of Office gave 4 completely different looks of the same document. The Mac version was different than Office2k, which was different from Office 7 (I think) which was different from OfficeXP... And apparently this was written in some version of office. The most annoying thing about it was the fact that nobody got a perfect representation of what the lecturer had originally intended. In fact, the closest to what was intended (and still not perfectly accurate) was the OpenOffice version.
What did we learn from this? Microsoft file formats bite because they don't like communicating with Microsoft products even well. We tried to configure some of our files to look nice despite the Office version, but the only program that would allow anything like that was in fact OpenOffice...
Now I'm not here to sing the praises of OpenOffice at all... The point I'm trying to make is that saying that a product is bad because it can't interface well with Microsoft products is like saying someone is a bad parent because their kid has down's syndrome.
Anyways. I'm sure I'll get a bunch of "Typical slashdotter Anti-Microsoft propoganda" flames, but this isn't based out of my pre-biases with Microsoft (of which I have many). This is very simply an experience I've had that was made ten times more difficult than it had to be thanks to Microsoft.
Karma: Non-Heinous
They are way better value: have you priced out an MP Dell or HP lately? They are way more expensive than MP G4's. OS X on a nice MP system is a thing of grace and stability, whereas they will probably ship those MP machines to you with Windows XP Professional. Sad.
Ubergeek.TV has its own Switch campaign. Makes perfect sense.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
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.
;-)
Because they buy more iPods?
Seriously, Apple seems to be aware of the fact that the personal computer market is somehow saturated, and they keep looking for new markets. And they fare pretty well so far. Even if they'll end up as a portable music player manufacturer, they will still make profit just from that.
Apple's cash reserves are also getting pretty low, if I remember correctly.
Warning - your memory circuits might not pass the power on self-test.
Okay people what ahppens to these types of FUD articles when Apple buys Sun?
Damn those Bad Apples..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
its not, they want you to email the lamer
The average joe will never understand why he isn't getting a good deal when he spends less than $1000-$1500 on a computer.
.NET development for much longer than everyone else has been. MS has the jump here, and it will be tough to catch up in both performance and compatibility.
Err...yes, for some things a $1200 computer is insufficient. For other things, it's a very good deal. As a matter of fact, given the continuous and rapid increase in bang/buck, there's a reasonable argument that deviating too strongly from the increasing value curve (i.e. spending a relatively large amount of money on a computer when the value rapidly depreciates) is a bad idea.
Furthermore, simply because Apple does not cater to low-cost computer buyers (nothing wrong with that -- you don't hear me going after Porche or Rolex) does *not* imply that one cannot purchase a high-end x86 machine. There are very, very many systems builders that will be happy as a claim to throw as much money as you want to into a computer. Want three times as much power as you need, with redundant power supplies? Quad processors? A UPS? Hardware SCSI RAID, Firewire, 8 USB 2.0 ports, a GeForce 4, 2 gigs of RAM? Perhaps large plasma gas or projection display? Enormous speakers? Joysticks that are clones of their fighter-jet originals? Whatever demands you have can pretty much always be met.
Remember, computer usage is an alternate dimension unto itself where all of the basic economic rules like "you get what you pay for" don't apply. If you want quality hardware, tough luck getting it for less than a few grand off the shelf.
You know, "inexpensive" does not necessarily imply "shoddy".
My parents paid $2000 for a new Dell PC because they were terrified that a new PowerMac or PowerBook would not have been compatable with my unversity's software requirements. Ironically, my PowerBook G3 which runs at 333mhz is a better development box for my school work than my PC. I know many geeks that want a Macintosh so badly they can't stand it.
[shrug] So your parents made a choice that you feel was suboptimal for your situation. That may certainly be true, but it has little bearing on whether the product you want is ideal for everyone else.
Projects like OpenOffice will make the PC irrelevent as a platform.
You *do* mean Windows, not "the PC", where I'm assuming that "PC" refers to "x86-based machine", right?
OpenOffice will help level the playing field. And Microsoft will have to compete more on price, features, and service more than it did, and give up some reliance on "compatibility".
I don't think that you can simply claim that OS X is the end-all and be all of desktop environments, disregarding Linux, BSD, and yes, even Windows. Apple's always had some good ideas and some completely stupid ideas (stupidity ratio increasing in recent years with many of their UIs (think Quicktime) and Jobs' insistence that people were *still* sufficiently unfamiliar with two-button mice to be allowed to purchase machines equipped with them).
I predict that OpenOffice, Mono, Java and Mozilla will go a long way toward getting people off the Microsoft plantation.
I hope so. OTOH, let's break this down:
OpenOffice is a major jump, and the beginning of a war on features more than comptibility. However, the onus will be on the OpenOffice folks to prevent Microsoft from successfully creating format compatibility issues, which they are *sure* to start doing.
Mono is a nice idea, but a long, long way away from where Microsoft is. Microsoft purchased some very good languages and compilers people, started design well before everyone else, and has been putting resources into
Java is interesting (and certainly useful against Microsoft in some areas), but has long since turned out to not be what it once was billed as -- a write once run anywhere solution for all applications, including desktop computing. There is a very obvious lack of horizontal-market Java applications, stemming from issues with the Java standard itself, including a lack of templated container classes, and poor performance and memory footprint. Remember that Corel spent a *huge* amount of money porting their suite to Java, and at the end (and I'm *sure* that after that kind of resource expenditure, this was not done without much agonizing consideration) the entire thing was scrapped.
As for Mozilla -- Mozilla is very nice. It was pushed into a production a bit early, but still a major strike against Microsoft. However, it is *not* the impossible-to-quash piece of software that some other projects are turning out to be. AOL/TW is undergoing a lot of upheaval, and funding and support for Mozilla may not be around forever. Apple has already distanced themselves from the Mozilla project and gone the way of KHTML (the cynic in me wants to think that this necessity was a result of Apple wasting so much memory and so many cycles on the basic UI that they needed to cut corners in the area of their browser).
What I think will be the watershed moment for Apple's reemergence will be the first major roll-out of Palladium PCs.
Ridiculous. A lack of Palladium support makes zero difference to the end user in an environment where it exists at all. It can be disabled by the end user. You feel that content will *require* Palladium to be used, and that content distribution companies will be comfortable leaving Palladium-disabled users out of things, perhaps? The same goes for the Mac. If such costs are deemed acceptable by content distribution companies (and Palladium *is* such a crucial issue), then the DRM-less Mac runs precisely the same risk -- of being ignored by said content distribution companies.
Frankly, I don't think Palladium will ever take off -- that's essentially a placebo to allow Microsoft better political positioning in the lucrative content distribution and management field with a horde of increasingly desperate content distributors. It only takes a single break in a Palladium-enabled system for *all* content distributed up until them to be redistributed in a DRMless manner. x86 architecture hardware has never been designed around being particularly secure. We will, of course, see, but my bets are that Palladium is going to be primarily useful from a political standpoint, not a technological one.
Microsoft is trying to force users to upgrade both the OS and the hardware, how is that __any__ different from what they say is the biggest problem with buying Apple?
Well, resource requirements generally increase so much over new releases of Microsoft software that one is required to purchase new hardware anyway. Such is life. A major difference is that Apple charges much more for their hardware than x86 manufacturers.
Apple doesn't fistfuck its users with concepts like Palladium which are blatantly anti-individual property rights.
Do tell? Perhaps you'd like to explain the presence of the "Copy Protection" flag that Apple introduced *long* before MS was trying to do DRM. It was unpopular, and fell into disuse -- much as I feel Palladium will (and this is in a world where the company trying to impose DRM controls both the hardware and software platforms).
My parents are perfect examples of users who "don't care" about technology. I described to them what Palladium is really about and asked them if they'd buy a PC like that to which they replied "Hell no!"
