Slashdot Mirror
iBox Episode 2
coolgeek writes "According to this article on Wired, the iBox (original SlashDot post), later renamed to the CoreBox, has run into some trouble. Their strategy is to clone Mac computers using spare parts from repair centers. Evidently, the supplier of the repair parts was reminded by Apple Computer's Legal Department that supplying to a computer manufacturer was a breach of contract. Consequently, the supplier has chosen to stop supplying parts. More information on at the CoreComputing website, and they say the game isn't over yet..."
Now do you really think good quality parts are just laying around at repair centers?
Great business strategy, buy broken, or unusable parts, build computer out of them, and sell to Joe Smoe who can't afford an Apple, so he'll buy an Apple?
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That so many of the people who support Open Source software initiatives and browbeat companies like Microsoft for their heavy handed policies...are also among the largest supports of Apple.
I admit, I don't know much about Apple, their computers or their business model. But their corporate policies sure do not seem to be in line with the same ideals associated with Open Source.
The iBox would devistate sales for Apple if it went off without a hitch. A fast, cheap, and easily upgradable box might be exactly what consumers want but that doesn't matter. Mac OS X costs more to make than Apple charges for it. Most people would buy an iBox to suppliment their current machine (server, etc) and would probably not even buy a new license of OS X.
So you get a nice cheap box, but at what real cost? The degradation of OS X? The death of Apple? Wake up, the iBox would be bad for everyone in the long run.
Yes, I guess it is. Every once in a while someone gets up and says "hey, Apple is the only one making Apple computers! HOW DARE THEY! It's my God-given right to make and sell anything I damn well want! Apple are a bunch of bastards!"
How dare Apple make a great OS, then put it on machines only they make. How dare they try to make a little cash and stay afloat. They should just give away their hardware and software for free!
Ok, a little drastic, so they should just licence their OS to anyone and forget about hardware? Well, they're in a great position now. If you want to use their OS, you have to buy their hardware. Simple enough and tons of people are doing it. No where near as many people as on Intel computers, but still a good chunk of people who enjoy using OSX.
Someone comes along and tries to get around this and of course, Apple tries to protect itself. But with Slashdot of course the main theme is "How DARE you try to protect yourself! You just sit there and take it!"
Maybe if Apple were to build in protection to their hardware that would blow itself up if someone tries to build it from scratch!
Hang on, gotta go call Sen. Hatch.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
is it more acceptable for hardware manufacturer to fence off competitors? eg Apple restricting parts to be used on Apply-Only machines, while everyone's crying foul when MS is trying to install its own browser on its own product (and still allows competing browsers to be installed).
imagine what would happen if Ford only allows its "rolling" tyres to be fitted on its cars...
monopoly: Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service.
a monopoly of their own product? freaking duh. what do you expect? for them to throw their company out the window by allowing someone to intrude on their copyrights? okay, sure. they're monopolistic. whatever.
These are Apple spare parts. Apple has a limited stock of these to be used as replacements. They expect the part it replaces to be sent back so it can be reworked. There is not some magical motherboard fairy that creates an endless supply for someone to leech off and resell as new.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
Bully?! Bully who? Apple has a contract to supply *replacement* parts to these companies. They do not and never have had a contract that allows these companies to *build* Macs. If these companies want to build Macs, they can go through the proper channels to get the tech info/parts they need. And if they can't strike a deal, they can find another business. There are plenty of computers to build and sell without trying to usurp the Macintoshes. This underhanded stuff just isn't going to fly.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Well, that's not to suprising.
I wouldn't imagine it would be to hard to get OSX running on some other PPC platform with enough emulation, something like VMWare. or even an intel box with even more emulation.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Do you think Sony would allow a repair center to resell PS2 components to a third party, who would in turn sell something called a "Play Stashun?" Is anyone jumping down Sony's throat for not allowing cloning of PlayStations?
