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

Huh?

[Shky]

Didn't Apple die? Wait, that was BSD...

I kid, of course..

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

Very interesting

[downix]

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.

Re:Very interesting

[kin_korn_karn]

you mean my TI-99/4A is obsolete?

Applause

[blackmonday]

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!

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.

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

Re:Applause

[afantee]

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.

What about their bottom-line strategy?

[GeckoFood]

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?

Re:What about their bottom-line strategy?

[GoofyBoy]

There are two ways to go about doing business.

You can be the big, for-the-masses, beat-them-with-price company. Examples of these are Wal-Mart and McDonalds.

You can be the small, speciality, beat-them-with-loyalty/quality company. Examples of these are Gucci and Apple.

As long as they steadly increase profit each year, why should Apple change their ways?

Re:What about their bottom-line strategy?

[Frymaster]

How are they working to increase market share

and market share is important because why?

the goal of apple is to be a successful, profitable company - not to "beat" windows. bmw and mercedes-benz are successful car companies. and you don't hear the shareholders whining that they're not beating ford on the market shart front...

Re:What about their bottom-line strategy?

[ScottGant]

How are they working to increase market share and compete with the Wintel market?

Perhaps they're not even trying to compete anymore. I mean, they've shown they can co-exist with other computers in the world. I know many people that have both systems at home and work with both systems at work. It's no longer a "one or the other" problem for people. They've been going and going and going for decades. Decades! They may not have huge marketshare, but they're also not trying to take over the entire market like other companies.

Perhaps it's Nash's Equalibrium at work? Just a thought

Re:What about their bottom-line strategy?

[tbone1]

This is a legitimate question, and the honest answer is "I don't know". I don't think anyone outside of Apple knows. However, they have been positioning themselves for a big strike at market share; certainly they are better poised for that now than, say, five years ago. In fact, one never know about this. When the iPod was introduced, I yawned like most people. Now I own one, wish I'd gotten a bigger one, and it is proving to be a "killer app" on the hardware side, when coupled with iTunes. That combination allowed them to create and dominate a market, pay for downloadable music. (Admittedly, it's still early for that market, but still.) That may be levereged for other things; who knows?

I will say this, from what I've seen Apple has the infrastructure and processes in place to make that strike, which I didn't see them having in years past.

Re:What about their bottom-line strategy?

[droleary]

The iTunes service was acknowledged as their biggest gainer.

Kinda hard for that not to be the case: they sold an infinitely larger percentage of music this year compared to last. :-)

How are they working to increase market share and compete with the Wintel market?

What makes you think they have to? It's like you're saying that BMW needs to compete with Toyota's numbers for "road share". Apple makes a profit and does so while innovating ahead of the curve. With that business plan, they'll be around for a long, long time.

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?

Now you're just being moronic. The reality is the exact opposite of what you suggest. Apple is a success with 5% of the market; it has 95% of its potential market untapped. Microsoft has 90% of the market; it has just 10% of a potential market left. If you need to worry about how any company can capture a larger marketshare, worry about MS.

Re:What about their bottom-line strategy?

[sbma44]

marketshare *is* essential. It puts you in control of your own destiny. You don't have to have >50%, just a competitive share.

Interoperability is essential for computing. It's like language: english may not be the most efficient thing we could use on slashdot, but interoperability is the deciding factor.

Given that, if you only have 5 or 10% of the market, you will always be at the big guy's anticompetitive whim as they decide on some new proprietary standard that locks you out. Then you suffer losses for 12 months until the courts tell them to stop.

Apple doesn't have to be bigger than MS, just big enough that MS has to ensure they're products work with apple, the way apple has to be sure their products work with MS.

Re:What about their bottom-line strategy?

[Bytesmiths]

How are they working to increase market share and compete with the Wintel market? ... What do they intend to do about a limited market share?

Ah, yes. The old "market share" argument.

That's why Porche, Leica, Gucci, Hummer, Rolex, et. al. are all going out of business. That's why rich people buy posters at Wall-Mart instead of original art or even (gasp!) pseudo-originals like Thomas Kinkaid reproductions. That's why there are no houses on the market over about $250,000 or so. That's why fine dining has gone out of style, and the hoi-poli are all eating at McDonalds.

But it gets even better -- a Hummer costs at least 4x the price of a Kia, yet they will both get you to work in the same amount of time. A Rolex costs thousands of times more than a watch at the Dollar Store, but they both tell the same time.

But the new G5 is within a few percent of the price of an equivalent Dell, Compaq, Gateway, etc.! So YOU can be part of the hoi-poli on a budget!

Chasing "market share" is not an innovator's game. (Look what it did to Apple under Sculley.) The masses (Geoffry Moore's "mice") will always choose a product for reasons other than technical innovation. It's the "gazelles" that drive innovation, and they are always a minority, almost by definition!

So leave the market share game to those whose specialty is super-efficient manufacturing and marketing. And if you want the absolutely cheapest computer that everyone else has, it's a great time to own a Wintel machine! :-)

Re:What about their bottom-line strategy?

[soft_guy]

As Linux gains marketshare, Microsoft will be forced to lower prices on their cash cow products - Office and Windows. As they do this, they get squeezed because all of their other products such as MSN and xBox, and others are real dogs - consistently loosing money. This will quickly put Microsoft up against a wall. Apple, on the other hand, will be able compete against Linux based on quality and a better user experience (i.e. being at the cutting edge). There will always be room for Apple in the PC market if they keep doing what they are doing. But will there be room for MS? How will they compete against Linux? Sue everyone? Continue to release insane and nonsensical position papers?

