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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."
Didn't Apple die? Wait, that was BSD...
I kid, of course..
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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.
is up over 20% from may's @ $15 to $25
so iam sure they are pleased, lets hope they keep it going
but don't look back on SCO's year, or you'll turn into a pillar of salt.
This is also the first year that Apple has had some real competition in the PowerPC market since the 90's. Genesi's Pegasos I and II along with Eyetechs AmigaONE motherboards shipped in volume this past year, giving Apple something to directly threaten their position, even in a very remote manner.
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Apple has not been completely succesful this year, but who can deny that it is the most ambitious computer maker? 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. When's the last time Apple had to copy a Dell or Gateway design to stay current?
I actually think next year will be even more interesting, as Apple pursues their music / video strategy. There's rumors of a Pro Tools killer on the way. Go Apple!
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.
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We actually paid for a call to mac tech support to get help, and after 20 mins on hold while the tech looked for a fix, nothing. In the end, after 5 hours of attempts, patch downloads etc, we just went to a library, and I had my email answered (in english, lol) within 15 mins (after a 20 min wait for a free machine, but still). There is a way to read the text in OS X, but it involves copy/pasting into a text editor, which wouldn't work for HTML forms, of course. which button was 'clear' and which was 'send'? I found out the hard way 3 times. Now that I read more of your message, I realize you said Hebrew 'might not work'. oops! This seems wierd to me, as a very high percent of israeli homes have computers, and there (used to be) a small but decent mac market here. Strangely, it died a bit after the release of OS X, as I recall. I wonder why...
I also know for a fact that many middle eastern languages have the same problems in OS X, though certainly not all.
That's a major fix Mac will need to make if it ever plans to get popular with businesspeople on an international scale (and on a major level, even on a domestic scale).
My head of IT stating that "Apple will be out of business by Christmas."
That was in 1997.
As long as Apple keeps innovating and forcing everyone else to play catch-up, they'll stay in business for many Christmases to come.
One thing Apple has done well is pushing UNIX to the next-level down user, people that might not ordinarily touch the command line.
Since I started working with OSX, I've gotten much more used to dropping into the Terminal to do stuff. It started with ls -aR and now I'm grepping ifconfig to determine my MAC address. It's fun.
Thank you, Apple, for bringing out the inner Unix sysadmin in me. Now all I have to do is grow my hair long again.
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Fortunately for all of us, it lives in peace with the penguins and daemons of the wild.
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...
Great article.. But no matter what, I am happy with... My iPod ... My preeecioussssss...
Fire, The Wheel, The Industrial Age, Xanadu, The Information Age, and finally, in 2004, the Brushed Metal Age.
If there's any merging catch phrase this year, it's probably the use of "embattled" and "under siege" to describe Microsoft's ongoing war with Linux and security problems. You'll probably also begin to see the use of "oft-delayed" to describe Longhorn pretty soon.
This was a huge year for apple, for us linux geeks.
Jaguar got me hooked on the OS, but the hardware was lacking. The 12" powerbook is what has finally hooked a lot of my friends (almost 5 that i can count now) as the first affordable powerbook.
- tristan
OS X claims to support:
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.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I would like them to continue but they need to stay on the edge and that is a very risky place to be.
I am just glad that they are currently on the safe side of the edge. Too often in the past, it has looked like they were about to disappear forever.
At the moment, no, there's no reason for Microsoft to be worried. Well, except that Windows virii have gotten so bad that the typical Dell purchaser will get nailed by several before Windows Update has finished running for the first time. But otherwise PCs are less expensive and generally much faster for the price.
.net-based OS, and changing lots of core components at the same time. And the minimum system requirements are going way up. None of the Longhorn features are battle proven yet. It will be a long time before we know how it will hold up.
But lets look a few years down the road. The next update to Windows is a huge one. Microsoft is essentially switching to a
On the flipside, the Mac already based on proven UNIX technology and security. The GUI is fully hardware accelerated. The core CPU line looks to be in a much better position for moving forward in performance (Intel has been very vocal about the power issues they're running into), and PowerPC's run cooler, which is getting to be an important issue.
All told, I can see a lot of people jumping ship to Apple in the next few years, especially if the hardware and OS X improvements continue at the rate they have been.
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
From the article: The largest complaint about the mini AlBook was heat. There was lots of it.
But it was never any problem for me... however Apple recently released a battery update for it to make it run cooler. Well, it does, but now I do have a problem: the fscking noise, when fan is running most of the time, although quite slowly, but still. (It starts every time the temp will rise over 52 degrees C, and won't stop until it has fallen back below 47 - the pre-update numbers were 64 and 59.)
Previously, it ran only during high CPU load, but now it runs during regular web browsing etc. This really sucks, I truly wish I could somehow remove that damned update! But I don't think there is any clever way to do it.