Did you *really* explain this to them -- that by disabling Palladium, you have (at least from a DRM standpoint) nothing more and nothing less than a Mac? No?
Those users believe, and rightly so, that it is their God-given right to listen to MP3s that they have...I'll be damned if I'll give Valenti
Uh, huh. I don't see even the evil-mogul-looking Valenti trying to prevent *anyone* from listening to MP3s that they have. As a matter of fact, Phillips (frequently cited as a "good guy" in the DRM wars) did actually pursue this patch.
no less than 192kbps VBR.
Bit of a nitpick, but this makes no sense.
model of IP ownership is better than the (Classical) Liberal system we currently enjoy where you have a de facto ownership of the IP in your possession.
I'm sorry? The "classical liberal" system that you're talking about certainly does *not* give you ownership of said IP. Try running off 10,000 copies and selling them on the street tomorrow and see how far you get before getting handcuffed. That's nothing new at all.
It won't keep aunt sally from getting Outlook worms because crackers are invariably more resourceful than their adversaries at Microsoft.
Yes, yes. Microsoft is full of hype and deliberately misleading when it comes to DRM. This is nothing at all new. Microsoft does this with *all* of their new products, and has for years. Most software companies do--heck, most *companies* do, though not as much.
And in all of this there is still one issue where Microsoft just doesn't get it. Hardware can have problems, look at some of the early Pentiums and some of Intel's PIII chipsets. You can't say "oh I'm sorry" and release a "service pack" for the hardware unless it's something like a ROM that needs patching. Palladium PCs will probably have hardware problems communicating with a wide-variety of peripherals and that will negate the biggest "advantage" PCs have: that you can buy components off the shelf and use them instead of buying from a select few vendors.
I think you've got a few misconceptions. You can certainly use a non-Palladium-aware device in a system and use Palladium -- you just won't be able to use Palladium features with it. [shrug] Same was true for old PCI video cards (couldn't do AGP texturing), old sound cards (couldn't do digital output), old mice (no scrollwheel -- couldn't use scrollwheel features), yadda, yadda, yadda. This applies to every PC component I can think of.
If anything Apple's star is getting brighter.
Well...yeah. No kidding. They actually have a modern OS, after six years of false starts. They couldn't *possibly* be worse off than they were.
I'm writing this from a box running OSX and I've used Linux for 4 years off and on. I recently used KDE 3.1 and RedHat 8.0 which anyone with a basic sense of reality knows are now for all intents and purposes the vanguard of Linux in the mainstream. KDE 3.1 can't hold a candle to OSX on the desktop
I'm not a tremendous fan of KDE. I do like a few things about OS X, but I really don't see the overwhelming advantages you're claiming. OS X's primary interesting feature is a significant amount of eye candy. While once I was deeply impressed with the HCI strictures Apple laid on their platform, more recent ones (one-button-mice only, Quicktime's interface, etc) are less impressive.
RPM and RedCarpet are jokes compared to Apple's updater.
Mmm...Apple's bundle packaging system is kind of interesting, though retrofitting it onto UNIX would be ugly. I personally wouldn't give up RPM, which offers a wider array of analysis and ease of automating tasks, but I can see how many less technically adept users would prefer the simpler UI to their package system Apple exposes. You are certainly right that I'm not a tremendous fan of Red Carpet, but that's a Ximian thing, not a Red Hat thing -- I believe you're thinking of up2date, which sucks very, very much. However, apt for rpm is available (try Freshrpms), and the even better yum is also available. And yum really *is* stupendously good.
Java on Linux compared to OSX?
I tend to feel that Apple's rather behind Linux in this field, actually. The best performing of all JRE/JDK implementations that I know of (*including* native code compilers, surprisingly) is IBM's JRE/JDK. This is not available for OS X, though it is freely downloadable for Linux. Cocoa is nice, though, I will give you that.
Almost every UNIX geek I know locally now uses or plans to use OSX as their main OS.
[shrug] I know a bunch of UNIX geeks, and none of them are particularly interested in switching to OS X. As a matter of fact, I know very few technically oriented people on OS X (though I certainly expect plenty exist, they aren't present where I live).
There is something irresistable about being able to run GCC in one window and WC3 in another.
Oh, for Chrissake. A *Windows* user can do that. That's not much of a metric.
The nerds that think that blackbox, windowmaker and afterstep are real desktops aren't on Apple's radars and they shouldn't be. They're a waste of time for a company that makes a real desktop platform.
Uh, huh. Aside from the "what about the actually *mainstream* WMs you left out like metacity and kwin (forget the current KDE WM)" argument, what then is your criteria for a "real desktop platform"? A "genie minimize"?
Linux desktop developers should quite frankly give up and ask the OpenBeOS team how they can help if they really want a good OSS desktop.
OpenBeOS is an interesting project. I kind of wish I had been able to play with BeOS at some point. It's also much, much farther away from being competitive than Linux native desktop environments.
Linux isn't faster than either OS X or WinXP on the desktop
Okay, now that is just ridiculous. From an application standpoint, and ignoring the fact that OS X generally runs on slower software, no, there is no hard restrictions. However, OS X has the heaviest GUI overhead of the three, in cycles and memory. If you're trying to sell OS X, resource usage is not a stance I'd try taking.
and only BeOS is arguably archetecturally superior to all of the above.
Uh, huh. Ignoring the question of exactly *what* the relationship is between "architectural superiority" and "end user appeal", why do you like BeOS so much?
It's a battle Linux will lose before it even gets to the start line.
Well, it stands to be interesting, atthethethe least.
May we never see th
iBankrupt
Moz was design to appear identical, no matter what platform its in. Now I don't mind that as I'm a multi-booter. But most people are fixed in a certain graphical enviroment & they like their apps to be consistent to that platform.
Look at the way Opera traditionally used a MDI in Windows & Linux, but not in MacOS & BeOS. That was because MDI's not consistent with the Mac platform or the the BeOS platform.
Where as, as Moz was designed to appear exactly the same, no matter what platform its on, its basically not really consistent with other programs on its compatible OSes. Well except for Linux which Moz's graphical enviriment seems to be designed for.
Well, I've seen Steve around the Apple campus from time to time, and I've never noticed any wings on his sandals.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I can get a suitcase of Pabst Blue Ribbon for the cost of a six-pack of Guinness.
Does that mean Pabst is the better beer?
Specialization is for insects. - R.A.H.
ignoring the fact that OS X generally runs on slower software,
That should be "slower hardware".
May we never see th
Excuse me. I neglected to mention BSD.
May we never see th
I have been secretly hoping Apple would somehow find a way to climb back up, but all they are doing is barely holding on. I know I will get flames about how much money they have in reserves, graphic houses still use them, Jobs is god...blah blah blah, but that doesnt matter. Apple doesnt make business sense anymore, they are not doing it better anymore, and they sure as hell are not doing it cheaper. Period! Anything an Apple can do, a lower cost PC can do just as well, if not better...even the almighty Photoshop runs the same. Apple WAS a great company...just let it fade away. The '78 AMC Pacer you drive is neato too, its comfortable, and it still gets you around town, but AMC let it fade away let Apple do the same. Apple R.I.P. (hehe let the flames begin)
Hmmm, wonder if he's ever tried to set up Palm's software with XP. It's far from automatic. Check http://www.infoworld.com/article/02/06/21/020624op winman_1.html
When Apple is capable of losing well over a quarter million a year, as they have done in the recent past, that 4 billion isn't as much as it looks like.
What? You're telling me Apple is still in business?!? I wonder if I can get them to fix the Apple 2e I have in the garage.