Perhaps we can consider that not every platform benefits from being cloned.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
An Apple monopoly depends on what level you look at the situation. What is Apple's market? Macintoshes (specific) or Personal Computers (general). I tend to view this in the general form, because I know damn well that it wouldn't be too dificult at all for me to switch to a Dell tomorrow if I were so inspired.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Apple produces spare parts to replace broken parts for machines it has manufactured. There's quite a high overhead of maintaining these relatively small quanties and their distribution is relatively complex, so it's fair to suggest that these parts aren't sold at much of a profit, if any. When Apple sells a computer, it expects to make back enough money to cover both the parts and the development of that machine. When Apple sells a part, chances are the cost charged to the end-user, if any, will reflect the shipping and manufacturing cost of that part, only.
The upshot is that if Apple were to sell its own parts to competitors, it would be subsidizing those competitors because the cost of selling those parts wouldn't cover the costs of developing them and marketing the overall product built from them, costs Apple still incurrs.
Now, as far as Microsoft goes - do we expect Microsoft to subsidize Linux? I mean, on a moral level. Slashdotters fume that Microsoft signs restrictive contracts that force people who buy PCs to, ultimately, pay for Microsoft's marketing and development costs regardless of whether we want to use Microsoft's design, but do we actually want some extreme opposite? Have you ever heard anyone complain that Microsoft should? If Microsoft objected to a port of Internet Explorer to WINE, do you believe Slashdotters would be up in arms about it?
The answer of course is no. Apple may be shooting themselves in the foot by not creating a mechanism that allows third parties to contribute to their costs in exchange for the ability to produce machines independently, but it's hardly immoral for them to do so. And it's certainly not immoral for them to tell their resellers that goods that are intended for the exclusive use of Mac buyers - people who've paid money to Apple and expect service at a reasonable cost - be only supplied to Mac buyers, on pain of Apple dropping them.
Microsoft's business tactics are well documented. Apple's are not in the same ballpark. And neither company should have any obligation to subsidize a competitor, except possibly as compensation for those cases where illegal actions by that company has damaged that competitor. I don't see any case where Apple has to compensate anyone.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The only flat panel iMac I see listed at store.apple.com that has a 60GB hard drive runs $1299. So that particular incident is all Micro Center. But all of this is really beside the point.
When you buy an Apple machine you're not buying the box, you're buying the overall product. Apple thinks of the computer as a whole, not processor, firmware, software. If you don't care about any of this and just want a cheap generic DIY box, then why are you interested in Macs at all? Just for the transparent windows?
Much of Mac OS X's value comes as result of Apple's approach to product design. The ease of use, peripheral connectivity that "just works", seamless integration and low maintenace don't come for free -- they come as a result of looking the computer as a whole product, not various disperate pieces slammed into a box ala Dell. You can't have both.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Bullshit. Apple has no right to dictate to me what kind of computer I want.
They aren't stopping you from NOT buying a Mac.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
Steve Jobs shoots Apple in the foot once again. MBA classes all across America probably use Apple's poor business decisions as examples of how to offend customers and how *not* to grow business
Please enlighten us as to how allowing a third party to distribute a cheap knockoff of a design that Apple spent years creating will bolster Apple's image of quality and help them increase revenue.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
He should be come an Apple authorized repair person. he wouldn't be selling parts to a manufacturer.
Obviously, letting anyone build the hardware and just licensing the operating system could never be very profitable... what a stupid idea :)
It's only really worked once, and many others have tried. I don't see that as a very strong business case.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Oh please.
Apple is saying you aren't going to be using their spare parts to undersell them. Nothing more. How are they restricting anyones rights in this case? By not letting them build and sell what are in essence Apple computers? Boo-Fucking-Hoo. Next you'll say that BMW is stifling competition because they won't let someone put together 5 series cars out of spare parts and sell them at half the price of a new BMW made 5.
Now if Apple was trying to jump on someone for using a generic board that Apple did not make which somehow, for some strange reason was able to boot OSX with no problems I'd say you have a point but every company in the friggin universe controls it's spare parts supply chain to some extent.
And stifling competition? How so? Apple makes a computer. You've got a multitude of computers out there made by Dell, HP, Gateway, and probably hundreds if not thousands of other companies all waiting for you to purchase and Apple isn't going to say word one if you buy one of them.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Excellent point and in this case the one company it worked for is standing right in the middle of the road waiting to smack the living crap out of anyone else who tries to be successful doing the same thing.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
It is literally a case of Apples and Oranges here. Mac clones at the time that x86 clones came about would have put Apple in a position to pull a Microsoft and become the giant OS company leveraging it to whatever end it chose.
