The Man Behind Apple And Pixar

hatchet job by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 18:45 · Score: 0

Jobs claimed that Deutchmann was doing a 'hatchet job'

Re:hatchet job by Clay+Pigeon+-TPF-VS- · 2005-10-31 05:21 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Steve Jobs is worse than Bill Gates. Everyone goes off on How microsoft is evil, yet no one gives a fuck when Apple ran all the clone-makers out of business, giving THEM a monopoly with their arch. (Fuck you mods, I dont need karma on this commie-board.)

--
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Re:hatchet job by Golias · 2005-10-31 07:14 · Score: 1

yet no one gives a fuck when Apple ran all the clone-makers out of business

Correction: They bought their largest competitor on the platform (Power Computing), which was the only "clone" maker to do anything to expand the market. Then they simply ended the license agreements with everybody else, all of whom were simply cannibalizing what would otherwise be Apple sales.

If they hadn't done it, I seriously doubt there would be an Apple Computer today. The would be a small branch of Oracle or maybe IBM, and stuff like OS X, the iPod, and the mini never would have happened. It was a very smart move.

So you are right about one thing: No one gives a fuck that the clone makers are gone.

--
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by SuperKendall · 2005-10-30 18:46 · Score: 5, Interesting

One of the more interesting paragraphs in an article of otherwise rehashed details this:

Jobs is a fiendishly good negotiator, a skill honed in the 1970s, when he charmed every supplier in Silicon Valley into providing parts for the first Apple computers. It's this ability that makes him valuable to Pixar, where Jobs isn't so involved in the production side (that is handled by John Lasseter). Jobs's role was to write the cheques (which nearly bankrupted him, until the company was floated) and barter with film studios. Which he did with accomplishment: Disney gave in to Pixar, and is presently trying to woo it back to a new distribution deal - a deal that Jobs is making Disney give up all sorts of favours for, like providing content in the form of TV shows for his Apple iTunes store. The giant Disney, kowtowing to the tiny Apple? A bizarre reversal.
An interesting speculation, which would explain how Jobs was able to get Disney to be the first to put TV on ITMS - anyone remember how scared Disney was of DVD's for quite some time? Uses Pixar as leverage is diabolically clever. And it's even hinted at by the only other non-music video for sale being Pixar shorts.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by glitch0 · 2005-10-30 19:00 · Score: 1

Maybe Disney actually learned from their mistakes?

--
-Glitch "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." - Linus Torvalds
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by johndierks · 2005-10-30 19:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

I think technically it would be illegal for Steve to barter a Pixar distribution deal for content for the Apple ITMS, as it would basically boil down to a conflict of interest.

Steve is responsible to both sets of share holders, and if he agreed to a give one for the other, he could possibly be robbing one set of share holders to give to the other.

I'm not saying that Pixar had nothing to do with the Disney/ITMS deal, but more than anything I think it could only have been a sign of good faith on Disney's side.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by MichaelSmith · 2005-10-30 19:46 · Score: 1

Uses Pixar as leverage is diabolically clever
I wouldn't want to be a shareholder in Pixar with this kind of deal going on. It amounts to a cash transfer from Pixar to Apple.

--
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by aratuk · 2005-10-30 20:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

I think it could only have been a sign of good faith on Disney's side.

Yes, exactly. Disney knows his personality, and they want Good Steve. Good Steve, only human, is transferable from Apple to Pixar. And it's not like they stand to lose anything selling a few shows on the Internet.
Also, I don't think it's necessarily bad for Pixar to have Steve Jobs get buttered up by Disney. Pixar without Disney faces a difficult distribution problem, where either Pixar has to develop the ability to distribute, market, and merchandise its own movies (expensive, risky), or find a new partner (let's face it: who is the master of selling animated movies to children?). Pixar has probably just been holding out for Disney to offer a better deal. Or maybe they'll just sell all future movies through iTunes... after all, no overhead.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by nmb3000 · 2005-10-30 21:26 · Score: 3, Interesting

Uses Pixar as leverage is diabolically clever.

But Microsoft using it's market share as leverage against South Korea is evil?

Oh, wait. I forgot we were talking about Apple. Steve Jobs could kidnap and use Eisner's grandbabies as leverage against Disney and it would still be "diabolically clever".

--
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by 1u3hr · 2005-10-30 21:50 · Score: 2, Informative

Uses Pixar as leverage is diabolically clever.
But Microsoft using it's market share as leverage against South Korea is evil? Oh, wait. I forgot we were talking about Apple. Steve Jobs could kidnap and use Eisner's grandbabies as leverage against Disney and it would still be "diabolically clever".
Diabolical is not a compliment.
diabolical 1. Of, concerning, or characteristic of the devil; satanic.
2. Appropriate to a devil, especially in degree of wickedness or cruelty.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by Stormwatch · 2005-10-30 23:25 · Score: 1

A difficult distribution problem? Pixar is hot! Anyone out there would love to sign a deal with them. On the other hand, what recent Disney animated movie was not a flop?

--
Circumcision is child abuse.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by jeffehobbs · 2005-10-30 23:45 · Score: 4, Interesting

Diabolical is not a compliment.

However, when paired with the phrase "clever", it actually is. Context is really very important.

~jeff
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by jeffehobbs · 2005-10-31 00:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

We are in violent agreement; if you were into killing mass quantities of people as efficiently and as cheaply as possible, then all those examples you cited would indeed be "diabolically clever". With this phrase we are not judging the *morality* of the cleverness, but instead merely saying that when paired with the word "clever", "diabolically" gains a appreciatively positive context.

~jeff
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by LocoMan · 2005-10-31 01:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

Lilo and Stitch (80 millions budget, made 145 millions in the USA) and I think Brother Bear too (don't have numbers at hand, but I remember hearing that it broke even in the US but made a nice profit worldwide and is popular on video). But of course, Eisner couldn't have movies that broke the standards by actually making a profit, so he shut down the Orlando animation facility after those.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by Lars+T. · 2005-10-31 02:40 · Score: 1

Why would Disney give a flying shit about Eisner's grandbabies? The guy Disney kicked out because he was dumb enough to even consider not renewing the contract with Pixar?

--
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 02:56 · Score: 3, Informative

The giant Disney, kowtowing to the tiny Apple? A bizarre reversal.
Giant vs tiny? Disney's market cap is 48B, compared to Apple's 46B. Not a huge difference.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by dfghjk · 2005-10-31 03:07 · Score: 1

Since when is a conflict of interest (if it even existed here) illegal? You obviously don't know how the board of directors works in these companies or how incestous big business really is.

Companies allied with one another are SOP and you should expect these two companies to behave that way.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by 1u3hr · 2005-10-31 04:31 · Score: 1

Diabolical is not a compliment.
However, when paired with the phrase "clever", it actually is. Context is really very important.
In the context given, kidnapping children, "diabolically clever" is still not a compliment. Looking again at the OED:
diabolically adv. ( a ) fiendishly, very wickedly; ( b ) slang shockingly, excruciatingly; exceedingly: L16.
So yes, there is a sense of just an intensifier, like "wicked", say. But the main sense is still evil. These days it seems hard to use "wicked", "fiendish", "diabolical" without seeming sounding slightly camp, in an Austin Powers way; nevertheless, unless you have reason to assume irony, I'd read them as being uncomplimentary.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by dogmatixpsych · 2005-10-31 05:02 · Score: 1

Of course, those numbers only really look at Disney and Apple - not Disney + Touchstone + Buena Vista + ABC + the myriad other companies Disney owns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_ by_Disney. So yes, Disney is a giant compared to Apple.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by Moofie · 2005-10-31 05:31 · Score: 1

But the deal as speculated would benefit both Apple and Pixar stockholders. Where's the conflict of interest?

Disney doesn't have to play ball. All they have to do is walk away from the table.

Which they won't, because Steve has something that the Mouse wants...good movies.

--
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by dubl-u · 2005-10-31 05:53 · Score: 1

I think technically it would be illegal for Steve to barter a Pixar distribution deal for content for the Apple ITMS, as it would basically boil down to a conflict of interest.

Steve is responsible to both sets of share holders, and if he agreed to a give one for the other, he could possibly be robbing one set of share holders to give to the other.

It would certainly be a problem if he hid his conflict of interest, but that would be quite a trick. I think that as long as the two companies' boards approve the deal knowing that he negotiated both ends, it'd be legal. Whether it's wise is another question, of course.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by PGC · 2005-10-31 06:18 · Score: 1

Lilo and Stich were a succes. Brother Bear however wasn't. So, In the past 8 years or so, they made one hit? Ow and bought some Gibli movies and brought them out under there own names ( Mononoke Hime and Spirited Away) .

All they really do nowadays is churn out crappy sequels. ( Have you SEEN Perter Pan 2 ? wtf ? ) .

All movies created by Pixar under Disney's name were more Pixar than Disney. Pixar won't lose much.

--
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by timster · 2005-10-31 06:31 · Score: 2, Informative

No, that's not the way it works. Disney's market cap is the value of all outstanding Disney stock, and represents the market's valuation of the company as a whole. Anything Disney owns is thus included in this size.

More to the point, though, Disney lists its current assets as $54 billion. That's certainly larger than Apple's at $8 billion, though Disney does have some significant debt whereas Apple does not.

The premium price the market has placed on Apple is essentially because the market believes that Apple has good growth prospects, as opposed to Disney which will presumably move more slowly. Certainly some would argue that hype plays a factor as well.

Anyway, probably the best measure of corporate size is not market cap but rather yearly revenue. After all, market cap is a sort of fiction created by whimsical traders, whereas revenue is the amount in real dollars that a company has managed to attract from its customers. By revenue, Disney is about three times the size of Apple -- not enough of a difference to call Disney "huge" and Apple "tiny".

--
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by Gulthek · 2005-10-31 09:14 · Score: 1

Lilo and Stitch wasn't really a Disney product anymore than a Pixar movie is. It was created by Disney's now shutdown FL studio and was a skunkworks project until it scored *big* with test audiences and the suits took notice.

Disney hasn't made a decent movie in over eight years. Even if you do count Lilo and Stitch, then that's just one hit in that timeframe.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 14:02 · Score: 0

(let's face it: who is the master of selling animated movies to children?).

That's easy... Hayao Miyazaki
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by hondo77 · 2005-11-01 06:05 · Score: 1

Lilo and Stitch wasn't really a Disney product anymore than a Pixar movie is. It was created by Disney's now shutdown FL studio and was a skunkworks project until it scored *big* with test audiences and the suits took notice.
Don't be silly. Everybody knew Lilo was in production. Florida isn't in Burbank but to say the show operated as some sort of "skunkworks" project or that it wasn't really a Disney product is just nonsense.

--
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by belmolis · 2005-11-01 17:40 · Score: 1

Is Stitch another name for Grub? I've never heard of it.
Re:Interesting paragraph, using Pixar as leverage by SamSeaborn · 2005-11-02 09:33 · Score: 1

I think technically it would be illegal for Steve to barter a Pixar distribution deal for content for the Apple ITMS, as it would basically boil down to a conflict of interest.
I don't know if it's illegal, but it's certainly something he'd have to approve by the Pixar board of directors.
Smells like a strategic partnership between Apple and Pixar. The question from the Pixar board would be, what does Pixar have to gain from pressuring Disney to have enter a TV distribution deal with Apple.
Not sure what the answer is, but interesting that the Pixar shorts are currently available among the $1.99 shows. There must have been some trade off -- like maybe Pixar gets 100% of the revenue for sales of their shorts, or maybe a sweetheart deal of their own when it comes to distributing Pixar movies on iTMS. Or, who knows, free quad-G5s for Pixars rendering farm?
Sam

Flipsides by Space+cowboy · 2005-10-30 18:48 · Score: 5, Interesting

Walk around the campus at Microsoft, or across to Cafe Macs in Cupertino, and you come across the same sort of casual arrogance - both sets of employees generally (there are exceptions :-) think they're in the best place to be.

In Microsoft's case, it's because they're the most successful computer company in the world, bar none. That they're on pretty much every desktop (or at least 90% or so of them), and that what they do, matters. Microsoft is all to do with preserving and increasing that user-base, and delivering what (mainly business) requires to do so.

In Apple's case, it's more insidious (possibly that's being harsh, perhaps 'subtle') - Apple engineers think they make the best computers. Bar none. They don't think they're the most popular (there's an implied 'yet' in that statement), but they do think they're the best. Apple is all to do with ease-of-use, attention-to-detail, and a good experience. They invest thought.

Some of the Apple attitude comes from having the potential for Steve Jobs to "take an interest" in your project. You *really* want it to measure up, if he does, and Mr. Jobs (to you!) is a perfectionist. This does keep people on their toes, but I wonder how often it *really* happens.

There's more though - the 'ease-of-use' is a mantra to the Apple employees I've met. They really care how their software is perceived, and I think it shows in the product. Sure, there are business decisions that override engineering wishes, but it seems to be less the case at Apple than anywhere else. I think that comes from the top (SJ) as well.

For me, back then, Apple computers sucked big time before OS-X came out. The focus of the company was pointed in a different direction. Now they woo techies, artists, movie-people, graphics designers, and business (with the 'office' suite) alike. For me, now, an OS-X machine with 2 cinema-displays is the best damn unix workstation I've ever used, and I've been using Linux since it came on floppies, Irix (ok, that was a close second), SunOS, Solaris, HPUX, etc...

I personally think SJ has done well - long may he continue, especially as I have some stock in the company I bought a while back when it was a lot lower :-)

Simon.

--
Physicists get Hadrons!

Re:Flipsides by TheGSRGuy · 2005-10-30 19:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

"Walk around the campus at Microsoft, or across to Cafe Macs in Cupertino, and you come across the same sort of casual arrogance - both sets of employees generally (there are exceptions :-) think they're in the best place to be."

So? What's wrong with taking pride in the company you work for? I applaud someone who respects the company they work for. There's countless white-collar jobs that are staffed by people who downright hate the company they work for and can't agree with a single part of the corporate statement.

Those with the good attitudes are the most productive and best employees.
Re:Flipsides by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

In an interesting interview with Bob Cringely on NerdTV, Dave Winer calls Bill Gates "our generation's tragic figure". His reasoning is that Bill Gates is the son who was not going to repeat the same mistake of the father, IBM.

If Bill Gates lived the life of the tragic figure, Steve Jobs is living the life of the classic hero. Banished and left for the dustbin of computer history, Jobs returns to Apple, after many years of isolation, and became Apple's savior.
Re:Flipsides by ankarbass · 2005-10-30 19:25 · Score: 5, Interesting

I don't think that the OP was saying there was anything wrong with it, just that it's the culture of those places. It sounded more to me like he was drawing some parallels between working for MS and Apple.

I think he was further suggesting that the culture is perhaps a bit larger than life, that is, Jobs doesn't walk up to your cubicle all that often to see what you are doing even though people stay on their toes because they expect it might happen. Or, they wish it would happen...oh pick me Mr Jobs!!!

I can't imagine development at either job place is low pressure. But, I can't imagine too many places other places where the opportunity has so much potential either. Not that I'd work at either place, it's just not my cup of tea.

--
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
Re:Flipsides by Saven+Marek · 2005-10-30 20:30 · Score: 1

> In Microsoft's case, it's because they're the most successful computer
> company in the world, bar none. That they're on pretty much every
> desktop (or at least 90% or so of them), and that what they do, matters

I must admit I know only two microsoft employees but both have the attitude that what they do doesn't matter. they're microsoft so they'll succeed anyway and there's not a worry in the world about competition.

Mayhap that their undoing
Re:Flipsides by HappyMeal · 2005-10-30 21:27 · Score: 1

I wanted to add an amusing observation to your post:
Guess what is pretty popular at Microsoft these days? Yep. The iPod. :-)
There was an article on that a while ago.
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/02/ 1523224&tid=176
Re:Flipsides by Bloke+down+the+pub · 2005-10-30 21:44 · Score: 1, Insightful

So? What's wrong with taking pride in the company you work for?
In moderation, nothing. But taken to extremes it gets a bit too close to a cult mentality.

--
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Re:Flipsides by jcr · 2005-10-30 22:59 · Score: 1

Apple engineers think they make the best computers.

That would be because Apple does make the best computers, at least in their price range. Of course, considering the flimsy, fragile shit that the Dells and Sonys of the world make, that's not very hard.

The problem in the Windows world is that most of the profit ends up in microsoft's hands, and the hardware vendors are left to compete on price alone. When they attempt to differentiate their offerings, MS smacks them down hard. PC vendors really do have to choose polystyrene instead of polycarbonate for their cases, because they just don't have the margins to allow for a quality product.

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Re:Flipsides by mikael · 2005-10-31 00:31 · Score: 1

Walk around the campus at Microsoft, or across to Cafe Macs in Cupertino, and you come across the same sort of casual arrogance - both sets of employees generally (there are exceptions :-) think they're in the best place to be.

If I made it to being a software/hardware architect/engineer at a large corporate campus who manufactured computer systems used all over the world, I'd probably be fairly chuffed with myself as well.

--
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Re:Flipsides by cbreaker · 2005-10-31 03:22 · Score: 1

It wears you down, to take a high level of pride in your company. I've done it with almost every tech job I've held, and almost every time you're severely let down by shitty management, crappy unfair layoffs, etc.

There's no loyalty. You can be as loyal as you want to a company, but if the computer says firing 500 people who have been with the company between x and y years that earn a and b salary is good for your bonus, you're gone.

I still take pride in my work, and I'd like to think I do the best job I can. But as far as taking pride in the company, well, it would have to be a really REALLY good company.

--
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Re:Flipsides by xenoandroid · 2005-10-31 03:35 · Score: 1

I'm not exactly sure how TFA displays arrogance in anybody.
Re:Flipsides by Space+cowboy · 2005-10-31 04:19 · Score: 1

I politely but firmly [grin] direct your attention to the part where I say an OSX machine is the best damn unix workstation I've ever used...

I was just trying to be unbiased. Yeah I know ....

Simon

--
Physicists get Hadrons!
Re:Flipsides by Braino420 · 2005-10-31 04:57 · Score: 1

That would be because Apple does make the best computers, at least in their price range. Of course, considering the flimsy, fragile shit that the Dells and Sonys of the world make, that's not very hard.

Wow hold on there now. Apple makes the most overpriced computers on the market. For example . Now here's Dells.

Note: Dells computer on the left cost about half as much as a VERY similar apple machine... Im pretty sure 80 gigs of HD space doesn't cost 1 grand. But the odd thing is, you attribute this to the cases for each. I hope someone shoots me if i spend 1,000 bucks on the case alone.

--
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
Re:Flipsides by Braino420 · 2005-10-31 04:59 · Score: 1

oh ya, forgot to mention that Dell's offer comes with a flatpanel... ya, great comp for the price =/

--
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
Re:Flipsides by Space+cowboy · 2005-10-31 06:52 · Score: 1

I'm not exactly sure how TFA displays arrogance in anybody
I didn't say that it did.

And I don't have a problem with either MS or Apple's engineers' attitudes. I think it's appropriate - that's what I was pointing out. I think it's for different reasons, and I think (on Apple's part), that it (at least in part) comes from the attitude at the top.

Simon.

--
Physicists get Hadrons!
Re:Flipsides by lrucker · 2005-10-31 07:09 · Score: 1

I can't imagine development at either job place is low pressure.
Every place I've worked is high pressure, but given a choice between the pressure of "we only ran this test today, it failed, the code's supposed to ship tomorrow, fix it now" (which is why I was here till midnight last night) and "we've been running the tests for months but there are still a few left to fix (oh, and have some free wood-fired pizza)" - well, I want to go back to the place with the pizza.
(I wrote the original OS X Swing Mac L&F. And it took a lot of free pizza. And yes, Steve did think it was cool (at least in how it made WebObjects cool and keynote-worthy, anyway))
Re:Flipsides by jcr · 2005-10-31 09:13 · Score: 1

you attribute this to the cases for each.

No, the cases are just one example.

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Re:Flipsides by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 12:29 · Score: 0

Apple is all to do with ease-of-use, attention-to-detail, and a good experience. They invest thought.

Bullshit. If that were true, maybe they would have invested the man-week of thought it would have taken to make a music player that works. No, they don't pay attention to detail or a good experience. They put out a music player that inserts GAPS of silence between all songs, whether any were there in the source media. They ignore the cries of thousands of users begging for gapless music playback, because those thousands are but a fraction of a percent of all sales. THEY DON'T CARE.