Hmm, they don't agree with your purchasing decision - therefore they are morons. Did it ever occur to you that maybe they considered the cost/benefit ratio and decided to buy a PC based on sound consumerist reasoning? Clearly not.
They don't realize that while the Mac costs twice as much, it also remains a viable computer twice as long
They "don't realise it" because that statement could easily be bollocks. Evidence please.
I got more than six years out of the last brand new desktop Mac I bought (a Power Mac 7600, with a few modest upgrades sprinkled into it over the years to keep somewhat current), and could've gotten more but I wanted a machine that would run OS X
This has to be the weakest Mac argument I've ever heard. Just because Apple don't hike the performance as often as the PC makers do, does not mean they "last longer". There's nothing stopping you from never upgrading your computer whatever you use, but if you want the latest tech, you have to either upgrade your old one (which isn't an option with apple anyway) or buy something new.
Saying "my Mac lasted for years until I decided to upgrade" is silly, it just makes it look like Apple move far slower than the competition (which is sort of true, isn't it)
Good point..I am yet to hear a valid reason to use an Apple over a PC other than it looks cool. I really have been very open to legitimate reasons to spend more money for a machine that does not do more than a PC or do it better.
Look at what you just said. They're losing a quarter million a year. They have four billion.
At this rate it takes four years to lose a million. Four thousand to lose a billion. Sixteen thousand to lose four billion.
Frankly, if Apple is only losing a quarter of a million dollars while the economy is in the crapper, while sitting on four billion dollars, then I think it is pretty safe to say they don't have that much to worry about.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
I am sure people have bad experiences with any hardware and software platforms in existance. But I don't think his experiences are typical for recent versions of OSX. While slashdot users are expected to post based on a single personal experience, I expect more from articles in newspapers and journals.
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.
One of the most successful software development firms in history, Borland, was supposed to die multiple times over the past decade. And it's still here, producing incredible development tools.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
I dont really understand why so many people have trouble with XP. I have hundreds of computers running XP and 2k, and they run great. I actually have more harddisk failures than problems related to running a Microsoft OS. As much as I have always hated running a Microsoft OS, I have to admit XP,2k and now .NET2003 server are great operating systems. By the way, for those who have not tried it, .NET2k3 is extremely stable and has made great memory usage improvements... the beta is very nice, its going to be a great OS.
The BMW site requires Windows IE 5+ or Netscape 6+ for no particular reason, and is rendered perfectly by Safari when I press the stop loading button well before the silly JavaScript browser and OS detection kick in.
What sort of idiot would design a web site like this? The guy should be sued by or killed.
The following is my reply to Robert Thompson here's his email address rthompson@nationalpost.com and here's the websites address financechannel@canada.com, feedback@canada.com, letters@nationalpost.com, and fpletters@nationalpost.com
------------------
On Thursday, February 20, 2003 the Canada.com website published "Apple can't recall Jobs to fix company this time" it just hit http://slashdot.org/ on Saturday February 22, @02:02PM. Guaranteed you will be flooded with email!
First of all your article is full of flaws and misinformation. I am actually amazed that you are able to publish such drivel without checking the facts!
"Apple, once a dominant force in the personal computer arena, appears to have no influence on the market and the only people still using its computers are masochists who apparently don't want access to much of the latest software."
This statement is really wrong! Apple still is a dominant force in the industry. They make other companies like Dell or Gateway look really bad. The fact that Microsoft is running a new Switch Campaign and Gateway ran those Profile T.V. ads slamming the iMac prove it. Apples a threat and Apples a leader with which to respect and to train their radar on.
"I have spent the last few years toiling on an old PowerMac, a clunky ancient machine that was slow and unreliable. But newspapers are hesitant to buy new computers, so I continued to churn out stories on the unpredictable machine. I suppose at the time it was purchased, my beleaguered PowerMac was cutting edge, but in today's terms it was more powerful as a paperweight than a computer."
Try that with a PC buddy! If you've had it prior to the Internet then it would be a paperweight if it was a PC. The fact that you were able to run the PowerMac so long and really get your money's worth is a tribute to Apple!
"First of all, my iBook didn't like the software I needed to run my Palm M515. Crashes and screen seizures were regular occurrences."
What are you talking about? I've got a Palm Vx but I'm running the exact same software you are and I have had ZERO PROBLEMS! I can even HotSync it over infrared! Sure I had to convert the cradle from serial to USB but that's accomplished with an adaptor. Heck, I even sync it with the new iSync software (still uses the Palm HotSync software though). I've not even heard of people having problems with any of the Palms on the Mac.
"third party manufacturers have stopped caring about Mac users"
Another falsehood my friend. Intuit just ported QuickBooks and Quicken to the Mac recently. There has been a great many third parties porting to the Mac. Corel, Microsoft, Intuit, etc. Besides why not run VirtualPC to run a couple of Windows software packages if you really need it.
"The problem with lacklustre third party development has prompted Apple to create its own browser, which it calls Safari."
Not true again... Apple wrote Safari to integrate it with iLife and other future Office based applications like Keynote. Safari is not that important it's the developers API that goes along with it that's important. i.e. it's going to be very easy to write an application for OS X and include the rendering abilities of Safari embedded inside the application. Virtually no code needed to do just that!
"Of course all of these technological issues have led to business issues for Apple. Unlike competitors Hewlett-Packard Co. or even Dell Computer Corp., Apple relies primarily on personal computer sales, often to graphics and business professionals."
Besides Dell, Apple was the only other computer manufacturer to actually break even last year! HP merged with Compaq who previously merged with DEC. If you know anything about DEC, you would slamming HP right now. DEC was evil, it's people were so incredibly screwed up it would have gone out of business had it not been for Compaq to buy them out. Compaq is fairly screwed up internally as well. I know people who either worked for Compaq or DEC and some of whom now work for HP. The only reason they are still around is because businesses haven't figured out how screwed they will be when they sign the next contract. Apples not in the same market as HP, not yet anyway. The next generation XServe could change all that however (new processors are on the way wether they are IBM Power4, Power5, or AMD/Intel has yet to be seen).
"In its latest numbers released in January for its fiscal first quarter of 2003, revenue fell from a year earlier and all of the company's major computer lines saw diminished numbers. PowerMac sales were down 20%, while iBook sales fell 8%."
No kidding now go look at the rest of the computer industry! This is not news! They all are hurting but Apples doing better than most, except for Dell.
"The last time Apple was in this state, it brought back co-founder Steve Jobs to fix its issues. He fostered the development of the iMac and secured a US$150-million investment from Microsoft. But there aren't any new iMacs in Apple's future and Microsoft, bolstered by its victory over the U.S. Department of Justice, is clearly not going to help the beleaguered computer maker this time."
Uh wrong again Robert! Apple was much worse off then right now! They have billions in the bank. They've purchased several media software companies and they are spending a whole lot in R&D.
"So what have you got left? Apple is a company that controls around 3% of the computer market, has recently undergone a restructuring and is slowly fading into nothingness."
Sigh... Robert Robert what am I going to do with you... Market share doesn't mean squat! As long as they turn a profit they can survive, which they will when all the computer users realize that the last time they bought new was around 1998 due to the Y2K scare. Maybe if more lame Mac users like you actually purchased a new computer every 3-5 years they wouldn't be hurting so bad. Guess who's upholding Apple on hardware sales right now? Unix users are switching to the platform in DROVES! I can't go to a Unix or Internet trade show without seeing a whole lot of Apple laptops in tow! Best damn Unix laptop ever made!
"Stick a fork in 'em -- this Apple is cooked."
No Robert, that's Apple Pie! Mmmmmm!!! Apple has been proving twits like you wrong for so long it's not funny!
----------------------
I really wanted to tell him to stick his head into a link to goatse.cx but thought better of it!