Mac clones now only serve to take market share from Apple. That's easy enough and obvious enough to understand I would think.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
"Don't you realize that you are pissing off customers such as myself!"
How?
Apple has a contract with a supplier of their parts. The supplier was selling these parts unauthorized to other parties, and this was against a pre-arranged agreement with apple. They didn't sue any end-users, they didn't hurt anyone, they merely told a supplier they have violated a contract clause and thus the supplier pulled itself into line.
Im confused why everyone's angry at apple, what did they do wrong?
(Yes i realized you were mainly having a joke.)
It's still not true though.
A high-end mac most certainly will keep up with a mid-range AMD machine. More than keep up. I have a single processor G4-660 laptop and an AMD 1800+ with the same video cards and guess which one handles graphics better? What percentage of CPU cycles on a modern PC in a desktop role are used on graphics? It's really high.
And there's more to 'hardware' than raw performance anyway also. Apple hardware is really nice. Not performance kings, but not nearly as bad as you're making it out - they hold their own. They are more expensive than AMD/Intel designs with comparable raw MIP scores, certainly. But for real world performance they're more than adequate, very nicely built and designed. So many clone makers produce utter garbage these days, everything from devices slapped together that won't get along right to cheap-ass boxes that bend when you open them and never fit together right afterwards. Not to mention more basic design problems, like inadequate airflow. Apple boxes are clearly a cut above on that level.
The reason people buy them, though, has more to do with the software. The software Apple develops using the profits from selling that hardware, and gives away to free to people that have bought that hardware. Really nice software. Keynote, safari, itunes, iphoto, imovie, OSX...
The reason Apple doesn't want competition in the hardware space is right there. They make a nice markup on the hardware that supports their software development. They don't want competition lowering their profit margin on the hardware and thus lessening their ability to spend on the software end.
Personally, I think they should take a slightly more laid back view on it though. I don't think this guy is really going to eat into their sales much - he's working on older slower versions that will likely sell mostly to people that wouldn't buy the new hardware no matter what, for budgetary reasons. And I'm sure Apple still makes a small profit on the replacement parts, if not a large one. As a matter of principle I understand they can't exactly endorse the practice, but as a practical matter they might be well advised to turn a mostly blind eye to it. His buyers are gonna want a brand new shiny Apple instead when they can afford it, certainly if they've been using one of his boxes for a year or two between now and then. And mindshare is important to the future. The same sort of reasons MS turned a blind eye to massive pirating of DOS and Windows, until very recently. It makes good business sense sometimes.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Define "monopolistic practices", please. Monopolies are perfectly legal in the US, and certainly should be in any free market nation. In fact, that's the extreme towards which free markets strive (rarely getting there because the market doesn't allow it -- if a firm does attain monopoly status and follows suit with standard monopoly pricing and there are no major barriers to entry in the market, then other firms will enter and under cut the monopoly by pricing at the competitive rate). It's only when a monopoly acts illegally by using its existing monopoly to attempt to gain another monopoly in an unrelated market that there is a problem. That's not to say that a firm cannot hold two or more monopolies, either. That's certainly conceivable, if the firm did not use its existing monopoly to create the new one (difficult to do, but not impossible).
Please review industrial economics, monopoly economics (not the system of economics that govern the board game Monopoly (tm)), and the anti-trust laws of your country of origin (assuming the United States here, since we're discussing an American firm) before spouting, thanks.
Nobody will read this far down in the discussion but I just want to put this bit of truth out into the ether:
...eventually.
1. Apple isn't evil because of "going after" this parts supplier. The supplier is in obvious breech of contract. Duh. There's plenty to criticise in the Apple company and in the Mac platform; pick a reason, just make it a valid one, okay?
2. Clones are bad for the Macintosh platform. Bad, bad, bad. Any strategy which erodes their ability to leverage OS/iApps/Hardware into a seamless, second-to-none user experience will be death to the platform. It is not good. It is bad. It will kill the one, single unique thing about this company and they will be swallowed up into the sea of mediocrity that is the rest of the PC industry. Nobody should want that, as even PC users benefit from Apple's R&D.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
I'll bite.
