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A Six-Step Plan for Apple
An anonymous reader writes "Open letter from Alex Salkever to Jobs. One thing in particular strikes me: 'The latest round of attacks on Microsoft software is terrifying. If using a Mac means servers in Russia are less likely to harvest my passwords and offer my identity to the highest bidder, I think that's an offer I'd like to hear more about.' I think he's got something there."
There it is! The elusive Step #2:
servers in Russia are less likely to harvest my passwords and offer my identity to the highest bidder
Step 1: Create Server (in Soviet Russia no less!) that harvests passwords
Step 2: Offer harvested information to highest bidder
Step 3: Profit!
Now, to create these password harvesting servers... off I go! Oh wait, he said something about a six step plan! Damn't!
Casual Games/Downloads
Macs are not immune either...
As I type from within one I must say!
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
...ehh, nevermind.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
apple really isnt the only alternative....
Thank the good Lord God we have technology columnist-pundits! What would our poor captains of industry do without their wisdom? Come on, everybody, let's sing a hymn praising BusinessWeek and the scary-smart Alex Salkever! ;)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I think the Mac OS has been escaped the brunt of virus attacks thanks largely to its miniscule user base. I am a Mac user myself and I don't run any anti virus software but I do not think it is impossible to write a virus or exploit some security hole in the OS.. I just feel secure because I know most virus writers are happy to target the world of Windows! :)
Back to the article, I do not think Apple will introduce a headless iMac; rumors seem to suggest another all-in-one solution! I would line up for either :)
All units move into Phase III battle positions! Commence Apache vs. IIS flamewar!
What we need is a twelve step program to save the world's enslaved masses from the evil that is Microsoft, Apple, Sun and other proprietary software and into the blessed bliss of free software.
Uh...okay but I'd still like to see it! Less M$ is good....inherently.
"I think he's got something there."
Thanks for that, but it doesn't actually show anything other than bias and isn't really relevant.
Do you think that when Apple talks about 'superior design', they aren't talking about color, but the OS and user interface? When Alex says 'technology', and Apple says 'design', I think they are talking about the same thing.
People don't pay premium prices because of a Mac's color, or shape, but for the OS and interface. They expect the nice 'design' (in the "looks-nice" sense) because of the premium price, but are not paying premium solely for its looks.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
...The same problems would exist. The Mac OS isn't immune, it may be true that it's harder to crack but if it were to have 95% of the market I can guaratee it will be cracked open just like windows and other MS software (IE) has been. Regardless of any good or bad software MS has made, they're the highest profile software firm out there.
But frankly, the most recent attacks on MS software aren't as bad as they are made out to be. I've hardly seen any problems and on the Windows systems I run, it's been smooth sailing. Now if I started seeing repeated attacks and they were successful in compromising the systems, I'd change my mind, but that's not happening. As it is I haven't even seen that many attempts.
Presently here, but not there.
As if the people who buy the servers really care about whether or not their customer's information is stolen.
It's been a few months since we've had a self-styled "expert" come along and tell Apple what their doing wrong and how they can fix it, else they will shrivel up and die.
Story contains the same thing over and over and over and over we've heard now for what...20 years now? Lower their prices, focus on what they do best, lower their prices and lower their prices.
The only thing new here is focus on security, which seems like a good thing to focus on, but only if Apple can TRUELY deliver a resonably secure system. Hopefully they can.
But it's good to see some things never die, like these articles that try to show Apple the error of their ways.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
But they've been following Bill Gates "simple is better than secure" mantra, and made their protocol handler (LaunchServices) the same for desktop and web protocols... with the result that they've had their first big security hole, and it's the same one Microsoft has been fighting since Windows 95/98, and like Microsoft they didn't actually fix it... they just fixed the symptom.
*sigh*
But he did the BIG missing component in Apple's marketing... a headless eMac. From my lips to Steves ear, I pray they'll wise up and build one...
If more people are using macs, then it will be a more tempting target. If you raise the cost of breaking in by increasing security, then time and effort will be spent trying to crack easier targets.
Sure, it's a good selling point being a less tempting target, but the whole point of advertising is to make your product more popular, so there is a point (in the distant future, if at all of course) where Macs would become as popular of a target as PCs.
So 1-5 on this list are basically just saying "take the series of strategies that since Jobs took over have taken Apple from the brink of disaster to the brink of an acceptable financial situation, and take the exact opposite tack on all of them, and you'll make MORE money!"
It's possible the strategies Jobs has been pushing were right for the time when Jobs took over, and the strategies this guy is suggesting are right for now. But all I see in this article are "X is a good idea!" and absolutely none of "X is a good idea for Apple, right now!". If he understands why Apple's been doing what they've been doing and has good reasons why that needs to change, he doesn't state them. He seems totally incognizant of the quirks of apple's particular situation, and seems totally to assume that if Apple isn't already doing the things he's suggesting they do, it's only because it hasn't occured to them.
Personally I have lots of trouble taking this article any more seriously than, well, a random anonymous coward post on slashdot.
#6 is a good strategy, however, assuming Apple is willing to take some steps to beef up security and spyware-proof-ness so that such a strategy doesn't blow up in their faces once someone sees Apple's new security-oriented ad campaign and decides to write a worm targetting unpatched 10.1 installations out of spite.
The guy has some sensible points (although it's clear at this point that Jobs simply will not sell to the low-end). But K-Mart seems like a peculiar success story to point to.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Price trumps style? How else do you get identified in a crowded marketplace. It's not just external style, but for the last five years the internal design style is something I hear nobody talk about. Make 'em cool and cheap. If there's no style, how can you make them cool? Cheap? How do you stay in business and be cheap? I'm not saying I want them expensive, but if they're viewed as expensive, it's because of poor marketing. USB, Firewire, etc. are all included. Ditch the all-in-one. Simplicity is what new users need...people who need space saved. What is a laptop, except an all in one computer? Sell the soap? Give away a discount on the most popular MP3 player? If you're on top, why would you do such a thing? Soap II. This is the best idea I've heard of. Except of course the people who do return it...leaves you with stock that is difficult to resell. But I do like the idea. People will get upset though, at a restocking fee. Security. This is something apple's marketing misses Really. So, that makes him 1 of 6 in my book.
Is that self defeating? What I mean is the commonly held reason for Macs not being targets is because they are so few compared to the number of MS installs.
It's like back in the day with linux. Linux did not have a known virus until it gained popularity. Though security does help that fact.
Give Macs even a quarter of the MS market and you will see every script kiddy going for macs.
What could possibly go wrong?
This is off-topic.
If you want an actual secure, usable operating system, wait for Windows XP Service Pack Two...
Vaporware isn't usable. Perhaps I should look for a leaked copy of SP2 on my favorite p2p system?
Price trumps style?
There's nothing new or interesting in the article.
It's just the same old mantra of cheaper, more modular, etc.
Jobs would read this, rightly conclude that it's just another tired summary of the market forces and contray opinions he's been aware of and dealing with for his entire career.
I understand why it's news on Slashdot; I just can't figure out why it would be news anywhere else.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
"its cause macs arnt as popular blah blah blah..."
"I'm a broken record, broken record, broken record, broken record, broken record, broken record, broken record, broken man."
So, my gut reflex was that this program would be a good idea. But then again, 2004 isn't the mid-80's. Back then, the program was a great idea because virtually no one knew about Macintosh. Now, you would be hard-pressed to find someone that doesn't know a Macintosh owner. These potential converts already have a "test drive" program: They just go over to their friend's house. And Macintosh owners have no shortage of enthusiasm for showing off their computer....
Are we phishing for passwords? Yes. Are we preying on the gullibility of millions of computer users? Yes. Are we using the information that we're receiving to access as much cash/credit from the end-users as is possible, probably ruinging their credit and their lives? Yes.
But we're doing it all to fight terrorism. Didn't anybody watch our recruitment movie, Swordfish? We're the good guys. Now give us your passwords and leave us to fight the good fight.
Wouldn't it be easier to simply not use Internet Explorer on whatever you have currently?
Offer a $200 bounty on a PC exchanged for a new iMac or iBook. Buyers get the $200 discount only if they bring a PC that's two years old or less. And they must have a valid receipt.
What an stupid idea. All but the crappiest two-year-old computers are still worth more than $200, especially laptops. Only a complete idiot would take advantage of that offer.
This space intentionally left blank.
You can hear the sound of Steve Jobs laughing.
...by releasing OS X for PC hardware.
This would have an immediate tidal wave effect, probably of near-biblical proportions. Sure it would flush Apple's hardware business in the toilet, who but the trendiest of CEOs and graphic designers would pay 3x the price for fancy form factors? But the number of people clamoring for something other than Windows is pretty large, given the MS-bashing that goes on even in mainstream media. Apple would clean up in software sales--and their license sure has MS beat. I salivate over the idea of a $199 family pack that allows one copy of OS X to be installed on 5 PCs.
Talk about introducing some fresh competition into the OS market! I can't think of a reason other than Steve Jobs' stubbornness that keeps this from happening. I would jump ship in a split second. And it might even prod game developers to get those Mac ports out the door.
I am the very model of a modern major general!
You could, but you'd probably get a faster download speed if you downloaded Release Candidate 2 from www.microsoft.com
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
Is that why about 50% of the laptops at the USENIX Advanced Technical Conference last week were Macs?
Seems like lots of geeks, at least the ones that go to USENIX (people like, er, Rob Pike, who might know something about innovative software) use Macs.
Apple won't listen. If Apple listened it would have never gotten itself in such a conundrum in the first place.
Apple's long history of being deaf to the market and rude to users is what got them to where they are in the first place, starting from when they moved from the Apple ][ to the Mac without providing a downward compatible option. The story continues from there: tiny screens nobody liked, b/w monitors only, no floppy support, overpriced Macs, single button mice nobody but Jobs likes and on and on.
Lower Prices.
Parent comment has nothing to do with the 6-step plan for Apple.
Hence, my critique of these points:
My 2c.
Is that anything like a 12-step program?
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I guess i'll chime in here with my biggest issue with Apple. I am a typical finance/home user. Some photos, some audio, but I live in outlook (heck I need to, my company uses exchange and there's no other way I know of to be sharing calendars and what not given that restriction) and furthermore I live and die with Microsoft Money and Quicken to manage personal finances. About 3 months ago, I rushed out and spent nearly twice on a powerbook what I normally spend during my annual dell upgrade fest. I brought the beautiful computer home and I found several main issues that would turn off any "try-hard die-hard" mac fan: 1) there is no outlook. there is nothing close to outlook. i couldn't share calendars, i was a corporate outcast. safari does not properly display outlook web access from my exchange host and the 3 other browsers i downloaded failed to do this properly as well 2) the version of office is one step behind. frankly speaking, when all my colleagues are buzzing it up on office xp with colored tabs and all the Excel yahoo features, I'm stuck 3 years ago 3) there is no Microsoft Money, the MAC version of Quicken does NOT download from everywhere the PC version does, and i'm left typing in all my stock quotes by hand. look, i tried as much as the next guy to get this to work, but these are huge dealbreaker issues that will face any semi-sophisticated wanna-be mac advocate. i wish that i had been able to figure out a solution, but it just plain didn't work out. i can't see any real conversion of business users until this works itself out and i see business use as a huge route into the home. Good luck apple
Here's lemonparty for you.
I disagree with one of his points.
1) Price trumps style in the computer market
Wrong. Price does not trump style, or you'd have [old_argument]Linux On The Desktop[/old_argument]. IMHO, it's all about utility. How much you get, for how much you spend. If a Mac actually gave me $3000 or so dollars worth of advantage, I'd buy one. But it doesn't, at least it doesn't for me, so I don't have one.
Consider tweaking the utility/price ratio and Mac sales will soar. You don't have to make low-end Macs, just drop the price by a percentage. It's my guess that the rise in sales will offset it. Experiment with your price point a bit, Steve. People will pay for style, they're just not willing to pay through the nose for it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I've come to the conclusion that Apple must have some sort of market share that defies the natural laws of the universe. For years now, Apple's market share has always been reported at ~4% with numbers as low as 2% in some places and as high as 10% in others. But the one thing that has remained constant throughout these reports is that it's a dwindling market share and it's falling rapidly. Now, how is it that 6 years ago, they could have 4%, 5 years ago they had 4%, 4 years ago they had 4%, 3 years ago they have 4%, 2 years ago they have 4%, one year ago they have 4% and this year, they still have 4%, yet every year it was declining?