Mr. Jobs (to you!) is a perfectionist.

Again, bullshit. Lack of gapless. A perfectionist would never let that slide!

There's more though - the 'ease-of-use' is a mantra to the Apple employees I've met. They really care how their software is perceived, and I think it shows in the product.

Clearly you haven't used Tiger. Constistency in UI continues to slip at Apple, as different in-house applications or different components of the same OS present vastly different methods for accomplishing similar tasks. GUI look and feel is all over the map - you have classic OS X pinstripes, brushed metal, iTunes 5/6 smooth grey, Mail.app seamless title bar, etc. It's a mess. Don't even start on Spotlight, the window that has no application, and cannot be switched to via Cmd-Tab. What the fuck were they smoking that day?

Rumors state that 10.4.3 fixes over 550 bugs in Tiger. WTF? Sounds like a product rushed to market before it was finished, driven more by business/management concerns than technical. This is the stuff Microsoft bashers dream of hearing about Windows.

I use Apple products because they're better for me than damn near anything else. I hate my iPod because the gaps irritate the shit out of me, but I love its seamless integration with iTunes, Smart Playlists, and metadata. Nothing else comes close, so I suffer through the gaps. Sucks. Same with OS X - like you, I've used just about every Unix under the sun (typing this on IRIX), and I find OS X to be better. For the most part. But lately Apple is needing a serious ass-kicking on the issues of UI consistency and attention to detail. They still have that reputation, but they haven't lived up to it for several years.

<insert rant about how the music Apple is slowly crappifying the computer Apple>
Re:Flipsides by Anonymous Coward · 2005-11-01 10:57 · Score: 0

For me, back then, Apple computers sucked big time before OS-X came out. The focus of the company was pointed in a different direction. Now they woo techies, artists, movie-people, graphics designers, and business (with the 'office' suite) alike.

Apple has *always* wanted to woo everybody, especially artists, graphic designers etc. I doubt the direction has changed much. They appeal to techies with the underlying BSD, true, but apart from that the focus remains the same.
Re:Flipsides by Bazzalisk · 2005-11-01 22:48 · Score: 1

Actualy, I could see Jobs as the classic Shamanic figure, symbolicly dying, passing through the underworld and being reborn able to bind daemons and make them behave :)
Possibly Richard Stallman is the Fisher King, and Linus Torvalds the classic hermetic sorcerer taking his soul apart and rebuilding it from the ground up as a form of initiation.
It would be nice to think of Gates as a dark overlord, but I think he fits the image of "King Log" better - rising to the top only to become the enemy, maintaining his power whilst losing all sight of why he started in the first place.

--
James P. Barrett

Not to mention the easiest halloween costume ever by antifoidulus · 2005-10-30 18:51 · Score: 3, Funny

Dressing up as Steve Jobs is not only the easiest to make Halloween costume ever(Black turtleneck and jeans), you can also wear the costume to work at a lot of places!

--
Monstar L

Is he really that great or just lucky? by glitch0 · 2005-10-30 18:56 · Score: 0, Redundant

I always wondered - was Steve Jobs really just in the right place at the right time?

Maybe someone who read the article can answer whether or not it goes this in depth. I'm far too tired to read it myself.

--
-Glitch "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." - Linus Torvalds

Re:Is he really that great or just lucky? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:07 · Score: 3, Funny

I always wondered - was Steve Jobs really just in the right place at the right time?

All this talk of a 'reality distortion field', together with his remarkable good fortune at key moments, has made me think that Steve Jobs is in some ways like a real-life version of Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Of course, Jobs is definitely not as cool, but then, who is?
Re:Is he really that great or just lucky? by Phroggy · 2005-10-31 08:21 · Score: 1

Steve Jobs - now there's a frood who really knows where his towel is!

--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;

Re:Not to mention the easiest halloween costume ev by FidelCatsro · 2005-10-30 18:59 · Score: 3, Funny

A Ballmer costume is not that hard either http://www.bryanshulkpage.com/Images/s20007.jpg(SF W)

--
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though

Only twice? by BladeMelbourne · 2005-10-30 18:59 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Second Coming?

I know he works in IT, but surely a man needs more than two by his age?

Apple and MS are Best Friends by ChaserPnk · 2005-10-30 19:02 · Score: 0, Troll

Apple needs Microsoft to justify their existence, but Microsoft doesn't. MS realizes that at this moment, Mac is a niche platform and they will continue for support Office for Mac until they see Mac as a real threat. MS couldn't care less if Apple disappeared.

On the other hand, if MS disappears (highly unlikely), who will Apple fans point to as the average, price conscious user? Apple's merits and "you-get-what-you-pay for" philosophy only make sense with an alternative such as MS that works but isn't sexy or stylish.

And that's why I can't "buy" into Apple and the Mac platform. I just want to get work done--not show off. I'm not saying OS X is a bad product--far from it. It just seems like owning a Apple product turns people into RDFed Steve fans. That's not what I want to be, sorry.

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"A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age." -Robert Frost

Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by falcon5768 · 2005-10-30 19:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

Actually its kinda the other way around. Its a very well know fact that Microsoft only invested in Apple back in the day around when Jobs came back BECAUSE if Apple was gone, Microsoft was dead from a monopoly standpoint. Apple is Microsofts answer when DoJ tells Microsoft they are a monopoly.
Its true now that Microsoft doesnt really need to support the platform (and the signs are showing it wont eventually, IE is now gone from Macintosh products, and Office is actually being challeneged on the mac by other open and in most cases free alternatives) But even today if Apple where to somehow go away (unlikely given they are actually gaining ground over Microsoft) Microsoft would STILL be in deep shit, since Linux is not seen as a true competetor to Microsoft by DoJ standards and as it stands now, many rightfully feel thatg Microsoft is not following its agreement to stop its practices.

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"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by Wyatt+Earp · 2005-10-30 19:28 · Score: 2, Interesting

Firstly, I think that MS needs Apple more than Apple "needs" MS.

Microsoft is selling the idea to the world that it is not a Monopoly which should be broken up. Microsoft points to Apple, Netscape and Real as proof that there isn't a monopoly in Desktops, Browsers and Streaming Media.

Should Apple go away, that arguement is harder for Microsoft to make.

Secondly, Mac users, don't all become RDF Zombies. I use Macs and Windows boxes, I've supported Macs from System 7.0 to 10.4 and Windows from 3.11 to XP. I've seen all the problems, I've fixed all the problems. I use a Macintosh because I can run a server that doesn't need rebooting every week and a desktop that is rock stable. Windows at this point isn't as good of an option for me, takes too much crap to keep it running.
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by MrPerfekt · 2005-10-30 19:30 · Score: 1

Oddly enough, I get far more "work" done on a Mac than I ever did on a Windows OR Linux platform. It has nothing to do with the sleekness or cool factor, it has everything to do with the intuitiveness and usefulness of the interface.

You seem like one of those "I hate it because it's getting alot of press" people. While hype can be stupid.. Macs aren't hype. If they were, they would've just faded away years ago.

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Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by David+Off · 2005-10-30 19:43 · Score: 2, Funny

You forget the biggest point... if Apple went away who would Microsoft (and some Linux desktops in that they slavishly follow the M$ user interface) copy and get ideas from? Don't say they would hire the Apple engineers, M$ obviously doesn't provide the right environment for innovation and would stifle anyone they hire.
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by killjoe · 2005-10-30 20:22 · Score: 5, Funny

If apple went away who would do R&D for Microsoft?

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evil is as evil does
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by drsmithy · 2005-10-30 22:22 · Score: 1

Actually its kinda the other way around. Its a very well know fact that Microsoft only invested in Apple back in the day around when Jobs came back BECAUSE if Apple was gone, Microsoft was dead from a monopoly standpoint. Apple is Microsofts answer when DoJ tells Microsoft they are a monopoly.
Apple and Microsoft - at least as far as the antitrust trial and DOJ are concerned - do not compete in the same market (although when x86 Macs ar e released they'll be somewhat closer than they are now).
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by hkmwbz · 2005-10-30 23:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

Your comment seems to be rather illogical and self-contradictory.
"Apple needs Microsoft to justify their existence, but Microsoft doesn't."

"On the other hand, if MS disappears (highly unlikely), who will Apple fans point to as the average, price conscious user"
Why does Apple need Microsoft to justify their existence? If Microsoft didn't exist, then Apple would either be huge, and doing just fine, or they would be competing with someone else, and still doing just fine. Apple doesn't need Microsoft to create decent products. That competition leeds to better products doesn't mean that Microsoft has to be that competition.
"And that's why I can't "buy" into Apple and the Mac platform. I just want to get work done--not show off. I'm not saying OS X is a bad product--far from it. It just seems like owning a Apple product turns people into RDFed Steve fans. That's not what I want to be, sorry."
This doesn't make sense at all. You are basically saying that you don't want to use Mac, not because of what the Mac is like, but because of the people using it?
If the problem with Mac, in your opinion, is that Apple fanboys are annoying, then say so. I fail to see what Apple fanboys have to do with what you can get done with a Mac. The way you are doing this now is just being dishonest about the real reason for not using a Mac.
No, really. What do rabid Apple fanboys have to do with the actual products?

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Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 23:14 · Score: 0

It was a token investment of $150M. The money was negligible.

The critical part of the deal was that MS comitted to shipping MS Office on the Mac, and Apple let them have a patent cross-licensing deal that let them off the hook for stealing quicktime code. I don't mean copying, I mean stealing, literally. There was Quicktime code in the windows media player and Jobs made the business decision to let MS walk on a felony because it was so important to keep Word and Excell on the Mac.
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by jcr · 2005-10-30 23:18 · Score: 1

Microsoft is selling the idea to the world that it is not a Monopoly which should be broken up.

They already dodged that bullet. There's no way the Feds are going to spend the money for another shot at it.

-jcr

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The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 02:07 · Score: 0

If apple went away who would do R&D for Microsoft?
If they got rid of Apple, they wouldn't need any.
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 02:50 · Score: 0

Oh my, a product is so good that everyone that uses it suddenly insists that they were a fool for ever using anything else, it MUST suck, let's never use it.
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by nine-times · 2005-10-31 03:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

Apple needs Microsoft to justify their existence, but Microsoft doesn't.
Huh? So if Microsoft didn't exist, Apple would be out of business? I think, more likely, they'd be huge.
Mac is a niche platform and they will continue for support Office for Mac until they see Mac as a real threat.
That's a concern among Mac users, but it's not as clear cut as that. First of all, failure to open Office file formats in addition to failure to produce a version of office for any other platform would probably land Microsoft in some more anti-trust hot water. Additionally, Microsoft really has *two* cash-cow monopolies. Office doesn't just prop up Windows, it's a big deal in its own right. If Apple grew to the point of being a real threat, Microsoft would probably be hesitant to lose that market for their Office suite. The more threatened Windows is, the more Microsoft needs to ensure the viability of Office in order to survive.
Apple's merits and "you-get-what-you-pay for" philosophy only make sense with an alternative such as MS that works but isn't sexy or stylish.
Again, huh? Are you implying that Microsoft products are cheap? The retail price of Windows XP is $300.
It just seems like owning a Apple product turns people into RDFed Steve fans.
So, essentially, you don't want to buy an Apple machine because you're afraid that you'll like it so much it'll turn you into a fan of Apple products?
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by fimbulvetr · 2005-10-31 04:04 · Score: 1

Oh? You must be talking about the engineers that decided to use everyone elses chips.
The engineers that designed the cube. You know, the one with the plastic moudling. And the "power off if it gets too warm sensor". And the ones who sold the cube as "fanless", yet put an ATI card in there with a fan on it.
The engineers who put the wireless antenna behind all the titanium/aluminum.
The engineers who made the latches on the TiBook?
The engineers who made the fauly power buttons on 20% of the newly shipped Imacs?
The engineers that designed the nano screen?

Oh? Are we talking just software?
Take a look at osvdb. You'll see just as many silly mistakes by apple software engineers. Software suceptible to symlink attacks? Hello? Aren't we out of 1992?
How about the newest Mail.App decrypts autoreplies and replies in plain text?
Umm...do their engineers test things?
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by falcon5768 · 2005-10-31 05:24 · Score: 1

Again wrong, Apple is infact in the same market. Just because your computer uses a different chip doesnt mean its not a computer, same with OS. Thats like saying that Ford and VW arnt in the same market because none of their parts work in each others cars.
Apple was infact a major wittness in the DOJ trial and its well known that Jobs disliked the trial because he knew it wouldnt solve anything, thus Apple did its best to try to stay out of the trial as much as possible.

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"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by fbg111 · 2005-10-31 09:53 · Score: 1

These guys.

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Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by drsmithy · 2005-10-31 11:28 · Score: 1

Again wrong, Apple is infact in the same market.
Not according to the findings of fact they aren't.
Just because your computer uses a different chip doesnt mean its not a computer, same with OS. Thats like saying that Ford and VW arnt in the same market because none of their parts work in each others cars.
I agree completely. However, the fact remains that Microsoft were found to be a monopoly of the "intel compatible operating systems market", one that Apple doesn't even offer a product in, let alone competition.
Indeed, if Apple really *were* in the same market as Microsoft, there's no way they could have been found a monopoly - not with such an easily available, practically drop-in alternative on the market.
Re:Apple and MS are Best Friends by CyricZ · 2005-11-02 16:39 · Score: 1

Your penis did a fine job presenting that argument. I, for one, am convinced!

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Cyric Zndovzny at your service.

Re:Not to mention the easiest halloween costume ev by glitch0 · 2005-10-30 19:02 · Score: 2, Funny

Since when did Ballmer get that sexy :-P

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-Glitch "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." - Linus Torvalds

Reality distortion field... by Shanep · 2005-10-30 19:03 · Score: 3, Funny

He's been said to have a 'reality distortion field' - by a mixture of charm and exaggeration, he can make you believe pretty much anything.

I hear that it is even said, that he has managed, with the use of this "reality distortion field", to make many people believe that Apple systems have had far fewer virus, security and stability problems!

A little known secret, is that Apple sells this so called "reality distortion field" here.

--
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?

Re:Reality distortion field... by jcr · 2005-10-30 22:49 · Score: 1

You think that's cool, how about raising Apple's market capitalization by $43 billion in just eight years?

As for the "Reality Distortion Field", that phrase is just a journalist's way of sneering at inspiration and leadership.

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Re:Reality distortion field... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 03:29 · Score: 0

You and your "irrefutable proof". I bet you think you can prove anything with your precious "facts"...
Re:Reality distortion field... by Listen+Up · 2005-10-31 05:06 · Score: 1

Exactly. Journalists, Linux advocates, etc.

Re:Not to mention the easiest halloween costume ev by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:06 · Score: 0

Is the blue collar shirt with sweat stains sold separately?

"developers! developers! developers!"

What motivates him? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:07 · Score: 2, Funny

Money.

Re:What motivates him? by JJSpreij · 2005-10-30 20:33 · Score: 5, Informative

Jobs could be milking Apple for a lot more than $1 per year, if he was really motivated by money....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs

Jobs worked at Apple for several years with an annual salary of $1, and this earned him a listing in Guinness World Records as the "Lowest Paid Chief Executive Officer". At the 2001 keynote speech of Macworld Expo in San Francisco, the company dropped the "interim" from his title. His current salary at Apple officially remains $1 per year, although he has traditionally been the recipient of a number of lucrative "executive gifts" from the board, including a $90 million jet in 1999, and just under 30 million shares of restricted stock in 2000-2002. As such, Jobs is well compensated for his efforts at Apple despite the nominal one-dollar salary.

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"These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others." --Groucho Marx
Re:What motivates him? by anothy · 2005-10-31 03:21 · Score: 1

I highly doubt it. Or, more precisely, i highly doubt that money is a primary motivating factor. It's simply a notoriously bad way to get any sort of vision. I believe it of most corporate exec types (and lots of other people, too), but it's simply not consistent with what Apple produces or with what data we have on Jobs. the assumption that money is the (sole) primary motivating factor also indicates either a significant lack of vision or a very cynical (and mildly depressing) view of human nature.

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i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Re:What motivates him? by gordo3000 · 2005-10-31 05:52 · Score: 1

he could.... but then he couldn't say he has a 1 dollar salary. even though, looking at historical prices,
he got, as you said, 30 million shares (with a value between 15 adn 25 dollars) and a 90 million dollar jet. hm...... seems like he got paid about 150 million dollars over the course of 4 years... yeah.... sounds like a real down to earth compensation package. I mean, I wouldn't feel like I could retire on that kind of income.....

I guess he could earn as much as his MS counterparts. I mean, that extra 1 million a year would make such a huge difference over the last 6 years....

he gets more than enough money. but I would still bet what motivates him is what motivates most people in his position, power. Money he has coming out his ears. But power is the hard thing to keep a hold of. and Jobbs knows it. He has gone through the ups and severe downs.

Apple Distortion Field. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:07 · Score: 2, Funny

"He's been said to have a 'reality distortion field' - by a mixture of charm and exaggeration, he can make you believe pretty much anything."

Granny smith Apples are NOT better than golden delicious.

Re:Apple Distortion Field. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:24 · Score: 0

Granny smith Apples are NOT better than golden delicious.

Wrong! Are you French?
Re:Apple Distortion Field. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:42 · Score: 0

Granny smith Apples are NOT better than golden delicious.

You're comparing apples to, er, other apples. Still, it's not a fair comparison.

Granny Smith's are baking apples. Less moisture; better texture; less sugar so you get more apple tast after baking. Golden delicious are for eating, not baking. Much more sugar and moisture which is bad for baking (mush) but great for eating (yum).

Get an hierloom red delicious, not the high-hip dyed red delicious you get in the stores. By far the original red delicious apples (not the kind you get in stores, but the ones with tiger stripe red) are the best apples ever.
Re:Apple Distortion Field. by hcpxvi · 2005-10-30 20:39 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Bah. Golden delicious are tastless mush and Granny smiths are tasteless mush with extra acid, just not enough acid to be a good cooker. Best cooker: Bramley's seedling, of course, with Howgate wonder as one among many alternatives. Best eaters: Egremont russet, Braeburn and Cox (but only if they have not gone wooly).

Golden delicious? Fit only for throwing at French farmers. And don't get me started on those horrid Pink lady things. Ugh!
Re:Apple Distortion Field. by Carewolf · 2005-10-30 21:05 · Score: 1

Get an hierloom red delicious, not the high-hip dyed red delicious you get in the stores. By far the original red delicious apples (not the kind you get in stores, but the ones with tiger stripe red) are the best apples ever.

The ones with tiger stripes sounds like Cox Orange, pretty much the best apple that is "easily" available with growing and picking them yourself.
Re:Apple Distortion Field. by LardBrattish · 2005-10-30 21:05 · Score: 1

I hear you, Bramleys are the best cookers, Russets are the best eaters - argument over, closed, finito.

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What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
Re:Apple Distortion Field. by Simon+Garlick · 2005-10-31 12:59 · Score: 1

Cox's Orange Pippin FTW!

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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658

Re:Not to mention the easiest halloween costume ev by John+Miles · 2005-10-30 19:12 · Score: 2, Funny

Dressing up as Steve Jobs is not only the easiest to make Halloween costume ever(Black turtleneck and jeans)

Yeah, it's pretty much a solved problem.

--
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.

Apple Store by Snuggly_Soft · 2005-10-30 19:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Everyone, including the author of this article, seems to forget the apple store in describing the second coming of Jobs. iPod and iTunes have been a boon for apple, but no one cares to speculate about how much a 'mall presence' had to do with any of it... IMO, the store isn't a footnote here, it's a keystone.

Re:Apple Store by Jeff+DeMaagd · 2005-10-31 01:12 · Score: 1

I don't know, but I don't think the mall stores account for more than 25% of sales, I have to find the numbers again. Maybe it's just a form of advertisement, but then, from that angle they pay for a lot of TV and magazine ads, and get a lot of newspaper coverage with the launch of a new revision or new product.

Jesus, again with the washing machine? by SensitiveMale · 2005-10-30 19:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

How many times does Jobs' procedure to buy a washing machine have to be covered?

Re:Jesus, again with the washing machine? by jred · 2005-10-30 19:33 · Score: 1

I was really disappointed by the washing machine decision coverage in this article. If you know of a better Jobs interview that covers the washing machine decision better, please post the link.

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jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
Re:Jesus, again with the washing machine? by zpok · 2005-10-30 19:38 · Score: 1

And on the Ateth day he chooseth the Washing Machine...

