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Apple's Fruitful Future
Apple's 30th Anniversary is prompting retrospective looks at the company's last three decades. C|Net grounds their look back in the here and now, commenting on lawsuits and competition. ZDNet complains that Apple still isn't in the workplace. The BBC looks at the company's world-changing aspects in a more upbeat story. Nick Irelan wrote in to mention a Forbes piece entitled Apple's Biggest Duds, so you can image what what side that article comes down on. CNN puts the whole thing in perspective, with a balanced look at the company's good and bad points. Finally, if you want some rumourmongering, 192939495969798999 writes "Industry sources have leaked that tomorrow, on the 30th Anniversary of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs will announce that the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4."
Fighting it out with Dell/Lenovo/Walmart at the low end isn't the answer either. One advantage of the dual boot option is that it removes the risk in buying the Mac hardware. Worst case you can always wipe the Mac OS X clean and run it as a very well made Windows system.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
It'd be slicker if they did something like xen and allowed windows to be run as a guest OS at near full speed. That'd be more historically consistant as well.
Yep. I know a lot of people who avoid buying macs because "I don't want two desktops, and I still need to run certain apps that I don't know how well they will work on a Mac". Dual-boot will eliminate that worry.
Of course, hopefully a good Cedega-for-Mac solution will eliminate the need for dualboot altogether.
Now I'm worried.
In this confusing world, the one comforting, constant, bedrock, fundamental certainty has been that the pundits would explain how Apple is moribund, in a death spiral, and will be gone in about a year. The first time I heard that was in 1985. Not counting, of course, the people in 1984 that said the Mac was dead on arrival because it didn't have an 80-column screen and cursor keys.
Circa 1990, I worked in a Fortune 500 company which cancelled all its Mac skunkworks projects, due to Apple's imminent demise, scaled back all its Windows projects, and beefed up all its OS/2 projects, because Gartner's colorful graphs showed OS/2 would pass not only the Mac but MS-DOS and Windows in, if I recall correctly, less than two years, and would dominate the market by 1995.
Nobody is saying Apple is dead? Uh-oh, I'm worried. Maybe it's time to start short-selling Apple stock.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It's not the answer. chasing the desktop is not the answer. It's a mature market. For most, there's no reason to get a desktop instead of a notebook. I got an AMD Sempron notebook off TigerDirect for my mom for 500 bucks and it's more than adequate for what she does. She has nothing but praise for the thing.
Notebooks and more innovative portables is the way ahead. I've heard of Apple buying palm. Not a bad idea.
Microsoft looking into portables like Origami, etc. Not a bad idea - whether of not it fails. Desktops are dead for most.
Not sure what Apple's plans are, but the IPOD is midway through it's trendiness, if they're lucky. They either need a more diverse array of hardware solutions, or they need to heavily dissociate their software from their hardware and become more of a software solution company.
un burrito me trampeó.
Have you tried Q? It works on my home iBook, but is rather slower. I'd love to see how it runs on a new powerbook.
http://www.kberg.ch/q/
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I work for a credit card processing company and we're a Mac company. We develop on our dual G5s and our sales staff uses powerbooks and iBooks. We get the luxury of using OmniGraffle over visio (its cheaper too!). We did break down and buy office, but we still use iCal and Mail.app over entourage. Our server environment runs 1U IBM x306s running fedora core 4. I can definately say we've saved a significant amount by not going windows. http://www.mobileevolution.com/
if sign.nil? Sig.new
I had the serial number 71 Apple II (I wrote the little chess game that was distributed with early Apples on the demo software cassette), bought an early Mac (I wrote the ExperOPS5 commercial product on it), and I still use Macs a lot for my work (although I use Linux more).
For me, Apple products are "feel good" products. Visually they look great compared to the competition. The software always seems a little more solid (probably because of only needing to support their own hardware).
You can certainly get more bang for the buck with a PC clone running Linux, but Macs with OS X are great products. When I bought my first Mac, they were very new and one day I brought my Mac into work because I wanted my secretary to type in a big stack of notes that I had written on a business trip. I immediately got pulled into a meeting and when I got out of the meeting my non-technical secretary was done - it just took her a few minutes to figure out the Mac -- try that with a PC in 1984!
For Apple's 30th they need to release a new NEWTON based on the iPod. Give it a sizable full color high rez screen, a small HD, with a load of good features... make it PC, and Linux compatible so others can use it too. Then the Newton wouldn't be such a flop. Make it a competitor to the Orgami. I'd buy one.
MadOgre.com
I worked for a major maker of desktop publishing software for the Mac and PC. In 1997, the co-founder (and resident wacko) decided "apple was dead" and "no more macs would be purchased within the company". Two problems with this logic - one - 78% of their revenue was from Apple users - and 2 - new USB-only macs were coming down the pipeline which nullified all the hardware dongles being used. Not to mention things like new dev-hires who needed new macs to test and develop on, testing on all hardware for compliance - and yes this was a hoot.
We were sneaking in macs in the shipping dock in off hours and making little side deals with security to erase video and door logs to cover tracks to contravene the order until the idiotic ban was lifted. Of course - other reasons for this could have included cofounder wacko coming to personal loggerheads with Apple's still reigning co-founder wacko and you had entertainment that reality show producers would otherwise kill for.
But yes - some of Apple's dearest "supporters" also wrote Apple off long ago.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
"The reality is that Apple is moving towards a Windows-based offering built on Intel hardware. Users would see Windows no more than they see Unix today. NeXT on Windows instead of NeXT on Unix. All the goodness of the Mac GUI, but the ability to run Windows software, and less expensive, better performing hardware."
This particular trollish comment keeps appearing in one form or another lately. It is completely retarded. Apple doesn't need to introduce a Windows-based offering. They will have virtualization built-in to the next major release of OS X. Virtualization is a better choice for most users than dual-boot and it keeps the Apple OS in front of new users to better aquaint them with the benefits of OS X. For others there will be nicely packaged versions of the popular dual-boot "hack".
This sig kills fascists.
Apple vs. Microsoft
This is the basic chart for the past five years. Apple is the red and Microsoft is the blue. Which would you rather invest in since 2001?
I won't disagree that Microsoft is a killer stock from 1986 through 2000 but since then it has been a shoe-sticking turd.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
Eight plus years laster on March 30th, 2006, Joe Investor has $19,015.15 of Apple stock and $1,996.33 of Microsoft stock.
My conclusions are absolutely correct. If you had invested in Apple in 1997, you'd have enough money to fix your Wang.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
As it says on the bag of non-Walmart flour I buy: "The bitter taste of the others remain long after their bargain price is forgotten."