This leads to the conclusion that Apple must have invented purpetual self sustaining marketshare, a graph of which could make MC Escher proud, and that they must patent this immediately so that they can increase their marketshare to -pi
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Sadly, he probably pissed off Steve in the first step, due to his oversimplification. The Mac is not just about style, Apple just happens to be one of the few companies that actually put a real effort into design. The Mac is all about being an extremely well designed integrated system - both in software and hardware. iLife is easily worth $300, included with every single Mac, not to mention the amazing OS X, which is easily worth $200. It's just really really hard to convince folks that there is that much difference between an eMac and a sh*tty $700 Dell with XP Home, MS Works, and an analog LCD.
Apple has never really been comfortable selling piece-by-piece, and to actually undercut in the way Salkever recommends would require them to do so. Personally, I'd love to see how well a flat panel eMac with a combo drive, no iLife, and a $700 price tag would do.
Can they make it happen?
Best read in good ol' Monaco 9 point.
I'll take two.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
If using a Mac means servers in Russia are less likely to harvest my passwords and offer my identity to the highest bidder, I think that's an offer I'd like to hear more about.
What about the servers in PANAMA???
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxp pro/sp2preview.mspx
you where saying?
Apple's share of the U.S. PC industry has fallen from 4.2% in mid-2002 to 2.8% in the first quarter, says IDC.
Apple pundits will generally tell you this doesn't matter... and I'm inclined to say they have a point. Average life of my 3 PCs before this one was 4 years. I bought the PB expecting it to last 6. Time will tell.
Sure, Apple flogs low-grade eMacs to schools at bargain-basement prices -- but they have big, fat CRT monitors. Ugh.
I just took a trip to the Best Buy website (let's make the poor assumption that Apple and Best Buy have the same ideas about margins and profits)... yup. CRTs are still roughly $300 cheaper than LCDs. I spent 20 seconds there, I didn't check for the quality of the monitors.
You probably seen the terrific product designs such as well-known architect Michael Graves' line of stylish housewares -- offered a budget prices.
Note that this is not a generalization . :-)
Offer a $200 bounty on a PC exchanged for a new iMac or iBook.
But I like my PC too. It's useful sometimes. For... games and stuff.
Why not offer all Mac buyers a try-and-buy program much like what some Apple resellers are offering to purchasers of high-end Xserve units.
I hear this Unix thing is unbreakable... what better way to test it than to feed it to the dogs that are the general public for free for a couple weeks! :D Realistically, I think their inventories might be a bit too short to do that.
Anyways, those are my first thoughts. At the very least the guy has some interesting ideas. I still think Apple feels they're fine with the niche they have. Reply at will. :)
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
People try to look at the computer world as some easily quantifiable and simplistic situation and its not. At the end of the day, the dollars you spend on a computer are going to dictate the features and reliability you want.
:)
I am a musician and an engineer. I use the tool I find that works the best on the job I am doing. For music, I am sorry, but the PC world is light years behind the mac world. And it's not just in software, it's reliability. I used to use a PC for about ten years on music, then one day, bought an old used mac and found I could do more reliably on my old G3 350Mhz machine than my fairly new 1.2Ghz athlon machine.
Why?
Because, unlike the PC world, I was buying a system from a small set of configurations. This means that the chances of the software running reliably on the hardware I had is greater. Now I didn't have to worry about the fact that on my Athlon MB, the VIA chipset had a problem that caused bottlenecks on the south-bridge and caused me to get pops and cracks, and lockups, in EVERY piece of software I tried to use.
That's the difference. It gets the job done, and does it better. My G5 has never locked up since I purchased it. I cannot say that about any other machine. My experience has been better this way and I am productive. However, it doesn't make me oblivious to the fact that macs have problems too, including hardware and software. The difference to me is that macs are more reliable in my experience.
As an engineer, I use Sun machines and Linux machines. The sun machines are more reliable but the linux machines are faster, so we use both.
As a good friend of mine said, "The best machine is one I don't have to support"
I agree with that
In Soviet Russia, passwords harvest you!
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
How about making a point out of it?
Let's look at the people who can buy a Mac.
1. They have to have the money. So, that means few 'family computers' are Macs. More likely to be in the upper brackets of disposable income, have few/no children, etc.
2. Must not need a PC for work OR must need a Mac for work. Looking at number 1, we see that you need more disposable income to buy a Mac. So you might think businessmen would have it. However, their networks are MS, so they have PCs. Business incompatability keeps Macs from being the digital Beamers of upper management. Conversely, graphic artists and musicians often are trained in school on macs and work in environments with macs. Tend to be your non-traditional 9-5'er.
Very few who can only afford PCs would come to be able to afford Macs. I'd venture to guess that those who don't already have a computer aren't going to be able to afford a Mac. And once you're on either the PC or Mac track, you tend to stay on it, for familiarity, backwards compatability, etc. Therefore, the market for Macs would seem to be those who already have a Mac and are upgrading, or those whose specialized professions require it.
Bottom line: the Mac market can't grow, unless prices drop.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
You know, I saw "six step", and I started wondering if they were half addicted to something - therefore needng a truncated version of the 12-step program.
This sig no verb.
...OS X (or similar) running on x86 wouldn't really be all that different from Windows. The Windows kernel? Stable enough. The Windows UI? Nothing to write home about, but quite fine.
Windows is as it is because it supports every crappy piece of hardware with crappy drivers which ends up making the user experience suck. You don't hear that much about it here on slashdot because most here are fairly quality-conscious and well informed. Whoever picks together the "cheapest all-around-noname" computer at a webshop is bound to run into problems.
What I have found difficult to accept with the Apple's is that I never shell out that much *at once* for a PC. I upgrade a bit here, a bit there, buy a new "core" (mobo + CPU) sometimes, but never a whole new machine. If a fire cleaned me out, I'd consider a Mac. But I'd say the upgrade route from PC to Mac is rather though.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How I love reading a random's attempt at getting a job at apple. I liked his Apples need to be cheaper suggestion. Yawn.
Slashdot will post ANY news piece with Apple somewhere inside.
>It's HARD to find the varied range of software >you find on a PC.
Geez. Here we go again. Any software that's anygood is usually available for both platforms. Sure there are more PC titles if you count all the crap! Personally, I don't buy software at Kmart.
Let's put aside for the moment whether an entirely new PDF-based windowing system and a desktop that makes finally truly makes Unix for the desktop counts as "innovative software". What on earth do you want in music playing software besides a) a better interface and b) the playing of music? It's not as if anyone else is making an MP3 player that mows your lawn or cooks you dinner.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
That's what Apple needs to do, ADVERTISE. Now when the new iMacs come out, we'll be hit with a wave of advertising but they should do it more.
Watch TV, what do you see? You see ads for Dell, HP, and other manufacturers. You see Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Radio Shack, and more all hocking computers. What was the last Apple ad you saw? The G5 one? When was the last time you saw an iMac ad or a iBook ad on TV? Years ago you say?
Thats what it seems like to me. When we looked for a computer for my 12 year old little sister, we did look briefly at Macs. My parrents liked the idea but we went with a PC in the end because of her investment in Windows games. If it wasn't for that, it would have been a Mac. But that was because I informed them. I help out neighbors all the time with their computers (I'm in a well-to-do area) and when they want a computer, they go down to Best Buy or something and buy one, or they call Dell or some such. They don't even give Macs a first thought because they aren't advertised.
As any Machead will argue, a Mac is a great value. You get a great computer with a great OS, but you also get tons of software. You get iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, etc. You get a great e-mail client, web browser, etc. If Apple would just advertise that their computers already include about all the software you'll need, they'd sell better. Remember the ads from when the iMac first came out about how simple they were to setup? That's what we need.
Viruses. Macs don't have viruses. They don't have spyware. They don't have all sorts of problems that people in the PC world have to buy software to deal with. This should be hammered home. You shouldn't be able to walk down the street without at least 2/10 people you stop knowing Apple advertises this.
Apple needs to advertise. They have great stuff, but they need to have more people know it. Advertise the stylish laptops. Advertise discounts on iPods when you buy your student a new Mac. Advertise how easy it is to use and how many of the hassles aren't there, but ADVERTISE.
On a side note, the article does have some great suggestions, like $200 off a Mac when you turn in a PC.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Come on.... The mac is the ultimate geek machine - BSD unix that's easy to configure, but you can go behind the scenes if you want - a free, high quality IDE, and excellent and easy to use API (Cocoa) and a bucket load of open source apps available for it too. Plus, when you need it, you can run PhotoShop, FCP etc. for when you're not playing around.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
If Apple goes the down the road this author suggests they'll lose all customer loyalty and be merely another company out of hundreds. They're targeted at a niche and they're guaranteed to lose, not gain, ground if they try to fight someone else's battle by someone else's rules. Personally, I would rather have someone like Steve Jobs running Apple than this idiot. There's probably a good reason why Steve Jobs runs a big company and this other guy writes articles rather than running big companies. Even with this guy as an author, I think we can do without another moron suggesting that, instead of a company that would compromise its share of the the market for quality, what we really need is another Dell or Gateway or Compaq or...
All-In-One is for SUCKERS!!! Most educated computer users know that a monitor will eventually crap out, and want to be able to get a cheap replacement.
A low-end headless Mac - THAT is how you'll finally get me to upgrade from my G3-enhanced 8600, Apple.
Pete Forsyth
His first 4 recommendations are basically to be like everyone else:
So basically, he's another of those people who thinks that, of course, Steve must be trying to maximize his market share at the expense of everything else! And, of course, the best way to do that is to make Macs cheap, like Dells. Because Dell sells a lot of units! ....Which is true. But it's not the point.
Apple's purpose is not to maximize marketshare but to maximize money. They do that by selling with high margins. Removing the high margins would make Apple unable to function, basically. They are not another assemble and resell outfit. They are not another Dell.
Why do so few people realize that?
As for making a headless "iMac," first, that wouldn't be an iMac, and second, that's not what Apple needs. They have a whole bunch of headless machines--what the heck do you think a PowerMac is??? And if I'm not mistaken, the PowerMacs come with iLife installed. So....he wants them to make a PowerMac. Yay! They're already doing that!
Why do people keep insisting that the way for Apple to dominate the market is to become another low-margin box-assembler? They're doing just fine the way they are. They're not in any trouble. Their stock price is higher than it's been in years--granted, it was higher a couple of weeks ago, but it always rises before and tanks after a major show.
My six steps for Apple?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
What boggles my mind is the descreasing market share. I personally have been responsible for over 20 Macs being sold, all to people who are now complete converts for various reasons (ease of use, security, etc).
If every other Mac fanatic did this, we'd at least see a dent.
I also don't understand why more small to midsize businesses don't jump on the OS X bandwagon because of significantly lower cost of ownership.
This so-called "company" was founded by a pair of dope-smoking phone service thieves from Berkeley
I think your the one smoking the dope....
I love my PowerBook, I really do, but how 'bout making our warranty last 3 years instead of 1? That'd be perfect.
1.) Macs does graphics apps better.
2.) Macs aren't easy to contaminate with viruses.
3.) Macs don't really have spyware and adware.
If the above is true, that's only 3 things Macs are superior than windows. Games, corporate apps, freeware choices, price.... unfortunately M$ still has the advantage.
I have 2 kids and 3 Macs. Additionally I make less than $70000 a year.
I think people with apple laptops just carry them around more, and have them on display more often, because then people think they're special.
Anyways, let me try this fun made up stat game! Here goes:
Is that why about 95% of the laptops at Apple Corportate Headquarters are made by Dell?
Casual Games/Downloads
feature? A lot of people have been talking about how macs aren't very popular targets, and thus why there are not more viruses for them, which is true. I'm not going to stand here and tell you that Macs are invincible from remote exploits, but there are other places were a virus can get into the system due to a clueless user, namely email attatchments.
Mac's default mail application contains a pretty nice spam filter. Outlook/outlook express(last time I checked anyway) does not have a spam filter, you get it all. A significant number of windows viruses/exploits come from the fact that users will click on strange attatchments. Provided you have a good enough spam filter, than the user will never have any reason to go sorting through the junk mail, and will probably be less likely to click random attatchments in the junk folder.
MS will probably catch up to speed in longhonn when they introduce spam filters, but that is a while away still.
Food for thought.
