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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."
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
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
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
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"
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.
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
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
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.
that's what iThink.
"Life is great; without it, you'd be dead." -Harmony Korine
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
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.
They haven't yet updated the counter for this paper, so that makes it 23 times in 7 years.
http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell
If this point has been made before in this thread, why is it rated Insightful?
Don't even start with the "Well mods should read comments at -1" argument.
Burp.
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.
--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?
Cause this is what non-tech's use to make their "informed" tech decisions. We need to know what the... um... "muggles" are thinking if we're going to successfully make them follow the correct course of action when it comes to purchasing and adoption.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
obsolete (IE 5.x)
IE 5.x on the Mac is NOT the same as IE 5.x on Windows. There are pages that render significantly differently across the two. I've made some, quite by accident.
or clunky ports (Mozilla).
Since Mozilla was designed from the ground up to be fully cross-platform, I don't see how it can be called a "clunky port". IE for Mac OS X could be called a "clunky port", maybe (of IE for Mac OS 9, which was an elegant port of IE for Windows).
This makes the Macintosh feel substantially less consistent than Windows (which is an ironic turn of events).
I hear you there - it's pretty weird to select text in Mozilla, press Command-C to copy it, then paste it into xchat by middle-clicking.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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.
-BrentI'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/
+3 Insightful? What the hell?
:)
You, sir, are a troll.
Web designers can't test web pages properly because most of their users use a browser that doesn't exist for the Macintosh (IE 6.x)
As is well known, the Mac IE code base is completely different from the Windows IE code base. There is NO major feature that I am aware of that is present in the current version of Windows IE that is missing from the Mac version of IE. If I'm mistaken about this, please point me in the direction of something that references such a feature.
Of course, MS probably likes to perpetuate this myth by not bumping the version number of its Mac product....
The other browsers for the Mac are either immature (Chimera, Safari), obsolete (IE 5.x) or clunky ports (Mozilla).
Maybe Chimera and Safari are immature, but IE5 for Mac is certainly not obsolete, and the statement that Mozilla for Mac is a clunky port (but the Windows version isn't) is just silly. If you don't like those, there's also Opera or OmniWeb, both mature browsers that are also highly standards-compliant.
Microsoft Office is behind the Windows version and StarOffice only runs under X-windows.
MS Office for Mac is "behind" the Windows version how, exactly? Mac Office doesn't have Access, so if you need Access, then the Mac isn't for you. Other than that... No speech recognition? I don't consider that a problem. VBA support slightly behind in some areas? Ditto. What else is there?
And there most certainly IS a Mac version of OpenOffice.
I'm not saying that Apple is going out of business but there is a problem with the fact that the Apple is always an afterthought for application developers.
For some developers, Apple is an afterthought, yes. But there are plenty of other developers for which Apple is not an afterthought, and believe it or not, Microsoft has been one of them. You make it out to sound like the state of software on the Mac is in the dark ages or something, but the truth is that in the two areas you mention, web browsers and office software, there are plenty of good choices out there. The only major area I can think of that is lacking on the Mac is gaming.
And besides, if you consider this such a problem, why not just get a Windows PC and be done with it? The rest of us will happily continue using our "obsolete" web browsers and office software.
(There. I've fed the troll. Now I feel better.
"First of all, my iBook didn't like the software I needed to run my Palm M515. 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."
Errhm. He has one buggy Software from Palm (unless of course "Crashes and screen seizures" had nothing to do with the Palm software - then he had a broken machine and was too stupid to notice), and unnamed problems with "parts of the Microsoft world." - probably meaning something like this.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
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
There are many Mac users who disagree with some, or even most, of Apple's business decisions, but they'll buy from no one else. There's a difference between loving the product and loving the company.
Huge profit margins? They're still barely breaking even in this economy, but then all the PC manufacturers are having practically no profit margins, after Dell destroyed them with their low overhead business model. If Apple went the same way, they couldn't afford any R&D, and the only 'innovation' in the industry would be the new ways Microsoft dreams up to screw the customers and competition.
I'll gladly pay the premium for a better OS, better hardware software integration, and an almost complete lack of viruses and security problems. Or at least I will when I find a job and pay off my credit card debt...
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
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.
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
$150 million in NON-VOTING stock in 1997.
Check you facts.
Pooty tweet
Cheers,
--Maynard
I didn't ignore the problems the author had with his iBook.
.7TB server, 2.7TB 3U FC RAID with $500 FC cards, Firwire 800, and built-in 802.11g) their way thru the post-dot.com era...
I have the same iBook as the author - and have no problems doing what he claims he can't do. I didn't ignore his problem - i simply believe he is incompetent - like i said in my article post.
as for "The problem with lacklustre third party development has prompted Apple to create its own browser, which it calls Safari. Some industry watchers feel the development and release of Safari is an indication that Apple is being forced to become more actively involved in software development." - i'm not finding any comments from 1994 when Microsoft introduced their own browser, IE. I wonder if that was also because he thinks that Microsoft felt forced to make it. Asshat.
As for the lock-ups and crashes - i'm not Apple tech support, but i'm not about to tell anyone how rock solid Mac OS X is.. that's old news - so this guy either is a doorknob, or his machine is physically broken.
as for "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%. At the same time Apple's sales were falling, PC sales rose, though just slightly, according to figures from IDC released last month."
he says these things as if they matter. they don't.
its the profitability, stupid. He ignored Apple's profits for the last 4 years because out of the last 18 quarters - Apple has been the most consistent performer outside of Dell - batting 16/18 in the last 4+ years for profitable quarters and even the two losers were just recent, and a couple of millions. Apple has 4.3B in the bank. I'm also not a financial analyst... but waaah.
