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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
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.
They haven't yet updated the counter for this paper, so that makes it 23 times in 7 years.
http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell
--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;
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/
+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
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
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.
If there's one group of people that would be especially sad to see Apple's demise, it's the music industry. Due to stability and management of multimedia, the vast majority of composers, producers, engineers, film scorers, and even wannabe dj's tend to choose Apple OS over anything else. Two of the most popular music sequencing programs - Mark of the Unicorn's Digital Performer and eMagic's Logic - are Mac-only. If you ever catch a live electronic band in action with laptops, chances are those laptops have a big blue piece of fruit on the front of them.
The big news about the music world this year is OS X, which included MIDI drivers built into the computer's capacity so that the consumer doesn't need to play with the bulky OMS (Open MIDI System) freeware commonly used by most programs. New MIDI-run synthesizers can be created with OS X in mind to optimize compatibility with sequencing programs. On the one hand, every company who wants to produce music software for the Mac has had to rewrite their best software to take advantage of this fact, but now that most of this software is coming out and running smoothly, most users are extremely pleased with the update. And Apple has solidified their support for the musician by purchasing the aforementioned eMagic, a company that makes several unique and useful products for the musician. Logic was one of the first major music programs to have an OS X upgrade produced.
The professional music world is a fairly small market in comparison to the standard consumer world that the PC dominates, but its a professional world that relies on Apple almost exclusively. There's gonna be a major outcry if Apple really starts going under.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
My favorite line from the article:
...appears to have no influence on the market...
After the success of the initial iMac, EVERY DAMN THING came in 5 plastic fruity colors that, oddly, matched the origional iMac colors. You could not escape Apple's market influence. Even now their design's are copied. XP looks like OS X if they just ass slacked on it (And has that edgy X in the name), Vaio's have tended to look like PowerBooks, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Tux gets a Aqua makeover... No, wait, to late.
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
I'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.
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....
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