Funny, as a college student paying his own bills, I was able to aford a $2,300 powerbook for use at school. In fact, it was my first choice, and only later did I then spend another $1,000 on a PC so that i could have a file server (and a Linux box) lying around if I needed it. The powerbook still gets more use. Now, somehow I think that if I can afford a powerbook, that most working people can afford themselves a $900 eMac no?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Get Linux. It is free and it will run on your old hardware.
Or just use Mozilla/Firefox on your Windows. I would use Linux, but I'm a gamer and I dont want to just be playing "Cube"
Ditch the 1-button mouse already! Seriously. It's a cliched criticism, I know, but that makes it all the more inexcusable. Give us a damn scroll wheel, 2 or 3 button mouse.
Yeah, I can buy one, but I shouldn't have to for what I'm paying. And what about for my Powerbook? $3000 and no means to add a button to the touchpad = annoyed me.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
how about showing how much nicer it feels some time... bmw seems to have no problem conveying that ad, and I never feel like I wanna buy one of their cars because they look cool after watching one of their commercials.
man god, when I see an ipod commercial I feel like I need one some my friends don't hate me. kind of a turn off, personally.
also note that if you click through to usenix, they are offering a chance to win something if you rate your conference experience.
and what is that "something"? an iPod, of course!
You're actually in one of the age ranges that has the most disposable income. A lot of your buddies bought PCs and blew the rest of their money in drinking binges. Wait till you have a mortgage, 2 car payments, spouse, and 2.6 kids.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
As a general rule Mac users are either bleeding idiots or very, very technical. It's always been quite a stark contrast between the two groups.
Too bad the average Linux propeller-head only sees the first group, because they have blinders on and don't care about facts.
From the linked article:
I have yet to see an Apple ad campaign playing up the fact that Macs remain largely virus-free.
Apple will do well not to try that stunt. MacOS was the first home user platform to be afflicted by viruses. When DOS was languishing in stolid austerity, Mac was the platform to play with, especially on college campuses. It proved to be a fertile breeding ground (pun intended).
On the flip side, one could say Apple has been trying longer to harden their systems against viruses.
Maybe you lay off the crack, then!
I have a couple of friends (Ely and Annette) who've been brought to their knees with security intrusions into their MS PC. They're both very ordinary people with ordinary jobs and neither of them are particularly computer literate, and treat their PC very much like any other home appliance. They don't read computer publications or news bulletins, so they mostly remain unaware of the latest security holes, only discovering they should have updated something when their PC starts misbehaving.
They're totally sick of the computing experience they've had so far. So when I popped in to see them one day I took my PowerBook with me and spent a few hours showing them what it could do. They were really impressed, but what totally got their attention was when I told them I didn't need to run any anti-virus software because a) there are no known viruses out the for Mac OS X, and b) the system is inherently more secure than MS Windows by design. Right away they wanted to know where they could get one and how much it would cost.
(NB: My domain/mail hosting company anti-virus scans all email for me, so I'm still being a good neighbor to my MS using friends)
I showed them the range, asked them some questions about their budget, and then advised them to get an eMac because that best suited what they could afford. But they didn't want a large CRT based system and were really taken with the iMac design.
That was 4 months ago. They've still not updated their PC and still haven't' brought a Mac. The reason why? They just can't afford it at the moment. Various other things keep cropping up in their lives and home that stop them from accumulating enough cash to buy the system they want.
Apple really needs to cut the prices. If they can't do it on existing systems, then they need to produce a bare bones design that can initially be pitched at those people with smaller budgets, and then later expanded and upgraded if people need the extra functionality.
I'm a Mac switcher of 2 years who has no intention of going back. And I've met SO many people in that time who've never seen a Mac up close before and have left, lusting after mine when they see up close and personal just how good it is. But they're always put off by the perceived high price. I know that you get so much more for your money with a Mac, but it seems difficult for people to relate to that (don't ask me why).
This is a bullet that Apple are just going to have to bite on if they want to grow their market share some more. Do they have the corporate courage and desire to make this happen? Time will tell, but I sure hope so.
Silly troll, Apple has better security - just ask Secunia about it. ;-)
I run freebsd (yeah, I know it's dying, but hey....) on a self-built PC and have for years. I'd never owned a laptop, but last October, I went in search of one. I wanted something small but at the same time, I wanted a complete machine (I know Sony makes a .00005 ounce laptop with a 2 millimeter screen, but I didn't want the optical drive, and everything else attached hanging off the thing with 60,000 wires.) I narrowed it down to an athlon based Fujitsu with a 13" screen and cdrw-dvdrom drive, and the 12" powerbook. The price difference..... less than $100 for as close as I could get to an equivalent setup (same amount of ram, same size and speed HDD, 802.11g, modem, network, USB, etc...). The mac was more, but barely, and the ibook line was underneath had I wanted to go even cheaper. I'm quite happy with my powerbook after 8 months.
I agree that apple would however benefit from a $500-ish headless desktop.....
Look at the marketing campaign, they never show the product (or very briefly). Apple is about a brand - when will you people get that!
OK enough sarcasm, seriously they need to show the product (nice build quality, lovely GUI, etc...) There are so many people out there who don't even know that Apple exists any more. A friend of the family asked me about buying a new computer when I mentioned Apple this is what he said: "Oh Forest Gump invested in Apple - are they still around?"
Alright, that post makes no sense at all. Please explain your point clearly.. and I take it you are a fanatical MS basher, since anyone could say Apple is similar to MS because they are both computer software/hardware(sorta) companies
i think your mentioning the mac as only a choice of boutiques, gays, and metrosexuals sufficiently indicates that you are a FUCKING RETARD.
Apple and Sun have natural combination of interests. Apple is weak in the enterprise and has no big servers, Sun can't make cheap desktops that are worth the price.
Sun can help Apple and make money by selling Macs as cheap Unix systems for admins to use as Xterms. They can throw in support contracts and make a tidy sum.
Apple can make Quartz and Quicktime tech availble to Solaris. Sun systems have had a lackluster history in media production, but having a full Quicktime may help. Sun could stop supporting Gnome, which helps Linux adoption, and stop helping to cut their own throats.
Sun and Apple would both stand to benefit from a partnership.
Macs are overpriced and while there is more software via shareware available for them, by time you are done putting together everything you need you could have...
a) suffered through Windows and paid for a suite of similair programs and still come out ahead financially
b) learned to use urpmi, or even ./ from the CLI and installed some equivalent packages for free
There is no reason to pay Apple prices and the few reasons to stay with Windows disappear by the day.
Surprisingly a lower price than other light weight notebook competitors. With her student discount she will get a 1ghz G4 ibook with 12" screen, 512 megs of ram, 60 gig drive, combo DVD-ROM/cd burner, 802.11g, firewire, usb, etc. for just over $1200. It's unfortunate that Apple doesn't have competitive pricing for desktop models and other notebooks like they do for the 12" iBook. It's really the best bang for the buck in the light weight market now.
Less aggravation and thus lower TCO- On her current aging PC I had to clean viruses and spyware off at least a half dozen times. She just can't get it on the iBook(at least not yet at any rate). My experience with modern macs has been that once they're configured they work and stay that way. Her sister's iBook from three years ago is heavily used but still works just as good as it did on day 1.
Awesome MS Office ImplementationThe latest Office edition rocks and it's cheap for students too ($149). Completely compatible, and a lot more slick too.
It runs Unix :)
Apple would be best advised to begin touting the fact that these machines are really immune to the tons of crap that are being heaped on Windows units. If they can get their prices in line with the market, they'd have a slam dunk on their hands.
www.lonseidman.com
I talked to the marketing head of Apple in Norway about why they did not use the awful track record of Microsoft as an advertisment opportunity. He stated that it is not that easy, and if a similar problem was to surface in MacOS X, they'd lose any credibility they had harvested from the PC community.
Security wise the Mac is great. The only problem I have with it is users don't have a choice. You get OS X and are forced to use iMovie and iTunes when there are some great third party apps out there that were around long before the Apple i counterparts yet Jobs doesn't tell you about them.
'Same speed C but faster'
Come up with an original way to criticize you lazy hack. Price drives the world. :P
Shame on Slashdot for posting this re-hashed useless BS as if it were news.
If "the most disposable income" means dumping nearly 80% of your income into just rent, tuition and insurance, perhaps people need to re-evaluate their spending habits and learn to save money? Especialy given that my income anualy is less than 10k.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
> I love my PowerBook, I really do, but how 'bout making our warranty last 3 years instead of 1? That'd be perfect.
No, it wouldn't make sense for Apple. Why? See, you've already bought your PowerBook - precisely for the reason that you love it (as you say) so extending warranty for you would only be an unnecessary extra expense for Apple.
Now, whether a 3 year warranty would make some Thinkpad user switch to PowerBook... I don't think so. Overall I reckon an extended warranty would not attract as many new customers to cover the extra cost.
By pass the six steps and just port OS X ot x86! You will see a lot of widows users jump ship and see Microsoft really sweat it out. It would have to battle fronts to contend with an maybe just maybe put out secure products. The only thing is that porting OS X to x86 would drain G5/iMac sales. On the other hand true mac die hards would probably stick with hardware that they can depend on. I believe if Apple really wants to increase their market share that they would do this. It would be the next biggest reveloution in the tech industry next to the release of Linux, iPod and Hot Pockets ;-)
Who the heck hangs on to their computer receipt for two weeks, much less two years?
that sided with Verisign and then claimed the Internet's infrastructure is archaic
Peace
"And I smile when I see that Linux desktop share is projected to overtake Apple's within a couple of years."
When it does, I'll cut and paste the first part of your post and post it back against linux.
"than building overprice proprietory systems that not many people care about/can afford."
Yeah, Apple is hardly relevent these days, can't ever hear about anything they do on any sites, geek or mainstream... oh wait...
"I would also make a gag about the Mac being the computer of choice for the gay, the metrosexual and boutiques, but I feel that the points I'm making are far too worthwhile to be modded down."
You are wrong.. this whole post is "Apple is too pricey" with some fud to dress it up. ALL of your points could be pointed at linux as well, except for the price.
It's fine to say that you think Apple products are too expensive, but the rest is shit.
a man, a plan, a canal, panama
You don't have this luxury in the PC world. Not even MS themselves could possibly test with even a good cross section of hardware. Do you think every little software vendor can afford that? Not even close. This is a large part of why things "just work" on the Mac but not the PC. The software knows exactly what hardware to expect.
I just don't see what allure apple's software would have in the PC world. It might be a bit prettier, but it wouldn't be any more reliable.
From: Joe (You know who I am)
Re: Expanding the Ferrari market
Dude. You don't sell that many cars.
Here is my "Six Steps to a Bigger Ferrari Market."
1) Price trumps style in the car market
I know this may be hard to admit for a guy as innovative and design-conscious as you. But Ferrari charges too much for its cars. The car market's benchmark price level is sinking quickly below the $21,000 mark -- turf where Ferrari has been loath to tread.
2) Make 'em cool and cheap
You've been to Target (TGT ), right? You probably seen the terrific product designs such as well-known architect Michael Graves' line of stylish housewares -- offered a budget prices. Heck, Blue Light Specials at Kmart (KMRT ) haven't been the same since Martha Stewart's line of kitchen gear, sheets, and towels hit the aisles several years ago. Dumpster-diving debutantes can't get enough of them. Even sportswear designer Mossimo makes great threads for fiscal lightweights.
We're in the era of cheap chic, Maurizio. And I have no doubt that Ferrari can play that game with the best of them. Give us a really cheap, really cool car, and watch them fly off the lots.
3) Ditch the all-in-one mantra
Your expensive convertable sports cars have never taken off compared to sedans. You should make sedans.
OK, thats enough you get the point.
This guy is a fucking idiot.
you are correct
I love the fact that I can regularly install little upgrades and bleeding edge software onto my Linux box. I love the fact that I can check out the code and see exactly what makes it tick.
Mac OS X is one of the best environments for geeks out of there. It's a Unix OS, for chrissakes! Nearly all software that runs on Linux can run on OS X, and nearly all of it available as prepackaged binaries from the Fink project. Also, the only closed-source parts of OS X are the user interface. The core OS and kernel (Darwin) are open-source.
but innovative SOFTWARE rather than just a shiny new UI would be nice
Apple's software is consistently innovative. They managed to create an operating system that combines the ease-of-use of Mac OS 7-8-9 with the power of Unix. That's far better than the open-source community has done. Have you ever actually used OS X? Ever tried Expose?