1) This argument is kinda silly at this point. Originally, it was brought up to point out that just because a company has small market share, it doesn't mean the company is succesful. In essence, the initial logical argument has been distorted by opponents and proponents to the point where it doesn't make sense. And you're completely wrong about the PowerMac case. Two optical drives, 4 hard drives, built-in Firewire, bluetooth, USB, modem, ethernet, WiFi plus 4 PCI slots and an AGP card with dual monitor support. What do you want to put in your computer?
2) Hmmm, I don't think sliced bread is an operating system, but here goes. OS X is an excellent OS. It's not the be-all end-all, and it has advantages & disadvantages compared to PCs or Linux. Let's point out a couple things. iBooks start at $1000, eMacs sell for less. Quicktime nag screens suck, no doubt there. Then again, Quicktime Pro is one of the best software values on any platform, it's easy, it's powerful and it works. Macs suck for games (so I here), crush Linux for ease of use, are far easier than PCs to network (I've spent 10x more time getting my Mom's Windows network to work than it I've collectively spent on mine), and have a much higher proportion of good software than either Linux or Windows. Ya, the hardware costs more upfront. But the OS is rock-solid, easy to use, and quite powerful.
3) Apple's friendly? Well, they have a nice image, no doubt. But really, I've never heard any defend Apple by calling them friendly.
4) Where's the myth?
5) Not really a myth. Some stuff doesn't work. Every digital camera, flash card reader, mouse, trackball, tablet, monitor and drive I've plugged in has just worked. I had to install the driver for my printer, and for the USB-serial adapter I needed for some legacy devices that I used on my PowerMac 7200 in 1999 & earlier. Webcam support supposedly sucks, and well-intentioned webmasters who think they are clever (effectively) go out of their way to break non-WinExplorer browsers. Other than that, I rarely have problems. In fact, at one point I had my well-upgraded (new hard drive, upgraded RAM, WiFi card, Zip Drive) Lombard Powerbook G3, circa 1998, running for 5 weeks straight. Not a world's record, but pretty good.
Your last point is your best. Why do we support Apple? Well, because they make very good products that work, and a certain segment of the population thinks it's the best value out there. We're all different, and make judgements based on other criteria. No one's right, no one's wrong, we're all free to do as we wish.
Great idea... Hey Apple, Mindstrm just suggested the solution. Charge 10x the price for each part. Give a 9x credit on returns of damaged parts*.
Fair, right? Enjoy your $20,000 iBox. :)
(That is what you suggested, right?)
-T
*Incidentally, Apple does this now - but not with such a huge markup.
In other words, everything about a computer is what makes it a Mac. It's not that it's just another piece of hardware, it's one that's very well designed, lasts absoultely forever, and performs well for years to come. I'm not a mac fan at all, but I have used the machines, and I'm amazed at how they stand-up to the test of time. I wasn't a fan of Mac OS pre-10, and I've not yet used OS X (no shops in the area stock macs, and I'm not about to buy one, sight unseen).
Okay, feature for feature others may fare better, but that doesn't say anything about how easy it is to get those features working (Linux is a real pain-in-the-ass that way, and Windows is nothing to brag about), nor how well those features work... For instance, compare XP's movie maker with Apple iMovie, et al.
It is quite possible that Apple is taking a hit (or selling at cost) the spare parts they deliver in order to keep Apple customers happy. Microsoft would be just as pissed off if you started selling modded XBoxes as PCs... Remember the "iOpener"/Netpliance?
Yeah, but you'll never come across a PC that works so well.
The reason I like the BSDs over Linux, is obviously the same reason most people like Apple over Microsoft. With the BSDs, either the hardware works perfectly when you plug it in, or it is never going to work at all. That means you have to be more careful when you consider buying some new hardware, but it also means you never spend hours tweaking settings, recompiling, upgrading, etc, etc. until you pull your hair out. I CAN jump through the Linux hoops and get things to work, but I choose not to because I can find better uses for my time. The situation is far worse for those "normal" people, that don't have the abaility and knowledge to do all that work, even if they didn't mind the waste of time...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Why would you bother? Macs are such nice computers, why would you want to attempt a witebox version that was pretty much made up of the same parts, but uglier?