The problem is that you are comparing yourself aganst microsoft who is a monoply in the area. 95% market share is the exception. There are other companies that are verry sucessfull that have a lot less of market share. If they are making a million dollars and the company size supports a million dollars it is doing well.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Turkey today stated that it was willing to support Microsoft's attack on Linux and Mac OSX, and sign on as a switcher, but due to the expected loss in productivity they will experience, they would need $26 Billion up front. Microsoft, in a fit of rage, "this is extortion", stated that they will find another country, if the current offer of $40 Billion in MS software products is not excepted. Officials familiar with Turkey's parliament state that the cash bargaining position is in reality a move to force Microsoft to part with large numbers of Xboxes. Sources further state that they believe that these will be dumped on the Kurdish population in Northern Iraq, with a note that if they allow Turkish control, that these will be replaced later with PS2's. Parliament is expected to vote on Microsoft's offer Tuesday.
.. running screensavers in the root window.. Particularly the Atlantis OpenGL screensaver port.. Wow your friends and cow-orkers.. Just don't run snood or anything else intensive while you're doing so..
IDC calculates how many new computers a company ships (ships, not sells) and adds that to how many copies of an operating system is sold.
Lots of companies don't report any of that information because either a) they don't care about what IDC says, or b) their customers don't care about what IDC says. Look up your favourite computer/software company to verify this.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
This article is the journalistic equivalent of flamebait. Pay no heed.
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
I think the argument of Mac's longevity is the MOST compelling. Maybe it has only been so since the later PPC generations(603, 604, 604e, G3,G4), but I think it is a real difference. In my experience Windows eats the hardware over time. A clean install of Win2k is very fast on decent hardware(+400mhz PII, PIII and higher), but it bogs down quickly. The more you add, the slower it seems to get. The longer you run it, the slower it seems to get. I'm not talking about having tons of programs running, tons of little crap utils sitting in the Tray chewing up resources. I'm talking about registry bloat, and systems that seem to crawl even when nothing is running other that standard windows processes. Ever run regmon and see how many registry queries happen just to click on the start menu and go to your favorites? It is truly a feat of modern computing that the registry doesn't blow up more often.
With the apple(350mhz g3) and powercomputing(180mhz 604e) machines I've owned, they seem to be more consistent. With OS X, AFAIC it gets faster with time. And I don't know what your talking about when you say upgrading isn't an option. The only thing that hasn't been upgradeable on the macs I've owned is the memory architecture. You could put a G3 in an old PPC601 box. Show me a 486 that'll take a pentium II or III upgrade. People seem to forget that when us mac geeks were using LC400 with 16-25 mhz 68030, with a nice gui more functional/modern than win9x, the pc guys were still using 386s and Win3.11
Maybe the public is realizing you can get a very formidible windows based computer ...
Now there's an oxymoron if I've ever heard one. This has got to be a troll.
He's probably trying to short sell some apple stock he has borrowed.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
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.
The public are mostly morons and since when have they ever done anything but look for the absolute cheapest of [product]? Quality and longevity are of little or no concern.
I can think of plenty of examples. Look at sales of Mercedes Benz cars, Calphalon cookware, Henckel knives, G. Loomis fishing rods, and Maytag dishwashers -- just to name a few.
They don't realize that while the Mac costs twice as much, it also remains a viable computer twice as long (or longer)
The Mac starts out underperforming its Intel architecture rivals and only falls further behind as technology marches on. Mac users, by and large, seem willing to tolerate a sluggishness that would drive me mad.
I got more than six years out of the last brand new desktop Mac
And it would have been outperformed by a six year old Intel-architecture PC. Macs don't magically get faster as the years go by. They start out slower than their contemporary PC counterparts and they end up slower.
Mac users tend to hold on to their computers longer because replacing them is such an expensive proposition. If I was looking at a huge investment to replace my PC, then I guess I would replace it less often, too.
Only morons would read a paper considered to be not far above tabloid status. Fact-checking? Whazzat?
I love how he uses Palm's crappy programmers as a sign that developers don't care about the Macintosh, and thus, Apple makes crappy product and will soon go under. That's like me saying that the millions of shovelware vendors for Windows is a sign that Microsoft makes crappy product and will go under.
Various sources show Apple's market share to deviate between
h tml tells us that Apple shipped
2.8% market share and
and 10%
Now, let us analyze these numbers in order to form an educated opinion on the matter.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/01/19.1.s
roughly 1.5 million computers. Let us realistically look at this number.
Assume
that 1.5 million computers were shipped to 1.5 million unique customers, so there are
at least 1.5 million Apple customers for the year 2002.
The truth is, the way technical progress is going, most customers upgrade their computers
at least twice a year, so now we only have 500,000 unique customers. However, if you
spend some time on the apple use groups, you will realize that out of 7000 people registered
in those groups, four out of five users only pretend to be Apple users for the coolness factor.
So, applying the same logic, gives us 100,000 true Apple users out of 500,000. The number of shipped
computers does not reflect the simple reality, that about 20% of all bought computers are
returned back to the company, so that makes 80,000 unique customers left. The people who buy
Apple computers and actually use them is even lower. Only about 70% of all bought computers are
put to some real use, which leaves us with 56000 customers. Out of 56000 50% are constantly stoned,
you can confirm this with the Switch testimonials from the Apple site, just look at their faces,
listen to what they have to say.... Ellen Feis, need I say more?
28000 sober users is still a
large number, Apple should be proud of the numbers of their true followers. Of-course, you have to
take into account that about a third of all Apple computers are sold outside of the USA, which
makes it impossible to say anything reliable about the customers outside of the country, so lets just
discard these, and this leaves us with a healthy 20000 customer user base. About half of all
computers are connected to the web, which makes them the true computer users (the rest are superficial
and do not deserve our time) so 10000 still sound pretty darn good for a company named after a fruit.
About 10% of all Apple users leave in Texas and 10% in Utah, and since we do not consider these
people to be civilized enough to use anything more complicated than a toaster, let's only focus on
the true, sober 8000 power users. Out of these 8000 customers about 20% has switched to Microsoft
products after success that MS displayed with their innovative and pattented UnSwitch compain.
So
we still have 6400 users. In general, Apple users to be very vocal in expressing their opinions, which
puts their already fragile health in strenuous conditions, such that they seem to have a
disproportionaly high number of heart attacks and strokes when compared to the general population.
So, out of the surviving 400 users (which is still a great user base and a market share) 50% are
female, and seriously, seriously, can females be considered computer users? I mean they must do
something with the computers they bought, probably most females bought their Apples as gifts and
decoration items.
Out of the remaining 200 men, US-Statistics Office reports, 120 were charged with
criminal offences of varying gravity, 40 were found to be linked to Al-Qaeda and a group of 12 were
last seen four months ago going North.
28 people left to account for. I personally know 20 Apple
users, out of which I consider 10 to be total A-holes, so they don't count.
18 rock-solid, head-strong
Apple followers, of-course from this number we have to exclude the blacks, the atheists, the homos,
the vegetarians.
This leaves us with 1 user. We have identified this truly great, unique individual
who, on his tremendously powerful sholders carries gigantic burden of sustaining profitability of this
money making machine, who some of us love to hate and the rest call Apple corporation.
We are here
to conduct an interview with this incredible person, with this true follower. He gratiously accepted
our interviewer. The interview took place in the house of this incredible person, the spectacular
97,000,000 dollar mansion located on the shore of the lake
Washington.
-I really like Apple, I use iMac and PowerBook daily, they never failed me. - These are the customer's words from the interview. -The only thing I don't like about the Apple computers, is that their keyboard lacks the Windows button on it, everything else is great!
You can't handle the truth.