Stop producing overpriced machines in funky colored perspex!
Have you ever looked at a recent Mac machine? The G5 is made of aluminum, the Powerbooks are made of aluminum, and the iBooks and iMacs are made of neutral, white plastic.
Apple makes the best-looking, highest quality hardware available today. Try finding a PC desktop or laptop made of anything but flimsy plastic (or some kind of flimsy purple-colored metal, in the case of Sony).
This space intentionally left blank.
Peace
I love trolls like you...
...and in all likelihood, would spend the majority of the cash on developing some nice new injection moulding techniques for the cases, rather than REALLY innovative software (yes yes I know about iTunes - but innovative SOFTWARE rather than just a shiny new UI would be nice. I've been able to play MP3s since before 1995 on my PC)
It's HARD to upgrade when you want to add a little more zip to the machine.
What, exactly, would you want to upgrade? RAM? I think it's easier to install RAM on an iMac or eMac than on a PC. I don't have to take the case off my Mac and fumble through ribbon cables to get to my RAM slots, just take the cover off the bottom.
If something goes wrong (and yes, even Macs go wrong from time to time), my folks won't have a bunch of friends around the corner who know exactly how to fix that problem, or a friend with a CD crammed full of useful little fixer applications.
I don't want a friend around the corner who "knows computers" to come fix mine. I'd rather have Apple's phone support do it. And considering that Apple has the best support, says Consumer Reports, i'm even more comfortable with them.
At the end of the day, I just don't see how a Mac can be any less prone to attacks than a PC with Zonealarm, AVG Anti Virus, Firefox and Thunderbird installed.
Because I don't *want* to have to install ZoneAlarm, AVG, FireFox and Thunderbird? Don't forget Ad-Aware and Windows Update every week!
I love the fact that I can regularly install little upgrades and bleeding edge software onto my Linux box.
And you can't do that on a Mac?
I love the fact that I can check out the code and see exactly what makes it tick.
Apple has open-sourced it's core OS, not to mention that any UNIX-based apps you have can be installed as well, straight from the tarball.
I love the fact that if I pay for any of this, it is usually through choice, and a project's little Paypal tip jar. I love the fact that the money I pay is going directly to the developers that write the applications that improve my life, rather than to a company that holds one hand with the RIAA behind it's back
Just had to get that shot across the bow, right? Well, Apple isn't the only company doing a Music Store, and they're not the only ones who had to deal with the RIAA and license fees. Apple has stated that the artist does get a chunk of money for songs sold.
Wow, you *really* haven't used a Mac. I can only begin to list the innovative apps that Apple's created: iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, Final Cut Pro, all the way down to iCal, Address Book, Safari and Mail. Each of these apps has so many features that make it more than just your basic app.
And I smile when I see that Linux desktop share is projected to overtake Apple's within a couple of years.
Aww, that's cute. Too bad people like your mom and pop won't be those people switching to Linux, they'll be too busy installing FireFox and AVG on their PCs.
To be honest, I feel that for Apple to succeed, they need to learn how to cut the elitist attitude.
The elitist attitude comes from knowing exactly what the customer wants then developing a product to fit that need. Example: iPod!
Stop producing overpriced machines in funky colored perspex!
eMacs start at $799. Find me a $800 PC with a 17" CRT, USB 2, FireWire, Combo Drive and video editing software, then I shall bow down to you. SuperDrive eMacs start at $1,000, so find me a $1,000 with a DVD-R/CD-RW. Oh yeah, Apple hasn't done colored computers in a while. so you might want to get a new MacMall catalog that's not from 2000.
Stop loading your desktop PC equivalents with a million and one interfaces that the average Joe will never use.
Put another button on the damn mouse! ...I get confused when I have only one button to click...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I for one welcome our new Macintosh wearing overlords...
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
For the last 8 years, I've been providing tech support for friends and family. I finally got fed up with windows2K crashing every time a child sits down and starts randomly pressing the keyboard. In 2003, I bought a iMac for my wife. Since then I've had to run virus scanner zero times. Instead of patching and fixing her computer 3-5 times a year, I haven't had to fix the iMac at all. Instead of a big ugly box taking up half her desk, she has a 17" iMac. Now she has more room on her desk. My son hasn't been able to crash the iMac yet and he tries. I still have windows boxes, since I'm a programmer. But for all other systems I will never buy another windows box. There's better things in life than patching and fixing windows.
As far as the comment about use a Mac 'cause it's safer, I've never heard a more circular or stupid argument in my life. If everyone switches to Mac's (which the author suggests) they'll be safer 'cause no one write's virus's for the Mac - duh! Wouldn't they start?
For all the Mac lovers / haters out there, shut the hell up and do some work. For all the PC lover / haters, do exactly the same thing.
I can't believe I wasted 20 minutes of my life reading these rants and raves, which are completley useless and serve no purpose (in my humble opinion). There will always be various hardware, platform, software, etc, vendors. Do something worthwhile and perform a little research yourself to identify the best solution to meet your unique needs, and stop trying to force your idealistic and completley insane ideals of which operating system is "better" on us.
Well, that's probably true. I say let the youth have their fun. But from what I've heard and read of the statistics, a fair number of Americans are falling behind in credit card debt, and not because of frivolous spending. Do you have cheap dorm or cheap university housing? A house and two cars are the basic requirements of life in America -- are cities are designed so that you ca't work without a car. Anyways, I don't know what the catch is, but apparently it's catching a lot of people.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Of course, I'm not saying that Apple should try to out-Dell Dell -- but they should get themselves a low-end (IMHO iMacs and iBooks are midrange in both price and technological sophistication).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Apple wants to sell niche. They do not want to sell mass. I don't know why, that's just the way it is. But still, if they take their i/eMac line to all G5s, then they could bring back the cubes at the low-end. A G4 cube for $700. Seems easily doable. It does not violate their niche philosophy. It could happen.
Okay, first things first, The mac OS is BSD. I'm seeing a lot of my Linux boys posting some not so true stuff about the Mac X OS. The way I see it, a mac is a happy medium between *NIX and the MS world of things. Having used quite a few different OS's in my day, nothing compares to Mac OS X. Its the stability and a common sense structure of a Linux platform with a good GUI front end. Something both Linux and Windows loose out on in different areas. Sorry, but KDE, Gnome, and BlueCurve have a long way to come before they bring linux to the hard drive of the non-technical staff that I work with.
-- Bored? Check out my Portfolio
Wow its amazing how dumb people can be and still be supposed "experts" that write articles. Way to miss the most obvious things Apple should do:
#1: Market your freakin products.
#2: Fix your supply issues.
are you baked???
I have to wonder, in all of this talk about Apple doing this or that wrong, if the company isn't just stuck where it is for a single reason -- aside from all of the high prices, no middle-tier lines, etc. type issues. That single reason is STEVE JOBS.
;-)
I don't know the guy personally. I can't read his mind. I don't know what he's thinking. And I could care less what his intentions are.
But for the life of me, after reading stories about the man over the years, I don't know why some of his peers -- THOSE WHO WANT HIM AND APPLE TO SUCCEED -- can't get him into a room and have an APPLE INTERVENTION. The stories I've read pain the man as an enigmatic, eccentric visionary who really has great ideas. But, going by many of these same articles, he's also a guy who has run off colleagues, insulted friends, and rejected many ideas for doing great things with his company to move it forward.
In the end, the underlying currents all seem to point to the fact that Steve Jobs must just be very damned stubborn. Does this "stubborness" translate, despite his vision and grand ideas of the computing future with Apple, into an approach to management that stifles his very dream child of a company?
I REALLY want the guy to succeed. I really want to be able to afford an Apple some day without my wife yelling at me and telling me to (HORRORS AND HELL FREEZING OVER!) spend the money on a homebrew Athlon64 system instead. I really want to turn on my PC someday and hear the beautiful music that is the Mac OS X Panther (or Tiger, Kitten, Feline, etc.) operating system startup chime!
But...will it ever happen? Must he insist, to his deathbed, on keeping Apple at its measly sub-5% market share? Will those dreams ever come true if Steve continues being...well...Steve? Stubborn Steve?
IronChefMorimoto
P.S. - Don't flamebait me -- I am a long, diehard PC user who has discovered Mac OS X and all its glories. I would SO love to have this operating system at home -- but it'll never happen unless I win the lottery.
Unfortunately Alex seems to like making mileage out of a couple of old ideas.
Cheap Points one and two are redundant. People want cheap and they find it at Target. But Alex overlooks Apple's method of compensating for lower volume sales (than say Dell) - gross margins. Apple's healthy margins are what have helped it accumulate is near $5 billion cash. If you try to play the "cheap" high volume game with Dell, you'll end up like Gateway - bleeding to death.
Point three is synonymous with points one and two. To sell something cheap, its typically no-frills and as basic as possible. Selling a headless iMac just pushes the display revenue into someone else's pocket and kills your consumer-oriented style. But I concede that a product reminiscent of the LC may spread appleseeds into non-BMW families. But all in one is much simpler than headless for newbies - the tradeoff may be worth it, but its hard to say.
Dell's move with the iPod bounty almost screams "product failure". If the DJ isn't selling of its own merits, then why would I want to swap my well-loved iPod for one? Apple's position is more healthy with its desktops than Dell is with its DJ. An interesting competitive upgrade idea but more of a last-ditch effort.
As for try before you buy, what the hell do you think the Apple Retail Stores are for? Salkever must not be hanging around his local Apple store enough. The one here has a steady stream of people just coming in to play with the machines. But the stores don't have to worry about sending out 10+ iBooks everyday to people who may never return them, and if they did return them, they'd certainly have to be in non-mint condition and have to be sold at a discount to someone else. I know I never want to buy a non-mint Apple if I'm paying the Apple-premium, and I don't expect anyone else to.
Businesses aren't going to just disappear with xServes like consumers will, and any unpurchased trial machines being sold at a discount will negatively impact gross margins.
Any prideful statement about a lack of viruses and exploits is nothing more than a HUGE invitation to be attacked and exploited. Security through obscurity is wrong, but so is inviting mayhem if you're not absolutely convinced that you will be able to withstand the attack. As the user-base grows, the level of security confidence should also increase, but don't set yourself up for a potential black-eye.
I've been drinking for the last five days.
You know what stopped the bleeding? I had two extra strong B-vitamin pills. Strange but true.
I've come to the conclusion that Apple must have some sort of market share that defies the natural laws of the universe. For years now, Apple's market share has always been reported at ~4% with numbers as low as 2% in some places and as high as 10% in others. But the one thing that has remained constant throughout these reports is that it's adwindling market share and it's falling rapidly. Now, how is it that 6 years ago, they could have 4%, 5 years ago they had 4%, 4 years ago they had 4%, 3 years ago they have 4%, 2 years ago they have 4%, one year ago they have 4% and this year, they still have 4%, yet every year it was declining?
This leads to the conclusion that Apple must have invented purpetual self sustaining marketshare, a graph of which could make MC Escher proud, and that they must patent this immediately so that they can increase their marketshare to -pi
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
What a fucking retard you are!
And the other 50% we're PC's running Virtual Terminal with a Linux client installed!
Peace
Has anyone RTFA? This guy is a complete loon. "If Apple only charged me less, gave me a trade-in on my uselessly outdated PC hardware, didn't charge me until I had had the computer for a while, and didn't try to bundle everything together, they'd be doing much better!"
No, they wouldn't, you idiot. They'd be dell. Apple's bundling allows them to hide how much they charge for commodities like RAM and hard drives. Their high prices let them survive with a small marketshare (R&D is NOT CHEAP!). This is what makes the company what it is.
I own an iBook. It cost me $1200 or so. PC laptops are probably cheaper. I would never, in a million years, bother with one. The iBook was worth every dollar because of its fantastic software, ease of programming (yes, that's key for me), reliability, good tech support (remember, you don't just buy an iBook, you buy an Apple), small size, durabilitiy, battery life, and a million other things I won't even mention.
Apple knows what is best for Apple. They have known what is best for Apple for a long time, which is why they continue to have large amounts of money. This guy does not know what is best for Apple. Of course, looking back, that should elicit nothing but "Duh?"
Where can I get one? Will you email it to me?
Must have missed that last paragraph...
You never know...