G5!

[BWJones]

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.

My problem with OSX

[Naomi_the_butterfly]

My problem with OSX is it's lack of support for international application. I was recently in the US, and couldn't send email in Hebrew, because OSX didn't support it. Not only that, but it displayed hebrew webpages as gibberish. Now, I could figure out what to do to log into my webmail account from back home (Jerusalem), but I couldn't tell which form button was 'Clear' and which was 'Send' on the compose page!
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).

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: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.

I recall..

[Guano_Jim]

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.

Re:I recall..

[AKnightCowboy]

My head of IT stating that "Apple will be out of business by Christmas."

That was in 1997.

Actually if Jobs hadn't taken over the company again and resurrected Apple with the iMac that may very well have been a true statement. Apple's management was piss-poor on 1997 if I remember correctly. I'm amazed they weathered 10 years of horrible products and a massive egress of users to the Wintel platform as well as they did.

Still, I won't be buying anything from Apple until Macworld in January.. hopefully they'll announce a new round of price cuts so I can finally afford a low end G5. :-)

Re:looking back on Apple is fine

[mhore]

but don't look back on SCO's year, or you'll turn into a pillar of salt.

I don't think we're allowed to look back on SCO's year. That is their IP, I believe. They may be offering licenses to do that, though, at US$1599.00 per eyeball.

Mike.

The Panther is hungry

[burgburgburg]

It can't wait to go hunting after that long delayed Longhorn.

Fortunately for all of us, it lives in peace with the penguins and daemons of the wild.

iPhoto performance?

[Otter]

The ugly: iPhoto performance with large photo libraries

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.

The good news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Great article.. But no matter what, I am happy with... My iPod ... My preeecioussssss...

Re:Right Track

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to admit, as a former apple hater, I spent an hour with a friend who has a new G5 and iPod. The G5 is slick, fast, has an OS I felt at home with in minutes, and just looks stunning. Price be damned, I'm buying one.

I also criticized the iPod many times, for its battery life, my distrust of HD based players, and preferance for an iRiver over the iPod, based on cost alone. This one seduced me even quicker than the G5. Hunting through a music library that wasn't even my own was... wow!. I don't know if I can say the build quality is any higher than anything else out there, I didn't spend that much time around it, but if it was revealed that an iPod owner pays a pittance for hardware and hundreds of dollars for a wonderful interface, I would believe it.

And I'd find it worth it. I've already ordered mine.

Re:Right Track

[qw(name)]

Money's money and if I don't have it then I don't get it. :-)

But seriously, if the price were much lower then I probably would splurge for one.

At a Perl conference last year, I'd say the vast majority of laptops were Macs running OS X. That is saying a lot!

Apple has brought us to a new Era

[morelife]

Fire, The Wheel, The Industrial Age, Xanadu, The Information Age, and finally, in 2004, the Brushed Metal Age.

One missing adjective...

[One Louder]

This is probably the first year in decades where the press hasn't automatically prepended "beleaguered" in front of any mention of Apple. This is most likely thanks to the success of iPod and iTMS that the press simply couldn't ignore - Apple needs to totally dominate a market to be considered successful by the media, whereas other companies merely have to stay in business.

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.

12" powerbook

[OmniVector]

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.

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.

Can they keep it up?

[mr_lithic]

Apple has been here before. The history of the Apple is one of dramatic rise and crushing fall. They seem to do this more than your average corporation. This is so common that the "Death of Apple" has been one of the most-overused bylines in the computing press.

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.

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.

An alternative to Longhorn...today

[Junks Jerzey]

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.

But lets look a few years down the road. The next update to Windows is a huge one. Microsoft is essentially switching to a .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.

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.

Re:An alternative to Longhorn...today

[the_rev_matt]

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.

Re:12" powerbook... and it's cooling

[plj]

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?

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.

Re:apple should get out of the PC business

[presearch]

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.

Re:apple should get out of the PC business

[JeffTL]

What you fail to understand is that well-designed, quality Apple hardware is at least half of the reason people buy Macs. I bought an iBook because all the other low-end affordable laptops look like junk in comparison, and frankly, before that day I'd never actually owned a Mac, or used one in a truly heavy manner. I heard that OS X was better than XP, and was a Unix so the command line would more or less feel like the Linux I know and love, but mainly I wanted a nice, small lightweight laptop with a good battery and a price tag fitting of its capabilities. As of today, Gateway doesn't even make 12" laptops (they made a $1600 or somesuch at the time) and neither does Dell or HP/CPQ. When you are moving around a university campus with a bunch of textbooks (that are, shall we say, lightweight in content alone if at all and plenty bulky), you don't want to also carry a 15" computer.

Re:apple should get out of the PC business

[tgd]

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.

Excellent Asian language support

[amake]

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*).

Don't forget USB

[BandwidthHog]

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

Re:Right Track

[iSwitched]

Bad for Linux?

First, do you have proof that OS X has significantly less 'substance' than Linux? Or is this just an opinion. Let's assume for a moment that I'm not just feeding a troll here.

Linux is a tool, OS X is a tool, some people prefer one, some another. If the number of people preferring OS X begins to outstrip those preferring Linux, then the Linux community has two choices:

It could pull a microsoft, wring its hands, and decry Apple as anti-choice and un-american, or...

It could stop bashing for just one second, examine what is being done that is good and innovative, evaluate why people are making the choices they are, and then compete, hopefully building a better Linux along the way.

How on earth could this be bad for Linux?

RE: Apple "haters" are quickly changing course...

[King_TJ]

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!)

Re:It's definitely the price

[alienw]

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.