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I think, therefore I am...I think.
Re:Jesus, again with the washing machine? by Farmer+Tim · 2005-10-30 19:58 · Score: 4, Funny

You're missing the point: its not how he buys a washing machine thats interesting, its the mere fact that he's a nerd and actually wants a washing machine, and even knows what they're for.

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Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
Re:Jesus, again with the washing machine? by JJSpreij · 2005-10-30 20:50 · Score: 1

further down this page:

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166843&c id=13913264

--
"These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others." --Groucho Marx
Re:Jesus, again with the washing machine? by jcr · 2005-10-30 23:03 · Score: 1

How many times does Jobs' procedure to buy a washing machine have to be covered?

How many lazy journalists are there?

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Re:Jesus, again with the washing machine? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 13:55 · Score: 0

Is this some new cult thing? I've never heard of Jesus doing anything with a washing machine.

iWash by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:21 · Score: 1, Funny

He has rejected every washing machine because their names didn't sound right.

Oh, and you didn't see that scratch on your ipod. These are not the scratches you are looking for.

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by putko · 2005-10-30 19:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

I never liked the Macs and their frilly user interface. Being a Unix geek, I just wanted a set of Unix-like (or better tools).

Some things, like Macscheme, really impressed me though.

I remember working with their development tools (Neal Stephenson wrote the same) and being surprised to see that they were put together like a bunch of Unix tools --- command line, pipes and so on -- but, it was a like a version of the Unix tools put together by two teenage brothers, and one was unfortunately a bit "special" -- aka, retarded.

Their insistence on the "resource" fork always struck me as idiotic: data is data. If it is in a file, it is a bunch of bytes (or even blocks of bytes) -- no need to have separate "meta" information. That drove me nuts -- it meant you couldn't easily make tools (as in any Unix environment), because you had to be willing to do resource fork stuff. That sort of thing convinced me that the Mac was half-baked, and I should just stick to BSD-derived OSes.

So I'm happy to see that Apple got on the Mach tip, and now they have a decent userland and tools (for crabby programmers like myself). But I don't use it -- for my needs, BSD on x86 is wonderful.

--
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html

Re:Not to mention the easiest halloween costume ev by lightknight · 2005-10-30 19:24 · Score: 1

It comes from all that chair-throwing. Triceps, biceps, and the abs all get a great workout! Perhaps Ballmer is looking to upgrade (two chairs at once! or maybe a table!). Kind of makes telling the big boss that you're leaving for Google a little more risky...

But seriously, my karma is going to burn for posting this.

--
I am John Hurt.

Bad Steve stories by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

Here's a couple of examples of Bad Steve.

First story. Back in 1983, Steve was a frequent visitor to Apple's Bandley 3 building where the original Mac was under development. After all, he was the de facto project manager, as well as the company CEO. (Incidentally, that was the building with the grand piano in the foyer with guest pianists for the residents as well as weekly massages if they wished, as well as other minor benefits.)

Steve was driving a BMW 3 series at the time and although his office was only a few hundred yards from Bandley 3 he always drove over for progress reports, etc. Being a busy guy, he also had the habit of parking in the nearest empty parking spot to the entrance, which almost inevitably was one of a places reserved for handicapped drivers. One day, somebody became fed up with this and left a notice on his windshield to the effect that the these spots were intended for the physically, rather than the emotionally, handicapped.

Steve wasn't a happy camper. He raged into the building and instructed the Mac team management team to "find out who did this and fire their ass". Of course, they didn't find the guy....

Apparantly Steve didn't learn from this - I've been told there was a similar incident some years later at Mariani 1 building.

Second story. About six months before the release of the Mac, Ernie (forgotten his last name) completed the layout of the system PCB. Steve didn't like it (wasn't aethetically pleasing to him, I guess) and he described in some detail how he would like the board to be laid out. This included placement of the processor and (in particular) the placement and distance apart of the RAM chips. Remember, this was a PCB destined for a closed system that required non-standard tools to open the case, so it was never intended to be seen by customers. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the RAM became less stable when placed as Steve directed, and about six weeks was wasted trying to make the new board work on margins. Eventually one of the hardware engineers convinced him of the folly of visual aethetics in PCB design.

I guess Steve's reality distortion field didn't work on RAM chips.

Re:Bad Steve stories by MrPerfekt · 2005-10-30 19:44 · Score: 1

After all, he was the de facto project manager, as well as the company CEO.

Actually, that's not true. Steve was never actually CEO prior to his return to Apple in 1997. The CEO in 1983 was Mike Markkula prior to Steve's hiring of John Sculley for the job later that year.

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I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Re:Bad Steve stories by laurensv · 2005-10-30 23:23 · Score: 3, Informative

"Being a busy guy, he also had the habit of parking in the nearest empty parking spot to the entrance, which almost inevitably was one of a places reserved for handicapped drivers."
I heard/read that story too but with a bit more information on why he did. As he had "pirated" the mac group, previously not believing in it, there was a lot of resentment from outside (because he now favored mac project) and inside (some didn't want him as their boss), even so that some scratched his car. So he parked in full view in front.
Re:Bad Steve stories by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 03:53 · Score: 0

Well there's this story about Steve's argument over the PC board aesthetics:
http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=PC_Board_Es thetics.txt

Or there's this story about the real reasons Steve parks in the handicapped spaces:
http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Handicapped .txt

Really there, were you? Or just lifting stories from the original source?

Re:All hail the Jobs by obender · 2005-10-30 19:27 · Score: 3, Funny

No, don't think different, think for yourself.

Just when I was going to copy this and use it as a sig I read it again.

Re:Not really, no by The_Dougster · 2005-10-30 19:28 · Score: 4, Interesting

He can make Apple's zealots believe pretty much anything, not me. The fact the Linux share on the desktop now accedes Apple's pretty much confirms that I am not alone in this regard. Apple's slogan really should be "Suckers wanted!"

I think that's a bit harsh. Yes, Apple has made some dog-turd computers here and there, but even a lemon Mac II is pretty much a joy to use compared to a brain dead Windows PC.

I've never been able to afford a cutting edge Apple computer, heck, I have to make my own PC's out of Ebay parts and then slap Linux and some dated version of Windows on it. Forget Office, I praise my lucky stars for OOo.

I have bought a couple old cheapo Mac II's on Ebay though and played with them. They run well for what they are. I wouldn't mind having a nice Apple workstation going with OS/X at all. My only problem is that as an engineer, I need CAD, and cheap CAD at that. I'm not doing bad with TurboCAD, but I don't know what I could use on OS/X for 3D drafting that would even be in the same ball park.

I can live without Windows games, but I absolutely need a good CAD package. I don't have thousands of dollars to shell out either, so it has to be cheap and good.

I think Apple stuff is really cool, but it is so far beyond my budget that its basically impossible that I could ever afford to set up a Mac the way I need a computer to be. I'm like how Linus used to be, I can't afford the real thing so I have to make do the best I can with what I can afford.

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Clickety Click ...

Questions... by cperciva · 2005-10-30 19:31 · Score: 2, Funny

what motivates him? And how does he choose a new washing machine?

Well, I'm glad the important questions were asked. I know when I meet someone new, the second thing I ask is always how they choose a new washing machine.

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Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid

The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by humina · 2005-10-30 20:09 · Score: 1, Insightful

I think what you meant to say is that people that use apple computers are easily influenced by advertising. The things they wear and the products they use define their personality. In essence apple users are apple whores. Brainless consumers that buy apple because it fits their hipster mentality. It's the same mentality that needs reinforcing through cherry picked images(I'm looking at you anonymous coward).
In a completely unrelated topic, I can't wait to replace my ibook with a Linux laptop(airport extreme + Linux = no wireless).
PS- I don't hate mac users. I just hate the ones that walk around with a false sense of superiority.

--
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Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by putko · 2005-10-30 20:50 · Score: 1

Those are some amazing photos!

I can easily imagine that the pasty-faced, unattractive geeks are probably never going to buy anything from Apple -- they'll just get a Rio if they want a music player.

Now I get it -- I just want a computer with a big bitmapped display to run emacs. I run "fvwm" as my window manager, for instance. So I'd probably never "get" the Apple bug enough to shell out for the experience.

--
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by Tayssir+John+Gabbour · 2005-10-30 21:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

As someone typing right now on a Mac, there's some truth to what you say -- it's marketed for conspicuous consumption. But honestly, much of computing has been pushed in similar ways; understandably, computer companies try to market tech fetishism. Anyway, is Gnu/Linux badly-supported on your iBook?
Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by clifyt · 2005-10-31 01:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

"PS- I don't hate mac users. I just hate the ones that walk around with a false sense of superiority."

Much like someone that would give up a perfectly good machine for one that is running an OS that is considered experimental at best on Laptops just for the cache it provides them?

You mean those kinda people?

I use Linux all the time...hell, I use it to run several servers for my business based around supporting Apple's pro line for the beautiful folk (well, so they say, the fuckers I deal with are as ugly as they get :-)
Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by Ath · 2005-10-31 02:06 · Score: 1

Makes me wanna buy a Mac so I feel better about myself.
Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 03:28 · Score: 0

Yeah, this gets posted every time an Apple "demographic" is posted. Basically, like others have said, Apple users tend to place high value in being "hip" and fashionable... basically they are the same type of people who buy clothes only from one designer (everything they own is by that manufacturor). It's quite ironic, to me, that the Apple marketing line is "Think Different" when it really is nothing but "Think the way Steve tells you to".

I imagine the most "different" thinking people right now are in the Linux camp, given the type of movement it is and what these people do with their machines. Macs seem to be used for artsy stuff where Linux boxes are being used for artsy stuff, making movies, running various servers (financial, entertainment, scientific, informational), to simulating nuclear interactions, to... well, just about any line of thought you want. *That* is thinking different. Everyone who uses a platform thinking about how stylish they can be and how cool they are because they use said platform and pretty much only doing one thing with it is *not* "Thinking Different".

But... you go right on ahead thinking the same as all your buddies thinking that you are thinking different ;)
Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by itwerx · 2005-10-31 04:20 · Score: 1

What if it's not about thinking different?
What if it's just about getting the job done?
I use all three - Macs, Windows and Linux - on a daily basis. Many years ago when I really had no need for a Mac that a Windows or 'Nix box couldn't do better the ratio was:
Windows = 50%
Linux = 45%
Mac = 5%

Then Linux started to suck less and Windows hand't improved enough to make up the difference:
Windows = 20%
Linux = 75%
Mac = 5%

Then OSX came out:
Windows = 5%
Linux = 25%
Mac = 70%

I don't hate/love/like/dislike any one in particular, they all have their strengths and weaknesses, but I'm a techie who also has a business to run. Most of my clients have businesses to run as well. While there are numerous exceptions the greater majority of businesses out there really don't give a damn what it is as long as it gets whatever the job might be done as quickly and efficiently as possible!
Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 07:46 · Score: 0

A post full of prejudices. You are obviously not from the open-minded Linux camp.
Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 08:07 · Score: 0

Not all Mac users are like that. There are quite a few over at NASA and JPL, because their Powerbooks give them a way to run all the Unixy spacecraft navigation stuff while being able to play WarCraft or Microsoft Word.
There are even beany-wearing alpha geeks who run Macs. Hell, when Mitnick got off probation his buddy Woz gave him a Powerbook. I wouldn't see him hanging around with people like that.
I'm a PHP programmer, branching out into Python and Ruby on Rails. I use a Powerbook because I can do everything I want on it. I have a Mac Mini running Apache and PHP and CUPS for WebDAV and beta testing and print serving. I'm not "cool." I don't use it because I'm "easily swayed by advertising." (I've been a Mac user since before they were 'beleaguered.') I use it because it works. It works and it gets out of my way. Things I want to fiddle with, I can fiddle with. I don't have to worry about finding an FTP client, for example, that's not riddled with spyware or needs to buy a license or needs me to compile it or patch my kernel before using it.
One thing I love about being a Mac user is the diversity of people with whom you share a common interest. There's really nothing like it, and I don't expect someone who's never been a Mac user to understand it.
Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 09:15 · Score: 0

Much like someone that would give up a perfectly good machine for one that is running an OS that is considered experimental at best on Laptops just for the cache it provides them?

You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 09:56 · Score: 0

I keep using that word? Mista AC, I doubt if you've ever read a single post of mine, unless you are one of 'em interweb stalkers tryin' to get a piece of my ass. Is you boy? If you is, I have some man friends I can hook you up with.

But for the record, yes, it was spelled wrong: cachet. Dammit, I'm talking computers and I forget the T. Should I have spelled it cash-ay so that your little mind could comprehend it better? I'm sure anyone with basic skills in engrish would have known what I mean. OK, technically, to know the rule for the t, one would have to realize it is French in origin. Now you've learned something new.

So fuck off and have a nice day!
Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by humina · 2005-11-01 21:20 · Score: 1

Well the wireless card on my ibook is not supported at all. I use wireless at home and around my work, so having wireless support is important to me. Some people are trying to reverse engineer the broadcom driver for the ibook. Broadcom is not helping the Linux community much and apple is not switching to a different wireless chipset.

--
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by humina · 2005-11-01 21:32 · Score: 1

"PS- I don't hate mac users. I just hate the ones that walk around with a false sense of superiority."
Much like someone that would give up a perfectly good machine for one that is running an OS that is considered experimental at best on Laptops just for the cache it provides them?
You mean those kinda people?
Now you are trying to judge me. You are only proving my point further. I don't run Linux to try and fit an image. I run gnu/Linux for the freedoms that it gives me.

--
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
Re:The Apple Demographic (Re:Flipsides [Unix boy]) by clifyt · 2005-11-02 07:53 · Score: 1

This is very off topic, but its been several days since the article was posted and no one is probably reading this any more -- so:

*RUNNING* linux give you no fucking freedom what so ever.

Bragging about running it gives you no freedom either.

And yes, you are running linux because of the image it gives you and nothing else. Your words have demonstrated this.

Software should not be about freedom -- it should solely be a tool. Can you get your job done with this tool in the most efficient manner? If so, then it is the best. What does running an iBook restrict you from doing? I run F/OSS applications from my Powerbook all the time and then upload the results to a Linux server. Having OSX on the server does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for me...it would be retarded for me to run my server apps on this (and actually this subject came up with a friend from Apple as well...we were discussing if it would make any business sense to use XServers simply to prove to our customers that we could deal with these...our customers don't deal with them, and as such, the friend from Apple even suggested that it would be money spent badly and then he encouraged me to put the savings into a 60Gig iPod...those bastards!!!)

So how does running Linux on a Laptop give you in the way of tools? I haven't met an application on Linux that couldn't be compiled on an iBook yet...

So ask yourself, why are you doing this. Is it for the geek cachet? Do you have customers that expect you to be running Linux? If so, there is a reason to do this (I keep a few distributions on my hard drive that I can pull up under VirtualPC -- for the few times I need to show a client how to do something that would be exactly the same way it would be in THEIR environment...personally, I hate dealing with Linux desktops, but I have one current client that set his office up this way because he felt it was the easiest way to keep the office staff more productive and have to keep a fulltime geek on board...and since upgrading him to a Powerbook, he's been considering that that may be the way to keep them productive without the need for an OS that no one knows).

If not, then you are more than likely turning away customers. When I was dealing more with general tech support (most of my business is around the music industry these days -- but I have a FEW clients that I've taken on as a favor).

Either way, you have only proven my point far more than I have proven yours. Computers are tools -- they are not freedom. If Linux were the beter choice in OSs for a laptop, I'd say you were choosing the right OS, but its not. Its a rather fine OS that I get usage out of every day. Its not something I'd use to be productive on the desktop because my time is money...and the $1500 I spent on my Powerbook was made up within the first 2 weeks of its ownership. I would have spent 2 weeks alone getting a laptop working close enough that I could SOMEWHAT get my job done. Maybe you don't value your time as much as I do...

Note: This is not a slam on your...it is just an open communication and thats it.

Re:All hail the Jobs by ankarbass · 2005-10-30 19:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

Did it ever occur to you that it might be the case that Jobs is wealthy BECAUSE he's charismatic?

I'll let you work out the contrapositive.

--
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.

Re: the washing machine by Biotech9 · 2005-10-30 19:36 · Score: 5, Informative

It took me a while to find what he actually ended up buying. It was a Miele washer. Premium German engineering of course.

In another more detailed interview ,

Steve went on, "It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something.... Most people don't take the time to do that." He then proceeded to tell a story that both sheds light on his private life and gives some insight into the decision-making process that often turns life into a hell for people who work with him. Making the point that design isn't just an issue for "fancy new gadgets," he described how his whole family became involved in, of all things, the selection of a new washing machine and dryer. This is a little hard to picture: The billionaire Jobs family didn't have very good machines. Selecting new ones became a project for the whole family. The big decision came down to whether to purchase a European machine or an American-made one. The European machine, according to Steve, does a much better job, uses about one-quarter as much water, and treats the clothes more gently so that they last longer. But the American machines take about half as long to wash the clothes.

"We spent some time in our family talking about what's the trade-off we want to make. We spent about two weeks talking about this. Every night at the dinner table" -- imagine dinner-table conversation about washing machines every night! -- "we'd get around to that old washer-dryer discussion. And the talk was about design." In the end, they opted for European machines, which Steve described as "too expensive, but that's just because nobody buys them in this country."

Of course, this wasn't really about washing machines; it was about passing along the concern for design to his children and perhaps to (his wife) Laurene. The decision clearly gave him more pleasure than you would expect. He called the new machines "one of the few products we've bought over the last few years that we're all really happy about. These guys (had) really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers."

Steve's surprising tag line on the story says a great deal about how much design really means to him: "I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years."

Some people might think it a bit weird that there was so much thought going into buying a washing machine, but i think that if you get to see some of the lovely stuff Miele make you might not think it so weird. It's obvious the engineers at Miele are as obsessive over their machines as Jobs is over his. And it's clear he noticed and appreciated that.

Not to mention how nice it is to know that despite his billions he still does his own laundry.

Re:Not really, no by ankarbass · 2005-10-30 19:37 · Score: 1, Troll

What kind of engineer can't afford an ibook?

--
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.

Re:Not really, no by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:38 · Score: 1, Insightful

He can make Apple's zealots believe pretty much anything, not me. The fact the Linux share on the desktop now accedes Apple's pretty much confirms that I am not alone in this regard. Apple's slogan really should be "Suckers wanted!"

"exceeds", thanks! I love flamebait so I'll bite.

What does Linux taking marketshare away from Windows have to do with Mac OS X seeming inferior to Linux? Oh yeah, nothing.

There are a zillion more x86 PCs shipped per year than Apple PCs so it begs that there would be more Linux PCs shipped (now that OEMs are actually offering it preloaded) than Apple. I'm sure there's quite a few smart consumers out there that want to avoid the "Microsoft tax" when buying a new PC and order Linux even though they might intend on actually running Windows.

Washing Machine by Frankie70 · 2005-10-30 19:41 · Score: 2, Funny

And how does he choose a new washing machine?

Makes sure it doesn't get scratched easily?

Re:Washing Machine by antifoidulus · 2005-10-30 21:19 · Score: 1

Interestingly enough, I put an iPod through the washing machine...it doesn't work anymore...maybe I used the wrong machine..

--
Monstar L

The future is clear... by ankarbass · 2005-10-30 19:42 · Score: 2, Funny

"We spent about two weeks talking about this. Every night at the dinner table imagine dinner-table conversation about washing machines every night!...Of course, this wasn't really about washing machines; it was about passing along the concern for design to his children and perhaps to (his wife) Laurene."

Can you spell D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

--
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.

Re:The future is clear... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 14:45 · Score: 0

Can you spell P R E N U P?

Re:All hail the Jobs by aristotle-dude · 2005-10-30 19:44 · Score: 5, Interesting

I don't give a damn how much money someone has. I give a damn about what they do. If you had a billion dollar and did nothing useful benefiting others in some way, you would just be a rich self-righteous asshole. I guess all you are missing now/is the money eh?

People like Steve Jobs are driven by ambition. They don't give a damn if everyone likes them. Business is not a personal popularity contest. If this guy is able to inspire people to do their best work creating products people enjoy using, then he is newsworthy.

I guess you could compare Steve Jobs to Howard Hughes. Jobs seems to be obsessed with his ideal of perfection, taking risks and pushing the envelope of innovation. That sounds an awful lot like Mr. Hughes drive to make colossal movies and develop a transatlantic airline.