1. Reintroduce the Newton with modernized hardware. Really. The newton form-factor is PERFECT for handwriting recognition. Large enough that you can write more than one word at a time, but small enough that it doesn't weigh too much. If they introduced a new Newton with a slimmer-down body, color screen, LiPol battery and other new features, but with Newton OS and Apple HWR, it'd reinvigorate the PDA market. Right now, smartphones and cellphones are destroying the PDA market because they are essentially PDAs with phones- about the same size, same functionality. A new Newton would add a new class of PDA and inject some hope into the market.
My Systems
they dont have much of a market share, so hackers dont spend that much time making viruses for them.
... and a good flaw in the OS. You've got two choices to write a good virus, as I've pointed out. Either socially engineer something that looks clickable and start sending out spam, finding enough suckers that click to keep things going, or find a flaw in the OS to exploit to save on social engineering. So either the numbers have to be massively high, as you point out, or you have to have a virus that infects passively, as all the great viruses do.
The lack of viruses was almost bad enough that I thought I should write a virus that'd execute on the Mac just to say we'd had a good one (other than that silly "bootable CD" scare under OS 8-9). It's not like it'd really take any time. Most viruses seem to be ones that people are silly enough to click on in their email to start the infection. You'd have a harder time writing one that exploited a flaw [without taking that extra time finding one, which is where the real genius comes in, of course], but just so that Mac OS X could say there was one, I thought I'd hack a quick REALbasic or Java or Applescript dohicky and "socially engineer" it to look all clickable in an email sent from the infected box. Heck, I get enough free spamable addresses in the spam I get myself these days even finding the first few hundred hosts wouldn't be a problem.
But your position then is something akin to malaria in someone with sickle cell -- you have to find enough hosts, not only initially but continually, to keep you alive to keep finding more hosts. Without them, you die out.
How many Mac users themselves have a large percentage of Mac users in their address book? Most of my friends use Windows. Even if I got a few Mac users to click and execute an application-virus, giving me pretty free reign on their system, what are the chances that sending the bugger to every email I could cull off their system would keep the outbreak alive? I've got to think pretty small.
So there's more to a virus than just lack of hackers -- what's the payout, even for a good virus? Pretty small as long as, as the original post points out, the market share is too.
Which brings us to...
If everyone gets the same idea to move to a mac, virus wirters will shift their attention to macs.
I'm not saying the Mac doesn't have these flaws -- nor that it doesn't. But OS X'd have to have the flaw in addition to the market share to really cause the havoc Windows has.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
...you must also remember that market share and sales may be quite different. Declining sales and constant market share might indicate that the average lifetime of a Mac is increasing. As OS X has, in my understanding, become faster since its release, it may lead users to keep their machines longer. Perhaps the cruft and spyware that crop up on Windows and make many users buy a new PC, isn't as strong a drive on Mac?
Of course, you rarely get "well paid" for that sort of thing. IBM used to make PCs like that in the 80s, PCs that could last until today. Every clone maker in the world underbid them. Hell, most other consumer electronics too. My parents' last washing machine died after what, 25-30 years? If you want to bet on their current one lasting that long, you'll get good odds. Say 5-10 maybe.
Anyway, I think the Mac desktop share will remain low. They stand a much better chance in the laptop market, where the mark-up is already high. Desktops are for some reason, even to people that blow off $$$ on all other things, something you're looking at the last 2$ you can save. Don't ask me why.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Apple relies on the income from its hardware sales to fund its operations. Furthermore, the advantages of OS X exist in large part because the pool of hardware it runs on is so limited that it can allow extremely tight HW/SW integration. If you think the dev team at Apple can just snap their fingers and OS X will be running on any x86 you built as well as it runs on a G4 or G5, think again. Microsoft still hasn't perfected plug and play on commodity x86 hardware, despite spending 20 years and untold millions trying. We know from NeXTStep's history that OS X could theoretically run on x86 hardware, but only a very small subset of it was supported by NeXTStep-- the only way OS X would ever run on x86 is if Apple started making x86-based Macs. And I don't want to hear about PearPC, that thing is a toy and always will be.
When Mac clones existed, the cloners undercut Apple on hardware prices and Apple's revenues went straight into the toilet. The Mac clones would have doomed Apple had Jobs not returned and done some fancy footwork to get the company out from under its contracts with the cloners.*
The retail price on OS X for x86 would be significantly higher than the $129 Mac users pay for OS X today, to make up for the lack of Apple hardware sales, and of course it would have to be locked down six ways from Sunday to attempt to thwart piracy. It would also cost more because development costs would go up-- supporting the gamut of x86 hardware would require significant testing to make sure everything worked.
The people who buy Macs now want a better product and are willing to pay for it. Your mythical OS X for x86 users are people who bitch and moan if their PC costs more than $499-- think they will willing fork over much for a better OS? I don't. They usually don't even want to bother finding a better web browser than IE, and browsers are FREE!
OS X for x86 the way you imagine it (able to run on any old commodity shitbox) would kill Apple. So surrender the fantasy, bub.
-----
* The cloners' contracts said they were only licensed to put Mac OS 7.x on their machines, so what really should have been Mac OS 7.7 was renamed Mac OS 8.0 to prevent the cloners from being able to bundle it with their machines and allowing Apple to terminate/revoke the OS distribution licenses.
I bought AAPL at 21, it's at 30 today. Get this dumb-ass away from my portfolio.
Seriously, every couple of months we get another MBA-bot posting his (never her) Grand Unified Plan for "saving" Apple, usually based on dumb ideas that have already failed (competing against Dell on price - look how well that went for eMachines and Gateway), are failing (tablet PC's do everything users want... really shittily), or are obviously going to fail (taunt virus/worm writers and script kiddies with boasts of Mac's invulerability).
Enough of the madness. Seven years ago, Wired ran a piece called 100 Ways to Save Apple, most of which were stupid (#76, "Make damn sure Rhapsody runs on an Intel chip"), fucking stupid (#81, "Merge with Sega"), or so fucking stupid it blocks out the sun (#61, "Ink a promotion/development deal with Shaquille O'Neal"). The item that looks best in retrospect is #101: "Don't worry. You'll survive. It's Netscape we should really worry about."
Slashdot and other sites with a collective IQ greater than that of a turnip should pass on these articles in the future. They're utterly garbage, have been for 20 years, and probably will be in another 20.
--realinvalidname
Just to clarify -
The same minus point can be made, and some of the same strengths apply.
a man, a plan, a canal, panama
That may be a minority of thier sales, but don't put too much faith in the consumer.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
The key to Apple's success has been integrating both of these things -- user interface and "cuteness" factor. They are both aspects of "design" in the overall sense, and both are reasons for their success. Your teen sister may dig the purple and may just use AIM, but there is no question that her experience of using AIM is more inviting, comfortable, and "fun" for her because of the user interface features that set Macs apart, and not just because of the purple (which actually should be called blueberry I believe...). The color of the computer and the slick user interface -- on the iPod as well as OS X -- are all part of the user experience, and Apple understands this in ways the Wintel world never will.
yeah dudes, sell it !!! .. its useless anyway
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
go back to k5 you fucking whore.
I know all the arguments about price vs. quality and grabbing the "cool mindshare," but I can't help but wonder what would happen to Apple's sales if they strategically price some of their products.
How many more people would consider a iBook if the base model was priced at $999, instead of $1099. Isn't this the exact same marketing tactic used in those *99.99 prices anyway? I'm not saying bring down prices on everything - but at least thrown in a base model or stripped down one that it is at, or just below one of those psychological price points.
For those that need the flexibility of choosing your own monitor size, yes a headless Mac would be fine, but for people like my mom and grandparents the 'all-in-one' solution with as little to mess around with is the best solution.
Peace
Peace
To me, most of what he's suggesting is completely off base. One or two points have some merit.
*ahem*
rant() {
Apple will NEVER offer a bargain basement computer.
Can we just live with that fact and move on now? The eMac is as close as it will get. If you want crap, you'll pay for crap and get crap. M'kay? That's what eMachines are for. The value proposition to someone who will consider a Macintosh is not the same as someone who just buys something out of ignorance. Making them cheaper might lure in a couple more people but it honestly won't effect much of the bottom line. They're already pretty price competitive. In the case of a laptop, they're better than the competition.
}
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
The other day I was in Boston (Davis Square, ~10:00pm) and walked by a coffee shop where there was a pretty good looking chick with a 15 inch Powerbook. Normally I wouldn't try to talk to a random girl, but it just so happened that I had my own Powerbook with me (in my backpack). I'm sure you will all believe me: had I not been in a rush at that minute, I would have gone in there to sit down next to her, open my own Powerbook to do some work, and comment on hers. And I probably would have at least got a decent conversation going. ("I've got a 17-incher"... :-D)
My point? My Mac opens up all sorts of interesting social scenarios, because they're rare enough that you instantly have something in common with someone else who's using one, and it's easy to tell when someone's using one. I wouldn't walk up to someone in a cafe with an Inspiron or Thinkpad or some crap and comment on its "design" or how 'awesome' it might be.
ummmm.....ummmmm....I don't think I've ever heard anyone not directly paid by microsoft claim that IIS is better than Apache. How can there be a flamewar?
Apple's already doing this, just in a more subtle way. They see the writing on the wall. Hardware and even software as we commonly think of them are quickly becoming commodities that very few people will be able to profit from. There's still time to profit, and there will always be profitable niches, but on the whole, it's quickly evaporating. The important battle will be over the infrastructure that exists between computers. File formats and networking protocols are the future. Seeing this, Apple is using the overwhelming Windows monopoly against Microsoft. It's hard to convince people to switch operating systems or hardware. Those are still big intimidating changes. However, if you offer things like iTunes for free, and it installs easily, people will hardly think twice about installing it. They appear to be doing the same with Rendevous now.
um. headless imac...
i believe apple did it, called in a cube, and everyone panned them for it because it "wasn't expandable enough"...
(pretend there's something witty here)
Apart from patenting their sustaining marketshare I think this post sums it up nicely.
Apple is doing just fine at ~4% marketshare. So what, they're happy, their users are happy, what's the big deal. Why push them to be another Microsoft and keep growing their market share. Just image if it works, in 20 year time we'll be switching to Microsoft so that we have a non-mainstream os that is more secure by virtue of it having only ~4% market share. I think I would choke on my own vomit if I ever found my self saying something like that, so why push for it.
Sure everyone complains about apple only having ~4% market-share but it seems most of these people are writing their opinions from a Windowze PC anyway. You know you like OS X or the fancy design, so don't be a cheap ass and spend the money. If you buy a top end PC it will cost you the same bloody amount anyway.
discalimer: I own both.
Im.
1. OEMs will not offer OS X for fear of Microsoft retribution.
2. People who buy the cheapest PC they can find will never pay extra to get a copy of OS X when Windows was included with the computer. They don't even look for a better browser than IE, and those are free downloads!
3. OS X is so kick ass because the limited amount of hardware it runs on means the integration of hardware and software can be extremely tight. That wouldn't carry over to OS X for x86.
4. Do you think OS X for x86 would still only be $129? If Apple's not selling hardware because everyone wants to run OS X on their x86 box, where else is the revenue from lost hardware sales going to be made up?
I could go on, but it's useless.
How about everyone who thinks Apple porting OS X to x86 would be the greatest thing since sliced bread, just line up side to side and I'll run down the line and bitch-slap some sense into you?
Not exactly cheap housing. An apartment that comes out to somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 / month with cable/net/water.
I think a lot of it is bad spending habits. People are too used to the buy it now and worry about it later mentality.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
It was all laid out in Robert Pirsig's "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance". (you did read it, didn't you?... Oh well, I understand). PC people (and maybe Linux heads, too) just love to get in there and get their hands dirty trying to get an old British sports car or T-Bird or air-cooled VW to keep on running. Mac people own a sleek Beemer, and wouldn't dream of letting anyone other than factory-authorized techies mess with the thing, no matter what the cost/headache. Both comparisons are equally valid and appropriate in the end.
http://macblog.org/archives/2004/07/08/a_sixstep_p lan_for_apple.php#more
the comments on the macblog article are better.
$56 billion will buy a lot of IIS shills.
I mean really, this is old news. Why was it even posted...
You know, this guy's a dipshit.
Not everyone uses a Mac. That's fine. Not everyone drives a BMW, either. You don't see BMW crying because they don't have 90% market share.