Any similar experiences?
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
I am willing to admit that apple's top offering is generally neck-and-neck with the fastest x86 of the world. This may or may not be technically accurate, but let's concede it. The fact remains that on a flops-per-dollar basis, you're better off buying x86. VaTech aside, you don't build a supercomputer with apples. (Don't expect any sympathy for tech from me -- wahoowa!)
Apple should start buying commodity hardware from the wintel world. Keep building your own cases; write your own driver software to make it bulletproof. Let Panther install on a pentium machine. The only hardware they should make: gadgets (ipod is clearly apple's foot in the door of popular adoption), and, as bad as it is for the consumer, proprietary widgets for their cases. Stuff that lets your ipod do things it couldn't otherwise; or that makes DVD authoring easier. Most of this will be crippleware -- disingenuous measures that enable functionality that everyone *could* have, but that they only give to owners of apple cases.
You can still charge your premium, but it has to be less -- and you can afford to do so, if you start buying from the same guys Dell buys from.
Now is the time to strike. Microsoft has a mature (read: stagnant) OS out that will not be replaced for 12-18 months. The recent rise of malware and spam has extended for a generation the idea that windows is an substantially inferior product, even as their OS offering is actually the most competitive it's ever been. If you can attack it sufficiently to weaken adoption of Longhorn, you will have made a huge gain.
You have a tremendous amount of credibility with your existing fanbase, with *nix geeks since redoing your OS, and with windows users as they discover ipod/iTMS. If you let windows users switch to your OS without buying a new computer, you could actually establish sufficient marketshare to challenge MS for market dominance in the next 5 years.
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.
Yes, i have this problem. It's not the battery update that caused it, but 10.3.2. The complaints for the 12" 867 powerbook's heat were so widespread that apple lowered the temperature at which the fans activate. you can fix this, if you like, by downloading Silent Night at version tracker. I personally don't mind, since my powerbook's never hot anymore and the battery doesn't seem to be affected by it much either (which to me is more important than noise).
- tristan
Granted Apple has had a great year. Many converts (including myself) and cool new products. Having recently jumped on the Apple bandwagon though I find that everyone likes to be a cheerleader for the company. Few users and fans ever point out some glaringly obvious downfalls of using Apple products.
i D1 aR7gq6B.1@.599b3149
First and foremost in my mind is an unbelievably shoddy quality control system for new software releases. The much-touted new operating system Panther created about as many problems for its users as it has new features. This is after replacing a buggy 10.2.8 OS that never has been patched up for users that did not upgrade! Before flaming my Karma, take a look yourself, at some of the threads on Apple's own support website and read about long startup times, the dock disappearing, Powerbook backlight dysfunction's, printer's not working, etc, etc... Here's the link:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?13@112.t
These are obviously not one-time issues affecting one or two users, here and there. They affect everyone, including myself. I have spent I don't know how many hours scouring these discussion boards trying to figure out how to fix one bug or another that Apple's "new and improved" software has caused on my system.
The fact that this happens in the first place is ridiculous. Even more frustrating though is that this unfriendly user experience does not get any limelight. So far in my Apple software is as bug prone and glitchie as windows. The only consolation is that you can look over discussion boards to try and figure out how to fix it. One would hope that Apple would have fixed it before releasing it in the first place though, and that those who buy and upgrade to their products would not need to go through these headaches!
Then comes the hardware. You pay a premium price for Apple products, why then are there so many complaints about this problem or that. Again I will refer interested readers to Apple's own discussion boards where users talk about display problems, poor working latches, loose laptop lid's, dissatisfaction with G5's, and all sorts of other problems on their top of the line, ultra expensive Apple toys. Here's the link (dig down into any thread):
http://discussions.info.apple.com/
These problems abound and hopefully Apple will get their act together to resolve them. Unfortunately at this time I do not find Apple to be any more stable or less of a headache than windows. Rather it is like a shinny new sports car that one loves to show their friends, but that winds up breaking down and sitting in the shop more than they will ever admit.
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.
I've never had one of those problems mentioned, because I did an Archive install for Panther - and before that I always used upgrade and never had issues. Sure if you look on a support board you are going to see a lot of wierd things but that does not men it's the predominant user experience.
I even had that "cursed" 10.2.8 upgrade installed and didn't have problems with that!! I think a poll on MacSlash revealed that not many people had issues with it.
I have to admit the FW800/HD bug was pretty evil though and should never have seen the light of day.
