Slashdot Mirror
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."
Apple appears to be on the right track. Their problem is still expensive hardware but going to a Unix-based OS was insight indeed.
If I had the money, I'd purchase a new G-5 dual cpu system.
As I read through the article, I saw lots of ooh's and aah's over the cool toys and services they are offering, as well as the integration to certain systems. The iTunes service was acknowledged as their biggest gainer.
Ok, so they have all of this cool technology and neat services. So, now what? How are they working to increase market share and compete with the Wintel market? It's one thing to shore up the market you have, but when that market is relatively small, that leaves one to wonder how to expand. What do they intend to do about a limited market share? The article does not say that. iTunes might be making money for them now, but how will they keep it on top with new competitors emerging?
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
I must say the biggest deal for Apple this year has been the advent of the G5 with significant help from IBM. Throughout the G4's life, I had been a supporter of Apple and in particular OS X because of the efficiencies that the OS provides. However, in raw number crunching power, the G4 simply did not scale in performance leaving me to do much of my hard core scientific computing on Intel or AMD hardware. However, now we have G5's, there is simply no comparison. I can now have the most efficient OS and the fastest CPU available in one platform. Apple needed the G5 and that I would say is the single biggest product Apple has come out with this year.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
That's their gripe on the software front? I'd say _THE_ single biggest screwup for 2003 was destructive software upgrades. The number one selling point for Apple is that things just work and you don't need to worry about them. Whatever they've been doing for QA on their upgrades, it needs to be massively revamped.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I don't think so.
All of that may be true but since the total number of people who even know that these products (or company's for that matter) even exist can be numbered in the dozens it's safe to say that Apple doesn't real spend a lot of time worrying about their new "real competition".
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
a lot of bussiness advice from unemployeed hacks.
example:
1) They've got to go after wintel!
2) They should only focus on software!
3) Sure there good now, but what about the FUUTUUURE!
blah blah blah.
Don't give business advice to a company that has 8% of the computer market.
I'm sick of this, and I don't even use a MAC.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I wouldn't mind owning this "dying" company.
It's profitable, and software developers continue to write software for it.
Therefore, it's not dying.
Sorry.
D
Although this has been beaten to death, let me take a quick whack once again.
x86 OS X makes little sense. PC people just want cheap compatibility with other
cheap Windows compatible people and workplaces.
Apple would sell less boxes if all they could compete on was design.
They would eat up any profit by attempting compatibility with the umpteen
billion PCI cards out there. Any profit that would be left would be eaten up by
dummies asking why the Windows game they bought doesn't work.
Slashdot would be full of comments on how you should just run Windows
instead of the emulation layer.
Current users of Mac stuff would have no end of fat binary grief.
All Mac developers would have to ship fat binaries and double
the support load in addition to the size of the distribution.
Things are fine they way they are for now. Let x86 die the quiet death it deserves.
And Windows with it.
My impression is that Apple hardware is more stable becauset they have maintained more control over the hardware. My first computer was a Mac 512, way back in the 80's. That computer never crashed.
However, they are still lacking one thing, Applications. I am a Civl Engineer by trade, and just about every piece of software I use is made for windows. It is the old chicken and the egg situation, If they sold more Apples, you will get more applications, you won't sell more Apples until you have more application.
This is real simple, for the 10,000th time its been stated on here.
Apple writes an OS to put on its hardware. It makes its money on the hardware. There's no reason for it to run its OS on anything else, because its not in business to sell software.
Its identical to Apple selling music to get people to buy iPods. Apple isn't in business to sell music, they're business to sell hardware.
They always have, and very likely they always will.
...your competition is selling your products.
:-)
Now, Dell may not be selling iPods anymore since they've debuted their metoo!Pod-- but Dell is, astonishingly, selling a variety of Macs to the NYC school system. Talk about a bunch of whores who will do anything for a buck, huh?
~Philly
I've been hearing the "PCs are cheaper" argument since the early 90's at least. One problem: It's never been true. Sure, you can buy a PC for less than you can buy a Mac. But you cannot buy a PC of *comparable quality* for significantly less.