--
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.

1984? 2005? by Da3vid · 2005-10-30 19:54 · Score: 1

What I think is interesting is the famous 1984 commercial that went against the current computer monopoly, now that Apple is a famous wide known brand, where are their old ideals? What about the iPod? I'm a college student that lives near a college campus, and the only music I see anyone listen to is on their iPod, their home computer, or in their car. The fact that the iPod alone has made such an impact, and that Apple's big brother competitor is Microsoft, the company scrutinized for near monopoly status, is amusing when you consider it together.

Re:1984? 2005? by shmlco · 2005-10-30 21:43 · Score: 1

So you're saying that no one should ever make an outstanding product, because if they do, it's possible that too many people might want one?

--
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Re:1984? 2005? by Da3vid · 2005-10-30 21:55 · Score: 1

I have nothing against the iPod. My point is that Apple made a point in 1984 against the very thing that they're doing. I make no claim to what is right or wrong.
Re:1984? 2005? by dangitman · 2005-10-30 23:33 · Score: 1

My point is that Apple made a point in 1984 against the very thing that they're doing.
I don't recall that IBM made MP3 players in the 1980s. Perhaps you misinterpreted the advertisement?

--
... and then they built the supercollider.
Re:1984? 2005? by gordo3000 · 2005-10-31 06:01 · Score: 1

I think the GP is talking about complete conformity. Its funny to watch a company that talks about thinking differently constantly to create such a homogenous group of followers. The company that says it wants to be different really does enjoy the benefits of creating a following of people that all act the same. its just ironic.
Re:1984? 2005? by guet · 2005-10-31 08:49 · Score: 1

What I think is interesting is the famous 1984 commercial that went against the current computer monopoly

Apple has done lots of evil things since then, however that 1984 commercial was not a protest against a monopoly or a successful big company, it was a protest against the stultifying world view of the corporation IBM (MS was nowhere at that point) which viewed customers as peons to be kept subjugated and milked for cash; which had an army of suits to sell its latest wares and was only interested in selling boring big-iron to businesses. At that point Personal Computers had just started to happen. It was anti-authoritarian and anti-conformist. Quite a good commercial too, as these things go, and a nice reference to a book that captured the century and its problems well.

I imagine SJ and others at Apple still feel they carry that flag, and having one very popular product doesn't change that, it just makes it more difficult to continue to break new ground. What *is* amusing was that they did a deal with that same evil corporation later (which hasn't change so much) to get CPUs : )
Re:1984? 2005? by 2nd+Post! · 2005-11-02 15:24 · Score: 1

I thought the 1984 commercial was about how the Mac was going to change the world of computers; if there's an analogy today, it's how the iTMS is going to shake up music, TV, and video, or how the iPod has transformed music from being about albums and CDs and organization to instant and constant immediate access to music. Every time Apple releases one of it's iPods, it DOES change the world:

iPod, 2001, made music portable: The contemporary Nomad Jukebox was the size of a Mac mini and had USB1
iTunes music store, 2003, music is no longer chained to albums OR publishers: Small independents can now make money
iPod mini, 2004, made music MORE portable: The contemporary iPod was the size of a pack of cigarettes, while the mini was the size of cigarette lighter
iPod photo, 2004, try expanding the universe to include pictures; did not really take off
iPod shuffle, 2005, made music even MORE portable: If the mini was a cigarette lighter, the shuffle was a pack of gum
iPod nano, 2005, made music even MORE portable: Now the size of 6 credit cards, the nano is the smallest MP3 player of it's capacity
iPod video and iTunes TV store, 2005, TV is made accessible without commercials: What will TV look like in 10 years?

Music used to be about 300 CD jukeboxes and albums with 30 CDs under the front seat of your car. Now music is about little iPods with 1000 CDs and an iPod in the glove compartment of your car. Any CD you've ever listened to is accessible in under 10 seconds. Any track, any artist, any album, any composer, available at your fingertips.

--

GPL Deconstructed
Re:1984? 2005? by dangitman · 2005-11-02 17:10 · Score: 1

Its funny to watch a company that talks about thinking differently constantly to create such a homogenous group of followers.
That's a really silly comment. Apple users are barely homogenous at all. With the popularity of the iPod, now Apple customers are even more diverse than ever - everything from professional film-makers to teeny-boppers downloading Britney Spears from iTMS.
Seems the most homogenous market is the Windows gaming market, and the Dell business computer market. Apple have been offering an increasinly large range of choices and products over the last 5 years. There are many more different ways of doing things than there were in the past.
Furthermore, people are users/I. of Apple products, not "followers of Apple." So, basically, what are you talking about? What is your evidence of homogeneity?

--
... and then they built the supercollider.
Re:1984? 2005? by Da3vid · 2005-11-02 20:57 · Score: 1

I think the 1984 commercial was against IBM and trying to prevent the computer world in 1984 from becoming like 1984 in the book. A bleak and bland world without truth or freedom of choice. I think part of the idea was to create choices- you don't have to get an IBM computer, you can get a Macintosh. Don't mistake me for being anti-iPod inherently, it was just a thought. I do give you that iPod research has made advancements and increased technology and so they follow through on that end, but they're on the other end of the spectrum now. Just a thought.

-Da3vid-
Re:1984? 2005? by 2nd+Post! · 2005-11-03 03:31 · Score: 1

I always wonder why Creative doesn't ensure all it's players play AAC files; because as more and more people buy iPods, more and more music will be AAC encoded. I can't believe that everyone knows to go into the preferences and change the encoding format for their music from AAC into MP3.

It's becoming the de facto next gen audio format, and it's a surprise more people don't adopt it out of Apple's de facto hegemony.

Someone will figure out how to break Apple's hegemony; it may even be Apple itself, in which case everyone else is in trouble.

--

GPL Deconstructed
Re:1984? 2005? by Da3vid · 2005-11-03 03:39 · Score: 1

A sidethought: is it even possible to copyright/patent a file format?

On the normal thought, yea I don't see why you wouldn't make your mp3 player play as many applicable file types as possible. The software needed to do so seems minimal compared to the added usability. It doesn't seem that hard to me.

When Apple first entered the mp3 market, there wasn't much competition. There was a hodge podge of this and that, the biggest one that comes to mind was the Rio, and that wasn't all that hot. I think combining style with the first decent mp3 player made a big impact on the younger audience. (At least the younger audience is my view point, I live near a college campus.) I think if someone tried to compete earlier they had a big chance, but now the competitors will have to ride this fad out or release one hell of a product.

-Da3vid-
Re:1984? 2005? by gordo3000 · 2005-11-03 04:38 · Score: 1

the homogeneity I am talking about is how every time I Look around, I don't see the differences. I see a bunch of people who have completely fallen for the Ipod and do the exact same thing, walk around not paying attention to other humans just listening their Ipods(looks almost like apple is brainwashing what was once a diverse group of people;-).

That homogeneity exists in droves with the success of the Ipod. I just find it funny that people who were once incredibly diverse in what they did and how they acted now do exactly the same thing when they are walking alone.
Re:1984? 2005? by Da3vid · 2005-11-03 06:23 · Score: 1

I think the idea is that Apple said in 1984 they didn't want a computer market that had only one major brand: IBM. So they were introducing their product so you had a choice, IBM or Macintosh. Now, there is a homogeneity among people who listen to mp3s on the go, they mostly all use iPods to do it. So now in the mp3 player market, there is just the iPod. I'm not criticizing anyone here, its just ironic.

-Da3vid-
Re:1984? 2005? by 2nd+Post! · 2005-11-03 09:13 · Score: 1

Considering that AAC is an mpeg format, it is really the logical successor to mp3; that everyone is creating wma + mp3 players and Apple seems to be the only major purveyor of AAC seems downright backwards. AAC is MPEG; as much as DivX or XviD or MP3 is MPEG.

WMA is the proprietary interface; AAC is the industry standard (both in theory as well as in practice)

--

GPL Deconstructed

Re:Not really, no by MichaelSmith · 2005-10-30 19:54 · Score: 1

What kind of engineer can't afford an ibook?

A married one?

--
http://michaelsmith.id.au

Not really, no-90% of... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:55 · Score: 0

"He can make Apple's zealots believe pretty much anything, not me. The fact the Linux share on the desktop now accedes Apple's pretty much confirms that I am not alone in this regard. Apple's slogan really should be "Suckers wanted!"

"correlation does not imply causation."

"I think Apple stuff is really cool, but it is so far beyond my budget that its basically impossible that I could ever afford to set up a Mac the way I need a computer to be. I'm like how Linus used to be, I can't afford the real thing so I have to make do the best I can with what I can afford."

$499, and the fact that you're making so much noise about the state of cheap CAD on the Mac, when Linux is in a similiar boat is laughable. Good CAD costs regardless of platform.

--
Biotech9

Donald A. Norman also understood the importance of good design.

Re:Not really, no by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 19:55 · Score: 0

A student? A mechE working for an absurdly cheap manufacturing company in the middle of bumfuck nowhere (cost of living: two cents/yr)? Just guesses...

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2005-10-30 19:56 · Score: 3, Funny

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Full of Shit by David+Off · 2005-10-30 19:59 · Score: 5, Interesting

Back around the Gulf war Cringely made another observation about the duo which I like. He said Gates was like the Sultan of Kuwait, not wanting the boat rocked and milking the profits from his empire. Jobs was like Hussein, firing his revolver in the air in front of a crowd of fanatics and telling the rest of the world that they are "full of shit".

If you want a very good book about Apple up to the time of Sculley and Jobs' early years try to get hold of The Journey is the Reward by Jeffery Young. West of Eden, the End of Innocence at Apple Computer by Frank Rose is also another good book at this time. Oh, and if you want a laff read Sculley's book Odyssey - a more talentless f*ck and bigger blowhard you could not wish to hire to ruin your business, the guy obviously only made it by marrying the boss's daughter. Sculley is all that is wrong with corporate America. The book must rank with "The Road Ahead" as the deranged ramblings of someone who just didn't get it. :-)

Re:Full of Shit by spiderbitendeath · 2005-10-31 00:45 · Score: 4, Funny

Hey, The Road Ahead is a great book. I use it to keep my window propped up on those warm summer nights.

--
Sometimes when I'm working on projects things disappear, I suspect gremlins.
Re:Full of Shit by sedyn · 2005-10-31 04:40 · Score: 1

"Hey, The Road Ahead is a great book. I use it to keep my window propped up on those warm summer nights."

Considering the producer of the book, I wouldn't trust it to keep my windows from crashing.

--
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Re:Full of Shit by nigel_q · 2005-10-31 05:47 · Score: 1

I actually found a copy of The Road Ahead CD-ROM stuck in the sewer drain at my university... I rescued it, now its a coffee and cola stained coaster on my desk at work. Where we work on Macs. I just think its funny that someone would go to the trouble to buy the book, then throw the CD out the window... I wonder what they said as they were doing it...

The article by TubeSteak · 2005-10-30 20:04 · Score: 0, Offtopic

I'm going to exercise my /. right to complain about TFA

I find the dual columns truly irritating to read.
They're not nearly wide enough to scan at highspeed.
I hate having to scroll down constantly
I hate having to jump back to the top of the page to continue reading.

I'm not getting page damage from my adblocking software, because I turned it off and not only did the page layout still suck, but i got smacked with a full screen popunder.

news.independent.co.uk sucks.

--
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!

Re:The article by courseB · 2005-10-30 20:10 · Score: 1

yeah.. and the printer friendly link is a print prompt scrpit... nice independent layout
Re:The article by BenjyD · 2005-10-30 20:48 · Score: 1

It's the Independent, what do you expect? The layout was probably designed by some 16 year old kid they hired because they couldn't afford anyone else. All the talent fled the Independent years ago.

Reading yet another article about Steve Jobs ... by Edmund+Blackadder · 2005-10-30 20:09 · Score: 1, Troll

Makes me think fondly of Bill Gates. I mean sure his practices have caused a lot of grief ... but he has some good qualities ... like, for example, he is not Steve Jobs.

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by be-fan · 2005-10-30 20:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

I never liked the Macs and their frilly user interface. Being a Unix geek, I just wanted a set of Unix-like (or better tools).

You know, I'm the same way. However, I recently bought a PowerMac, and it really is a wonderful machine. A lot of the standard UNIX apps are even better on OS X than on Linux. Emacs, in particular, is miles ahead, supporting an interface that actually blends in with the Aqua UI, and sports anti-aliased fonts and a Mac-style top menubar. The only caveat is that the default terminal app could be a little bit better.

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...

Why be afraid of the imaginary by SuperKendall · 2005-10-30 20:21 · Score: 1

I bought a Mac exactly because I wanted to get work done. Even with a large team of administrators at work my Win2K box there requires far more fiddling day-to-day in operation than my Mac does at home. There are a lot of little things that in day to day use make things go more smoothly.

Why should you discount a whole line of computers that many have found quite productive just because you fear being consumed by the RDF? Owning an Apple imparts no obligation to like, admire, or otherwise hold aloft Steve Jobs any more than owning Windows turns every user into a fawning toady of Bill Gates.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

The rosy past was not so rosy... by ankarbass · 2005-10-30 20:26 · Score: 1

We've got a guy at work who goes on and on and on and on and on about how he "gets more work done" on a mac. He really loved the old Mac OS. See, I like OS/X, and I do think that it's quite useful. Macs may have always been more productive for some people but I get the sense that "getting more work done" is a baseless claim that is synonymous with "I like it more".

Now, I prefer OS/X or linux depending on what I'm doing. But I've had to oversee computers in the work place and I don't find that there is any metric that is particularly useful when applied to individual workers. What allows the company to get more work done is the better question.

Back in the day that partly meant networking which was a royal pain on the old world macs. Trying to get macs and windows working together was also a pain. I never worked in an all mac shop so I don't know if that would be better, however, given that almost every place I worked used windows it was a LOT easier to just not use macs unless you had to. Maybe one employee's productivity would go up, maybe not, but ours would go down without a doubt.

With OS/X that has changed. OS/X macs are nothing like what macs used to be. I have several although I prefer linux for most of my work for reasons that have little to do with the user interface or how pretty it is or isn't. But new macs are every bit as easy to integrate and secure as windows or linux, in fact, easier in many cases. There are fewer reasons today to not use macs in the workplace.

BUT, you can't extrapolate the current OS/X macs productivity backwards. The old macs were slow, crashed frequently, were super expensive to upgrade, etc etc. If you liked them it was because you cut your teeth on them and were afraid to go to windows. Granted win 3.1 wasn't much more than a pretty (ugly) shell, but by the time windows 95 came out the Mac OS had little advantage and 98 killed any advantage that was left. Yes I was using linux in those days. Linux had a LONG LONG way to go to be on the desktop. In fact, in most cases XFree86 was much slower than win95/98 on the same hardware. Oh, and NOTHING worked out of the box.

Of course there were differences, and of course, if you cut your teeth on a mac you would have a learning curve to switch to windows. But there wasn't really a significant difference in how "productive" an individual could be. Any effects you could measure would be second order and by the time you factored in the cost of maintaining and supporting macs it was a losing battle.

Remember Apple was struggling with their operating systems direction during this time and had several failed initiatives. Whatever they did to the original MacOS was really just a stop gap measure to try and hold on to their market share. I think "Mac People" forget that pretty much only artists, musicians, and teachers used macs back in those days. Things have changed, but it hasn't been THAT long that I've forgotten how much macs used to suck.

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Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.

Re:The rosy past was not so rosy... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 03:19 · Score: 0

Hey dumbass, it's not "OS/X" it's "OS X." The X is a roman numeral. Do you say Linux/2.6 or Media Player/10?

Why are there so many idiots on Slashdot who can't spell three letters correctly? I've already seen both "OS-X" and "OS/X" in this one article discussion alone. IT'S OS X, MORONS.

Mac OS X. As in Mac OS 10. Are we clear?
Re:The rosy past was not so rosy... by ankarbass · 2005-10-31 03:25 · Score: 0

Wow, do you guys REALLY care about that shit, cause I sure don't.

To me OSX=OS X=OS-X=OS/X=OS10=osx==os 10=OS 10=osX=OSx=os/x=os-x=Only MacOS that's worth a shit.

The problem with OS X in a sentence is that it's hard to read. I don't care if you like it, OS/X stands out more clearly. That's what I'm gonna use until apple gives it a good name, like linux.

Get over it.

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Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
Re:The rosy past was not so rosy... by NidStyles · 2005-10-31 04:41 · Score: 0

You mean like Tiger?

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Yes, I said it.
Re:The rosy past was not so rosy... by ankarbass · 2005-10-31 07:18 · Score: 1

No not like tiger. Tiger only applies to one version of os/x. No, I mean like munix, or applenix, or fruitnix, or McUnix, or something like that.

Yes, I think that works, McUnix.

--
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.

All I see are anti-fanboys by SuperKendall · 2005-10-30 20:27 · Score: 1

Lots of people complain about the "damn Mac fanboys" but most Mac users I have seen seem pretty well based in reality (and not the one Steve is generating either). For more often I see people complaining about something just because Jobs has done something in relation - like taking a perverse pleasure in not owning a Mac or an iPod as if in some way that were striking back at "The Man", where said Man is literally a man - Steve Jobs.

Now journalists, there I think your claim rings a little more true where journalists seem a little over-fascinated with Jobs.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Re:All I see are anti-fanboys by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 21:28 · Score: 0

really? You need to meet more people. They're willing to overlook the apple prices (Ever checked out the price of an upgrade to a 400gb SATA disk vs the cost of a new one?), the fact that apple are making drm acceptable ("But if you really want to get around it you'll get around it" - failing to notice that there are laws against that) and the fact that there are better, cheaper options available. Creative and iriver make damn good players which support more formats, only they're not "white and shiny". Marketing is a wonderful thing.... if you're not paying marketeers and not relying on your products to speak solely for themselves.

I've heard people talking of "paying a lot of money buying into the apple club" and how they were pissed off about the x86 switch. 1 hour later it was the best thing ever. (not a quote) "Well steve said it was great so it's great!"
Re:All I see are anti-fanboys by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 14:37 · Score: 0

and the fact that there are better, cheaper options available.
Are they as small as an iPod? No. The flash based players are also much more expensive. The last Sony one I saw was More than AUD$100 for 128Mb. Creative and iriver make damn good players which support more formats, only they're not "white and shiny".
No they don't. Count them. You also need to realise that some of us value certain features more highly than you do. Think about it.

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by cpt+kangarooski · 2005-10-30 20:37 · Score: 4, Informative

Their insistence on the "resource" fork always struck me as idiotic: data is data. If it is in a file, it is a bunch of bytes (or even blocks of bytes) -- no need to have separate "meta" information.

Resource forks are sensible given their purpose: to allow strings, in-program graphics, sounds, etc. to be tweaked without having to recompile or have necessary files outside of the application itself.

This way localization and some UI changes could be made without having to know how to change the source directly. Translators that can program are more costly than translators that can fiddle with ResEdit. Early on it was also hoped that files could use them productively (e.g. a text file that was raw text in the data fork, so that lesser systems could still read it, but with formatting in the resource fork) but this didn't really work out.

Application bundles (folders that masquerade as actual programs, and contain all the various resources in separate files) are a different way of accomplishing the same goal, basically. They're not quite as good, since they're known to break and revert back to behaving like folders, but it's better than what you see on other platforms.

At any rate, given that you seem to actually be complaining about metadata, this indicates that you have no idea what a resource fork is and probably never seriously used a Mac. Metadata (which is invaluable) is known on pretty much all platforms to one degree or another. Filenames, permissions, modification dates -- these are all metadata, and may or may not be portable across platforms. The Mac had some additional metadata -- custom icons, file types, which app should open a particular file, etc. -- and it improved the usability of the system. Frankly, we could do with yet more.

Of course, if you like to tell software what sectors on the disk to read instead of using filenames, which are metadata, more power to you. But most people aren't that crazy.

That drove me nuts -- it meant you couldn't easily make tools (as in any Unix environment), because you had to be willing to do resource fork stuff.

Meh. As a rule of thumb, doing a task in software takes a set amount of work. The more work that the programmer does once, the less work that the user will have to do repeatedly. So programming should be comparatively hard, in order to make use quite easy.

Now, the form of use that consists of creating more tools should also be easy, but that requires a hell of a lot of work by programmers to make it so. Recently, Apple has put out Automator, which is handy, but still needs significant work. Applescript was an interesting attempt, but really didn't work out well for most people.