Apple fanboys are annoying fools and apple has work_to_do but even a diehard pc user has to see that this guy does not know his stuff. $150 million to apple? Hello? How would apple give a rats ass with 4.3 billion in cash reserves? The economy will pick up and so will Apples niche. If palm is really giving apple grief they should just put on a couple of programmers to make_palm_software_work.:;
And as important for Apple, the niche market Apple has has been slowly eroding. New customers didn't appear at a high enough rate to compensate for those that disappeared. So growing into new markets is not al luxury for them - it's a necessity, both to get customers in new markets, but also because the perception of growth is necessary to keep the customers in their current niche.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
what, apple's dead!
were they stealing OpenBSD's code too?
Man I want one of those things. After years of waiting the perfect machine for me has come out. I dont want apple to go out of business because if they do I wont have time to save up for one. And I want them to fix the heat problem in software before I buy it.
So stop talking up bad stuff about apple until I have a chance go get one - then say what you want. (for about 3 years till i need another one [hopefully buy then I will be able to get something that good from a cheaper manufacturer])
At the end of last quarter, Apple only had $2,612,000,000 in cash. That's nowhere near $9 billion. Did you really just make up "$9 billion" off the top of your head?
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.
Unethical?!? Since when did ethics come into question with Macs? Ask yourself whether Microsoft® is ethical and come back to me....
"I was raised by a cup of coffee" -Homsar
Apple has $4.2 billion (4,200,000,000 = 10 digits) in cash and cash instruments. They have about $400M in obligatio
Again with the fake numbers. Why does everybody do this? You're flat wrong. Apple has $2.6 bil in cash, and $1.6 bil in obligations. Jesus, what's so hard about checking one of a million financial websites out there to get your facts straight? I mean shit, I'm on dialup, and it took a whopping 30 seconds.
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
I've been using Linux since '94 too, but always in conjunction with another desktop OS, since at work I've always needed to run certain proprietary software apps that don't run under Linux. My transition has been Linux plus OS/2 then Windows NT then Win 98 (thanks to a job change) and now OS X (thanks to a job change that let me get a whole new system). I still use a Debian Linux box as a server, and for running various apps that haven't been packaged for Fink & that I don't have time to adapt and compile.
The combination of OS X + Linux is a pretty unbeatable work environment. I'd guess there are a lot of Linux "adders," maybe more than "switchers."
Then why the hell was it posted to slashdot? Because you thought it would be fun to see everyone pick it apart?
What a waste of time. Why not post some substantive critiques of apple? Why not post some of the really interesting stories you guys routinely delete?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Market share vs. profit? Proof that Slashdot is not the place for informed or particularly interesting discussions of economic matters.
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
Absolutely right, I have noticed older Mac's circa 1999 or even a bit earlier still being used successfully. On the PC side the upgrade treadmill, especially with regards to running later versions of Windows could well offset the initial cost of the Mac.
StarTux
I hear a lot about apple machines lasting longer than PCs. Does anyone know why this is?
Windows code bloat, and the fact that Macs have much tighter integration of hardware and OS.
A Mac purchased new in late 1996 would have shipped with Mac OS 7.5.3 or 7.6. From then until now that Mac could have had its OS upgraded about six times (8.0, 8.1, 8.5, 8.6, 9.0, 9.1) throughout the life of the machine, with little more than a RAM upgrade from the stock configuration. Just for argument's sake, we'll call it three major OS upgrades-- 8.0, 8.5, and 9.0. At any rate, the OS upgrades would not have much overall impact on the speed of the machine as perceived by the user, i.e. it wouldn't seem too much slower. The only place where this doesn't hold true is with the last beige Power Macs, which are unsupported when it comes to running OS X.
The average Windows PC from 1996 would've had about a Pentium 200, and been running Windows 95. Good luck upgrading that through 98, 98SE, and ME. The code bloat would have slowed the computer to a crawl, and I don't even want to think about trying to find new drivers for the components in the old PC that were probably discontinued by early 1997.
This is why Macs have historically retained high resale values-- they're still useful years after manufacture. Don't believe me? Try looking on eBay for Two Power Mac models: 8600 and 9600. They are very upgradable (to G3 or G4), lots of drive bays, etc. You can add FireWire and USB with a PCI card, and generally get a pretty good approximation of a recent Power Mac. They also make fantastic servers. I have three 7600s in my house performing various server duties, and they are more than capable of doing what I ask of them.
Because it's a fucking good song.
Get a new PRAM Battery, that's why your PRAM needs zapping constantly.
And if it takes 15 minutes to boot, I'd be shocked, my Beige G3 only takes about 4 (And yes, that's slow)
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Well it's nice how Apple turn to the open source community when they're in need of something to save their ass (ie a good web browser), shame Apple can't put something back (ie. Quicktime for Linux).
:)
Make the OS open/free or the hardware cloneable and they might get more people using the damn things
Well, where do you begin to argue with him?
He appears to be totally unaware that Apple is actually one of very computer makers that still turn a profit despite the recession, and draws his conclussion solely based on bad experiences with a Mac "built before the Internet" and the buggy Palm software.
I have been using Mac OS X on 2 iBooks for over 2 years now and can't remember when was the last crash. It's quiet, light, stable, cheaper than a similar Wintel portable, definitely the best system i have ever used.
For anyone who doesn't hold stock in Apple or get Apple paychecks, however, the more meaningful measure of success or failure is the success of the Apple platform: the number of developers writing software for it, the number of jobs which you mad-Mac-skills can get you, the number of applications and, yes, games which are Mac-compatible, the number of web-sites and video-clips and what not that you can view on your Mac. (In most of these cases, I would rate Apple's "success" as higher than that of Linux, incidentally.) And market share is far more important a component of *this* measure of success.
To post something post-drinking-night-out, pre-asprin!
-- Chris Martin, System Administrator
They did give back...all the code changes they've made they've submitted back to the KHTML community.
And you can already play quicktime movies on Linux, just not the ones that use certain third-party codecs.
Really, in the big picture, it'd be nice to see more companies adopting open source to the level that Apple has...
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
OK, so I read the story. In a nutshell, Apple is going out of business because this guy can't use his computer. The article isn't even as interesting or as insightful as the post suggests. Move along folks; nothing to see here.
If KDE is so damn usable, how come people have to try hard to get anything done? Did you even read your own post?
Don't get me wrong, I like KDE. Use it all the time in fact, but a gleaming example of usability it isn't.
-73 It's about prime
Apple Computer Goes Out of Business For the 478th Time
Stable OS, user satisfaction sited in computer giant's demise
CUPERTINO, CA. -- Apple Computer, Inc., the company often credited with launching the personal computer revolution in 1979 with the Apple II, has gone out of business for the 478th time, according to a recent report from acclaimed jornalist Robert Thomson.
In his latest article for the National Post, Thomson states "Stick a fork in 'em -- this Apple is cooked." Upon reading this, long time Mac users across the world knew it was time to give up.
"I've been an Apple user since 1983," said Jason Haas. "Ever since our Apple II Plus with two Disk ][ drives, the green screen, and 48 kilobytes of RAM came into the house, I've been in love."
Haas, who once assisted in the development of the Linux operating system for the Mac before returning to the Mac OS, went on to say "They really took a chance going from ProDOS to the graphical system in 1984, and I guess that never caught on. That's a shame, as I guess I'll just have to go back to ProDOS. Fortunately I can emulate that on my Mac's dates PowerPC G3 processor. VisiCALC, here I come!"
Thomson agreed. "That makes it official. This user was so unsupported by Steve Jobs that he had to go back to an operating system made in the 1980s -- and made by Microsoft. Apple really is toast."
Apple CEO Steve Jobs could not be reached for comment at press to,e. ø
-- haaz.