After college I sold computers for a few months at Good Guys. The was when the pentium processor was first introduced. A decent IBM (actual IBM, not a cheap crappy clone) was about $1400. A comparable Performa was about $1600. But the Performa came with a nice monitor, which was worth about $200. Gee, same price after all. You could pick up a Packard Bell for 1100, but they were pure garbage and got returned as defective more often than not.
These days you can buy a low-end computer for as little as $200 from Wal-Mart. By this logic, no one should ever buy a Dell or Gateway, because they cost more than the Wal-Mart PC. It's cheaper for a reason. Try it yourself. Look at the specs for an iMac or eMac and then spec out a Dell or Gateway of comparable power and quality parts. I doubt you'll find a difference of more than a few tens of dollars.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
No No No.
Apple Machines are not more expensive
The above is a link to a recent set of comparisons. Yes, you can always get a cheaper PC than a Mac, but if you spec the machines to be as equal as possible the Mac is cheaper. And that is withouttaking into account the unquantifiable benefits of OS X, no viruses, very few security problems etc. etc. etc. etc.
Let is stop here, Macs are not more expensive, but they are generally higher specced than most of the bare bones crap you see advertised for so little.
This sig has been deprecated.
You do realize that you are comparing Apple against the whole computer industry, and there is no single box maker in the Wintel world that is remotely as innovative as Apple.
The original iMac is the first legacy-free PC with built-in USB, Firewire and wireless, and its industry design has inspired not only computer makers but also designers of a wide range of products from mobile phones to printers. AFAIK, no consumer PC in 1998 could match the iMac in features, and it actually took the industry 2 to 3 years to catch up with Apple.
Dell is a cheap copycat with zero software and insignificant hardware engineering compared to Apple. Apple is 40x smaller than MS, but its software portfolio is comparable and often better than MS products.
Sure, if you're willing to pay $5000 for a machine, maybe Apple is pretty competitive there. Most people out there buy something in the $1500 neighborhood (for a desktop) and there PCs clearly beat any of Apple's offerings.
Also, you have to look at how contrived the guy's examples are. He compares the desktop G5 to a server-class Intel Xeon. Obviously, the two are extremely different. The Xeon is an order of magnitude more expensive than a desktop processor. Comparing the G5 to an Athlon 64 or an Opteron would be more appropriate. Then, he goes on to compare a low-end Radeon 9600 to an Nvidia Quadro, a professional card! Then he goes on to bitch about how the soundcard sucks, and so on, when he could easily get a different one. It's more a comparison of Apple versus Dell. Which is not fair; the two serve completely different market segments.
What doesn't it do well? Produce PC hardware that is a good value for the money.
I call troll. Apple's hardware is a good value for the money and it pretty much always has been at least since I've been using Macintosh (since 1993 - prior to that I was using Atari).
The advice you are giving Apple is to commit suicide.
Don't believe me? It right out of the BeOS playbook. Microsoft can effectively kill any non-free OS competition at will by threatening the OEMs.
If Apple stopped designing and building hardware, or tried changing to an x86 chip at this point, that might kill them and would certainly be a very bad move. You can't go from being a multi-Billion dollar hardware company to being a multi-million dollar sofware company without massive losses of money and credibility. Ask IBM. Ask Be. Ask some Amiga users.
And the fact is, Apple doesn't need to do this. They only hope for Apple - long term - is to keep doing what they are doing. Keep quality up. Keep customers happy. Provide a user experience that is worth paying for. Capture the high end. Take sales away from companies like Silicon Graphics and Sun.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Well, actually, I think often times, shareware programs eventually become public-domain freeware, after the author feels the code is no longer generating him/her enough profit to make it worthwhile to maintain it.
Not everybody wants to expend the effort required to write a piece of software and not even take a shot and seeing if "it's worth paying for". Shareware makes a decent "test bed" to find out if what you wrote is worth money to people or not.