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-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

Re:Not really, no by zbaron · 2005-10-30 20:43 · Score: 2, Informative

I'm not doing bad with TurboCAD, but I don't know what I could use on OS/X for 3D drafting that would even be in the same ball park.

How about TurboCAD then?

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by DLWormwood · 2005-10-30 20:45 · Score: 5, Informative

Their insistence on the "resource" fork always struck me as idiotic: data is data. If it is in a file, it is a bunch of bytes (or even blocks of bytes) -- no need to have separate "meta" information.

"Insistence" is really the wrong word. After Jobs' return, many of the NeXT developers tried to deprecate such traditional Mac-isms, but the established Mac developer base, as well as many users (especially in the publishing/graphic arts marketspace), balked.

The original point of the resource fork was to provide a system wide "poor man's database" so that any arbitrary application or data file could have arbitrary tagged data appended to it without breaking or confusing apps that originally read the file. For example, to add publishing keywords to a graphics file in its data fork, you have to worry if you are working with a EPS, JPEG, PSD, TIFF or whatever. Each file format has it's own way of storing metadata and added info that are mostly incompatible with each other. However, assuming you are in a mostly Mac-based shop, you can simply add a "IPTC" resource to the file's resource fork, and you have added keyword data without worrying about the contents or exact format of the file in question, even if it's a file format yet to be invented.

After the early virus problems with System 4-6 OSes, Apple tried to start migrating away from resources to trying to develop a form of "universal container" file format. QuickTime's MOV format and disk images are two such stabs. However, this doesn't solve the compatiblity problem with the "outside world" since that just moves the problem from trying to NOT ignore a secondary data stream (that is, the resource fork) to the problem of insuring all file I/O goes through a "standard container file access" library.

it meant you couldn't easily make tools (as in any Unix environment), because you had to be willing to do resource fork stuff. That sort of thing convinced me that the Mac was half-baked, and I should just stick to BSD-derived OSes.

OS X is more or less a BSD-variant. It has more in common with a BSD than the System V derived UNIXes like Linux is alleged to be. As for the tool making problem, under recent OS X releases, you can treat the resource fork of a file like a subdirectory named "/rsrc" in most contexts. This is similar to what Windows needs to access NTFS stream data.

--
Those who complain about affect & effect on /. should be disemvoweled

Cheap CAD by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 20:45 · Score: 0

CADintosh from lemke software. Is $33 cheap enough? You might want to start hanging out at Architosh.

ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by Edmund+Blackadder · 2005-10-30 20:48 · Score: 0, Flamebait

I usually like the independent, but it is unfortunate that in this occasion they lost their better judgement and got swept up in the whole ridiculous Jobs worhip fest.

Just in order to preserve history I must repeat some things for the thousandth time:

Apple did not invent the windowing system
Apple did not invent the mouse
(the article was quite misleading in saying apple "introduced" those things giving the suggestion that they invented them, which is not true. Of course apple may take some credit for popularizing them, but then again Microsoft did a much better job at popularizing the mouse and the windowing environment)

Jobs was not a visionary ... It is really nice that he gave an interview in 96 sayying that the internet was going to be huge, but then again by '96 every single college kid had an internet connection, and would have said the same thing. Even gates had amended his "road ahead" book to include a chapter about the internet by that time.

And the biggest reason why Jobs is not a visionary is that Apple had the opportunity to win the PC market ... they could easily have been Microsoft+Dell+HP(personal computing) all rolled into one, but Jobs f***ed it all up. Sorry he is no visionary.

Jobs is just a guy that has a decent eye for design (according to many people) who also quite fortuitously happened to be rich. As a result he runs a company that pays a lot of attention to design (which is rare in the US, for some reason). This is all very nice, but do not expect the next new thing in technology to come from him.

Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by shmlco · 2005-10-30 22:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

As far as the public is concerned, Apple and the Mac "introduced" them to the first inexpensive window/mouse personal computer. The first such system designed for the masses.
Lisa came a couple of years earlier, but at $10K was aimed at the corporate market. At $16K (about a $100K for a complete network) the Xerox Star (1981) was aimed even higher, and only a relative handful were ever produced and sold.
It's also fair to say that Apple also "introduced" the public to WYSIWYG, the laser printer (LaserWriter), desktop publishing (through Adobe's Pagemaker), and the home network (AppleTalk/LocalTalk).
BTW, Pagemaker and the LaserWriter never get nearly enough credit for the Mac's success. Together, the three created a "VisiCalc" killer application synergy that none could ever achieved on their own.

--
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by Chapter80 · 2005-10-30 22:34 · Score: 1

As far as the public is concerned, Apple and the Mac "introduced" them to the first inexpensive window/mouse personal computer. The first such system designed for the masses.
Sorry, but I disagree. $2495 in 1984 dollars isn't really "designed for the masses". Yes, a better price than earlier machines, but a far worse price than later machines. But it's a price-point-in-time. To argue that this is the "first" just doesn't make sense.
I could argue that e-Machines or Packard Bell, or some white-box manufacturer was "the first" to make it affordable for the masses, because they beat that price by a factor of 10 or more in real dollars.
Basically, you have two variables there - price and functionality. Unless your argument is that the definition of "inexpensive for the masses" is $2500 or less (in 1984 dollars), it just doesn't hold up. The Mac wasn't the first in functionality. And it wasn't reasonably priced for the masses (as compared to today's systems). $2495 in 1984 was about 3% of the price of an average HOUSE! A little steep for the average person, for a "disposable technology unit" that would clearly depreciate to scrap value in three years.
Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 01:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

And the biggest reason why Jobs is not a visionary is that Apple had the opportunity to win the PC market ... they could easily have been Microsoft+Dell+HP(personal computing) all rolled into one, but Jobs f***ed it all up. Sorry he is no visionary.

Care to elaborate on this claim? At which point did Jobs/Apple have the opportunity to unseat IBM and the clone market? AppleII? Mac? What could he have done differently to convince business' in the early 80's that the Mac was more appropriate than the stalwart PC? Please explain.

Plus, being a visionary isn't necessarily inventing new things, but it's often understanding which new things will have impact and importance. Steve might not invent it, but he's less likely than many other so called visionaries to pass on it. Oh, and the point about his take on the internet wasn't simply postulating that it would be huge, it was that he actually nailed HOW it would be huge. He understood the tool and it's potential applications (again, understanding problems and how technology might solve them, vs simply guessing that the internet is "cool" and so bound to eventually take off (solution looking for a problem)).

BTW, I don't think the article was misleading at all, maybe because I know the history, so the word "introduce" was quite appropriate.
Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 02:22 · Score: 0

Sorry, but I disagree. $2495 in 1984 dollars isn't really "designed for the masses". Yes, a better price than earlier machines, but a far worse price than later machines. But it's a price-point-in-time. To argue that this is the "first" just doesn't make sense.

You're missing the point here. Before the Mac, the only machines that were WIMP powered (Windows Icons Menus Pointing devices) were decidely NOT for anyone outside of large publishing environments (or companies that had publishing needs). While the Mac was certainly expensive, it was in line with the cost of PC's at the time and SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than any other gui based alternative. Not to mention that even a full blown Apple IIc system at the time was going for over $1200, and it certainly was a machine geared towards the "masses". So we're only looking at 2x the price for what was at the time a massive jump in technology (though not necessarily usefullness). If you're talkin e-machines or packard bell, then you're either way too young to understand life back then, or wasn't paying much attention.
Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 02:47 · Score: 0

the article was quite misleading in saying apple "introduced" those things giving the suggestion that they invented them, which is not true. Of course apple may take some credit for popularizing them, but then again Microsoft did a much better job at popularizing the mouse and the windowing environment
So, you're saying that Apple didn't invent the mouse, nor did they make it more popular, right? And you're implying that, really, all Apple did was be one of the first to bring them to market and nothing else? And that the author was wrong to use the word "introduce" because, well, the author really meant was "invent", which Apple obviously didn't do? Curious. "Introduce" sure looks like the right word to me.
Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 02:47 · Score: 0

Actually, I believe it is you missing the point. I HAD a windows-mouse-icon driven machine at my disposal - at work. I looked at the Mac for a home purchase. No way could I justify it.
Perhaps we have different definitions of the word "Masses". If, as a well-paid technology guy, *I* couldn't justify the price of a Mac, then there's no way that your average schmoe off the street could or would afford it! Think "average" - think maybe a nurse or school teacher or your average AOL user of today. Would they have bought a Mac in 1984? No, they wouldn't, and didn't.
Computing for the masses - a computer in the home for the "average" person - didn't come until MUCH later than the Mac introduction.
And so, to say (quoting the original post): As far as the public is concerned, Apple and the Mac "introduced" them to the first inexpensive window/mouse personal computer. The first such system designed for the masses. is silly. It wasn't for the masses.
Masses = "multitude: the common people generally".
or "The body of common people or people of low socioeconomic status" (Dictionary.com)
Costing 3% of the price of an average HOUSE isn't for the common people.
Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 03:13 · Score: 0

Masses = "multitude: the common people generally".

You're thinking of "masses" in one context. If M$ comes out with a compiler for the "masses", then the context is the "mass of developers". Porche's car for the "masses" is the Boxster. It's within reach of the "average" person who is willing to stretch a bit, but not designed for the same "masses" as say the Yugo was. Once again, the "masses" in the original comment is appropriate, it was designed to be used by somebody at home, no gui based computer before even had that focus. The first consumer based VCR's were VERY expensive, but it was designed for the "masses" in that it wasn't designed for tv studio or other professional use. That it takes a while for the "masses" to be able to afford it without a stretch is a different issue altogether.
Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 03:25 · Score: 0

Well, you just lost your credibility. I bought a mac 2 weeks after they hit the market because...there was no "window-mouse-icon driven" interface in the wintel world. Windows 1.0 didnt come out until close to a year after the first Macintosh. Oh and by the way, MS didnt even announce Windows until about 2 weeks after the Mac hit the stores (I now because I remember they announced 2 days after I bought my mac). And the difference in price between a compaq (the poor mans IBM PC at the time) that had the same graphics capabilities as a mac? Around $100.
Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by Overly+Critical+Guy · 2005-10-31 03:44 · Score: 1

Apple DID introduce a windowing system and a mouse to the public. In fact, much of the desktop metaphor is theirs (pulldown menus, standard "Trash" can, etc.).

Clearly, Apple's successes contradict your claim that he is not visionary. Who is it again who introduced GUIs to the world? Apple. Who is it again that legitimized online music? Apple. Who is it again that has 80+% of music players? Apple. Who forced manufacturers to provide USB devices by making the 1998 iMac USB-only, thereby making the PC world universally adopt USB? Who was the first to have 3 1/2 inch floppy drives in every machine? Etc. etc. etc.....

--
"Sufferin' succotash."
Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by Braino420 · 2005-10-31 05:30 · Score: 1

Clearly, Apple's successes contradict your claim that he is not visionary. Who is it again who introduced GUIs to the world? Apple. Who is it again that legitimized online music? Apple. Who is it again that has 80+% of music players? Apple. Who forced manufacturers to provide USB devices by making the 1998 iMac USB-only, thereby making the PC world universally adopt USB? Who was the first to have 3 1/2 inch floppy drives in every machine? Etc. etc. etc.....

you're right, it was apple, not Steve Jobs. I'm glad we have cleared that up.

--
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by gordo3000 · 2005-10-31 06:33 · Score: 1

well then, obviously bill gates is the biggest visionary there is. I mean, who controls almost all business interaction and over 90% of the desktop market? MS and its software. now, of course by 80% of the music players you do mean 80% of mobile MP3 players. And of course, they weren't first in this, jsut the first to popularize it. But we don't say Windows is a revolutionary, do we? just by being the biggest doesn't always make you the visionary. every now and then, even apple just takes what others started and improves it. you are spreading outright lies about the 3 1/2 inch drive. scroll down at: http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/timeline.p hp?timeline_category=cmpnt Components Sony introduced and shipped the first 3 1/2" floppy drives and diskettes in 1981. The first signficant company to adopt the 3 1/2" floppy for general use was Hewlett-Packard in 1982, an event which was critical in establishing momentum for the 3 1/2" format and which helped it prevail over the other contenders for the microfloppy standard, including 3 1/4", 3", and 3.9" formats. let's not give credit where it isn't due. Let's do give credit where it is due. Apple was the first to give the world a PC that used a mouse and GUI that a non-business entity might buy(though equivalent to about 4700 dollars today, affordable is a little bit of an overstatement). Its specific Windowing system did become the de facto style but was not by any means the only one or the first.
Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by shmlco · 2005-10-31 06:56 · Score: 1

Ah well, at least now you're nitpicking over the "masses" comment, and folded over the "introduced" one.
Besides, I think you need to go back in time, to that particular time, and see just how much comparable PCs cost. $2300 was very much in the ballpark for a complete IBM PC system, or a Compaq "portable" computer.
While they were relatively expensive in comparison to today's prices, people did buy them. By your "logic", todays computers are not for the "masses" either, as most of the world (china, india) don't have them either.

--
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Re:ok Jobs is getting way too much credit here by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 08:37 · Score: 0

oh yea, and as a designer he just *happened* to figure out how to pull the pathetic music industry, kicking and streaming, into internet music and himself to the bank. as a designer, he figured out how to make billions out of a losing venture in animation. as a designer, he figured out how to bring apple back to super super profits after all those 'visionary' managers like sculley and whoever else nearly drove the company nose-first into mud.

as a designer, he pretty much understood how to choke adobe adn how to pick up a software from the GPL'ed world, and convert it into a hugely lucrative software for video compositing (shake).

as a designer, he also upstarted sony.

c'mon, get a life!

steve defies all categorizations.

steve is steve.

call him good, bad, ugly, wealthy, buddhist, visionary, designer, marketing-savvy, or whatever.

remember, he's a drop-out as well.

More Insight by Brainix · 2005-10-30 20:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

For more insight into Steve Jobs, click here.

Also, the following quotes are spoken by Steve Jobs' character in the movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley. Steve Wozniak has verified the movie as accurate.

Information is power.
It's better to be a pirate than to join the navy.
90 hours per week and loving it.
Real artists ship.

--
Raj Against the Machine! http://social-butterfly.appspot.com/

Re:More Insight by The+Lynxpro · 2005-10-31 06:28 · Score: 1

"Also, the following quotes are spoken by Steve Jobs' character in the movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley. Steve Wozniak has verified the movie as accurate."

Pirates is a great flick although I think it totally passed over the little tidbit about Jobs (and Woz indirectly) working for Atari prior making the Apple I. There's no exploration of the relationship between Jobs and Bushnell consequently, yet the film proceeds to spare no expense at showing MIPS and the impact that had on Gates & Co.

--
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Re:More Insight by The+Lynxpro · 2005-10-31 06:32 · Score: 1

Excuse me, MITS.

--
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by putko · 2005-10-30 21:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

Thanks very much for the explanation of their technical decisions!

It is interesting to hear that a bunch of the Mach guys thought like Unix geeks -- somehow they Mac-juju didn't stick to them permanently (if it ever did). I just assumed they'd all drunk Steve Job's Kool Aid. Now I'm old enough to figure that he probably told them, "my way or the highway," and they chose to keep their job and do it his way.

I can imagine that they wanted a cleaner approach to files (that would map to Mach better), and then a layer of "resource info" on top of it -- that way Unix-style stuff could co-exist with Mac-style stuff. But even if it started that way, there were probably good reasons to junk it and muddle things.

I'm surprised that they've still got the resource stuff in there -- in the form of "/rsrc". But I guess you can't break all the old apps that need it.

Thanks again for the info -- it is interesting to hear your take on Quicktime.

--
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html

Re:Bad Steve stories - still parks... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 21:04 · Score: 3, Interesting

i watched him park in the FIRE zone in front with his car a year back. he then walked swiftly into the building avoiding eye contact with everyone, including while inside. (no way to chat with him that way i suspect).

BTW : though he parks in the fire lane at times, and ALWAYS drives in the commuter-car-pool lane on the highway on the way to work (illegally), he personally drops off his kids at school in his car and not the maids. HE him HIMSELF really!!!!! (on the way to work).

Steve jobs is right most of the time... though arrogant I suspect.

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by HappyMeal · 2005-10-30 21:21 · Score: 1

The original point of the resource fork was to provide a system wide "poor man's database" so that any arbitrary application or data file could have arbitrary tagged data appended to it without breaking or confusing apps that originally read the file.

The irony of that? :)

Apple published a Technical Note in 1988 saying the Resource Manager was *NOT* [to be used as] a database. Or rather, Apple was asking that it not be used for more full-blown database-type stuff.

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/ov/ov_08.html

Yes, I agree with your comment about the original intention. It may have been later abused in interesting ways, to the point where Apple may have reconsidered the original intention to an extent?

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by DLWormwood · 2005-10-30 21:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

somehow they Mac-juju didn't stick to them permanently (if it ever did). I just assumed they'd all drunk Steve Job's Kool Aid.

If you read the article or read some of the other threads here, you'd see reference to the fact that Steve's "reality distortion field" quickly wears off when he stops talking.

For the record, I love the Mac platform not because of Apple, but in spite of them. When I first got exposed to HyperCard and QuickDraw/QuickTime and the OS's prior lack of command line, the OS seems like the "OS of tommorow" to me. OS X's embracing of various UNIX and Windows technologies feels to me like going back to "primative times" to me; I'm really surprised by the cultural inertia of the command line and the flat file system. It feels like that I'm dealing with things that I'd thought I'd left behind after using TRS-80's, TI-99/4a's, and VAXen in my distant past...

I'm surprised that they've still got the resource stuff in there -- in the form of "/rsrc". But I guess you can't break all the old apps that need it.

Besides the "rsrc" path extension trick, Apple introduced the "file package" concept where a directory of files is presented to the end user as a single "file" in the Finder. Such a package can store Carbon accessable resource data as flat files easily portable to Unix/Windows systems, although they still need special treatment to read the specially formatted data within. Also, when saving Mac files on non-HFS systems, the Mac OS will create "dot underscore" files next to the original data files. This behavior drives many server admins nuts, I've been told.

it is interesting to hear your take on Quicktime.

My take's unusual because I've rarely used QT for it's "intended purpose." QuickTime is a "layer," not a "player." It's a comprehensive API and set of routines for processing media (time-based, static, and even algorithmic like sprites and MIDI) related metadata and processing. Its design intention is more encompansing of functionality than Windows Media or Real. It also, sadly, a much older procedural API, so it doesn't mesh well with Cocoa development and can feel backwords when trying to use QuickTime within a modern OOP development environment. With the fading away of multimedia CDs and what not, iTunes and the iPod are the only thing keeping QT in widespread use.

That said, my perpective may be a little off from consensus; I wasn't using them when the Macs were first released (those TRS-80's remember? (-;). You might get a better insight into what made the Mac and its surrounding culture so facinating by visiting the quasi-blog site called Folklore.org; lots of Mac development information straight from the developer's keyboards.

--
Those who complain about affect & effect on /. should be disemvoweled

Jobs and the Internet by green+pizza · 2005-10-30 21:38 · Score: 4, Interesting

Jobs was not a visionary ... It is really nice that he gave an interview in 96 sayying that the internet was going to be huge, but then again by '96 every single college kid had an internet connection, and would have said the same thing. Even gates had amended his "road ahead" book to include a chapter about the internet by that time.

Steve Jobs was known to have an internet connection va T1 to his home around 1992. He used it to access machines/files/email at NeXT and later to surf the web with OmniWeb. He mentioned this in several interviews and explained how he enjoyed experimenting with the kind of bandwidth that would soon be available to average consumers. There are even a few stories of how NeXT engineers would have to log into Steve's home NeXTstation to troubleshoot for him! :)

Re:Jobs and the Internet by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 21:53 · Score: 0

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned to you, but the guy is RICH. If the average BBS user had that kind of money, there would be a whole lot of "visionaries", I guess.

No by commodoresloat · 2005-10-30 21:47 · Score: 2, Funny

He gets the machine with only one button.

What pen does he use? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 21:48 · Score: 0

Apparently he only use one type of pen which he thinks is the best. Does anyone know what kind of pen he uses?

Re:Not really, no by iMac+Were · 2005-10-30 21:53 · Score: 0

A married one wouldn't be interested in Apple.

--
You thought my name meant what? How very dare you!

