A Look Back at Apple's 2003

Samvit writes "The end of the year is upon us, so it's naturally time for those retrospectives to start coming in. Ars Technica has a fantastic look back at Apple in 2003. 2003 was one of the biggest years for Apple, arguably the biggest in a very long time. Still, Ars is typically fair, so the author lays down not only the good in 2003, but also the bad and the ugly. There's a bit of prognostication going on too--a little something for everyone."

Comments

Stock price

[Anonymous Coward]

is up over 20% from may's @ $15 to $25

so iam sure they are pleased, lets hope they keep it going

Re:Applause

[BWJones]

Apple constantly pushes the envelope forward with newer features (FW 800, bluetooth, 17 inch laptop), and the rest of the pack try to clone their offerings in a Windows world.

Not only these products, but we have Apple to thank for Firewire, being the first to install built in networking in their computers, the first to include CD-ROM drives in computers, the first to include GUI in consumer computers, the first to include plug and play hardware configuration (remember setting all those damn switches when installing hardware cards?), the first to include color support in their computers, their first to......well, you get the idea. One could go on and on here, but I agree. If any company has been responsible for driving growth in the personal computing market, it has certainly been Apple.

OS X claims pretty good "internationalization"

[ianscot]

I've seen people using the OS to browse and do basic office stuff in Japanese, anyway, in OS X -- they were using what (scrounging on Apple's site) Apple seems to call the "advanced predictive input method for typing, which guesses which character you want based on context." Said it was handy.

OS X claims to support:

"localized versions of English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Brazilian and Portuguese

with broad support for:

many additional languages, including Thai, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Cherokee, Hawaiian, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Armenian, Russian and Greek"

That would be the default install of 10.3. One of the intall disks for Panther is basically full of the international options; lots of users turn it off when they do the install, to save space on their hard drives.

Re:My problem with OSX

[imadork]

The lack of Hebrew support is a well-known "bug" in IE (and apparently most of Microsoft's Mac products). The Register has been following it for some time, I found a good article here.

Re:Applause

[Frymaster]

my favourite "firsts" for apple:

1984: first to include 3.5" floppies
1998: first to ship a machine without a 3.5" floppy

Logic Board Failure

[mooredav]

A distressingly large number of iBook owners have suffered logic board failures.

Yes, indeed. My own iBook died 13 months after I purchased it -- just one month after the warranty expired. I brought it to my local Apple store. They told me that it would cost over $700 for a new logic board. At the time, laptops similar to mine were selling for just $900 on eBay.

I refused to pay for it. I told the manager that I'd replace it with a PC. That was no bullshit... I was really prepared to do exactly that. However, she gave me a phone number to call. I guess it was their pissed-off-customer hotline. After some discussion with the phone rep, he agreed to cut the price down to about the cost of the AppleCare plan. So I bought the repair.

The repair was nice and easy. Less than 72 hours after I put my iBook in the mail, I got it back. Still works great today -- over 15 months since it was fixed. With service like that, I almost forgot any bad words that I ever said about Apple.

Don't forget USB

[BandwidthHog]

It's an Intel technology, but its uptake was pathetic until the iMac brought it to the masses.

Re:My problem with OSX

[afantee]

Actually OS X has much better international support than Windows. It works perfectly with Chinese out of the box, both for display and input. Some third party app (such as IE) may not have the correct UI for every language, but every single Apple I tried has Chinese interface, including Mail, Finder, Address Book, iMovie, iTunes, iCal, iChat AV, TextEdit, even Terminal.

Re:Can they keep it up?

[soft_guy]

Yes, you are forgetting several.

Rise: Apple II
Fall: Apple III

(Some doubted Apple could survive this flop.)

Rise: Apple IIe
Fall: Lisa

(I seem to recall the press having a field day with this one.)

Rise: Mac
Fall: Mac (sales stagnated after about 90 days.)
Massive bad times and predictions of Apple's demise: 1985 - 1987

Rise: Mac II
Good times!

Fall: Introduction of Windows 3.1
Massive predictions that it was the death of Apple.

Rise: PowerBooks introduced - Apple, a latecomer to the world of laptop computers takes it by storm and becomes #1 in portable computers

Fall: Lead up to and launch of Windows 95
Although Apple had its best year ever in 1995, the press started (continued) a drumbeat of noise about the Death of Apple.

1995 - 1997 Bad Times. After outsting Sculley, Apple's board struggles to find someone who can build Apple's marketshare - or else sell Apple to Sun or whoever. Eventually they succeed in sacrificing profits for Marketshare, bringing on a massive crisis.

1998 Steve Jobs returns, fires Apple's board, rebuilds company, correcting the massive mistake Apple made in 1985 by firing him and going with Sculley.