I mean, I can see certain countries like China banning Microsoft from their computers...but why does the nation of Canada have to boldy state that Apple is going out of business? Maybe they're just upset there isn't a Apple Store Toronto yet...
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
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.
I bet your laptop hasn't got a 17" screen, slot loading DVD burner, gigabit Ethernet, 800 Mbps Firewire, 54 Mbps 802.11g, Bluetooth, 4.5 hrs battery life, 1" thin, or an ambient light sensor that automatically light up the keyboard and dim the screen.
.NET just to develop for Windows, while Mac OS X comes with dozens cross-platform programming tools for free.
And of course you wouldn't have the previlege of enjoying the best Unix system with a lickable GUI and best-of-class digital tools like FinalCut Pro, DVD Studio, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iSync, iCal, iCha.
If you are a programmer, you have to pay MS up to $3000 for Visual Studio
To make matters worse, you probably have to reboot your laptop everyday to keep the heat and noise down or to reduce crashes and performance degradation, while mine can carry on for weeks and months, and go asleep and wake up instantaneously.
You are clearly just a typical Windows users with a severely limited brain and imagination. By the way, there is nothing wrong to prefer a better looking as well as functional computer, particularly when you have to work on it whole day long. But then again, your poor Wintel guys have to choose either black or white and it never occurs to you that there is another world full of colors.
Wow! Imagine if Apple and Novell went under at the same time.
I am an assistant at a digital photography/printing business.
We run workshops occasionally (check the schedule on the web site) and we just finished one tonight. Our lab is comprised of 400MHz G4s running Mac OS 9.1 and Photoshop 7.0.1, mostly culled from eBay. I love my job; I haven't been able to say that since I worked at Metricom.
From time to time, Windows users who use our Macs are stymied. These tend to be the people who want to know "the right numbers" for Unsharp Mask (there aren't any "right numbers"), and who want to know if the keyboard commands and files from Photoshop on a Mac will work on a Windows machine.
An example of a "very confusing" situation: the Windows user clicks on the desktop behind the active application's window and can't figure out why the menus have changed. They don't ever try to click on the (still visible) window to regain focus on the application they want to use. With no screen-stealing taskbar to remind them of wht they're doing, they get lost in the contexts of an application-centric OS.
Nothing against these people; many of them are talented and bright in their own right, but they uniformly seem to lack the mental abstraction that the desktop metaphor depands on. They are dependent upon the concept of procedural instruction to perform tasks on a computer. They were, as the previous poster suggests, taught to use Windows, and are not able to acclimate to anything different.
My experience has taught me that the best way to help these people learn to use a Mac for three days at a time is to produce a short but highly procedural document explaining how to perform common tasks in Macintosh OS 9. (I refuse to waste my time explaining the 47 possible places to put ICC profiles in the last six versions of Windows, nor am I especially keen on explaining the vagaries of why Microsoft STILL will not allow users to have different color lookup tables on dual-head or dual monitor card systems!)
I think the fundamental differences are small between Mac and Windows users, but while I find that many Mac users are adaptable to Windows without outside instruction, Windows users depend on the higly organized and enforced GUI of Windows in order to perform tasks.
Hope you enjoyed this data point...
Forgive me if I am incorrect, however I believe your real gripe is about the missing Sorenson codec for Linux. If this is the case, I suggest you take up your gripes with Sorenson. They're the guys with the patent.
cat
The components maybe same, but Apple still build much better system. If this is too abstract to you, think about BMW and Ford - they may use the same engine or seats but still differ in the overall quality. Have you got it?
As I am considering a 12" powerbook for my next notebook purchase (my HP Omnibook still works OK after 4 years ;-), but it's obvious out of time).
When browsing my usual CD stores, I started to see lots of new audio CDs are "copy-protected' that explictly DON'T PLAY ON MAC, and of course don't play on Linux or anything else than Windozs.
That make me worry that I can no longer play audio CDs on the new Macs in some point of future, if such (sucky) copy-protection schemes are prevalent.
This is really a problem to me and a very discouraging issue for me Macintosh purchasing decision.
Than, may Sony care to providing a supported Palm Desktop/Hotsync for my Clie NR70V?
It's said that most consumer companies *don't care* for Mac user anymore to march towards to a Windozs-only world. Evil! Evil!
The Financial Post is the financial news section of The National Post (Canada). This is a paper that has gushed red ink since the day it was founded, it has never made a profit.
The National Post's owner, CanWest Global, also owns television networks in Canada and New Zealand, most of the daily papers in Canada, and the Canada.com "portal". CanWest bought the Post in one of those ill-considered "convergence" plays and is rumoured to be pulling the plug if things don't turn around soon.
"Clean up the air and treat the animals fair" - Captain Beefheart
Fun with tweaking.
--j
Not necesarily with notebook fans. Those are not always user servicable. Most internal laptop fans are accessible only after you take the keyboard and screen off. It's best to leave that to the vendor's service people usually, you might void the warranty accessing that part of the system too.
This story is just some guy's personal rant against his computer and his inability to get it to link with his pda. I suspect the only reason it was posted is that it is an easy target for the poster to discredit, thereby making Apple look good.
Vote for Pedro
Take the $999 iBook for instance, it's fast, quiet, light, and has long battery life and more than enough features most people. Where can you find a cheaper laptop with similar features?
Apple is also miles ahead of the Wintel crowd at the high end. Is there any other 6.8 pounds 1" thin 17" laptop with slot loading DVD nurner, gigabit Ethernet, 800 Mbps Firewire, USB, 54 Mbps AirPort Extreme (802.11g) wireless, Bluetooth, and a ambient light sensor that light up the keyboard and dim the screen when the light goes out?
And it also comes with the best Unix system with the most functional and stylish GUI with built-in speech and hand writing recognition plus tons of free programming tools as well as super cool and useful software like iLife, iSync, GNU Chess, etc.
You sound like Microsoft, blame users for the poor quality of Windows. But with Macs, the users can afford being lazy.
Ok, so he's using an outdated PowerMac for who knows how long. Then he gets a spanking new ibook and has problems. Welcome to the world of computers. Many still use and rely on Mac's wares with similar issues and manage to solve them - did he see if there were any OS updates or patches before we decided to go on this journalistic tirade?
.com scrap heap? If a buggy OS were a reason for product extinction then Microsoft should have completely fossilized by now.
Apple is still very much on the NASDAQ radar considering what other high profile computer and technology companies are doing- Apple isn't doing that bad.
So, this guy is basically whining that he bought this ibook, didn't check to see if it was compatible with his pim, or whether any of the software he want would run on it? Sounds more like his firm bought it for him and he didn't want it so he'll write a column to bash it.
And his assertion that due to his experinces, not full compatiblity with previously owned products and buggy OS, is reason that Apple is destined for the
Lovely, now journalist are using their forums to troll - pffft!
What a dweb!
untill I see this.
The byline says the article comes from the Financial Post (part of Canada's other national newspaper, the National Post). I've long since given up on these sources to have any clues about the tech industry. In my opinion, there are very few good tech writers at general news publishers. Also, the editorial folks seem utterly unprepared to fact-check anything.
BRENT ROCKWOOD, EST'd 1975
I'll grant you some of the hardware on that laptop. The top-of-the-line Gateway matches the specs that count to me, though, for $600 less.
;-))
It only drops Gb Ethernet (don't need it), 802.11g (all the APs I ever see are 802.11b anyway, and I work for a manufacturer!), the slot-loading DVD burner (whoop!), and the light sensor.