Re:All hail the Jobs by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 22:16 · Score: 0

You still copied it in the first place. I am sorry

Re:Not really, no by orin · 2005-10-30 22:30 · Score: 1

MichaelSmith nailed it exactly.

Lunchtime O'Booze pops up in California by FishandChips · 2005-10-30 22:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

The Good Steve / Bad Steve gig has been around for a long time. It's hardly original and anyway is a very reductive way of looking at something as complex as a human being. If this is all legendary journo Lunchtime O'Booze, sorry Alan Deutschmann, can manage then he's not really worth spending time on, imho.

Much more interesting is the address Steve Jobs gave at Stanford earlier this year - see http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/ jobs-061505.html. There are plenty of luminaries and big-shot businessmen in the IT world but it's hard to imagine them coming up with an address like this. Being told you have terminal cancer is something we'd all pray to be spared, and the way Steve Jobs came through it suggests to me he's a very special person.

Just my 2 cents. I'm not an Apple user, either.

--
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï

Re:Lunchtime O'Booze pops up in California by tbone1 · 2005-10-31 00:59 · Score: 1

Ah, bless you! I needed a Willie Rushton-created reference today.

--

The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
Re:Lunchtime O'Booze pops up in California by gordo3000 · 2005-10-31 06:16 · Score: 1

so being told you have terminal cancer and then that evening finding out it was a misdiagnosis tells you a lot about a person? You don't even get to find out what he did with that day. let's not put him up on a pedastal for going through a 12 hour scare. it'll probably happen to you or someone you know one day.

Its nice to hear that he didn't have to suffer through telling his children that he would be dead soon. Its a horible thing to watch when a child realizes they won't ever see their parent again(mother and father). But I don't see what insight you get about the man from his going through a scare like that.

I think what we would all pray to be spared is actually having terminal cancer(the count in my family is at 4 people who I have had to watch go through it) and have to make our family watch that deterioration and care for us through it.

I would say its more enlightening to hear him say those words to realize what kind of speaker and writer he is. It says he has the rare gift of speech.

Pirates of Silicon Valley by teewurstmann · 2005-10-30 22:42 · Score: 1

The movie Pirates of Silicon Valley is pretty interesting. I know it's not 100% accurate (probably not even 70%...), but it has some interesting moments of the "Bad" and the "Good" Steve. Steve Wozniak has 33 (!) sets of Q&A about the movie and what really happened on this website. It's worth reading!

--
Get a free Video iPod!

a curious fact by Xamataca · 2005-10-30 22:49 · Score: 1

I remember using "aldus" pagemaker in windows 3.11

--
***Game Over***Insert Coin***

Two of most powerful technology brands??? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 22:52 · Score: 2, Informative

This Apple worshipping has gone a bit too far...

Here are listed most valuable brands in 2005. Apple is on 41. place. Following technology companies are before Apple in the list:

2. Microsoft
3. IBM
5. Intel
6. Nokia
13. HP
17. Cisco
20. Samsung
21. Dell
27. Oracle
28. Sony
35. Canon
38. Google

Pixar wasn't even on top100 list.

Re:Two of most powerful technology brands??? by fmaxwell · 2005-10-30 23:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

This Apple worshipping has gone a bit too far...

Here are listed most valuable brands in 2005. Apple is on 41. place. Following technology companies are before Apple in the list:

That list is largely based on profit and size. It's not a list of companies that are visionary.

Apple has consistently been a visionary company. They introduced the Apple II as a completely assembled computer when the majority of the market was for S100 bus systems assembled from a hodge-podge of boards -- for which the owner had to create his own BIOS. They introduced the GUI and mouse into mainstream computers back when Microsoft thought that MS-DOS was the right direction to go. Their products have been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Go into any store and look at a modern iPod. Compare it to the offerings from Creative Labs, Philips, Samsung, Toshiba, and the others and you'll be amazed. It's like you're looking at a product from the future when you first see the iPod. It's less than half the size of similar capacity competing models, more elegantly designed, and has an intuitive user interface.

Lest anyone label me an "Apple fanboy," I have owned exactly one Apple product in the 20+ years that I've been in the technology industry: An iPod with video. I hated the Apple II when it came out. To me, it signaled the end of computers as a hobby just for the intellectually gifted and, instead, was a pre-built toy for the unwashed masses. I hated the Macintosh. I hated the MacOS. But my personal dislike of them doesn't change the fact that they were visionary products.
Re:Two of most powerful technology brands??? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 01:39 · Score: 0

So in other words you are a fanboy - and a masturbating fanboy at that.

Please check the reality distortion field at the door - Steve Jobs, if anything, is the king of the Used-Car Salesmen. He takes other people's ideas, inventions, and products, talks them up, call them his own, and makes a buck - and the expense of everyone else. Family, friends - fuck'm all. So long as he gets his name in lights, and the gets the cash in his pocket. Indeed, he's the type of guy true geeks love to hate - he doesn't understnad the technology, doesn't care about the technology, but is able to take the very things said geeks spend their lives developing and making a fortune off it - just like the archetypical high-scool bully (i.e. "gimme that!"). And sure enough, here you are cheering him on for that behaviour.

Pathetic.
Re:Two of most powerful technology brands??? by theurge14 · 2005-10-31 03:12 · Score: 1

I hated the Apple II when it came out. To me, it signaled the end of computers as a hobby just for the intellectually gifted and, instead, was a pre-built toy for the unwashed masses. I hated the Macintosh. I hated the MacOS.

I think you hate the wrong unwashed masses OS, or perhaps you have other reasons. :P
Re:Two of most powerful technology brands??? by Overly+Critical+Guy · 2005-10-31 03:51 · Score: 2, Informative

Actually, Apple edged out Google for top recognizable brand this year (do a search, it was reported on/.). Your list is about revenues and size.

--
"Sufferin' succotash."
Re:Two of most powerful technology brands??? by fmaxwell · 2005-10-31 03:57 · Score: 1

So in other words you are a fanboy - and a masturbating fanboy at that.

Yeah. That must be it. Anyone who can recognize that the importance of Apple's products must be a "masturbating fanboy." Or do you just like to think about guys jerking off?

He takes other people's ideas, inventions, and products, talks them up, call them his own, and makes a buck - and the expense of everyone else.

Every CEO is reselling the ideas, inventions, and products of others. Bill Gates doesn't stay up at night inventing new technologies. He gets product ideas from his employees and his competitors. Do you think that he invented the graphics editor, firewall, e-mail client, web browser, or word processor? Nope. Nor did he invent the ergonomic keyboard, the optical mouse, or the joystick, but Microsoft has sold many of them, too.

What distinguishes a CEO, and what makes Jobs such a valuable commodity, is the ability to recognize a good idea and know how to refine it for the marketplace. Jobs has an uncanny ability to recognize what is important to an end-user in the mass-market. Despite huge investments by such giants as Toshiba and Samsung, it is still Apple, with the iPod, setting the gold standard for personal music players.

Pathetic.

At least you signed your post.
Re:Two of most powerful technology brands??? by fmaxwell · 2005-10-31 04:02 · Score: 1

I think you hate the wrong unwashed masses OS, or perhaps you have other reasons.

Apple gets my ire for being first. When the Macintosh was introduced, Microsoft had a command-line operating system which included a BASIC interpreter, IBM was shipping the source code to the BIOS with every IBM PC that they sold, and the PC was an open architecture. The MAC was a closed architecture system and there was not even a programming language included with the OS. It was the personal computer turned into an appliance. To me, that was a sad turn of events.
Re:Two of most powerful technology brands??? by theurge14 · 2005-10-31 10:16 · Score: 1

You make a good point in that the tinkering factor is probably what made the PC-clone so successful.

But I would also argue that the "personal computer turned into an appliance" is exactly what is making the Playstation, XBOX and TiVo machines so successful now, and to a certain extent, that idea inspiring the Windows Media Center PCs and the new iMacs with FrontRow.

I would also argue calling MS-DOS's circa 1984 BASIC interpreter as a "programming language". :D
Re:Two of most powerful technology brands??? by Fengpost · 2005-10-31 13:56 · Score: 1

A well executed vision turns into profit! Apple still has a long way to go.

--
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity....Calvin
Re:Two of most powerful technology brands??? by fmaxwell · 2005-11-01 07:30 · Score: 1

But I would also argue that the "personal computer turned into an appliance" is exactly what is making the Playstation, XBOX and TiVo machines so successful now, and to a certain extent, that idea inspiring the Windows Media Center PCs and the new iMacs with FrontRow.

But the XBOX, TiVo, etc., don't pretend to be personal computers. They are not sold as general-purpose computers any more than a microwave oven, setback thermostat, or any other embedded system is. I've got no problem with that, but the computer-for-the-unwashed-masses movement has lead to consumers with no technical knowledge making technology purchasing decisions. That's lead to substandard OSs that stress "pretty" over secure, efficient, and stable.

I would also argue calling MS-DOS's circa 1984 BASIC interpreter as a "programming language". :D

It may not have been the language of choice for developing kernels or digital signal processing software, but it was an accessible language on which the masses could successfully create software. 'Hello World!' was nothing more than "PRINT "Hello World!" Compare that to the machinations one has to go through using C++ under MacOS, Windows, or any other GUI-based OS to accomplish the same thing. And it had a growth path. Start with interpreted BASIC, move to the QuickBASIC compiler, and then migrate to Microsoft's BASIC Professional Development System.
Re:Two of most powerful technology brands??? by fmaxwell · 2005-11-01 08:06 · Score: 1

A well executed vision turns into profit! Apple still has a long way to go.

Apple just reported fiscal fourth-quarter profits of $430m, or 50 cents per share, on revenue of $3.68bn. That compares with profits of $106m, or 13 cents per share, on revenue of $2.35bn for the same period a year earlier.

But sometimes well-executed, visionary products are commercial failures anyway -- especially in a tech industry where uninformed consumers are making purchasing decisions.
Re:Two of most powerful technology brands??? by theurge14 · 2005-11-01 13:32 · Score: 1

But the XBOX, TiVo, etc., don't pretend to be personal computers. They are not sold as general-purpose computers any more than a microwave oven, setback thermostat, or any other embedded system is. I've got no problem with that, but the computer-for-the-unwashed-masses movement has lead to consumers with no technical knowledge making technology purchasing decisions. That's lead to substandard OSs that stress "pretty" over secure, efficient, and stable.

On the contrary, the XBOX, TiVo etc do exactly what they're designed to do without required user intervention. My Playstation 2 never stopped and asked me to install some missing codec when I put in a DVD, and I've never heard of an XBOX requiring someone to please insert Installation Disc 5 to use some new feature. I mean, let's face it, earlier PCs required too much "maintenance" work to perform their original function. While early Mac users were typing documents on a GUI screen in MacWrite in one of the first WYSIWYG environments, PC users were running memmaker over and over trying to free up as much of that 640k they could, and playing around with autoexec.bat and config.sys for hours tooling around with TSRs and CD-ROM ATAPI drivers.

Even today that tradition continues, with spyware removal tools and antivirus scanners.

Start with interpreted BASIC, move to the QuickBASIC compiler, and then migrate to Microsoft's BASIC Professional Development System.

I was teasing about the BASIC. I started out with BASIC on a Commodore 64. I thought I was a pro when I made my first EXE file in QuickBASIC 4.5. :)

Oh, for crying out loud.. by jcr · 2005-10-30 22:53 · Score: 1

Didn't anyone notice that Disney is getting paid for those TV shows? They've dipped a toe in the water, to see whether online distribution will work out. Why do people have to construct vast Machiavellian conspiracy fantasies to explain a simple business transaction?

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."

Re:All hail the Jobs by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 23:17 · Score: 0

> If you had a billion [or a million] dollar[s] and did nothing useful benefiting others in some way, you would just be a rich self-righteous asshole.

Gee, sounds like that useless, selfish, full-of-shit asshole Michael Moore.

Re:Not really, no by dangitman · 2005-10-30 23:23 · Score: 1

I can live without Windows games, but I absolutely need a good CAD package. I don't have thousands of dollars to shell out either, so it has to be cheap and good.

What about Vectorworks?

--
... and then they built the supercollider.

Re: again with the washing machine? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-30 23:24 · Score: 0

Interesting that you would classify him as a nerd. Is this an attempt to build up your self-importance, and somehow justify your personal hygiene choices?

"He's rich and successful. If I classify him as a nerd, then it can make being a nerd a good thing, and maybe I'll get laid..."

Seems like for years, people have been saying that Jobs is not technical, and not an engineering genius, and does NOT have the typical traits of a nerd. You're having wishful thinking if you think he's "one of us" - meaning similar to you and your ilk.

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by tciny · 2005-10-30 23:43 · Score: 4, Informative

>> With the fading away of multimedia CDs and what not, iTunes and the iPod are the only thing keeping QT in widespread use.

When looking at the movie/effects etc. industry you will find that QuickTime is by far the most popular way to encode Video. Especially because of all the different codecs supported by default (Pixlet, H264, Animation/Lossless). It's the only format I know of that supports such a wide range of ecoding methods and where you can be absolutely sure that when another person has this package installed, it WILL work.

The Apple III incident by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 00:05 · Score: 0

I always thought it was interesting how Jobs went in and fired the entire Apple III team after it's obvious failure (in the holistic sense).

Of course some people were cherry-picked out of the team before it was laid off, but the balance of the team was let go.

Fast forward 20 years: Lots of companies and otherwise respectable institutions do the same thing. Whoops, this project was a mistake; that project didn't meet expectations - let them all go and start again.

So my question: did Jobs start this trend? Or were other companies doing the same thing all along? Was Apple just another unstable startup at that time? Or was there an expectation that even a new company would be more stable?

I really doubt that by Ender+Ryan · 2005-10-31 00:55 · Score: 1

Considering that any deal Jobs works out with Disney in regards to Pixar is also, most likely, going to benefit Pixar, he would probably be acting perfectly proper. He's, probably, not bolstering one at the expense of the other, but, rather, using the fact that he controls both to work out more profitable deals for both.

On the other hand, I really despise that I just defended Steve Jobs, as I personally really do not like the man(read: I hate the fucker).

--
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden

Re:I really doubt that by pz · 2005-10-31 01:07 · Score: 1

Exactly. Just because Jobs threatens to pull Pixar's relationship with Disney does not mean he actually would. Couple the phrase, "fiendishly good negotiator," with, "reality distortion field," and you get someone who would threaten the life of your mother, and have you really seriously believe him, when, in fact, you both know in the light of day that it's completely illegal and he'd never do it.

--

Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Re:I really doubt that by Jeff+DeMaagd · 2005-10-31 01:52 · Score: 1

I really don't understand why people love or hate Steve Jobs. Most of the haters seem to act as if Jobs personally took the time to kick their puppy. On the other hand, the people that love him don't seem to understand that he has serious personality flaws, and that he's just human.
Re:I really doubt that by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 02:10 · Score: 0

"... personally took the time to kick their puppy."

LOL!
Re:I really doubt that by niktemadur · 2005-10-31 03:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

I really don't understand why people love or hate Steve Jobs.

Yeah, I asked myself the same question while scanning through the thread.

It's quite simple, I believe. Steve Jobs is a prominent public figure, and as such will be subjected during his lifetime to visceral (as opposed to rational) reactions from thousands or millions of people, in both positive and negative ways. Run down the list and you will find that this is generally the case, from Jesus of Nazareth to John Lennon, Bill Gates to Bill Clinton, Martin Luther King to Mahatma Ghandi.

Once dead, however, public figures are almost canonized in public folklore, society in general subconsciously responds with a little axiom in the back of the collective mind: "Do not speak ill of the dead". Hell, even Richard Nixon's reputation has been reevaluated since his death (he did some pretty good things: started the Environmental Protection Agency, opened the doors to China, etc).

The essence of your question, I guess, would be: What the hell are we afraid of?
Why the human mass divides and polarizes itself into separate herds through ideologies, disregarding or ridiculing the positive aspects of opposing stances or figureheads, while augmenting the flaws. Quite a stupid reflex, really, because as time passes, the edges blur, the differences dissipate, and we have all wasted an incredible amount of energy.
There are exceptions, of course, but while a few individuals may be universally hated, no individual is universally beloved.

Most of the haters seem to act as if Jobs personally took the time to kick their puppy. On the other hand, the people that love him don't seem to understand that he has serious personality flaws, and that he's just human.

Just human, like the anonymous rest of us, but we're looking at the guy through a warped magnifying glass, and never forget that many people resent his Ferrari, his Lear Jet, and most of all, the swooning hero-worship he receives from some circles.

--
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Re:I really doubt that by Thangodin · 2005-10-31 04:01 · Score: 1

It's a little more complex than that. I don't give a damn about celebrities. They're completely irrelevant. Saying that people love or hate Nixon because he's famous is a joke. They love or hate him because he often decided who lived or died. And we don't hate someone as much after they're dead because dead people no longer have the power to act.

Successful captains of industry who have star status set the tone for their entire industry. They are watched, studied carefully, and emulated. So, if you work in software, animation, or the computer hardware field, Steve Jobs has a lot to say about what your worklife is going to be like. If you're working 90 hours a week in one of these industries, he's one of the people you have to thank. And in much of the Apple lore, Jobs often turns into just another pointy haired boss. That's where the hate part comes from.

On the other hand, as a consumer of any of these products, Jobs has a tremendous influence on what is going to be available, and he's very good at putting out cool stuff. That's the love part. But people don't have strong feelings about him because he's a celebrity. They have strong feelings about him because he can have a strong effect on their lives.
Re:I really doubt that by dubl-u · 2005-10-31 06:10 · Score: 1

Most of the haters seem to act as if Jobs personally took the time to kick their puppy. On the other hand, the people that love him don't seem to understand that he has serious personality flaws, and that he's just human.

Those are two sides of the same coin. Narcissistic Personality Disorder runs rampant in Silicon Valley, and to my mind Steve Jobs is exhibit A. His "reality distortion field" is legendary, but it's more accurately called an extraordinary ability to manipulate others. While it works, they love him. Eventually, when he screws them, their betrayed love turns to hate.

Having spent some time studying cults, I think it's exactly the same dynamic, but Jobs's talents are turned in a productive direction. I guess that's a step up, but the inmates-are-running-the-asylum aspect of this makes me a little nervous.
Re:I really doubt that by vought · 2005-10-31 07:27 · Score: 1

Just human, like the anonymous rest of us, but we're looking at the guy through a warped magnifying glass, and never forget that many people resent his Ferrari, his Lear Jet, and most of all, the swooning hero-worship he receives from some circles.

Jobs drives a silver mercedes S-Class, debaged with no plate, and is piloted around in a Gulfstream IV that Apple bought for him as a bonus.

Unlinke many executives, he does not seem eager to show off his wealth. I'll agree that many Apple fan-boys (and I consider these a different class than people who simply admire his accomplishments) are way off-base in their praise of him. He can be, and regularly is, by all accounts an asshole. He's also extremely bright.

Probably the best word to describe him is one I've seen used seldom to describe him; mercurial.
Re:I really doubt that by mkiwi · 2005-10-31 14:34 · Score: 1

Just human, like the anonymous rest of us, but we're looking at the guy through a warped magnifying glass, and never forget that many people resent his Ferrari, his Lear Jet, and most of all, the swooning hero-worship he receives from some circles.
To nit-pick a little, Steve actually has a Gulfstream V, not a Lear Jet. To call it a Lear Jet would be to call his Ferarri a Hyundai.

Re: the washing machine by jschrod · 2005-10-31 00:58 · Score: 1

I cannot understand at all why that's called wierd. When we bought our last one, we needed four evenings to decide. And that was quick because we didn't need to talk about the brand -- that it would be Miele was clear from the start. The actual question was `which Miele machine'? (Our previous Miele worked for 20 years without a flaw, btw.)

They're a bit more expensive than others, but worth every Euro.

--

Joachim

People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]

Steve Job's love of Cubes by G4from128k · 2005-10-31 01:01 · Score: 2, Interesting

Pixar Image Computer -- probably where he got the idea
Next Cube
Macintosh cube
....
Profit??? -- actually not. None of these cubes did that well in the market.

I'm just waiting for an iPod cube.

--
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.

Re:Steve Job's love of Cubes by UtSupra · 2005-10-31 05:48 · Score: 1

You forgot the Mac mini, tiny cube, and, perhaps, profitable...