Apple is sitting on a pile of cash, and making Windows look bad. They're doing just fine.
Well said. Apart from the security issue, which I'd say is 50% obscurity and 50% actually due to greater security in the OS, this article is guff.
To sumarize: Apple would sell more if they lowered prices, instead of going for the premium market - except for the iPod, which is selling well because it is actually better, not because it isn't butt-ugly like the other MP3 players and the eMac - which you do sell cheaply...erm...
-S
If the sales technique is to sell it on "you don't have to do updates or concern yourself with security", Apple's in for a world of pain later on...
McNealy would go to convention after convention and other speaking engagements. He would go off on the Microsoft rant, talking about no viruses in Java and go on and on about the evils.
It did nothing, changed nothing. He lost more and more mindshare until he got bought off to stick around on life support and keep his mouth shut.
Jobs is smarter than McNealy. He won't push Apple marketshare by basing Microsft security, and he knows it. He will do it by expanding what Apple's are. By going heavily into the portable computing space, making ergonomically pleasing Apple appliances, under the iBook, iPod and other product iMonikers. Video playback, capturing, music players. He knows to become strong, his competition is not Microsoft, but Sony. There is nothing to be gained by jumping on the open source bandwagon, there is much money to be made in licensing content distribution methods.
If I'm a distinguished engineer at Apple (and I'm not) I would be working on a movie projector that can download films in Quicktime format and display them with the quality of movie film projectors. I hook these projectors up to theater chains with broadband, and start competing with Sony, who invented this technology but only have penetrated a limited market with it.
But, hey what do I know...
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Salkever has nothing new to offer. What does he analyze anyhow? Aside from the hair on his scrotum.
She was initially opposed to the mac until she looked at the following benefits
Before you buy, consider this. My girlfriend recently switched from PC to Mac, too. She had about $1300 and got an old-model refurbished (they call them "refreshed" at the Apple Stores) 12" Powerbook. Faster bus, better screen, and same 60G/512MB as the iBook your girlfriend is contemplating.
When you get to the store, make sure to ask about the refreshed units in stock. They, too, qualify for the educational discount and have the same standard 1-year warranty. With the money she saves, she can get 2 years of AppleCare if she's nervous, or a copy of Office or something.
As a side note, one of my friends got a 15" PowerBook from the same Apple Store. It was the model before the 1.5 GHz speed bump, so it was like $200 less. The Apple Store also knocked an additional $100 off because, get this, the packaging was damaged.
blog
You can easily set up permissions so that only certain users can install programs, or only power users, and so on. Modern applications are also written so that they don't require admin privileges to be run, though you still run across the shitty app once in a while that absolutely has to run as admin. You can go to the program's properties and tell it to log you in as an admin for just that program.
Um, ya. Sounds like its right out of GWB's playbook.
To actually provide a clickable the others haven't. AKA, Client Server works just fine.
According to Google Zeitgeist, other browsers aren't even making a dent and have steadily declined since 2001. You can even see a spike where IE dipped, but then people apparently switched back to it.
Can't pick and choose statistics, y'know...
Apple needs to start selling individual motherboards and processors. I've been saying this for years, but how many of you would invest in an Apple motherboard/processor/OS bundle for $200-$300? The average geek has an extra hard drive, power supply, and case laying around.
Apple wouldn't be canalizing their market because these people aren't going to shell out $3000 for a new G5, but they may spend $200-$300 to try out another Unix with a polished GUI.
I wonder if they carry them around more and have them on display more often because they enjoy using their computers?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Explain how Apache is the most popular web server, and yet the server which gets holed by worms on a regular basis is IIS
Have any stats to back that up?
Do you remember Gnome, Gentoo, Debian, GNU, Savannah, and more all getting hacked last year? Do you remember the article Slashdot posted that showed Linux was the most breached OS on the net?
I dislike how claims are just wildly thrown around here on Slashdot as though they're magically self-evident, and nobody questions it and instead reactively mods it up. Because, after all, IIS is bad and Apache is good, right? I read it in a Slashdot comment.
95% of laptops at Apple Corporate Headquarters are made by Dell eh? Care to back that up? Didn't think so, go back home kiddie!
This sounds like a great idea. Furthermore, if it could also double as a game console it could be a really great product and really help out apple. I know many people who would buy a mac if there were more games available. Marketing a box like this as a game console (even though it would still run OSX underneath) might just be the incentive they need to get more game developers to develop games for apple.
Seems to me the MS users are paying the premium indirectly by having their credit card numbers securely stored on a server in Russia.
Or, the MS "premium" of having to deal with virus de jour, or worm of the week.
Give me the apple premium any day of the week.
Really, who gives a shit? Not the 95% of the real computing world.
But you keep that circle jerk going!
You might have a look at housing costs around the nation. It wil give you a better idea as to why Joe Blow is broke.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
You ignorant fucknut!!!
I have a multi-button ,ouse at home that I use all the time with my Mac.
But I have to say, that on a laptop, a single button is greatly preferrable to mutliple buttons. I've used a lot of differen PC laptops over the years and right clicking has almost always been a pain, or even worse the buttons were not very distinct and I'd hit the rwong one by accident.
Since your hands are already all over the keyboard on a laptop, I like chording to get a right-click effect a lot more than an awkward button somewhere. It's more convienient to hit and really works a lot better for me. With a Powerbook I don't feel like I need an external mouse, which I could hardly use a PC laptop for any real work without.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I need your root password and IP address for it to install correctly.
it's obviously a joke, and it's also obvious that you haven't got a clue
Casual Games/Downloads
At our University, I just heard preliminary estimates from a scientific poll that about 10% of undergraduates use a Mac. That's up dramatically from the last poll a few years ago (~5%, IIRC).
It's NORMAL HUMAN BEINGS that are buying Macs. So what if pointy haired bosses stick with Windoze...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I'm not entirely sure if the author of this article has ever actually sat down and tried to argue to a Mac-o-phile that they should switch over to something else. Take my wife for example. I could tell her that her Mac is the source of every evil in her life, where Osama bin Laden is actually hiding out, and a terrific source of radioactivity which will summarily fry her ovaries, and she still wouldn't listen to anything I say.
The reason why mac-o-philes do not listen, is because you have the argument backwards - by asking them to move from a Mac to a PC you are essentally saying "Wouldn't you rather have a box Where Osama can have a happy home, and that renders the Pill completely unessicary due to revolutionary conter-reproductive technology?"
It's hard to listen when what the other person is asking you to do sounds completely insane.
The other day I was actually tricked into opening one of those spoof emails. I don't know how, something about the message registered with my brain and just let it right through. Desite knowing better, and constantly reading about such things even *I* hit one of the links! If I had been using IE instead of Safari on a Mac, I would have been fairly screwed over by that one mistake (as that seemed to be the point of the link, to activate an IE exploit - no fake login page or anything, hit the real site). Frankly I consider anyone who still uses IE to be off thier rocker at this point, the slight rendering improvment it yields on an ever dwindling number of sites is not worth the very real grief it can cause without much difficultly! And Windows is not far behind. I have to use XP and Win2K boxes daily at work, and I just get more and more tired of using them due to the poor interface and the heaps of CPU-sucking anti-virus stuff that has to stay active to keep them alive. I can't of course get many kinds of attachments in the mail either, as that would be unthinkable!
You want people to switch from a system where they can just use a computer without doing a daily anti-virus udpdate, to that kind of world?
I realize I sound rather like I'm ranting, but I just don't see the logic in using Windows systems unless it's a requirement for some software you use - and for the vast majority of people it is not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
not to diffuse your plans, but in my past experiences-even when I lived in boston (well, cambridge in central square), a cute puppy works pretty good for an icebreaker with girls. You have to WORK to keep them from coming up to you to talk and pet the puppy.
You seem a little preoccupied with image.
His point was actually one that the image in BMW ads does not matter, they are about the feeling of driving - and he wanted to see Apple ads that convey a similar message about Apple computers, how much a pleasure they are to use.
If you watch a BMW ad they are targeted at trying to put across how fun they are to drive. Frankly I don't care much for BMW styling but they are supposed to handle very well - in the same way weither a Mac looks good or not (eMac!) it still makes for a great computing experience.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> Is that why about 95% of the laptops at Apple Corportate Headquarters are made by Dell?
Not quite, but you're closer than you think. I bet 95% of the laptops at Apple Corporate HQ are made by Quanta and Compal (which also happen to build a most of the Dell laptops).
1) Price trumps style in the computer market
Sure they could drop into the cheap-o under $1k market, but what portion of their business model will need to go to maintain profit? Once you factor in costs of designers, software engineers, quality hardware, etc how can someone expect these machines to retail anywhere close to the PC market? They are not just slapping together some common parts from the lowest overseas bidder and installing a flaky OS here. There is a lot of quality in-house work that goes into these machines that needs to be compensated for somewhere. I'll wager that development costs of the operating system (or rather BSD tweaks now) and standard included software costs twice (if not more) per system than an OEM copy of Windows XP.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
And you put them in your nose?
This is college housing we're talking about. Paper thin walls, built on concrete slabs and the only reason it costs me 400 is because there are 3 other people living here. Now granted we all have individual leases, but we're not exactly living the luxury life here.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Price is only one-third of the reason regular people buy PCs over Macs.
The two others reasons are (1) lack of games, and (2) lack of compatibility with common Windows software and file formats.
If Mac OS X had something like Wine/WineX, but it was brain-dead simple to set up and worked with like 95% accuracy, AND it were advertised as a key feature of the Macintosh, then people would buy Macs instead of PCs. Unfortunately, the problem is not just that it's a different OS, but that it's a totally different hardware platform as well, so you'll never get something like Wine/WineX running at equivalent PC speed on a Macintosh.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I'll take that window of opportunity.
I'm smoking dope and this makes no sense to me either, and it is poorly written.
bah.
Apple has a different business model, "building the whole widget". Building the whole widget is pretty incompatible with cutting prices, giving up control, etc etc. They can't change things about themselves without making... changes....
I think your six points are actually two repeated many ways - "make it cheaper" and "sell it"
Point 1: Price trumps style in the computer market
If you WANT style, you have to PAY for style. Without the style, Apple is just a little Dell. Buy a Dell if you want cheap. You will be happy with the bang-for-the-buck.
Point 2: Make 'em cool and cheap
Didn't You just say this?
Point 3: Ditch the all-in-one mantra
Buy a PowerMac. The $5,000 kickass flatpanel definitely is not included in the PowerMac price, if that's what you want. Is this a sideways way to say "Make 'em cool and cheap?" But more importantly to Apple's marketshare, Apple should allow users to customize their laptops A LOT MORE. I've never SEEN Gigabit ethernet, I don't have any Bluetooth, Firewire, or USB2 devices, I don't use my 56K modem, etc. BUT I PAID FOR ALL OF IT. Like "Linux is only free if your time is worthless", "Apple prices are only competitive IF YOU WOULD HAVE BOUGHT ALL THAT BUNDLED CRAP ANYWAY". I wouldn't have, I could have slimmed my PB down to $1000 by cutting out the features I don't use, don't want, and weigh down my computer unneccessarily.
Point 4: Sell that soap
Point 5: Sell that soap II
Point 6: Sell security
You got it right there. Apple should do something to get their name --no, not their name, their -product- out there. Believe it or not, the most overhyped company on the planet is still basically unknown to many people. Everybody knows how COOL and TRENDY Apple is, but people don't even know they have icons and a mouse (I'm not kidding, the people at work ask me what it cost me to get the internet for my PowerBook). But to know them (the product) is to love them, so it basically sells itself once I reassure people Apples don't have many hidden flaws. "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is..." except in this case. They ARE very good, depending on who you are and what you're doing with it. But yes, Apple certainly blew it by not having ads showing off OS X. I mean, just 30 seconds of the Dock maximizing as you roll your mouse* over it is worth 2% of the market.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that as a user, there are some things about Apple that piss me off -- namely, the other Apple users. But lowering the price on a Mac will only open the floodgates to loserdom, and the day I see a Mac in a trailerpark is the day I'm buying a Dell.
And I will run Linux on that Dell, just because I can. And because it seems nobody else can. There's a built-in IQ cutoff point below which running Linux is not permitted. That makes Linux even cooler, more 733T, and less trailerpark-friendly than the Mac is.
