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Dismal Apple Forecasts Are Wrong
Nutrimentia writes "Tom Yager has a new column at Infoworld disputing poor analytic forecasts of Apple's future, especially based on criticism of Apple's lack of innovation (which seems to me to be pretty easy to refute, but whatever). It's a balanced article that looks at what Apple is doing right and wrong, and he offers some good reasons to pay attention to Apple even if you aren't a Mac fan, namely that the company's approaches to the market help understand many broader trends in effect."
As an admitted Apple zealot, I used to get so pissed off about finacial analysts getting thier collective panties in a bunch about Apple going out of business within a year or so... Now I just don't care what they say. Apple is a good company, they respond quickly to market trends, and often are the ones setting trends, but they are not too quick to create a stupid PDA that nobody wants (anymore). They have about $4 billion on paper, the good kind of paper, CASH. For a company as relatively small as Apple is, they innovate and create or help to create more standards they just about anyone out there.
One last thought, just to show I'm not a completely blind follower of Lord Jobs. Had Apple not gotten OSX so gosh darn right, I would have bailed, OS9 was showing it's age and starting to get real flakey under stress. I'd either be running a user-friendly (although OSX has taught me a good deal of under the hood UNIX stuff) or, shudder to think, Win2K. However, I believe they did get OSX right, in my opinion, besides the first Macintosh, it's the greatest thing Apple has ever done.
Apple needs some fast processors from IBM and the education market back.
They will be fine.
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
I guess I was out of touch with the analysts of late, because I didn't know they thought things were so bad. Still, it's a good thing I wasn't paying rapt attention to them, or I would've sold my PowerBook and bought it back about 5 times in the past two years.
What I don't get it why they haven't figured it out yet that Apple is strong and steady, unlike its counterparts. The blips on the rader are just that, blips. I find it quite ironic that the people who are supposed to have this figured out are the ones who understand it the least.
Boom Shanka
Apple is still a computer company to watch, although it may be of lesser interest to stockholders today. Still, if you were to bet on any one personal computer company to make something that would transform a process, Apple is a safe bet.
Apple is where it is now for several great ideas and collossal screw-ups, many of which determined the company's present destiny.
(My history highlights come from Apple History to make my point easier, and for your reference.)
1977: The Apple II is born, beginning the personal computer boom in earnest. Apple develops, by some estimates, a 75% market share.
1984: Apple develops a successor to the Apple II line, the Macintosh. It used a graphical interface and mouse and was the first computer with a GUI to become commercially successful. Apple boneheads the initial fate of the Mac's success by: (1) failing to make Apple II apps work with the computer, (2) making the system underpowered until 1986, (3) making the computer with a 9-inch screen that was hard on the eyes, and (4) making the Mac very expensive ($2495).
1986: Apple updates the Macintosh with the Mac Plus, with more RAM, external SCSI support, and a true hierarchial file system update for the OS. A software company, Aldus, creates PageMaker, which takes steam as the first desktop publishing program. Apple soon offers the LaserWriter, one of the first laser printers. A good move by Apple that still gives them the lead in DTP and prepress work today.
1985: Bill Gates sends a memo to then-Apple CEO John Sculley (having been hired by Steve Jobs and then, shortly, has Jobs ousted from Apple). Gates recommends that Apple license the Macintosh (warning: PDF) to make it a standard computer operating system. Gates recognized that Macs were great but weren't reaching critical mass. When Apple refused, Gates requested a license to duplicate the look and feel of some of the Mac OS in a product he was considering with IBM. Biggest bonehead move of all for Apple as this would've made the landscape completely different from the OS world we know today.
1988: Apple finally offers a Mac with internal hardware expandability, including a larger screen: the Macintosh II. It was too late for those who chose a more expandable IBM PC. This moves breathes life into its products, and vendor support improves.
1990-1998: Apple creates more good, innovative ideas, such as the PowerBook laptop (whose design elements are commonplace on PC laptops today) and the Newton (the first PDA), but never capitalizes on them as they want to hold on to all rights. This"not-invented-here" policy nearly kills the company as expensive, confusing models aren't clear, and developers find Windows apps more lucrative. Apple's overall market share plummets. Windows 95's debut makes this worse. Apple considers and offers Mac OS licensing, but this only makes Apple's problems worse as 3rd party clones are better products than Apple's.
Apple completely loses its marketing model. Steve Jobs ousts CEO Gil Amelio to return to as company CEO and begins to repair Apple's products and credibility.
In my opinion, Apple's best move would've been in licensing themselves. It may have killed Apple ultimately, but the Macintosh technologies would have survived and improved dramatically as the PC clones have proved out over time.