Re:Bad Steve stories - still parks... by aluminumcube · 2005-10-31 01:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

I grew up in Atherton California which is one of the towns in the area where Steve and Larry Ellison pal around. Apparently Steve's favorite sushi restaurant was this tiny place in Menlo Park (Toshi's... now called Koma) which I happened to go to one night for my birthday. Sure enough, parked just around the corner from the entrance were two silver Mercedes AMG S class sedans parked right smack in the fire lane and inside, Steve and Larry were having dinner.

It sort of pissed me off until I realized that, together, they oversee the employment of something like 40,000 people in the Valley. I guess a couple of perks are in order.

talk about ridiculous by uncadonna · 2005-10-31 01:10 · Score: 1

A typical puff piece, barely worth reading. But I agree with Jobs on many points, notably that most non-Apple tech products are ridiculous.

Consider the article itself. Typical vapid press, yes, but the design is so stupid! Why use two narrow columns on a web page? This triples my scrolling, and makes a dull article even more annoying. This in an article which extols the power of the iPod interface! Well, the article itself presents a user interface, and that UI the essence of the sort of ridiculous that Jobs so studiously avoids.

It would be bad enough if it were sheer laziness, but someone had to go to some extra trouble to make the experience of reading this article so annoying.

--
mt

Re:Not really, no by Domini · 2005-10-31 01:30 · Score: 1

Check these sites out:

http://www.freebyte.com/cad/cad.htm
http://www.pure-mac.com/cad.html

The package I like to use is QCad:

http://www.ribbonsoft.com/

Even though it's source is GPLed, I think there is a fee for commercial use ($28 which is pretty much free)

Give it a try...

Re: "diabolically" is harmless here by Dystopian+Rebel · 2005-10-31 01:46 · Score: 1

From a certain authoritative English dictionary, noting the first non-devil-fearing usage of this circa 1958:

"2. slang. In weakened sense: exceedingly, excessively; often of things bad, but now used as a gen. intensive. Cf. diabolical a. 3 and devilishly adv."

--
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.

Re:Bad Steve stories - still parks... by LS · 2005-10-31 01:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

Come now, these perks are not in order at the public's expense. They can walk a few feet, it would be good for their health, and it would prevent problems in case the building ACTUALLY DID catch on fire. This is besides the fact that it pisses everyone off that they believe themselves somehow superior to the rest of the public. They can get all the perks they want on Apple and Oracle private property. The city is not their property, sorry.

LS

--
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie

Interesting point in the article by ChrisF79 · 2005-10-31 01:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

I liked the quote, "Suggest something he disagrees with - such as that there might be demand for an FM tuner in the iPod - and he'll respond with the unprovable 'People don't want that.'"

It just struck me as funny because I've heard quite a few friends mention that they want an FM tuner in their iPod, and I've seen it come up in comments on the iPod here on /. Perhaps the population that wants it is relatively small compared to the larger user base, but I wouldn't think he'd just shrug it off so aloofly. Granted, Jobs knows far more about his users than I do, but it still seems unusual to me for him to make that sort of statement.

--
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance

Re:Interesting point in the article by aluminumcube · 2005-10-31 04:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

I think one of the problems that Jobs has as an innovator is recognizing how his own innovations (or the ones he managed the creation of more accurately) actually change the market. What is considered simple and easy with computers today is far different then what was considered simple and easy 20 years ago because so many people utilize a computer every day, gain experience and their perceptions change.

When the iPod and the iTunes music store came out, it made the whole Mp3 revolution slick and accessible to people. Now that we have something like 4 years of iPods under our belt, people are more comfortable with the technology and so they are beginning to demand different features such as FM receivers or wireless earphones. The market has advanced and I think fundamental innovators like Steve have a difficult time recognizing smaller scale market changes. I think we see a lot of that in the design of OS X.

I do think the Video iPod will generally be a failure and I think Steve knows it too. Notice how the video iPod isn't a "special" model? It was simply a feature added to the higher end side of the iPod lineup, thus insulating the concept from risk. If the video iPods were separate products, it would be noted when/if they began to fail on the market and it would be trackable and perceivable. As it stands, the ability to play video is just a tacked on feature added to an already successful product; it can stay that way until video begins to gain market traction at which point, products tuned more towards video (bigger screens for example) can be produced. People are putting the video player cart in front of the content availability horse.
Re:Interesting point in the article by F_Scentura · 2005-11-14 02:11 · Score: 1

While it would be *nice*, if I wanted a radio tuner, I could pick one up for 10-20$ or so and save the space that it would otherwise take up on my ipod. I've moved over to an MP3 player because I'm sick of the pathetic offerings from local/national radio. NPR is the only worthwhile thing there, but it's not worth it while jogging or riding a train.

value is in the eye of the beholder by planetfinder · 2005-10-31 01:52 · Score: 2, Funny

There is no reason to buy Apple products if you don't mind waiting 3
to 12 months for Dell and IBM to implement a poorly integrated
version of Apple's hardware innovations,
if you don't mind waiting 1 to 10 years for MS to generate a useable kludge of
Apple's software innovations, and if you don't mind loading MS service packs
that completely shut down your computer. The analogy using Lexus and Toyota
isn't appropriate because Lexus and Toyota both make high quality products.
Microsoft recently reorganized its software development effort
and it wasn't because they were proud of what they were generating.

Considering the quality of the products, the sizes of their
respective companies, their marketing budgets, and the free advertising by
the hordes of sychophants who cluelessly attribute innovation to Microsoft
I say that the crown for marketing effectiveness legitimately
belongs to Dell and Microsoft.

Re:value is in the eye of the beholder by cinnamon+colbert · 2005-10-31 02:01 · Score: 1

this is your opinion vs my opinion
the only thing that counts is data
the only relevant data, iMHO, is to take 200 users, with equal skill sets, and give half of them things to do on an apple, and half the same set on a wintel box.

You then need to record how long it takes them

When you have that data set, you , and I, are entitled to talkk about ease of use and technical superiority.
untill then, its just hesaid shesaid - and my 2cents is that apples had a brief moment whenyou could pay more and get a few fetures; so far as i can tell, with windows2000, there are NO compelling set of features that make apples superior (and i htink the hardware still costs more)

as for all this great software what software ? all they make is an OS, they cant even make an office suite, a media player, .....

I have used my wifes laptop with max os10, and on the hardware side, it is no better then a std wintel laptop - for instance, the screen sticks tot he rubbery keys... I could go on, but give me data

Re: "diabolically" is harmless here by steeviant · 2005-10-31 02:33 · Score: 1

Boy, I'm really getting the linguistic smack-down over this. I guess I'll have to concede that "diabolically" doesn't neccessarily have anything to do with "diabolical".

Re:Not really, no by d0n+quix0te · 2005-10-31 02:55 · Score: 1

A bit of research will show that TurboCAD runs native on OS X as well.

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by nine-times · 2005-10-31 02:59 · Score: 3, Informative

"Informative" indeed. I was a Windows/Unix guy for years enticed by the unixy nature of macintoshes, so I migrated. At first, I was completely put off by the idea of resource forks. Data that could magically disappear if you copied the file "the wrong way"? Wouldn't be so bad, except the "wrong way" was through FTP, SMB, HTTP, or even just through the command line. Crazy stuff.

Then I learned more about them, and largely, they aren't so ridiculous. Maybe there'd be a better technical way to accomplish the same thing, but it's essentially a way to attach meta-data, which is a good thing. How many times do you hear that database-like file systems are the future? Well, you're going to need metadata somehow, and as you mention, you can't just start throwing it in arbitrarily to the data forks of various file-types, because different formats won't all allow the metadata to be stored in the same way and in the same place.

Mostly, there isn't anything super-important in the resource fork anyhow. At least, there shouldn't be. I guess you could create an empty text file and store your text in the resource fork instead, but why would you? Mostly it's things like thumbnails, tag words, icons, and program associations. And when I say "program associations", I mean that I can set JPGs, by default, to open in Preview, but then set a particular JPG to open in Photoshop, and the instructions for the particular JPG to open in Photoshop would be held in the resource fork. So it's mostly things that are useful, but if you lose them, it's not a huge deal.

Of course there are some exceptions. Often icon or font files are store their data only in the resource fork (though that need not be the case). On the other hand, if you want to protect your resource fork on a file system or while passing through a transmission that does not support them, you can use Stuffit, Tiger's built-in zip functionality, or a disk image. Also, in the newest versions of OSX, Apple's addressed many of the problems with command-line tools dropping the resource forks.

Am you a poorly constructed script? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 03:01 · Score: 0

I checked the reality distortion field at the door and there is nothing wrong with it - you sir, are king of the car sales, prince of pastiche, and queen of the misplaced metaphor - where did I put that again? Ah yes. If Steve was a porsche, you and your favourite operating system would be a 2CV with additional luggage rack. You don't nad the technology either, and you are a gesticulating inarticulate at that. You pick up other peoples' worn ideas and hate to love them, then twist them, call them your own, and expect a cheer from the monkeys in the peanut gallery.

Astonishing.

Changing the World by Deinhard · 2005-10-31 03:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

It's interesting that Jobs says "[t]his stuff doesn't change the world" when (right or wrong) the quote "[d]o you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?" is attributed to him as part of his offer to get John Sculley to join Apple from Pepsi.

--
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.

What is OS-X? by Overly+Critical+Guy · 2005-10-31 03:04 · Score: 1

Hi, I have OS X installed on my Mac, but I noticed you make mention of something called "OS-X." Could you tell me where I could try out this alternative operating system? I've also heard of "OS/X" and other derivatives. For some reason, many Slashdotters seem to know about these strangely named products, while the rest of us use plain ol' OS X.

--
"Sufferin' succotash."

Re:What is OS-X? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 04:02 · Score: 0

That's interesting. I've never tried OS X, and would be interested to know a source for it. Since I got my Mac, I've used various versions of "Mac OS X", but never "OS X". Is "OS X" similar to "Mac OS X" but without the requirement of a Mac?
Re:What is OS-X? by Braino420 · 2005-10-31 05:01 · Score: 1

hi, im on teh internets

--
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
Re:What is OS-X? by Overly+Critical+Guy · 2005-10-31 05:43 · Score: 1

OS X is that operating system Steve Jobs has been talking about for the past five years, pronouncing it "oh ess ten." "OS-X" is some mysterious misspelling that plagues Slashdot posts, just like "OS/X."

Anything else you need me to teach you?

--
"Sufferin' succotash."
Re:What is OS-X? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 07:03 · Score: 0

Other AC just flushed your post out as a witless grammar Nazi troll, putting your anal retentive post in a headlock of clever scarcasm for the 1-2-3 count beyotch! And you follow up his reply with a dull and obvious explanation whose definition was only lost on you to begin with? Brilliant! You, sir, win this year's /. award for "self inflicted typing wound to the head"! Brilliant! I bet you're just a closet BeOS user anyways...

Re:Not really, no by Overly+Critical+Guy · 2005-10-31 03:09 · Score: 1

Uh, sure, prove it. Apple's desktop share is 4.3% and growing. I'd be surprised if Linux's desktop share was more than 1%.

--
"Sufferin' succotash."

What is OS/X? by Overly+Critical+Guy · 2005-10-31 03:12 · Score: 1

Hi, I'm a Mac user who uses OS X. However, you make mention of an alternative operating system called "OS/X." Along with "OS-X," I often see Slashdotters making mention of these other operating systems. Where did you get "OS/X" and what systems does it run on? As of right now, I'm still using plain ol' vanilla OS X.

Thanks.

--
"Sufferin' succotash."

Re:What is OS/X? by Braino420 · 2005-10-31 06:04 · Score: 1

hi, i'm on teh internets
bye.

--
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am

Mod parent up by Overly+Critical+Guy · 2005-10-31 03:22 · Score: 1

There are a lot of Steve stories that don't explain the context. Saying Steve got pissed when a note was left on his car doesn't explain that the reason Steve was parking right up front was due to political tensions between him and the Mac team, which is why he got angry. So mod parent up.

--
"Sufferin' succotash."

Re:Mod parent up by elrous0 · 2005-10-31 05:52 · Score: 1

No, the reason he was parking up front is because he was an arrogant prick who would rather take up handicapped spots than to just to drive a cheaper, non-descript car for a few months.
-Eric

--
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.

Re: the washing machine by miller701 · 2005-10-31 03:31 · Score: 1

I looked around at their site. Convection drying for the dishwasher! Very, very nice.

eternal questions by Charles+Jo · 2005-10-31 03:37 · Score: 0

> So my question: did Jobs start this trend? Or were other companies doing the same thing all along?
> Was Apple just another unstable startup at that time? Or was there an expectation that even a new
> company would be more stable? ... will BeOS ever be revived? Was there a magic bullet? Did Oswald act alone? Will CBS rebrand itself as CIS? Will the Simpson's evetually run out of days before the kids have to grow up? Will the New Justice Team in Futurama have a spinoff? What does it mean for Super King to have "all the powers of a king?" Will Slashdot become a religion? Are there only 5 of us using /. and everyone else here just AI scripts?

How do we really know anything? Life is uncertain.

--
Charles Jo

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by ShieldW0lf · 2005-10-31 03:53 · Score: 1

If you read the article or read some of the other threads here, you'd see reference to the fact that Steve's "reality distortion field" quickly wears off when he stops talking.

When a bullshit artist stops talking, there's less bullshit? Wow man, that's deep.

--
-1 Uncomfortable Truth

Re: "diabolically" is harmless here by Dystopian+Rebel · 2005-10-31 03:55 · Score: 1

Nothing personal. 'Dotters are devilishly picky.

--
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.

A sugar cube sized iPod? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 04:13 · Score: 0

I'd like to see that.

Of course, it might need to be a smidgeon bigger to contain the user interface...

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by abb3w · 2005-10-31 04:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

Their insistence on the "resource" fork always struck me as idiotic: data is data. If it is in a file, it is a bunch of bytes (or even blocks of bytes) -- no need to have separate "meta" information.

It's not much stupider than using a three-char postfixed extension to describe whether a file is a word processing document, executable application, picture, spreadsheet, or binary random data for one-time-pad encryption.

Having messed around on Mac, PC, and Linux, I felt the real weakness of the resource forks was how Apple did not have a good metaphor for translating the resource fork back and forth to filesystems like FAT not so equipped. As proof of that, OS9 and OSX use incompatible means of solving that problem. That Apple has a M$Office grade self-compatibility problem is indicative of how big a kludge the implementation was.

The current method, prefixing resource fork file names with ._ to indicate them, is progress. I still don't think Apple has everything right, however; when creating such files on a FAT/FAT32 disk, OS X really should set the "hidden" attribute as well. I regularly have to help Mac users in a panic, thinking their pen-drive stored presentation won't open on a PC... because they selected the resource fork ._Presentation.PPT file rather than the Presentation.PPT file proper. If I had been given a 0.1% raise every time I explained that this was the solution, and an 1% raise every time I had to repeat this to a Mac user who had forgotten that this was the problem, I'd be able to retire at the end of April.

--
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.

Re:Not really, no by Rrrrob · 2005-10-31 04:39 · Score: 1

Try ArchiCAD http://www.graphisoft.com/

Cut some slack here... by h2d2 · 2005-10-31 04:52 · Score: 1

People whom like Jobs are driven by ambition?

Then what about those who like Gates? Aren't they even more ambitious? I mean come on, give the guy some credit for having the biggest technology company on the planet...

Oh, and yes, Microsoft-powered PCs are less stylish and with a just-gets-the-job-done attitude. The cheapest Windows PC cost are around $300 (that's a whole computer with the Windows OS), so don't compare Apple OSX prices to Windows XP prices... Windows doesn't come out with a new version every year... the Apple OS does.

P.S. If you are willing to wake up at 3:30am, you'll probably get a better PC for around $150 (after rebate)... can't recall when the last time I saw an Apple for that cheap... or with a rebate at all.

--
Mozilla stole tabs from NetCaptor. So what? Right?

Re:Cut some slack here... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 09:08 · Score: 0

I can also get a barely running piece of shit car from the teenager down the street for $150. Personally, I'll stick with my BMW, thank you very much.
Re:Cut some slack here... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-11-01 10:16 · Score: 0

The only trouble is, it doesn't get the job done. windows creates more problems than it solves. I wouldn't call it getting the job done. Personally it is GNU/Linux all the way as far as OS is concerned, but OS X is decent. You like your windows craps? Fine, just don't bitch about the tech support, security, spams, etc. because it is me who unfairly suffers from the insecure, inadequate windows even when i go great length to avoid windows spending a lot of time and money while you save few bucks, not caring the kind of polution a windows user like you bring to the net.

Typical drivel. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 04:53 · Score: 0

"Gee, sounds like that useless, selfish, full-of-shit asshole Michael Moore."

That's right. Criticize Michael Moore because he exposes the drivel coming out of those murderers in Washington.

If he's so full of shit and the Iraqis truly adore you as freedom fighters, why don't you send your own kidz to Iraq?

Re:Typical drivel. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 07:17 · Score: 0

we have to send our kids to Iraq already since fat popcorn munching jaba the hutt slobs like moore aren't capable of reproducing. moore is probably a linux user i think...

How did he get rich? by snowwrestler · 2005-10-31 04:54 · Score: 1

Jobs is just a guy that has a decent eye for design (according to many people) who also quite fortuitously happened to be rich. As a result he runs a company that pays a lot of attention to design (which is rare in the US, for some reason). This is all very nice, but do not expect the next new thing in technology to come from him.

You're either poorly informed or willfully avoiding the facts of the story...Jobs wasn't always rich. He got rich because the company he helped start, and that he ran for years (Apple Computer), actually did usher in the next new thing in technology--the home computer.

Not to mention the whole Pixar thing...anyone remember the movie that kicked computer animation over the top? Toy Story, by Pixar--CEO Steve Jobs.

Jobs is not the second coming of Christ, but he's not some schlub either. He's one of the few people in the country whose start-up has survived for over 30 years and grown into one of the largest and most influential companies in the world in their market segment. Apple is a success story along the lines of FedEx (another startup gone huge).

Now his company is the second to successfully transition from computer to consumer electronics, with the iPod. This is what every computer maker wants to do, but only Apple and one other has done it with such success...how many people are buying Gateway or Dell TVs, stereos, or personal music players?

That's right, the second...who can guess the first? Sorry Jobs, it was Microsoft, with the X-box.

--
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Re:How did he get rich? by The+Lynxpro · 2005-10-31 06:03 · Score: 1

"That's right, the second...who can guess the first? Sorry Jobs, it was Microsoft, with the X-box."

Except for the fact that the Xbox is nowhere near the success that the iPod is. The iPod dominates the MP3 player market. The Xbox does not dominate the videogame industry. That would be the Sony Playstation2.

--
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*

By Woz's own accounts, the guy is an ass by DesScorp · 2005-10-31 05:10 · Score: 2, Informative

Woz is too charitable to Jobs, methinks. I sure woudn't have been that forgiving if I found out my business partner ripped me off so badly (woz went so far to admit this actually made him cry). From parking in handicapped spaces and fire lanes, to ripping off Woz, to his insane tirades, it's pretty clear Jobs is a selfish man, perhaps even proudly so. This isn't a guy that values other people at all.

Oh, and for all you people screaming about John Sculley ruining the company, again, Woz seems to think a bit differently. Sculley did his best to get Jobs to start making sensible decisions during the first lull in Macintosh sales. He tried to get Jobs to allow the Mac more PC compatibility. Jobs would have none of it, and was actually impeding the progress of his Mac team. That's why the board pretty much sacked him from his duties. He was making absolutely stupid decisions. Andy Hertzfeld gives a rather scathing account of the famous reality distortion field, and how the board essentially made Jobs a powerless figurehead. But it's pretty obvious he brought it on himself. And as for Sculley's contributions:

John was more concerned with the total company operation and keeping things going while Steve wanted to keep advancing on the future, company and profits or not, in his own internally conceived directions. Actually, John Sculley promoted technologies like AppleTalk and PowerTalk and QuickTime and PlainTalk and the Newton. He was very supportive of the rare technical geniuses in the company. He was not just a "marketeer" who dressed things up in colors.

So if history is any guide, letting Jobs run things without the board making him responsive to actual business pressures can be a disastrous thing in the long run. Maybe the guy has learned his lesson. He once said in the mid 90's (before his return to Apple) that if he were running the company again, he'd milk the Macintosh for all it's worth, and get busy on the next big thing. That pretty much sounds like what he's done since his return, with the Ipod now being Apple's premier product. So maybe an old dog can learn new tricks.