And the author seems to be saying that computers are commodity items like soybeans... because, again, he's got an iBook with all the great software and ease of use built in, and he totally ignored all of that. Apple has innovated (USB, 802.11b built-in, first flatpanel consumer all-in-one, 1" thick laptops, complete consumer video DVD burning solution out-of-the-box, Rendezvous, Easy to use 1U
Dell gave us... preloaded Windows XP machines and that asshat "dude" that isn't smart enough to hide his chronic.
Gateway gave us... uh....uh.... umm.. oh... uh....
Compaq/HP gave us... fugly monitors.
The the author wants to get a windows laptop - great - i don't care. One less whiny coputer user that will obvious be much happier running XP.
But his complaints are all sophormoric - and i did address them in a couple of words.
i posted this article because i thought it was hiralious that his article is a cut and paste job from any number of thousands of articles from the past
I posted this article because it almost feels "like home" to see one of these cookie-cutter "Apple's dead" articles... almost like a good gritty first post in soviet russia where ??? profits natalie portman.
so, i posted it because i thought it was funny that this guys seems to be at least 5 years behind the curve, and still has nothing new to whine about.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
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.
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
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
Let me know when every application in Linux, cuts, copies and pastes in the same way.
Linux is great at a lot of things but having every program conform to one set of user interface standards is not one of them.
As a fairly non-political news junkie in Canada, I can say that the National Post has been factually erroneous (eg. here) more often than any other paper I've ever read here, has never declared a profit since it's conception, is declining in circulation (used to be #3 nationally), and this is all probably resulting from the fact that their news & editorial pieces are generally out of touch with the opinions of most Canadians. Near-xenophobic opinions on refugees & immigrants, (see here and here, for example), as well as intolerant & exclusionary views on the issue of Quebec are all examples of this.
I wouldn't be too worried about yet another jump-to-conclusions inflammatory article from someone at the National Post.
If there's one group of people that would be especially sad to see Apple's demise, it's the music industry. Due to stability and management of multimedia, the vast majority of composers, producers, engineers, film scorers, and even wannabe dj's tend to choose Apple OS over anything else. Two of the most popular music sequencing programs - Mark of the Unicorn's Digital Performer and eMagic's Logic - are Mac-only. If you ever catch a live electronic band in action with laptops, chances are those laptops have a big blue piece of fruit on the front of them.
The big news about the music world this year is OS X, which included MIDI drivers built into the computer's capacity so that the consumer doesn't need to play with the bulky OMS (Open MIDI System) freeware commonly used by most programs. New MIDI-run synthesizers can be created with OS X in mind to optimize compatibility with sequencing programs. On the one hand, every company who wants to produce music software for the Mac has had to rewrite their best software to take advantage of this fact, but now that most of this software is coming out and running smoothly, most users are extremely pleased with the update. And Apple has solidified their support for the musician by purchasing the aforementioned eMagic, a company that makes several unique and useful products for the musician. Logic was one of the first major music programs to have an OS X upgrade produced.
The professional music world is a fairly small market in comparison to the standard consumer world that the PC dominates, but its a professional world that relies on Apple almost exclusively. There's gonna be a major outcry if Apple really starts going under.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
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.
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.
I agree! Buy me a BMW and I'll run over him. I would use my Mercedes-Benz, but the police are holding it.
-Clara Harris
Ron Paul 2012
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."
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.
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
You met the above only as an aside you but its not a bad analogy. 7-10 years ago a huge percentage of Internet usage was Usenet usage. I would bet that usenet volumes today are higher than they were in the hayday of the usenet, the number of posters is higher, the number of newsgroups is higher.... That is usenet in every respect has continued to grow and thrive. OTOH as a percentage of internet traffic and/or as a percentage of internet users today usenet usage is miniscule. It many ways this is similar to Apple. Apple today in every respect sells 10x as many computers as they did during the glory years. Yet as a percentage of the market....
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
As for the lock-ups and crashes - i'm not Apple tech support, but i'm not about to tell anyone how rock solid Mac OS X is.. that's old news - so this guy either is a doorknob, or his machine is physically broken.
Or, more likely, he's trying to use Mac OS 9.
Why else would he be installing any software for his Palm at all? I recently upgraded my girlfriend's iBook-- an original one in blueberry, with a 300 MHz G3-- from OS 9 to OS X. Under OS 9, she was using IE, Palm Desktop, and Microsoft Word most of the time, and it was locking up pretty regularly. That's just how life was under OS 9. Under OS X, she uses Safari, iCal/Address Book/iSync, and TextEdit. Her laptop is absolutely balls-out bulletproof now. You know something else? It's as fast running OS X as it was running OS 9, and in some ways faster. I put 10.1 on it some time ago, but it was too sluggish for her to be happy with. But 10.2.4 runs like a dream on 3-1/2-year-old hardware.
If this doorknob were using OS X instead of OS 9, and iCal/Address Book/iSync instead of Palm Desktop, he'd be in business.
I write in my journal
Hell, how many people call the Mac the BMW of computers?
Practically nobody. The Mac is the Mercedes of computers.
I write in my journal
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
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.