Granted, but these machines aren't cheezy "witeboxes". They were reworking the Apple parts into some really snazzy looking low-profile brushed metal cases. These machines would have filled a similar niche to the failed Cube...probably had better QC on them too.
I own a Mac, and I do buy into the quality argument; I'm also a QA person (I hate to use the term engineer in the software industry), so I believe I have a worthwhile perspective on quality.
The components in a Mac may be the same stuff other PCs are made of, and therefore the quality isn't in those components: but it is in their integration that quality is visible, and in their use.
Let me explain, from my quality background:
A high quality software product is not one with zero bugs or defects. Zero bugs or defects is a low *error* product.
A high quality software product is one that the user enjoys using, or in situations where pleasure isn't a good indicator, the user can do their task effectively, efficiently, and with a minimum of hassle, problems, mistakes, and errors.
So to rephrase those in terms of a Mac, a piece of hardware:
A Mac is not high quality because it has no errors or defects.
A Mac is high quality because the user gets pleasure from it's use, or alternatively they can do the tasks they want, with a Mac, with a minimum of hassle, problems, errors, and setbacks.
So to bring it closer to home, I use a Mac, and I see it as high quality, and I agree with the BMW statement on multiple levels:
Small niche
Affluent niche
Image conscious niche
Quality conscious niche
I enjoy using my Mac. Already one of my metrics for quality is satisfied.
My PowerBook *feels* good to hold. My PowerMac *sounds* good, because it is so quiet. The case on the PowerMac is a pleasure to open, because it is so simple. I like opening it to just look at everything and how well laid out it is, because I like machines and technology. I put together PCs for 8 years, and after owning a PowerMac for 8 months, I wonder *why* no PC case is designed like this.
Hard drives are mounted on the floor on trays, instead of a freestanding cage in the middle of the case. This cuts down on vibration by directing it into the floor, and minimizes cable clutter because all the IDE connectors are at the edge of the motherboard, parallel to the connector on the hard drive. This also increases airflow because the cables and drives run left to right, instead of front to back on every PC case I've seen; so by design the drives are positioned to reduce vibration and increase circulation.
The case is covered in a thick swathe of plastic, and there's a plastic motherboard tray (probably all acrylic), both of which reduce vibration noise a lot. This *also* doubles as an aesthetic device, making the PowerMac more attractive than most PC cases, as well as providing handles to make the PowerMac easier to handle than most PC cases.
The main cooling fan is 120mm, for low RPM and high cooling efficiency.
So as a technofetishist, I enjoy the design of my PowerMac and PowerBook. Elegant and efficient. Pleasure. All metrics for quality, in my book.
So then there's the other bit, about getting the job done; the Mac platform is the most efficient and effective platform right now for me to do what I want to do. Having access to a terminal suits me perfectly fine, because I can work from it. It beats Windows in some areas, and matches Linux. Then there's the applications, which beats Linux in most areas, and Windows in just about all areas. This is purely subjective because people have different needs.
I don't play games.
I make DVD-Rs using iMovie and iDVD, and I haven't seen anything on the Linux or Windows side that matches this combo in ease of use, elegance, and simplicity. 1 day to make a 1 hour iMovie, and 1 day to design the accompanying DVD, and that's because I'm a picky perfectionist bugger. If I wanted to slap something together, it would be 2 hour for the movie (the time it takes to import, plus minor titling and transitions), and 1 hour for the DVD (using stock layouts). These are professionaly looking layouts too, things I am *happy* to use, overjoyed, because when I use them, the people I will be giving thes
GPL Deconstructed
Yes, BUT they bought them for a different reason....
If they bought them as replacement parts (for which they have an agreement with Apple) and then sold them as new machines, they would be trading under false pretenses and in violation of their agreement with Apple. Apple can therefore do exactly what they have done.
We can debate the "niceness" of the agreement, or of Apple and we can debate the naievity (or stupidity...) of the company but they have broken an agreement with Apple and that's all there is to it.
It's like obtaining software "for non-commercial use" at a reduced cost and then using it for commercial reasons, or buying something in place X and taking it to place Y when you signed an agreement not to... you are breaking that agreement whether you like it or not.
hohum
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net