* The crippled Apple One-Button Mouse should not be shown on tv, as it is the computer equivalent of a one-legged handicapped semi useless single-buttoned mindless POS and a glaring example of Apple's stubborn insistence that the masses are wrong and Steve is right. Don't show that on tv. It's bad. And yes, I know I can buy a USEFUL mouse, but I and everybody else will complain until you can get it as an option on your PowerBook. See my notes on Point 3.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
actually i've found that's often not true. mac users, in my experience, are either professionals (doctors, graphics, publishing, video, engineering) or highly computer technical (IT, web design, computer science). i don't know where the "mac users are idiots" stereotype came from. probably because macs are easier to use, people automatically assume it means the person is also automatically less intelligent. i believe it's quite the opposite. it takes the more intelligent people to realize that the mac lets them get work done easier and faster.
- tristan
I think the letter is naive. It shows a total misunderstanding of Apples market placement or business.
Apple play to the high end of the market. They don't make their profit by selling lots of machines, they make it by selling few machines at a higher margin. Selling to the lower end would kill Apple for sure. They're smarter than that!!
Uhh dude, I hate to break this to you, but if the coffee shop in question was "Diesel," she was undoubtedly a lesbian. ;D
I hate Grammar Nazi's
They priced me out of their market finally. I was a machead for a decade, but my income dropped, they raised prices and introduced OSX, all at the same time,do it just priced me right on out. I can't run osx on older hardware, I couldn't run it on the then semi-expensive mac laptop I had that was only a few years old(1400PB), so I just struggled by with what I had, then one day a friend handed me a couple of redhat disks, and having some old x86 junkers hanging around I tried it out, and it worked fine. It was smooth and fast and had a lot of decent apps,and ran swell on my old junk, so I got hooked. Then I found out about the whole open source philosophy(no, I had no clue previously), so I switched to linux for those two reasons.
IF Mac had offered a more reasonably priced machine at the time (they were heading there but quit, right about exactly when they switched to the tablelamp version of imac), I probably would never have switched, and never really investigated open source or linux. As it is, I was more disappointed on Mac going to a unixy system then sticking with a much more secure system which was classic. I've never cared all that much about CLI, always liked and used GUI as much as possible, but I am reluctantly learning dribs and drabs as I need to. I still think Mac classic was by far the easiest for people to use OS, the most secure (in terms of automatically secure with a default install and not needing much else to keep it that way), and the hardware was always top notch. Just too pricey for me now.
With linux, an older real cheap or free generic system and a cheap set of disks give me what I consider to be "near" top of the line computing experience, for my purposes anyway. After dropping thousands over the years on computers, I just got tired of it, really tired of it.. I still have all but one of my personal computers going all the way back, they all still work. I got tired of expensive obsolesence.
For surfing, email, listening to some net streams, blah blah blah, you simply no longer have to keep faked out into the expensive hardware upgrade cycle, at least if you don't want to be. Next year I might drop 100$ on a used machine that's better, or just get a mobo/cpu/ram bundle, and that's about it. If you don't do gaming, or anything much exotic like intensive graphics development, or things of that nature, there is no practical need for most people to have this new hardware, either macs or commodity x86. We hit a nadir of diminishing returns for mostpeople compared to cost several years ago, roughly around Mac G3 era, pentium II era, and linux will run just dandy on either of those two platforms for most peoples purposes. I think people are better off just upping their ram than buying a new machine, that and get broadband, that does more to speed up things than anything else. I also think that the industry doesn't care that windows is so buggy and crappy, because it literally sells new machines for them! I have seen several people just get so frustrated with windows machines being constanly hosed for them no matter what they did, that they went and bought new ones, just to see if they were any better! No lie! Just the other day down the street this lady I know got some brand new compaq bundle. Reason? she installed something and it borked her CD drive! I was flabbergasted. I was taking over a gift of an old pentium I built for her son, for his birthday, he sees it and goes "COOL, now I got TWO computers!" I had no idea. I asked her why she didn't just call me and have me help her either fix or replace the drive, she just didn't want to fool with the old one anymore, she just wanted new, in the hopes something like that wouldn't happen! I guess some people don't mind spending the loot, but really, her older one was working fine for her purposes(some medical transcription jazz that works with corel whatever), it just had a 25$ part break, or windows something made it not work. I'm not enough of a windows analyst to decipher arcane bugs with the stuff, most
Apple has, overall, been steadily selling more computers every year. The issue is that over the last 20 years, the PC market has grown insanely fast. Thus, to look at market share of new computer sales is interesting for some things. But for apple investors, they see a steady and predicable increase in sales and (even better) higher margins for each sale.
... everone else under the sun, they would get a good boost in sales. But they don't need to, to keep the current sales going; macs sell themselves. If you really want to increase sales, you got to start telling people one by one about the value of a mac. Most pc sales are businesses. Business people will buy value. Long life, security, upgradeable, powerful, FAR more managable, easy, friendly, etc. How can you NOT sell that stuff?!
Another thing, how is market share measured? Are you counting all of the die hard mac fans that STILL use their old systems? No one mentions this, but it was one of the biggest selling points in my apple purchase: macs last. Consumer reports gave apple the best ratings for support, satisfaction and durabiliy. Take a look at ebay prices. All computers depreciate fast, but my 1/2 year old powerbook is still being sold in the local papers and ebay for the same price that I bought it. When you buy your next laptop, shop for the extended warrenties and good luck on finding a three year warrenty one that even compares to the apple care version.
When it comes down to it, apple make good computers. If they wanted to expand their market share, I think they could EASILY take over the workstation market that sgi and sun used to service. They have every technicial thing in place to really make great inroads into business and education (again). Why isn't it happening?
Their image and sales staff. Stuffy executives have seen the stupid apple ads and apple stores. Would you trust your 2 million dollar upgrade budget and future bonus to some slacker hippie wearing a black t-shirt with a target... er apple on his chest, stinking of pachouli and calls you "suit dude"? I only slight exagerate to make my point. Ya, ya, ya... creative professionals... blahh, blahh. With minor design changes and just a few (very few) extra software offerings, they could easily compete in the business world. I believe the issue really is, that they don't want to. That powerbook easily outperforms the latest and greatest company thinkpad I was given (really). I can the same programs on my virtual pc as fast as on the thinkpad. If they'd just get over their mouse button phobia and add a nice docking solution like
Apple has some of the best value out there right now and shit for brains in sales.
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
1 - price trumps style
The only reason to lower your price-point is to increase market penetration or that higher volume more than makes up for the price-difference. I doubt that either of those is going to happen, as the volume has been pretty consistent for the last 5 years or so (~3%) with gains occurring slowly.
Dell gets away with lower price-point because they aren't developing major software, and they have their suppliers by the balls.
2-Make 'em cool and cheap
That's way the iPod has only penetrated 40% of the market? This reminds me of all of the ugly-ass laptops that followed the Apple laptops, where all of the cool design stopped at the meaningless plastic add-ons on the case.
With apple you do pay more, but you pay for value.
3-Ditch the all-in-one mantra
I agree that the iMac may not be the hottest seller in the world, but I think that its just crazy to suggest that this has somehing to do with the all-in-one mantra. I mean, Apple BROUGHT BACK the eMac, which I am assuming is still selling strong.
The reason IMHO for poor iMac sales are that they don't really fit into any niche. Its like a high-powered laptop without the capabilities of a laptop, or all thepower of the desktop machines. However, their footprint is nice. 200K units/quarter, though, isn't bad for a machine that hasn't seem major upgrades.
I think that sales in all-in-ones will continue to wane, however, as it becomes more attractive for scales to by inexpensive iBook's.
4-Sell that soap
WTF? Awesome, just throw away money. Its more than a bit insulting to anyone who needs to use a M$ box, as well, or who wants/needs a separate Linux box?
5-Sell that soap II
If you don't know the advantage of buying the Xserve's you probably shouldn't be buying one. I'm not exactly sure what type of "tests" you would be running, as installing a pseudo-server is a major endeavor/commitment.
6-Sell security
I think that 95% of the posts already allude to this.
I can't believe I read this. I can't believe I wasted my time writing this.
Natalie Portman looks a little cold.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
People probably get this impression from that one Mac guy they know or quite possibly from the commercials. Those Switch ads didn't always portray someone with smarts as wanting to Switch.
-]Phreak Out[-
No wonder Microsoft gave Apple $500 Million in the past.
Without Apple, Microsoft would probably not make serious advances in usability.
Alex to Steve:
My six-step plan to increase market share for Apple is as follows:
.
.
.
[Make Macs more like PCs.]
.
.
.
Steve to Alex:
Go to hell.
Wired Magazine's cover story of June 1997.
100 ways to save Apple.
Let's go through the top 20, shall we?
1. Admit it. You're out of the hardware game. Okay, this didn't happen.
2. License the Apple name/technology to appliance manufacturers and build GUIs for every possible device. Or build the killer app for listening to music, the iPod.
3. Start pampering independent software vendors. The open-source roots of most of OSX and related items fills this need quite well.
4. Gil Amelio should steal a page from Lee Iacocca's book - work for one year without a salary, just to inspire the troops. Jobs' salary is still only a dollar a year.
5. Straighten out the naming convention. eMac, iMac, iBook, Powerbook, PowerMac. Done.
6. Apologize. You've let down many devoted users and did not deliver on the promise of the Macintosh platform. Hmmmn, hard to call this one.
7. Don't disappear from the retail chains. Two words: Apple Stores.
8. Buy a song. Or build the first sucessful online music store. Whatever.
9. Fire the people who forecast product demand. Still a problem, given the recent iMac troubles.
10. Get a great image campaign. Switch. The colored iPod ads. The spinning iMacs. Done.
11. Instead of trying to protect your multicolored ass all the time, try looking forward. Done.
12. Build a fire under your ad agency. Given the Clios and other awards that recent Apple campaigns have one, I feel safe in calling this one done.
13. Exploit every Wintel user's secret fear that some day they're going to be thrown into a black screen with a blinking C-prompt. Advertise the fact that Mac users never have to rewrite autoexec.bat or sys.ini files. See: Switch campaign.
14. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate yourselves from the pack. Done. Oh boy, is this one done.
15. Dump (or outsource) the Newton, eMate, digital cameras, and scanners. Done.
16. Take better care of your customers. You need every one. Make customer service a point of pride. Many Mac users feel alienated and have jumped ship. Done.
17. Build some decent applications that the business community will care about. Maybe not business-related, but the iLife series trumps anything out there in the Wintel world.
8. Stop being buttoned-down corporate and appeal to the fanatic feeling that still exists for the Mac. Power Computing's "I'll give up my Mac when they pry it from my stiff, dying fingers" campaign hits the right note. In the tech world, it's still a crusade. Support the Mac community, and the Mac community will support you. Done.
19. Get rid of the cables. Go wireless. Done. 802.11, Bluetooth, you name it.
20. Tap the move toward push media by creating a network computer with state of-the-art technologies, e.g., videogame support for Nintendo 64, top notch graphics such as QuickDraw 3D, and the best possible bandwidth. Okay, is anybody supporting push media now? Let's just cross this one off the list, k?
So, all in all, they've done 17 of the first 20, with 2 maybes and a no. Not bad.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Some one is trying to write me critique on how i am marketing my company.
Get my secratary
Write him a reply Dear sir Eat shit and die. There situation handled.
Best Buy can have you arrested
frosit?
Uh, you mean I should just drag it into "drwxrwxr-x 40 root admin 1K 16 Jun 10:54 /Applications"?
Nothing magic about this, just good old unix permissions. The closest thing to magic is that if I attempt to drag something in there as a non-admin user, the Finder won't just fail with an error; it will pause, ask me for an admin user's auth, and proceed if I can supply it. Which of course is not technically groundbreaking, just good design.
no, because macs are based on bsd.
you know what that means??
you aren't root by default, when you are happily surfing the internet and some BS pop up asks if you want your downloads to be faster and click yes, having to put in su password will at least defer some of the people, where as a win user wont even see that and have BS installed....guess I shouldn't complain as much of my bread and butter has been cleaning up pcs -lol
Did someone forget that we've tried this for the original macintosh....and it failed worse than I did on my last mid-term?
Absolutely. No doubt about it. Still, there is no perfect way to measure browser usage. As I understand it, Google's Zeitgeist says "Web Browsers Used to Access Google March 2001 - May 2004" and such. Therefore, so far as I can tell they simply measure how many times a particular browser hits any part of their site and then they graph it.