He's still probably an asshole, though...

--
Life is hard, and the world is cruel

Re: the washing machine by Braino420 · 2005-10-31 05:22 · Score: 1

this is weird because this man makes over 6 figures. he could buy all of the washing machines and it really wouldn't matter either way. but no, he spends nights discussing this with his family. you don't find that a little odd? he uhh makes millions and millions of dollars at work and the best he can do when he comes home is discuss a new washing machine... thats not odd? the man prob doesn't even use the damn thing. that yuppie bastard

--
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am

Re: the washing machine by jschrod · 2005-10-31 05:41 · Score: 1

Even if you can afford all washing machines in the world, you will want only one and have to select. And if you've got enough money, it's not the question any more how much it costs, but how good it is. And no money in the world will take that selection process away. (Well, one could delegate it -- but then one needs first to find someone who trusts that the decision is right.)

It seems that you don't have much money. If you think that more money means less work and less decisions, you're in for a surprise if you ever get some.

--

Joachim

People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]

Re: the washing machine by Braino420 · 2005-10-31 05:52 · Score: 1

I still don't think you're getting it. It's not a matter of how much it costs or even how it good it is. It's not a matter of anything, the man prob doesn't wash his own clothes for christs sake.

and yes, i don't have much money at all (college does that to a person). but of course having more money doesn't mean less decisions, but it does mean you don't have to care about them as much; i'm quite sure he wouldn't notice any difference in his bank account.

anyway, you managed to steer me Faaaaaar away from the point. the point is, wtf does anyone care about this mans decision on buying a waching machine(again, i don't even know why it's a big deal to him)?! now, you may think that this is a very important decision, and you want his input or something, i don't know. but i'd rather have someone other than Steve Jobs explain to me which machine to buy.

--
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am

Re:Bad Steve stories - still parks... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 05:56 · Score: 0

If he's taking the kids to school, doesn't that qualify him to use the carpool lane?

Boo-ya! Duh-motherfucker!

Re:Not really, no by Lord+Ender · 2005-10-31 06:03 · Score: 1

Engineers typically make at least twice what the average person makes, yet the average person can afford a computer without having to piece together junk from ebay. I'm thinking you aren't being honest (an engineering student wouldn't be called an "engineer" outside of a group of students) or you are a faux engineer (such as a "support engineer" aka a technician). It is also possible that you have somehow managed to royally fubar your finances, but engineers are usually too good at math to let that happen. So which is it?

--
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.

Now what makes you think it was meant that way? by SuperKendall · 2005-10-31 06:17 · Score: 1

We are you assuming I fully meant to complement?

I chose the words I did because I honestly am on the fence about using leverage in that way. In one sense it is positive as it's using multiple vectors to force an unwilling party to do something that's actually goo for them. But in another it's a little scary the leverage that Apple is starting to have over some very large media companies.

Thus, diabolically clever.

I would have to say though that in all real usage I have seen it is thought more of as a complement than not.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Two most? by RonaldReagan · 2005-10-31 06:35 · Score: 0

Apple and Pixar are the two most powerful "technology brands?" Wow! Steve Jobs will be so thrilled when he hears the news!

Nothing clever about using a club by SuperKendall · 2005-10-31 06:39 · Score: 1

But Microsoft using it's market share as leverage against South Korea is evil?

No, just diabolical - having lost any context of helping the other party. Here's the distinction:

In Microsoft's case, they are simply using their enormous corporate bulk to make people (and governments) do what they like. The quintessential 800 pound gorilla.

In Apple's case, they have no club - they are using multiple small assets from multiple companies to offer a trade for Disney. Do these good things for us and we'll do these good things for you.

In Microsoft's case what has North Korea really gained by Microsoft bludgeoning them? Not much. What does Disney gain by a deal with Pixar and Apple ITMS to distribute shows? A whole new distribution channel for TV and a set of winning animated movies for Disney at a time when the animation company cannot make their own.

I'm not denying that what Jobs is doing has one foot over on the side of evil, as it is a sort of manipulation. But do not blind yourself to the aspect of the manipulated party being healthier as a result after one transaction and not the other. Microsoft has and always will be more vamipric in nature, willing to suck a company dry with fees as long as they can. After all, there will always be more companies to draw from... Apple generally tries to think longer term and so far has used a sharp negotiating skill into deals that benefit Apple, yes, but also benefit the companies/organizations they deal with. He's dragged the record companies along so far into showing them the only path forward that leads to survival (and they may not yet take that path). In theory over the long haul propping up stupid companies is good for Apple as well when they come to realize how helpful Apple has been... and if the companies refuse to realize what is helpful and what is not (as it appears the record companies may be doing by thinking to pull out of ITMS) then Apple is really not any worse off than if they had never tried.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Re:Nothing clever about using a club by Kadin2048 · 2005-10-31 17:04 · Score: 1

In Microsoft's case what has North Korea really gained by Microsoft bludgeoning them? Not much.

I'm not trying to be pedantic, just confused: did I miss something, or did you mean South Korea?

I wasn't aware that there was a significant installed base of Windows in the DPRK.... although it would put new meaning to the term "vendor lock-in."

--
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."

Gates' good qualities by abb3w · 2005-10-31 06:43 · Score: 1

Makes me think fondly of Bill Gates. I mean sure his practices have caused a lot of grief ... but he has some good qualities ... like, for example, he is not Steve Jobs

Well, I suppose you could consider it a merit that you at least don't have to wonder whether you'll be getting the good Bill Gates or the Evil Bill Gates.... there's only the Evil Bill Gates.

More seriously, Bill is a lot more tolerant of personal criticism. Not that doesn't loathe it like any sane human, but he at least can remain polite and smiling when someone takes a jab at him and his products.

--
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.

Re: the washing machine by PhineusJWhoopee · 2005-10-31 07:04 · Score: 1

Agree - Miele is excellent, well-thought out, well-engineered. We have a Miele vacuum cleaner - cleans exceptionally well, does not send dust back into the air, and is extremely quiet and durable. ed

Well, it's 'Mac OS X', Dummy! by Space+cowboy · 2005-10-31 07:05 · Score: 1

No, I think it's you that has it wrong. WTF is "OS X". If you go to www.apple.com/macosx/ you'll see there are none, no, zero, nada, references to just "OS X". Every mention on the page is for 'Mac OS X'. Sometimes with a designation thereafter ('Tiger', on this page).

Now normally I don't give a flying fuck about grammar/naming/nomenclature/whatever on /. - the purpose of language is to communicate, and if you didn't understand that I was talking about 'Mac OS X' when I said 'OS-X', then frankly you have larger issues...

But, it's always nice to see someone hoisted on their own petard. Especially when that petard really does blow up in their face, over such a trivial, little, useless, inconsequential matter such as this. Way to go - you've just (a) shown yourself to be anally retentive to the highest degree, and (b) wrong anyway. Cool.

Simon.

--
Physicists get Hadrons!

Re:Well, it's 'Mac OS X', Dummy! by Kadin2048 · 2005-10-31 17:46 · Score: 1

I agree with your points, and just thought I'd add my thoughts.

I think Apple used -- for a fairly short period, right around the OS 9 to X transition -- the name "OS X" to refer to the new product by itself. I think there was even a logo that was just those letters. I haven't seen it in a while though. But it's been totally purged and I can't find any trace of it now. It's all "Mac OS X."

My theory is that somebody in the marketing department finally wised up to the fact that their product's name IS NOT "OS X" but the "Mac OS" and they are currently selling version 10, represented by a roman numeral X. Therefore everything on their site right now is "Mac OS X" ... this is pretty important because if the public gets the name of the product burned into their heads as "OS X" alone, then it'll be really difficult for them to ever sell a "Mac OS 12". Instead they'll have to go with "Mac OS X II" ('oh-ess-ecks-two'). Ugh.

--
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."

Ditto! by Duhavid · 2005-10-31 07:08 · Score: 1

Ditto!

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emt 377 emt 4

B I C Y C L E ! ! by johnrpenner · 2005-10-31 07:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

so what to get the man who has everything...
what to get steve jobs -- the father of the ipod...!?!?

| So then finally, what is the last piece of technology that
| he [Steve Jobs] acquired - not made by Apple - that really
| delighted him? He pauses for long seconds, looks down,
| puts his hands on his knees, looks away.
| "I ACTUALLY BOUGHT A BICYCLE RECENTLY.
| IT'S JUST ...WONDERFUL."
|
| (Steve Jobs: The Guru Behind Apple, Charles Arthur; October 29, 2005)"

Re:B I C Y C L E ! ! by johnrpenner · 2005-10-31 07:29 · Score: 1

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle
I no longer despair for the future
of the human race. (H.G. Wells)

Wake up and smell the laundry soap by tfrevor · 2005-10-31 07:35 · Score: 1

Actually, it looks like you're the one not getting it. There are three things that I pull away from the Jobs' Washing Machine story. 1) He thinks about the equipment he buys -- whether he uses it or not. The reason the original iMac sold so well was because of two driving things: aesthetics and functionality. People bought it because either it was a Mac or it was "purty". But people came back and bought subsequent versions as well. The fact that Jobs' thinks about how something works or how something looks is very important to me, since I purchase computers. And, yes. They went with the more expensive model that had better functioning and better lines. Isn't that a good analogy for people buying the Macintosh line? (An analogy is where they compare one thing to another to make it easier for people to understand. With you being in college, I figured I'd save you the trouble of looking that up.) 2) He involves his family. I don't know what kind of person Jobs' is. I've heard he can be the nicest guy around one minute, the a royal SOB the next. But -- unlike a wide number of people -- it seems that the washing machine story says he cares about his family and their opinioins. That gives him a silver star in my book. (He'd get a gold star, but I don't have any confirmation of that...) 3) His family enjoys being involved with him. It wasn't "Oh, no. Dad's gonna talk washing machines again." It seems that he said that the topic of conversation somehow always got back to that. And I dont' think that he's the one who brought it up all the time. As for why it's a big deal for a big wig like Steve Jobs to make the decision on buying his own washing machine? Well, bunky, here's the real world: 1) It helps show that he's still in touch with the "common man" -- y'know? The one he's gonna be selling these computers to? 2) He cares about the equipment in his house, how it works, how it looks, and how it lasts. 3) Money is money. Why waste it? Surely you can understand that.

jeebus no! by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 07:41 · Score: 0

The story is,acccording to The Second Coming of Steve Jobs (I think, been reading a lot off Apple books of late) that Steve parked in the hadicappped spot and Jean Paul Gasee (Of BeOS fame) remarked to Steve (actually the passage is unlear) "I didn't know that those spots were for the emotionally crippled too."

Very funny stroy no doubt. And, no doubt, Steve Jobs is a colossal prick. Einstein was not a great father, Hitler loved kids, etc. Just because someone is talented at one thing it doesn't necessarily follow that they are great in each an every aspect of their lives. Which isn't really on topic of the OP but I needed to say it.

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by BorgCopyeditor · 2005-10-31 08:08 · Score: 1

Some people have already mentioned application bundles as a kind of descendant of the resource fork (to which we might add "Frameworks" and "Components"). Let me just add one more plus. One very good thing about .app bundles is that they make installation so much easier; all the app's libraries can live in the bundle, which helps avoid .dll or dependency hell.

--
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by tim1724 · 2005-10-31 08:17 · Score: 1

It also, sadly, a much older procedural API, so it doesn't mesh well with Cocoa development and can feel backwords when trying to use QuickTime within a modern OOP development environment.

Have you looked at the new QTKit framework in QuickTime 7? It's a set of Cocoa classes for using QuickTime. It's nowhere near complete yet, but it handles a large enough portion of QuickTime that Apple now uses it for QuickTime Player. (Although a few features of QT Player are clearly still handled through that awful procedural API, as some features are not yet available through QTKit.)

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-- Tim Buchheim

Steve Job in India! Tapped into the zone? by ejp · 2005-10-31 08:38 · Score: 0

For years I have been saying (and totally ignored!) that while Steve Jobs spent his year in India he was a student of Neem Karoli Baba. Out of all the spiritual gurus in the last 100 years, MANY people (inlcuding Ram Das, Bhagavan Das, and many more!) were deeply effected by his teachings.

Did Steve Jobs by osmosis pick up something special from Neem Karoli Baba? It's just too much of a coincidence. AM I THE ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD that is even aware of this? Is the Mac really channeled by way of the space people to Steve Jobs? I told Steven Levy this once (I thought it would make a great movie), he looked like he thought I was crazy. To be continued . . .

Re:Not really, no by The_Dougster · 2005-10-31 08:57 · Score: 1

Married, wife in college, kids, house, horrific student loans. I'm usually lucky to be able to keep the bills paid and thats about it.

I wasn't aware that TurboCAD was available for OS/X now. That would definately suit me well then. Thanks for all the tips.

One of these days I might see some blue sky, but its been bad for about five years now. My student loans are what really crush my finances. They are more than my house payment is.

--
Clickety Click ...

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by DLWormwood · 2005-10-31 09:08 · Score: 1

It may have been later abused in interesting ways, to the point where Apple may have reconsidered the original intention to an extent?

Exactly. The "database" warning is one of the more infamous notes from the old Inside Macintosh manuals. The Resource Manager didn't have true DB concepts like tranactions, or a way to even assure that a resource was pulled from a specific fork in the "resource chain" until later system revs. This later point made it possible for executable code resources to become viruses that infected the old "Desktop file," before it was replaced by the "Desktop Database."

Even so, Apple adopted the "Internet Config" standard invented by Quinn and company down under; it originally used the Resource Manager on a preferences file as a database for storing information before Apple refined it into the current "Launch Services" system.

--
Those who complain about affect & effect on /. should be disemvoweled

uhhh yeah. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 09:09 · Score: 0

"Steve Jobs is the chief executive of two of the most powerful technology brands in the world: Apple and Pixar. But what motivates him?"

What motivates him? I'm sure the tens of people interested really care. Give me a break.

Re:Bad Steve stories - still parks... by Moofie · 2005-10-31 09:16 · Score: 1

I just get a happy feeling in my tummy when I imagine Larry Ellison's shiny Mercedes getting wadded up under the push-bumper of a fire truck.

*wistful sigh*

--
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!

Re:B I C Y C L E ! ! by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-31 09:25 · Score: 0

You'd be surprised at how fun a very nice road bike can be to ride.

Mac internal aesthetics by Radical+Moderate · 2005-10-31 11:34 · Score: 1

I cracked open a few original Macs way back when, and I don't remember needing any special tools. I do remember seeing several signatures (of the design team, I assume), cast on the inside of the case. I thought it was very cool, never saw that in a DOS machine! Jobs' idea to move the RAM didn't work out, but creating a culture that pays attention to the little things has made Apple what it is.

--
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.

Re:Mac internal aesthetics by jabellas · 2005-11-02 17:27 · Score: 1

You obviously never opened one as you needed a special long torx screwdriver and a case cracker.

Much more affordable than you know. by GPS+Pilot · 2005-10-31 12:32 · Score: 1

I've never been able to afford a cutting edge Apple computer

Fortunately, few people need a cutting edge Apple computer.

Four years ago, I bought a PowerMac G4 (400 MHz) on eBay for only $400. Since then I've spend $75 to upgrade to a Radeon graphics card (enabling Quartz Express) and $369 to upgrade the processor to 2.0 GHz.

I expect this 2 GHz machine to be useful for another four years or so. Total outlay for my Mac fix: about $100 per year.

--
That that is is that that that that is not is not.

Re:open letter to steve by WMD_88 · 2005-10-31 13:46 · Score: 1

Now not to sound to winey but could you explain to me what the hell posesed you to forget about Java, C, and C++?

He did? I wasn't aware. XCode supports all those languages.

and in 15-20 years when your umm might say -well ageged-, that your eathernet and wifi controllers choices will make a hillarious laugh.

Um...huh?

And learn to spell. It helps your credibility.

Re: again with the washing machine? by Farmer+Tim · 2005-10-31 18:18 · Score: 1

Wow, what a lot of pseudo-psychoanalytical claptrap for an off-hand joke ridiculing a stereotype. I'll respond in kind, though I know I shouldn't feed the trolls.

Interesting that you would classify him as a nerd. Is this an attempt to build up your self-importance...

No, unlike certain Anonymous Cowards who need to diagnose inferiority complexes in others to feel like a big man, I build up my sense of self-importance by doing voluntary work for Oxfam International and music therapy at a nearby psychiatric hospital (amateur psychiatrists don't impress me, I work side-by-side with the real thing). Posting what are obviously jokes on Slashdot is what I do to relax, being entirely inconsequential (and not in the least likely to get me laid).

...and somehow justify your personal hygiene choices?

Interesting that someone can fail to comprehend ridicule, a simple linguistic technique used in everyday communication, and yet still imagine they are capable of great psychological insight; sorry, you have to master the basics of human interaction first. Also interesting you can interpret a generalisation made for the sake of humour as a serious reflection of my personal hygene; perhaps my comment cut too close to the bone for you?

"He's rich and successful. If I classify him as a nerd, then it can make being a nerd a good thing, and maybe I'll get laid..."

Your words, not mine; not even paraphrased from what I wrote, just pulled out of thin air. Not projecting, are we?

Seems like for years, people have been saying that Jobs is not technical, and not an engineering genius...

Stamp collectors and train spotters are also considered nerds, yet are not necessarily technical or engineering geniuses. As far as I can see, the only consistency in the label "nerd" is an obsession with a particular subject not generally considered popular or fashionable.

...and does NOT have the typical traits of a nerd.

You seem to be relying on the very stereotype I was ridiculing; what startling accuracy in missing the point! However, looking at his past I would point out that Jobs is somewhat obsessed with technology and has the greatest involvement his particular set of talents allow, so it is possible he is a nerd, even without extensive technical knowledge. I don't know for sure; I've never met him, I don't know what he does in his spare time, and its way more research than I care to do for the sake of a joke.

You're having wishful thinking if you think he's "one of us" - meaning similar to you and your ilk.

I'm curious, if you aren't a nerd, why visit a site that bills itself as "news for nerds"? And considering I've spent the last 17 years earning a living as a musician and record producer, professionally speaking I'm not "one of us" either.

Frankly, the rather astounding assumptions you've made based on what I wrote (and what you imagine I implied) says a lot more about your psychology than mine; no wonder you remain anonymous.

--
Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.

It is indeed I who am confused... by SuperKendall · 2005-10-31 18:38 · Score: 1

I'm not trying to be pedantic, just confused: did I miss something, or did you mean South Korea?

I should know better, there's a bit more difference between North and South Korea than between, say, North and South Carolina!

I stand corrected.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

If you enjoyed that opinion by albanwr · 2005-11-01 03:25 · Score: 0

You should definatly read iCon, what a fascinating read - Jobs is Satan and Father Christmas all in the same bundle.

Link to my UK Macworld Expo and Conference pictures.

URL:http://blog.albanwr.com/>

--
http://www.albanwr.com

Re:Flipsides [Unix boy] by randyflood · 2005-11-01 05:01 · Score: 2, Interesting

Well, actually the resource fork was incredibly useful in the Macintosh Applications at the time. Remember that because all of the graphics, text strings, etc were in the resource fork of the application, most applications did not require an installer at all. You simply copied the application somewhere and ran it. To uninstall it, you just deleted it. That is pretty nice compared to having to have the mishmash of package managers and then other programs that install themselves without package managers and strew their files throughout your file system, made obscure changes to text files, etc.

Also, if you wanted to take an application and translate it to another language, for example, you could easily open it with a resource editor, like Resedit, and just edit the strings. You would just Put in the translated stings for the new language. Now you have a new version of your application for a new language. Likewise, you could easily replace all of the pictures, sounds, etc that an application used. All of this could be done without recompiling the application, and using a standard GUI based tool.

Whether or not the way they implemented the resource fork was the best possible way to go about it, I think storing it in the same file, in a standardized format, was a good design decision at the time for the reasons stated above. Now, as applications have become more complex, and are probably not going to be contained in a single executable anymore, and are likely going to have an installer, and an uninstaller, it would be nice to have a separate file containing all of the same information that was in the resouce fork of the application.

--
Randy.Flood@RHCE2B.COM

oh, I get it. by i41Overlord · 2005-11-01 16:20 · Score: 0, Troll

From looking at your pics, I've noticed that just about all the guys who use Macs in your pictures look, well, flaming gay.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not my scene at all. I think I'll stick with PCs.

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