Your assertion that you have to pony up three grand to Microsoft to program for Windows is just wrong. You can use the same Free GNU toolchain for Windows that you do for OSX, and you can pick up a brand-new copy of Visual Studio.NET for under $1000, not $3000. If you don't need the absolute-latest version (and you don't--I use version 6.0 at work), pick up a copy of version 6.0 for about $250.
As far as having to reboot my laptop, I haven't honestly had to reboot it in about three months. I just suspend and resume. It's not instantaneous, I'll grant you, but I doubt that yours is, either--there are some speed-of-light issues involved. Mine suspends and resumes in about three seconds, which is faster than it takes me to get it properly opened and sit down to work.
Don't get me wrong, and don't assume from my signature that I'm a Windows-only person. (Don't tell anyone, but Windev actually runs on a Linux box...
I cut my teeth on Apples (II+, IIe, then Mac Plus); now I'm more of a Linux person, simply due to the economic realities (search for Mac programming jobs vs. Unix programming jobs and you'll understand).
MacOs was a decent platform, and from everything I've heard, OS/X is a great one. But you obviously know very little about the Windows world.
Of course he can't use $CURRENT_VERSION with $YEAR_OLD_HARDWARE
$CURRENT_VERSION = "10.2.4";
$YEAR_OLD_HARDWARE = "circa 1999 blueberry iBook with 300 MHz G3 and 192 MB of RAM";
That's my setup, pal. Works great. My expectations were low, low, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Jaguar runs really well on 3-1/2-year-old kit.
I write in my journal
Auctally, you can play sorenson V1 and V3 (Both of which are used for most trailers and such) with Mplayer
Which will also play WMV/A, Divx,real and a bunch of other audio/video formats
That people don't seem to understand that journalists will write stories that are loosely based on facts, or blatantly untrue merely to evoke a reaction? Fluff journalism at it's best.
http://www.remix.net/
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
If you mail columnist Richard Thompson ( rthompson@nationalpost.com ) regarding his article predicting Apple's "fade to nothingness", don't forget to at least CC: the Financial Post editor Terence Corcoran ( tcorcoran@nationalpost.com ) too.
Did I miss something?
... my beleaguered PowerMac ...
From the slashdot article summary:
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".
From the Thomson's article:
Did I miss something? It seems to me that the submitter is complaining that Thomson didn't use the word beleaguered, but he obviously did.
From the article: "...but in today's terms it was more powerful as a paperweight than a computer."
Given the sheer weight of the beasts, I'd say that was true of every computer I've ever seen. I mean, hell my P2 is about 300 times as powerful as any other paperweight I've ever used...
Oh wait, that one laptop I saw once...
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
I support, or at least I try to, a number of Windows users in a small company. My co-worker, an immigrant from Egypt made a request for help form in Excel so that the users skill levels could be determined. It contained radio buttons and drop down lists.
Most users, presented with the form, couldn't fill it out, being overwhelmed with the form. The most common question was, "What is Windows?". The second most common question was, "How do I fill this out?".
The moral of the story: most average joes don't know the difference between Windows and anything else. Those that do are a dwindling minority.
The author of the article would most likely be complaining about something else if he were to be using Windows..
Unless apple hurries up quickly with the powerpc970 they will be in big trouble. Motorolla screwed them royally in the ass. If I were Steve Jobs I would never do bussiness with them again no matter what they offer.
That would be kind of silly to do something so final. *IF* (and thats a bloody big if) motorola were to come up with "THE KILLER" chip, and offered it to apple, apple would be completely stupid not to consider using it, the whole cutting ones nose to spite ones face thing. (Ok, itll be a cold day in hell, but...)
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
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.
I understand your aunt very well. This is exactly what I want in a computer. I am a Mac user, because - as you said - Mac is as close to this as money can buy, but I still think it could be even better. My dream machine is a laptop version of Playstation 2 - capable to play DVD's, run commercial games, with some customized version of Linux, that would allow me to work and communicate with the 'Net. And of course it has to be portable, as I want to carry it everywhere I go (like I do with my iBook). What's really annoying is that this kind of machine is technically possible even today - but probably no one is going to manufacture and market it. I can have PS2 - but without portability. I can have Linux - but without the ease of use and with limited gaming and multimedia abilities. I can have Windows - but without security and stability. So what's really left for me, if not an iBook running OS X?
I have Quicktime 6 playing on Linux perfectly fine. It's just the almost seedy installation method that bothers me. Copying Windows DLLs across to Linux. Probably breaking the EULA etc..
:)
There should at least be an official Linux player even if it does lack come codecs. Until there's an official quicktime player for Linux you won't get support from Sorenson. You really think Sorenson are going to liase with Xine or the Mplayer guys?
I appreciate what Apple are doing, fixing KHTML and putting their fixes back, but this is part of the license agreement anyway
would have purchased a PowerBook for him instead of an iBook. I guess his worth to the company was a $999 iBook instead of a $2799 TiBook.
Gotta laugh at canada.com trying to stir up some gravy from their backwoods shithole of a country. I'd be willing to bet Mexico (since NAFTA) will surpass Canada as our best border country in the next 50 years. Se habla espagnol?
No Wintel box makers have the Apple style drive for perfection and attetion to details - they may use similar components but Apple products always looks and feels better.
...
People are willing to pay extra for a Mac because it just works and makes you more productive. And now Macs are actually cheaper than many top brand Wintel machines.
For me, there is an ethical dimension: Apple has been contributed more to the world than companies that are 10 or 20 times bigger. In fact, Apple is probably the only computer maker left in the industry except perhaps IBM that is still actively innovating, often for the benifit of parasites like Dell. Just look around to see how many things are either invented or first adopted by Apple years before the Wintel crowd: GUI, mouse, color display, laser printer, plug-n-play, speech and hand writting recognition, PDA, digital camera, QuickTime, USB, Firewire, 802.11b, 802.11g, gigabit Ethernet, Rendezvous,
Compared to Microsoft, Apple has a 20 times smaller market share, probably makes 100 times less profit, and yet its software portofolio puts Microsoft to shame: Mac OS X - the best GUI with rock solid Unix, Darwin - the first open source OS by a main stream computer maker, QuickTime Player - grandad of multimedia players, Darwin Streaming Server - the only multiplatform open source media server, WebObjects - the first application server, FileMaker Pro - powerful and easy to use database software, AppleWorks - small and powerful office package, FinalCut Pro - the choice of Holywood movie editors, iLife - the best free software for managing music and photos and movies and DVDs, DVD Studio - professional DVD authoring tools, Shake - leading edge compositing software, Safari - faster and smaller than MS IE, Project Builder and Interface Builder - free and powerful IDE and GUI tool for developing Java or C/C++ or Objective C/C++ or AppleScript applications, and the list goes on.
Dell is a shameless parasite, and by its own admission relies on other companies R&D budgets and then undercut their prices. I will not spend my money to help a clueless box maker like Dell gaining more market and to produce another ruthless monster like MS that would eventually destroy the ecosystem in the computing industry.
Only on Slashdot will you see someone using the words 'only' and '$2,612,000,000' in the same sentence. ;)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
... people will start to believe it.
I salute your brilliant rant good sir - it has a snappy rapid-fire quality to it that I find refreshing. cheers.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I love guys like you, Macs use the SAME guts as any other PC out there. You think they have some secret stash(tm) of high quality parts? I'm typing this on an almost 7 year old Dell running Suse 8 Linux. It's FASTER than my 500mhz ibook with 320m of RAM in it and this machine only has 192m of RAM. I bought the ibook to try out and play with, it was their most competitve computer at the time. It's nice and all (I use OS9.2 on it since 10 is slow as a dog) but Apple uses the same crap in their machines as anyone else. I love it when you people try that lame ass line.
I do like a few things about OS X, but I really don't see the overwhelming advantages you're claiming. OS X's primary interesting feature is a significant amount of eye candy.