I'm guessing that, because of Google's massive size and broad user base, the Zeigeist gives ballpark estimates. And even if their statistics aren't perfect, I don't think they change their gathering method from month to month, so one can see trends.
Every time I see one of the WWDC Keynote videos, I think that they should purchase some time on late night TV and convert it into an infomercial.
So does Photoshop. :-|
It's a hard, sick truth, but both Adobe and Macromedia are optimizing for Wintel. They happen to chunk out Mac versions because Designers Use Macs and they're guranteed to move product with an OS X version.
Photoshop 7 for MacOS is the most sluggish piece of SHIT I have ever had the displeasure of using. CS isn't much better.
I think Adobe's still pissed about Apple's move into production software, and they're taking it out on the users.
I know this is probably too late to be posting this, but here goes:
Step 1: State that Apple's small market share is a sure sign of impending doom.
Step 2: Suggest that apples competitors have the right idea and that Apple should also make low cost, shitty computers that crap out in a couple months just like everyone else.
Step 3: Complain that apple won't sell you a really cheap computer like you want them to, point out several other complains that make shitty products and again state that Apple should do the same.
I've been hearing this crap like this for more than 10 years, and I'm only 22. I can't believe that pompous assholes like this continue to believe that they know how to run the company better than Apple. People are always complaining "why can't I buy an Apple for the price of a Packard Bell/ Compaq / Dell?". I'll tell you why, those companies make shitty computers and Apple makes quality computers, that's why. And you know what? Apples plan worked a lot better than did Packard Bells or Compaqs(both bought out when they hit hard times). That fact is that business plan only works until everyone has bought one and realized how crappie the computers are. I'm sure that Dell will eventually suffer the same fate, I know about a dozen people that have Dells, and none of them are happy with their purchase. On the other hand, Apple users love their computers, and will continue to be loyal to the Apple brand as long as they live. To bad they only replace their computers every 5 years or so.
Let's face it. They haven't been selling like hot cakes -- even with the iMac's nifty swiveling flat-panel display and stylishly compact footprint. Sales peaked at 448,000 units a quarter after its release in January, 2002. It has been downhill ever since, with sales in Apple's second fiscal quarter ending Mar. 27, 2004, totaling just 252,000 units.
I'm still not sure that the people more buttons would make unhappy outnumber the ones the single button makes happy. Think of it this way - most of the people who would want the single button are probably not even going to know you could re-map keys.
And I really can't believe all that many people would prefer another button once they get used to the chording to access second-button kinds of menus. It requires less movement from the keyboard.
it's nice to see your copy-pasting skills from the article are honed. was that even suppose to serve a purpose?
- tristan
The point is not that IIS is more popular, the point is that IIS runs on Windows which is more popular. If I want to spread a virus to all Windows desktops, I'm going to most likely compromise Windows servers.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Ummh, maybe you are right...
Dear Steve,
I hear you are running a profitable publicly listed company with about 4.5 billion dollars cash in the bank and a bunch of happy shareholders.
Well done, keep up the good work.
p.s. could you do something about the prices dude because I was just looking at a price list from my local PC shop and I could get two really well specced, scorchingly fast AMD based systems with all the bells and whistles for the same price as an entry level eMac and I'm getting pretty comfortable with the likes of Gnome and KDE so running GNU/Linux on one of those puppies wouldn't be such a hardship that it'd put me off turning my back on OS X. And can I have an iPod for Christmas?
Now wash your hands.
This is true. An interesting point to add: Installer.app will always ask for your password, as do most other OS X installers, but many times, Mac apps are distributed as a single file and you install by dragging the app to the Applications folder, and this has no safeguard.
Also note that applications do NOT need to reside in the Applications folder to be run.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Your point is???
The market is starting to look for a MS alterative and apple are not positioning themselves to take advantage of it... Incredibly silly if you ask me.
OSX is a mature platform, runs many of the enterprise applications (MS Office suite, Adobe suite, Lotus Notes etc), built on a unix styled kernel, not MS owned, just what everyone is looking to linux for. Now if we could just choose cheaper hardware, or dual boot on our existing hardware...
Even if it were slightly crippled - win us over to OSX first, sell us overpriced hardware later..
The OS/2 comment.
Its pretty clear that emulating is never the way to success for an OS.
The Mac has the ability to read files from word processors etc with dead precision... Its called MS Office for Mac.
I use Mac's but the biggest strength of the Windows is not the big applications (i.e. Office), its the little ones. Stuff like DVDShrink, TMPGenc, Collectorz, Encarta, Posadis, ImToo probably most people have never heard of this stuff. But there's so much good stuff, its hard to switch off windows for this reason.
Every time I suggest to friends that they should use a Mac, they ask if it will run their special-purpose Windows applications. Of course I have to answer no. They have legitimate needs for which there is no parallel on any Unix-like system. Their needs are much more sophisticated than browsing the web and reading email. They really don't lack money, and they appreciate good design. It's just that Macs don't run the special-purpose Windows apps out there.
Apple should get involved in the Wine project. I don't mean that Macs should emulate X86 (not again!), I mean that Apple should make it possible for software vendors to port their software to Mac OS X just by compiling Windows apps using winelib on a Mac. With some work, I bet you could run winelib applications without emulating! Apple should give developers incentives to create a Mac version, too. Apple might feature new ports on TV commercials, for example.
It could be a tremendous breakthrough. It's ambitious, but the transition to a Unix core was more ambitious and look how well that turned out. What say you, Apple?
Also, the "test drive" suggestion is really good -- spending some quality time with a Mac is the best way to fall in love with it. The Apple Stores are a great environment to try the product out, but it pales in comparison to the comfort of your living room. Hm... that's an interesting idea. Things like beds and stuff you can buy and "pay nothing 'till 2005." If they had a trial period for like a month, and then started charging you if you didn't give it back then they would get a whole slew of new customers. I doubt many people would choose not to keep it.
"True dat with a wiffle ball bat." -- kabrakan
yesterday.
What do I win?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
You're just a tad misinformed. Time for me to dust off this old post I keep archived for just such an occasion:
----------
August 6, 1997- Microsoft agreed to purchase $150 million in non-voting Apple preferred stock. Note that it was NON-VOTING stock-- so essentially this was just a goodwill investment in Apple. Microsoft was required to hold the stock for at least 3 years before selling. Another clause of this investment was that Microsoft was to continue to produce Macintosh products, including all new versions of the Microsoft Office product, for a period of five years. In exchange, Apple would make Internet Explorer the default web browser on Macs, and not sue the living hell out of Microsoft.* Microsoft has since sold all of this stock, at a nice profit, I might add. This agreement expired in August 2002, and since then MS has occasionally made noise about discontinuing Mac Office. Apple is also no longer bound to the terms of this agreement, and as I expected, Apple's Safari immediately replaced IE as the default browser on all shipping Macs as soon as it hit version 1.0.
* Strong rumors from several sources indicate that the 1997 deal was the public portion of a settlement made after Apple discovered substantial patent and/or copyright infringment by MS in Windows. Word is that there was a meeting between senior Apple and MS officials where Apple laid out the evidence and an ultimatum. Personally, I think there is some credibility to this, as Microsoft rarely if ever does anything that could be deemed 'nice,' especially to a competitor. There is, however, another school of thought that says Microsoft was only acting in their own self-interest, propping up Apple so they would have a competitor to point to when the antitrust thing really built up some steam. I question the use of the term 'propping up,' as Apple had a few billion in the bank at the time and did not need the $150M, and the government would have realized that.
I wouldn't walk up to someone in a cafe with an Inspiron or Thinkpad or some crap and comment on its "design"
Yeah, I imagine one of the less successful pickup lines in existence would be, "Wow, your laptop is a chintzy piece of shit."
Apple isn't playing to the masses anymore. They've realized this and are now exclusively niche targeters. Once one niche is saturated with Macs, Apple targets the next.
Take the photoshop, biotech, scientific computing, pro video, pro audio, and pro visual effects crowds. Alias came out with Maya unlimited for mac because they believe there is a large market in the Mac sector for it. Apple is slowly drawing niche markets that will probably be unwilling to switch from a *NIX operating system to windows.
When Black Friday came about (okay, I forget just which day of the week it was) we were humbled by something Mike Markkula said -- "They (IBM) make more off the interest in their petty cash accounts than we turn over in a year, and you're making a Duck Quack Synthesizer?". After we moved to Australia, we bought a new LC II and discovered "Quack" was one of the options for the system bell. Laughed so hard i hurt myself.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
A few things from the discussion that hit home..
A French AC had this to say: "For those who don't know someone owning a mac: What a boring life you must have! I know a lot of very different people using different OS. At least Mac, Win and Linux.
Maybe you should go out more?"
Copied from Daring Fireball, one of very few writers that actually does his research and produces quality..
"The reason this argument is so popular with Windows apologists is that it's a convenient bit of rhetoric. They say it's so, we say it's not. You can't get past this argument, because it can't be disproven without the Mac OS actually attaining a Windows-like market share.
So, let's concede the point, just for the sake of argument: OK, fine, if the Mac had the same market share as Windows, the tables would be turned and there'd be just as many Mac security exploits as there are Windows exploits today.
Now what? Given that the Mac is never going to attain a monopoly share of the operating systems market -- that merely expanding its share to, say, 10 percent would be universally hailed as an almost-too-good-to-be-true success -- isn't it thus only logical to conclude that the Mac is forever "doomed" to be significantly more secure than Windows?"
Somewhere else, buried alive: They just need to get better at convincing Average Joes WHY they should pay a premium for a Mac.
The problem people fail to see is that Apple is in the Luxury Computer market, and always has been (except for it's long-gone education relationship). Up until the end of the millenium, computers WERE a luxury. BMW, Mercedes, Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Dom Perignon, Rolex, Cartier...the list goes on, none of these care that you want it but can't afford it and wish it were cheaper. You just do what all the other ghetto folk do: buy the knockoff. In this case it's Windows.
(This is not a troll. This is an open letter to Apple. Please vote it up, not down.)
I am ready to plunk down money for Apple products, as soon as the problem with their badly designed ADB keyboards is totally behind them. As the slashdot comment linked above indicates, this will take a re-design of the motherboards for all Apple laptops.
Apple: please fix this problem soon. I am not the only unix user and/or DSP engineer holding back on Apple hardware purchases because I cannot use your laptop keyboards.
*All* OEM's and major manufacturers ship with the same damn layout. Just because its not to your liking does NOT mean that it's "broken".
If you look at Apple's home page for dashboard and look at the calendar widget on the right, you will see under appointments, "Lunch with Winona"
Try to attract a more mainstream user base. The fact that your user community is tainted by a vocal contigent of "Zealots" doesn't help you get acceptance.
This is such a bullshit argument. Anyone who says anything positive about Macs is (or can be) labelled by someone a "zealot." I'm a Mac fan because they are better machines. If that makes me a zealot in your eyes then so be it. But they are still better machines, regardless of my zealotry.
Developers! Developers! Developers! Face it, Steve Ballmer has a point. Your tools should be the best. They're not. Much as I'd love to love them, Microsoft Visual Studio is MILES ahead of Apple's tools.
Bollocks. XCode -- the IDE for Objective C, Java, and AppleScript that comes with the developer pack -- is a class-act development environment that allows for rapid development, unit testing, drag-and-drop construction of GUI components, code completion, and many other professional level components. Not to mention the fact that the primary interface used to tie into OS X's native functionality, ObjectiveC, is far and away easier to use than C++ with MFC, while being more powerful. This isn't even mentioning all the developer tools that are native to the unix world that are available under Darwin. And don't forget about Shark, either.
Add to this that the widely used (and free) Eclipse is available on this platform and your argument is pretty much shredded.
Sorry, I develop on the Mac every single day now. I developed on PCs for over 10 years prior to this. Mac = Jenna Jameson, PC = Carrottop.
Make it clearly faster than the competition. I have an AMD-64 single processor machine and a G5 sitting here side by side. The AMD just "feels" faster. A lot of it has to do with UI performance.
This is also bollocks. Let me ask you a question: are you a paid Microsoft troll? Because you are really starting to sound like one. Honest question. Because if you really had a G5 sitting next to a beefy PC, then you wouldn't be so ignorant of some key facts.
GIMP stands for:
GIMP Is Meager Photoshop