Regardless of the problems however, I still have very few qualms about letting Apple patch my system instead of a Windows update (at work my Powerpoint segfaults when you try to open any presentation after a recent update. Thanks!).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hobbyists and engineers could much better appreciate and understand the Apple ][ and if one so wished he could engineer his own fancy graphics and sound boards as it had a proper expansion bus and internal slots
Also, each Apple ][ came with complete schematics and diagrams showing the design. Talk about open source! I remember thinking how cool it was that I could simply build my own if I wanted or build cool light boxes driven by my computer or make a robot with my Apple ][ as the brains (the mind of a 12 year old at the time).
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...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
OS X has excellent Asian language support. More specifically, I should say that I use Japanese and Traditional and Simplified Chinese. I run my system entirely in Japanese, and can switch between Japanese and Chinese inputs on the fly in any app with ease. The only apps that have problems are poorly ported ones (*cough* MS Office *cough*).
It's an Intel technology, but its uptake was pathetic until the iMac brought it to the masses.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
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.
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I've been in the category of "Apple hater" for quite some time. (Yes, I did briefly go the Apple route, back in '96 or '97, when I started feeling like I really needed to give one a chance instead of bashing something I never even owned. After 3 months with that Performa 6400 tower, I was back to Apple bashing, and unloaded the system A.S.A.P.!)
Well, 2003 has been the year that turned me around! Money has been pretty tight for me throughout this year, but I somehow managed to borrow and scrape up enough money to get a dual 2.0Ghz G5 tower, a Powerbook 15" laptop, 40GB iPod *and* iSight camera. So as you can see, I've VERY MUCH bought into the new Apple product line!
Here's the thing. I've been working in computers and I.T. for almost 14 years now. I can't remember the last time a new computer and/or OS offering really excited me since my first Timex/Sinclair 1000, and my Tandy Color Computer 2 and 3 I owned after that.
(Well, ok - I was pretty thrilled when OS/2 Warp and eventually 4.0 came out - but IBM quickly put a damper on that enthusiasm, with their horrible marketing of the OS.)
This year, Apple has brought out what I consider the near perfect OS, the near-perfect laptop to run it on, and an amazing desktop system to run it on. The iPod speaks for itself, and the iSight.... well, frankly, it's just an "impulse buy" because at $149, you may as well own a well-made camera that matches your multi-thousand dollar Mac systems.
If there's one thing I can justify sinking my money in, it's computer technology. I use the stuff all day long and most evenings too. I make all my money from it. Why wouldn't I want to own hardware and software that impresses me and makes me proud, rather than the same old beige boxes everyone else uses?
It appears it's not just me, either. Two of my ex co-workers from a previous I.T. job both made the switch to Macs and OS X this year - and both would have NEVER considered an Apple system before. (I had no say in their decisions either. I was shocked to hear they both had Macs now!)
"Money has been pretty tight for me throughout this year, but I somehow managed to borrow and scrape up enough money to get a dual 2.0Ghz G5 tower, a Powerbook 15" laptop, 40GB iPod *and* iSight camera
My definition of money being tight and yours are apparently not the same.
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.
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.
Your post titled "Ars Technica calls iBook flaw Ugly" has been removed from Apple Discussions. Posts including (but not limited to) any of the following are not appropriate:
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etc. etc. That's what I get for Thinking Differently. I wonder what Jobs would do if he were in my shoes?I am probably a typical computer user but not a typical slashdotter in that my knowledge of all things Unix is minimal at best but that's why I'm thinking of getting a Mac. I have tried a bunch of Linux distros that worked OK but were still quite confusing for me. Macs put a friendly face on Unix. It's as simple as that. I have played around with a friend's Mac and the 'nix stuff seemed easier for me to understand. Since I write a little weblog and do some websites on the side I have wanted to get to know Linux/Unix better and I think that the Mac's ease of use on Unix to me is just the ticket. That and the fact that my Windows machine is contantly hanging has given me the impetus to search for something that just works. Macs seem to me to be that computer at this time.
I can't remember the last time a new computer and/or OS offering really excited me...(Well, ok - I was pretty thrilled when OS/2 Warp and eventually 4.0 came out...)
Ha! You just described me! I could have easily been classified as an "Apple hater" as well, and still can't stand anything pre OS X for various reasons. I came across a good deal on a 600 mhz iBook about six months ago, and I figured "hey, I'm getting a good deal on a 12" portable DVD player that just happens to come with a computer." More importantly, it came with a Unix-based OS.
As I started becoming familiar with the thing, I found myself with exactly the same thoughts: I can't remember having this much fun using a computer since OS/2. I haven't totally jumped ship, and would not commit myself to being called an "Apple preferrer." Maybe a closet-mac user. There are things about the usability experience that still gripe me (some of that is fixed with third-party utilities, and I haven't used Panther yet), but the hardware is darn sexy, and I'd by another Apple laptop in a moment!
Count me in.
"I say consider this day seized!" -Hobbes
"Tomorrow we'll seize the day and throttle it!" -Calvin