Is Apple still a force to be reckoned with? Even if you don't know an Apple from a PC, the company history suggests that, if there is a new spin on a computer program or hardware product, Apple usually thinks of it first. Unlike the Apple of the past, however, don't expect Apple to abandon its creations at the first sign of trouble.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
In Apple's 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.
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.
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. Software makers don't even have Mac users on their radar and it's not like Apple can bring Mr. Jobs back to right the ship this time -- he's already there.
Stick a fork in 'em -- this Apple is cooked.
He was at his church trying to use thier windows pc to print the church budget for a meeting. Windows kept giving him the error message that 'either the printer is off or the port is disconnected.' Well it wasn't. It was hooked up and it is usb. My roommate after several tried gave up and hooked the usb cord for the printer up to his ibook. The ibook recgonized the printer, and he was able to print. He was so happy as there was no software installation nothing. Just plug in USB and print.
Now before the mac haters or basher start I wil lsay this. Mac is missing a few things, like drivers for certain hardware. However the hardware that it does have drivers for works easily in my experience. Apple has done a wonderful job with their OS X and if windows was 1/2 as good we would not need as many desktop 'PC = personal computer' (which includes macs) admins. Yes some people would be out of jobs. I now do 0 admin on his machine whereas windows I was was doing lots of debugging because this or that did not work. I love mac's cause that have literally made MY life easeier. Your experience may vary, but I love the macs,a nd as soon as I can afford a powerbook, I'm getting one....
Only 'flamers' flame!
This is rediculous. apple is the first companie to mainstream unix in a way that a secratary can use it. they are using the G4 processor. by the way if you look at the bech marks and the the way the processors are built. are superior to amd and intel. and you look at the engineering. mac products are guaranteed to work with mac products. the same people who think that pcs are superior to macs also believe that coors light will make you sexy and cool. intel and amd are called junk processors for a reason.
for the first time in the history of computing unix can be used on the desktop. and here the slashdot crowd is being pessimistic.
talk about silly.
Now, enter iWorks, Apple's forthcoming answer to that bug-laden piece of poorly programmed crap that should still be in Alpha, called MS Office.
Apple is taking on MS on every front. In the enterprise, they're producing powerful, cheap, easy to deploy servers. And now they're producing the clients for those servers.
The day of the desktop PC for personal use is over, and Apple is the only company to see it. Desktops still have uses in the Enterprise, and Apple is poised to take over there as well.
besides, how do you account for the gay man's superior sense of style?
and, how do you account for proving this point by cutting-and-pasting the same woefully pathetic incendiary letter on every single goddam apple post?
how, AC, do you reconcile the fact that you are somehow *threatened* by what is (by your own admission) the mac's superior technology? how do you respond to that without looking for all the world like Jackass Prime?
answer: you don't.
The comparison at hand is between iDVD, which comes with an Apple-branded DVD burner, and DVDit LE, which is the software that came with the other computer or DVD burner or whatever. In other words, it's a completely valid comparison.
If you want to compare non-bundled DVD authoring packages for Windows with non-bundled DVD authoring packages for the Mac, then we have to pull out DVD Studio Pro... and believe me, you don't want that. The comparison would not be flattering.
I write in my journal
If the burner came with crap software, that's the fault of the company producing the burner. Remember, Microsoft does not sell PCs (XBox aside), Apple does. This was not a Windows/Mac comparison, it was an Apple/Whoever Made the DVD burner comparison.
I suggusted Vegas+DVD to show that Windows is not the problem here. Dell could probably ship a copy of Vegas+DVD on every system they sold with a DVD burner - Sonic Foundry is almost out of business and I'm sure they would be willing to license their package to Dell for very little cost.
iDvd is a great package. I've used it. It's no DVD Studio Pro, but it's good enough for most projects. But complaining about a stupid DVD package is not a comparison betweeen Mac and Windows. It is a comparison between what Apple shipped with their machine and what shipped with the DVD burner.
The author thankfully found TMPGEnc. It's an excellent encoder, and I believe that it offers more flexibility than the encoder in iDVD. The author didn't seem to be able to figure out how to use TMPGEnc, despite the fact that it has a wizard that shows you all of the profiles it has at the start, and, yes, it has profiles for DVD.
So what we have here is a DVD burner company or a PC company seriously trying to cut corners by bundling the cheapest DVD
Comparing Vegas+DVD to DVD Studio Pro + Final Cut Pro would probably come out favorably for Vegas. Final Cut and DVD Studio are definately more fully featured, but Vegas is also quite capable. The difference? $999 vs $2999.
If there's some incredible difference, please tell me, as I've never used Final Cut.