.net beyond simple eye candy.
.net api's.
.net/Windows.
I was responding to your generalized perception that compatibility is as huge an issue as you still perceive it to be, and OS X having it's own advantages over Windows and
In addition, I disagreed with your marginalisation of the mono project. I agree with your perception that they won't be a solution for compatibility, but by making libraries available they will enable programmers to take advantage of what is good in the
Furthermore, I said
Objective C (written by Brad Cox) was trying to bring smalltalk like objected oriented functionality to C.
I then went on to clarify what aspects of smalltalk were relevant to the discussion here of the unique advantages of Cocoa/OS X vs.
When you compare PC and Mac laptops, you have to figure in from $100 to $350 in extra costs on the PC side to obtain the same amount of default battery life as the included iBook and PowerBook batteries.
The PC laptops will cycle way way down (so much for performance comparisons with their actually faster processors -- when plugged in) and shut off various parts to manage battery life while a Mac laptop, even without engaging in all the tricks, ekes out substantially better times.
Just ask Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal and other PC-oriented journalists who review Macs, but typically don't use them. They get a Mac as a review unit to test and they rave about the battery, the screen, and the built-in Ethernet, FireWire, USB, VGA, DVI (some models), AirPort/Wi-Fi, etc.
It's really hard to find everything that you get out of the box in a Mac laptop in a single PC without an additional card or set of modules or an awkward port replicator on those smaller subcompacts.
Geez, I sound like an advertisement, but this is from real world experience. I used a Sony Vaio as my primary machine for well over a year when traveling and battery management was unbelievable even with a tiny screen and extra ports turned off and the LCD turned down -- and new batteries, not used ones.
I switched to a white dual-USB iBook when it came out, and suddenly I just don't worry about battery life at all any more.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
>> the apple users I meet are still idiots. Geeks will eventually get fed up with apple for the same reasons that apple's own developers did.
/. threads are related to Apple.
/. editors use Apple portables.
Perhaps it's because you are such an idiot yourself. Mac OS X is the most exciting thing for the geek community in recent years - just count how many
Top geeks such as James Gosling (Java inventor), James Duncan Davidson (original author of apache Tomcat and Apache Ant) and the entire Perl core team, are switching to Mac OS X left right and center. At least 4
1. Upgradeability. Hahahaha, you say, x86 architecture is so much more upgradeable than Apple. Well, the fact is I can get G3 upgrades for Apples manufactured in 1994, and G4 upgrades for Apples manufactured in 1997. Can you get a P3 for an old 486? NOT! 2. Better Architecture. While this isn't true of every model, Apple machines generally have a better architecture than the x86 world. Specific examples include: ethernet integrated into the system controller, thereby eliminating all network traffic from the PCI bus, and: PCI bus on a Mac is 266MBps vs 133MBps on an x86 board. 3. First on the scene with new technologies. Apple has always made a habit of pushing new technologies into their product. Firewire debuted in 1999 on an Apple machine, and only this year is it a big thing in the PC world. USB was another technology that was done by Apple before anyone else. Ethernet has been built-in to every powermac since 1994. Apple was also first to introduce DVD burners. The end result is a machine that often has cutting edge technologies that don't become mainstream for several years. There are several other advantages, such as Apple being in control of both hardware and software, etc, but the end result is Apples tend to remain useful longer than PCs. (I'm sure Microsoft and Intel have something to do with this as well, but I won't get into that).
Don't think the Ti Books are due for an update in the very near future. They just revamped them in Nov, and then again added soem extra bits just recetly. I think they'll sit on these till at least late summer.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Just for the record:
The guy who runs that website does not seem to be on the payroll of BMW. Do a whois and find out that bmwtechinfo.com is not a domain registered by BMW.
This is just a lousy attempt to rip off stupid people who do not verify whom the are talking to.
Maybe you shoot yourself in the foot when you try to shoot at that man.
And maybe, one should point BMW to this website and let them shut it down.
Dude couldn't figure out iSync so he got frustrated and hacked out an article. Sounds like he should backpeddle to a PC running Microsoft Bob.
To use iSync you still need to install Palm Desktop 4.0 to get Palm's hotsync software.
That being said, I have had no problems with any of the softare mentioned, either from Palm or Apple.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.
Well...I don't think the "arithmetic" necessarily means business failure as it does business down-size. There are alot more companies out there with questionable margins that will fail in the recession economy. Apple has plenty of bucks in the bank--enough to make it through this economic winter.
...well, that's my $.02 on it.
Besides--one reason Apple will probably always be around is because of "zealots" who are also paying customers.
Apple may shrink in size a bit, but even a market share of 20,000,000 users is a significant source of revenue for a company to thrive--even if they're not the gigantic corporation they used to be.
I think your idea of a "business failure" is based upon short term ideologies. Apple, like many companies, rides on a waxing and waning sine wave of profits, sales, stock value, market share, etc.
Considering their present longevity that has persevered through several bear markets, I find it astonishing that so many people predict Apple's death every time there is a dip in their business revenues or maket share.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Looks like this "going out of business" is their way of doing business... Well, why not? :-))
VKh
One of the reasons the justice Department thinks MS is not a monopoly is that they think Apple is a viable competetive force. Apple still exists, but has been very much marginalized. Yet MS can still claim that they have competition in the form of a specific corporation. There are probly many other reasons justice bailed on the MS suit.
MS is a major stock holder of Apple, and provides special technical consideration so that MS application products (Office) can run on MacOS.
It is in MS's best interest for Apple to remain in existence: to a small degree because of MS's financial stake in Apple (although Apple is 1/100th the size of MS), but to a much larger degree so they can claim, "we are not a monopoly."
Because we did to much Dramamine. Seriously though, I can re-hash the same better proformance, better longevity, better service, just works arguments you and probably everyone else has heard a thousand times. Really, until you've used one for a extended amount of time, you can't really understand it. We seem to view our machines less as machines and more as friends. I think it's because they have a soul.
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
People are willing to pay extra for a Mac because it just works and makes you more productive.
If by productive you mean, "Up and running quickly," then I'd agree 100%. The OS and the iApps are great one-button-friendly environments where anybody can start harnessing the power of their new PC within an hour of pulling the box inside of their front door.
But more productive overall? We've got two routes here: Apps that are included with a new box, and all apps available for the system. I'm going to assume the same standards I was using before and that I assume you were: the OS and bundled apps. If you want to comapre app by app, you can put together a realtively competitive suite in either OS if you're savvy enough.
Mac OS and a Mac's bundled software is easy to use, but lacks many of the power-user features people might expect. Here are the three that get to me most often.
* File navigation is a pain in the Finder. Windows Explorer, simply by providing a command line integrated with the GUI (alt-d) really puts the finder to shame. And Windows' File Dialog box (when opening and saving) has all sorts of keyboard and mouse shortcuts for quickly getting functions done that the Finder can't touch.
* Keyboard navigation is often overlooked in Apple's products, and as a software developer I'm a big fan of not using the mouse and slowing myself down.
* Apple's refusal to allow multi-document interfaces keeps things easy for the newbie, but there are still times where I'd like to have child windows running within a parent. Same reason people enjoy VirtualPC or Mac-on-Linux, but it holds for applications as simple as SQurirreL SQL, which, being Java, luckily can still do MDI.
Hey, when I get home I fire up my Mac. I like the OS/environment quite a bit more than Windows overall. But when I'm programming, the above three (plus speed of applications -- when programming GUI'd Java apps, the Mac is at a real speed disadvantage) make me sell back out to Bill.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
I am still a big fan of Apples machines, but performance is not what I like about them. I think your example would still come out on Apples side even if you speced a 1 GHz P4.
C'mon 970!
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis