Apple's Device Model Beats the PC Way

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Walt Mossberg argues in the Wall Street Journal that Apple's model for PCs and devices is beating Microsoft's. In early battles for dominance of the PC market, Microsoft's component-based platform crushed Apple's end-to-end model, he says. But in today's post-PC era, where the focus is on music players, game consoles and cellphones, the end-to-end model is the early winner. From the column: 'Even the Mac isn't as closed as its critics charge. It's still designed to work with Apple's own operating system and software. But it can handle all the common files Windows uses, can network with Windows machines, and can use all of the common Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice. The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows. Heck, the newest Macs can even run Windows itself.'"

Comments

History Repeats Itself

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA:

The jury is still out on whether the end-to-end model will prevail in the long term. Many at Microsoft, and some outside analysts as well, believe the new devices will eventually succumb to the component model, and that Apple's success with the iPod will fade, just as its early dominance of the PC market did.

I'd have to disagree with the above, based on the following observation:

I believe we're seeing an evolution of PCs and electronic devices that closely parallels the evolution of the electric motor. When electric motors were first available to the public, it was in a general-purpose, component model. You could buy an electric motor, and it would normally come with different belts or chains allowing you to attach them to a wide variety of other devices. Nowadays, electric motors are much more within the end-to-end model, in which they are made for a specific task and embedded in the end product.

Computing devices seem to be following that same general curve...becoming more specialized, embedded, and specific-to-task (one example: console games vs. gaming PCs). Given this inexorable movement away from the general-purpose to the application-specific, I'd have to guess that the end-to-end model will be excercising progressively more dominance in the market as time passes.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[BasilBrush]

The electric motor analogy to computer devices is one of the key arguments in the book "The Invisible Computer", by Donald A Norman in 1999. Coincidentally he used to work for Apple. Which probably made the book and his theory rather popular there. Perhaps it even provided the catalyst for Apple deciding to do the iPod. It's probably one of the best example of the kind of "invisible computer"/"information appliances" he described.

It was a good book, and probably worth reading again now to see how his predictions are going.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[amliebsch]

I think your analogy only works for "computers" to include any turing-complete integrated circuit. In that case, computers, just like motors, are already manufactured in a dizzying array of form factors, capabilities, and functions. Specialized computers are manufactured for practically every consumer product that uses electricity.

But a PC is intended and designed to be as general-use as possible. The very concept of software is to enable the device to perform functions that were not contemplated at the time of manufacturing. To the extent that the PC is modular, it fills that role better, because increasing the functionality beyond the design conception is cheaper and easier. Perhaps some people would be willing to give up the flexibility of a PC in favor of something like a game console: slicker, better at doing what it was intended to do, but limited to its designed functionality. But I think many people are attracted by the open-ended nature of possibilities created by a general-purpose PC.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[AKAImBatman]

That's a good comparison. To take it a bit further, generic motors are still produced as generators. However, no one connects a device directly to a motor these days. Instead, the motor's output is first converted into a universal format (electricity) before being distributed to attachable devices. This design allows any device with a standard power plug to make use of the motor. It also allows for devices to be chained via power strips.

Now compare this to a computer. External devices used to be directly chained to the bus via ISA, PCI, PCMCIA, or Serial lines. As time progressed, the market moved to a generic "in-between" bus known as USB. (Universal Serial Bus) Just like with generators today, any device that has a USB connector can be attached to nearly any large computing device. With a hub, USB devices can even be chained to allow for as many devices to be controlled as can reasonably be handled by a single device.

The parallels are simply amazing.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[be-fan]

Being happy about being able to run Windows isn't out of any thrill of running Windows. It's a pragmatic issue: now, we can run software we can't find on OS X on the Mac. Better yet, with virtualization, we can run that software in a comfortable OS X environment. The net result is that we no longer have to keep a PC around if there is some piece of software we need to run occasionally.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[Skreems]

Actually, I think looking at things that way yields somewhat different conclusions. Look at the early PC market, for example. Apple sold completely pre-fab systems. Yeah, they came in a number of flavors (different speeds, different add-in cards) but essentially you were buying one complete system. The parts used to make such systems weren't available, even to businesses; Apple was the only one who could put together an Apple PC.

In contrast, x86 machines were built from modular components. If you wanted to, you could order different components from vendors and assemble the machine yourself. More common, though, you would pay someone else to assemble the components for you. Gateway, Dell, HP, whoever you picked, they could get the same components as every other manufacturer, and put them together, then ship it to you. You got a fully functional system, but since it wasn't proprietary you could easily swap out parts, and the competition in who was providing these pieces meant lower prices and (sometimes) better performance.

Now move to the software analogy. With Windows, Microsoft builds a bunch of pieces that they assemble into an operating system. They sell it in several different styles, and you can pick which one you want; but the pieces they use to make those systems are not available to anybody else. Another company cannot just come in, buy the parts, and assemble a version of Windows to sell to you. It's a closed market.

Linux, on the other hand, is nearly identical to the x86 market. The system is composed of a bunch of pieces that fit together in standardized ways. Many different people or groups have taken a stab at building versions of these components, though. You can take kernels patched and tweaked in any of thousands of different ways, different device systems, different GUIs, etc, and assemble them into a functional system. Individuals can do this themselves, but more often they will get a full package from some company that has taken these widely available pieces and assembled them.

The situations are parallel to a striking degree. And the results are nearly the same as well. Apple makes computers in which all the parts work together. You don't have to worry about the CPU overheating and frying the motherboard. All the parts are quality controlled, and while they may not be the very best on the market, you know the system is going to Just Work (tm). Windows is the same. You can't swap out the chron manager or the system logger if you want different functionality, but you also know that one piece of the OS isn't going to eat the rest of it. With Linux, you have a huge range of choice in which components you assemble, but that comes with the added risk that some available components are much lower quality than others, and some may be incompatible with each other; exactly the same way with assembling x86 components yourself.

In the end, who won? Well, it's not a perfect parallel, but it seems that in the long run, interchangeable parts and systems with more options won out. It took companies who would hide that abstraction from the user to do it, but Linux is getting there. Fedora, Suse, Linspire, etc are all catching on more and more, and as people start to realize that "computer" is not synonymous with "Windows", they'll continue to do so.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[BasilBrush]

But a PC is intended and designed to be as general-use as possible.

But that's just what they said about the general purpose electric motor. That's the whole point of the analogy.

As an extreme example, take Word Processing and Spreadsheet use. You may think that the same general purpose computer is best adapted to both tasks. But it's not:

Word processing on a PC is compromised because the screen is the wrong shape to fit a representation of a piece of paper on. A portrait orientation would work better. Yet for spreadsheets, landscape is better.

Likewise the keyboard is not optimised for either task. Instead of anonymous but general purpose buttons market F1-F12, and relatively arbitrary control and alt key combinations, which vary from application to application, there should be buttons marked perhaps BOLD, CENTER, STYLE etc. on the word processor and ABSOLUTE/RELATIVE or SUM on the spreadsheet.

Who knows, perhaps the spreadsheet would be better with different pointing scrolling controls. Perhaps a trackball purely for scrolling.

Perhaps the word processor should have a scanner/ocr built in. Because it doesn't need anything more than a cheap embedded CPU and no fancy 3D graphics it could have extras like that and still be a fraction of the price of a general purpose PC.

BTW, don't argue with any of the specific suggestions here. They're out of my hat and for demonstration purposes only. The point is that looking at each application separately, hardware can be designed to support a specific problem far better than the general purpose machine can. Those optimal designs would certainly be different from my examples.

Re:History Repeats Itself

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

This is just going by what I've heard, but I don't think many people are talking about buying a Mac just to run Windows. People seem to be talking about buying a Mac and then either dual-booting or running Parallels Workstation.

It's not about replacing OS X, so much as it is supplementing your Mac-using experience by letting you have easy access to your old Windows stuff. And for long-time Mac users, it's about getting access to the (very few) Windows applications that don't have a Mac version or equivalent.

I am SHOCKED!

[10Ghz]

Walt Mossberg things Macs are better than PC's?!?!?! Impossible!

Re:I am SHOCKED!

[jcr]

The man has long exhibited a keen grasp of the obvious.

-jcr

post PC era?

[a_greer2005]

when did the PC die? Netcraft never mentioned that!

What?

[Luscious868]

The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows.

What? Then please explain the following:

http://television.aol.com/in2tv/
http://www.movielink.com/
http://www.vongo.com/

There are still quite a few things on the Internet you can not do with a Mac. Leopard, if it includes built in virtulization, can't get here fast enough.

Re:What?

[rritterson]

That's only a DRM issue and has nothing to do with the platform itself.

As a slashdot user, I'm disappointed you didn't go on a rabid rant about how DRM is evil and will destroy everything we've ever worked for.

Re:What?

[amliebsch]

Maybe I misunderstood your complaint

He's not complaining or whining, he's refuting a claim that "everything works the same," and proving by counterexample that the claim is false. "Why" it's false or "whose fault it is" are irrelevant.

Re:What?

[Skadet]

Ok, I'll bite.

he's refuting a claim that "everything works the same,"

Define: straw man
"a weak or sham argument set up to be easily refuted"

The actual claim was:
"The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows."

Think of it this way:
"The Yugo gives you the same access to the highway system as Porsche."

Pragmatically true. But nobody would claim that "everything works the same".

Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mossberg is no different than John Dvorac and Robert Cringely: he gets paid to make noise. At the end of the day he's a journalist and doesn't understand technology. If he can get a few extra tens of thousands hits from Mac phanboys dieing to hear that Steve Job's 1984 prophecy that Apple will liberate humanity, then ... hey .. whatever. I guess Mossberg and his readers are happy.

Re:Mossberg is "high class" infotainment.

[syphax]

I don't think that's fair. Dvorak and Cringely have a business model that's based on coming up with crazy shit.

Mossberg is a technologist for the common (business) man. He writes about technology from the perspective of a normal person (what we might call 'user').

There is nothing overly provacative over this particular theory, except that it is probably wrong. In new fields, integrated, proprietary technology usually gets the headstart because it can innovate faster (not having to worry about standards and such). But eventually, as the new field matures, innovation slows and the advantages of standardization and commoditization catch up. Here is an excellent talk by Clayton Christensen at the 2004 Open Source Business Conference. It is really an excellent talk. Christensen may not be 100% right, but he is at least mostly right, and has some great insights and stories.

Apple is kicking butt right now because they developed an awesome family of music players that while proprietary, are not overly so, decent software for managing said devices (iTunes is great at some things, sucky at others, but overall is pretty decent), and the first sane online music store (and kudos to them for their successful negotiations with the record labels). It's excellence of execution more than a winning business model. Plus, the industry's perceived need for some sort of DRM, which will let Apple sustain it's closed system for awhile.

If we ever get past the DRM BS (hah!), we'd at some point be able to buy music from store A and play it on player B. At that point, Apple will lose margin in both markets (stores and players) due to increased competition (right now they are exploiting the oft-talked about but rarely observed concept of 'synergy').

I Like Components...

[Quintios]

I like building my own PC's, being able to upgrade this part or the other, and being able to compare prices so I can minimize my expense as much as possible.

I don't know diddly about Apple. Can someone tell me how upgradable the typical Mac is? If I want to uprade the memory, cpu, hard drives, optical drives, gfx, etc., how easy is it to do this, and what's the longevity of the parts? How do prices compare between Apple and PC for these parts?

Re:I Like Components...

[DebianDog]

Memory - REAL EASY actually the same as a PC CPU - It depends lot of G4 upgrades no G5 upgrades as of yet HDD - Standard SATA DVD,HD drives - They use off the shelf models but you will be stuck with certain ones Video Cards - Ditto

Re:I Like Components...

[be-fan]

A PowerPC Mac is almost a regular PC. You can use standard memory, hard drives, optical drives, etc. The graphics cards are standard, but the BIOS in them is not. It's usually pretty trivial, though, to flash a Mac BIOS onto a regular PC card.

The new Intel Macs are regular PCs. Within the limits of the form-factor, they are just as upgradable as a PC. For example, you can pop out the CPU on an iMac and stick in whatever Core Duo chip you want. You can't upgrade the motherboards on the current set of Intel Macs, but that's mostly a result of the fact that the iMac and Macbook use laptop components, and thus the motherboards use a custom form-factor.

Re:I Like Components...

[bennomatic]

Here's a bit of my own experience: at home I use a 5-year old G4 Quicksilver. The original hard drive is long gone, replaced with 2 120 GB drives. RAM is upgraded to 1.25 GB. The video card is upgraded to whatever the fastest card I could get which was backwards compatible with 4xAGP, which is as fast as my slot goes.

Last, but not least, the original (single) 867 MHz G4 CPU has been replaced with a dual 1.6 GHz G4 setup. The CPU upgrade required a firmware change and a screwdriver (to remove the heat sink). The rest was like, pop it open and pop in the upgrade. Doing all that made it go from feeling like a five-year-old computer to feeling almost brand new. Now the slowest part of my home setup is my DSL line. I wish I could get a full 5 Mbps connection!!

All that having been said, I'm still thinking about the new MacBook Pro Core Duo systems. I feel like after waiting 5 years, I deserve to make an upgrade :-)

When you are the minority player in the market...

[gravyface]

you *have* to be interoperable with the market leader's file formats and software. Chalk this up as a "duh" and move on. Nothing to see here.

Software is the reverse

[ZachPruckowski]

In software however, I've seen a lot of the reverse: Apple's stuff working better because it uses the "bazaar" model, as opposed to MS's "cathedral". Tiger consists of at least a dozen interconnected programs, each of which is removeable and replaceable (including Dashboard, the Finder, Spotlight, Safari, the Dock, etc.) Whereas Windows is all sort of jumbled together and is less seperable or partially replaceable than OS X.

Re:Software is the reverse

[diamondsw]

Ha! Great in theory, but just [b]TRY[/b] to replace the Finder completely, the Dock, or Spotlight. Good luck. They should be easily replaceable (and this was the original vision in the Rhapsody Design documents), but they aren't in practice. It's still very much cathedral style, just like Windows (in that respect, anyway).

Re:Software is the reverse

[NutscrapeSucks]

Your post seems very off-base, so much so, I wonder if you even use a Macintosh.

From the user interface, Apple does not provide any way to remove or replace [Dashboard|Finder|Spotlight|Dock]. Yes, there's hacks to change these things, but similar things exist on Windows as well. All of this is very tightly integrated from the User's POV and not "removeable and replaceable".

On a technical level [Dashboard|Finder|Spotlight|Safari|Dock] are very integrated into system libraries and share a lot of code. Just like [IE|Explorer|Outlook|ActiveDesktop] on Windows. If there's any significant architectural difference between how IE works on Windows and how Safari works on OS X, I'd like to hear about it.

Re:Software is the reverse

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

In software however, I've seen a lot of the reverse: Apple's stuff working better because it uses the "bazaar" model, as opposed to MS's "cathedral".

Dear God Man!

If Raymond read that, he would die, bury himself & start spinning.

From wikipedia (as ESR is a nutcase & I won't link to his new book).

* The Cathedral model, in which source code is available with each software release, but code developed between releases is restricted to an exclusive group of developers. GNU Emacs and GCC are presented as examples.
* The Bazaar model, in which the code is developed over the Internet in view of the public. Raymond credits Linus Torvalds, leader of the Linux kernel project, as the inventor of this process. He also provides anecdotal accounts of his implementation of this model for the fetchmail project.

Both Apple & MS follow cathedral models - what you're thinking of is a unixy 'lots of useful little bits you can string together' vs 'big monoloithic and single use' models.

Re:Software is the reverse

[mrtrumbe]

Really? So you use Safari to browse your filesystem, huh? And you probably use Mail to make appointments, manage your contacts and manage your calendar, don't you? And you probably use iTunes to view not only your mp3's but also your videos, right?

Well, the last point not withstanding, Apple has a history of building applications for very focused tasks. You browse and open files with the Finder. You browse the internet with Safari. You send e-mail with Mail. You organize your life with iCal. You manage contacts with Address Book. Etc. Etc. They have--annoyingly, in my opinion--taken a more MS approach on certain applications, as of late. Previewing in the Finder, for instance. Or the grouping of music and movies under the "media" umbrella in iTunes. But on the whole, their applications stay in their own little sandboxes.

Microsoft tends to take the opposite approach. Outlook does contacts, calendar and mail. Explorer does...everything?

Sure, Apple makes their applications play well through system services. But interoperability is just good practice and doesn't fundamentally change the "one application per task model." Why wouldn't you want your contacts easily accessible from an e-mail composition window, for example. But that is as far as Apple takes it; if you want to manage your contacts, move on to the next app.

Similarly, putting code to accomplish common tasks in shared libraries is just common sense. For example WebKit which allows Mail and Dashboard tools to render HTML. Notice neither of these apps browse the web. Html is a file format and allowing applications to understand this format is very different than them becoming web browsers in and of themselves.

Now the ability to remove any of these applications from your system is another matter entirely. With the exception of IE, I largely agree that removing the Apple components is roughly as difficult as removing the Windows components. That is an area I personally would like Apple to change their ways. Even if they only allowed it to be done from the command line, allowing the "system level" services like the Finder to be replaced would be a nice feature of the OS.

Taft

Re:Software is the reverse

[HaveNoMouth]

...each of which is removeable and replaceable (including Dashboard, the Finder, Spotlight, Safari, the Dock, etc.)

Well...you didn't mention how easy it was to remove or replace any of them. Safari is certainly easy to avoid. But the rest are pretty heavily hardwired into OSX. Dashboard is probably the second easiest to kill, or replace with Konfabulator. The awful OSX Finder can be replaced with Pathfinder which is finally starting to work like the Finder should have all along, but it took years of work for a company to figure out how to do it, when the Finder should have included enough hooks to make it easy for lots of companies to add functionality without replacing the whole thing monolithically. The Dock can now be fairly effectively eliminated and replaced with half a dozen different methods, but again, it took years for the community to figure out how to kill that damn bastard piece of software in a clean way. Steve Jobs' biggest flaw is that he doesn't understand the difference between cool shiny stuff and productivity software. His second biggest flaw is that he thinks his way is the only correct way, and users shouldn't be allowed to get rid of his shiny babies and replace them with useful tools.

If you know how to remove and replace Spotlight and return to previous Finder file searching capability (one of the few good things about the 10.3 Finder), would you be so kind as to inform those of us who think Spotlight is the Spawn of Satan?

P.S. I know about EasyFind . It's a stopgap. It's not as good as the 10.3 find function and it doesn't bind to Cmd-F.

The article submitter...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is "Carl Bialik from WSJ" with e-mail address "wsjarticles@wsj.com"
This for an article published on the WSJ web site.
I think that about says it all.

---
This anonymous post was brought to you by the image-protected password "profuse"

Re:The article submitter...

[ObligatoryUserName]

... is "Carl Bialik from WSJ" with e-mail address "wsjarticles@wsj.com"
This for an article published on the WSJ web site.
I think that about says it all.


What exactly does it say? It says that someone working at the Wall Street Journal was one of the first people to know that article was live and knew it would be interesting to Slashdot. (If it wasn't interesting it wouldn't have gotten posted, right? If there was posting-payola involved they wouldn't have made it so obviously submitted by the newspaper, would they?)

That someone from the WSJ would submit their articles isn't surprising is it? Slashdot has been around for quite a few years now and its original mainstream claim to fame was its large audience(Slashdot effect). There might be a hint of impropriety if the submitter had hidden their identity, but as it is, what's the problem?

convert

[xao gypsie]

This is prolly just going to get modded to an oblivion, but i recently found my wife's older g3 ibook. i added some ram, got a new battery (4 hours of life!!!), and put panther on it, and even the g3 run better than my athlon xp 3000 with windows (now it just has bsd).

I am so impressed with the way os x works. it is fast, accessible (through the bsd subsystem) and i can do anything on my ibook than i can on my desktop (no i dont game). After my experiences running a mac, i will never buy another non-mac pc. even if that means that i have to wait to save more money, they last longer and run better than windows machines.

Re:convert

[minus_273]

i actually still use my blueberry G3 ibook as well. I have never had to upgrade. The new BTI optimized batteries get you almost 5 hrs actually, even when using airport (wifi). Considering it is a 7 year old computer and i've seen no need ot buy a new ibook, i think that says a lot. If you use xpostfacto you can install Tiger on it as well if you want it (yay! spotlight!).

Apple May Not Win...

[moore.dustin]

but they will certainly not lose either. Having used both Windows and Mac for a while now, I can honestly say I do not prefer one over the other for general use. When it gets down to working though, each OS can offer me different things in different areas. An example would be that when working I would like to use a Mac for design and image processing of whatever kind. At home I may want to play a game or two and I would not get a Mac for that now would I. Creating a niche for certain things could what got the company to this point as it is, but they are only just now expanding on the success the last couple years.

I am certainly happy that Apple/Macs are getting better and better and are able to compete with Microsoft/Windows. All that does for us is give us better products faster from both companies and I am certainly not going to be upset with that.

But what about the Games!?

[azcoffeehabit]

Apples end-to-end device model seems to me to only be coming out of Apple's devices. Of course when you make the device, make the computer, make the operating system, and sell the service you are gonna have a good end-to-end device model. If you don't than you have a serious problem within your company.

I don't see any third parties being given access to the Mac's core to provide alternative end-to-end device solutions. Their end-to-end model is nothing more than Plug-n-Play when it comes to third partys.

My critisizm... Where are the games?
One of the biggest reasons new PCs are purchased as well as all of the new componants for the PCs are the games. Video games can be directly attributed to the reason computers are getting pushed faster and faster in the consumer market. Up until vista, the non gaming user would never need a 128Mb DX10 graphics card. People don't need a PPU to use Excel. Heck, even laptops have been hovering at 1.7Ghz for the last 3 years!

Apple has yet to get the support of the gaming development companies. Sure there are a few games getting released now and then, usually months or years after the general PC/Console release.

Has Apple even attempted to get into this market?

Re:But what about the Games!?

[Pengo]

I have been a PC gamer for years and it has been the primary reason that a Mac usually sits to the side of my windows machine, and not in front of it. As I have gotten older and my free time is more and more sparse, I tend to enjoy less and less video games and more and more console games as I can jump on and off and enjoy.

The only game I have played on a computer in the last year is World of Warcraft, which now plays nicely on my MacBook Pro.

The rest of my entertainment from video games consists of an occasional round of Fight Night 3 on my xbox 360 or some hack'n'slash with Oblivion (again on the 360) or Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (again on the 360).

My gaming career was on the PC, never gave the consoles much credit as I could build a PC to do much better graphics and seemed to have more fun online playing games.

But , other than my occasional WoW binges, who wants to be cramped in a corner of the house huddled behind a PC when you can spend that time hanging with your kids playing fun games behind a 65" high-def TV with graphics that match what I am seeing on my PC, without any compromise of playing online with other people (via. xbox live for example).

To get to the point of my rant, that's the biggest reason my Mac is now a viable computer for me.. not the interoperability, but more the fact I don't really game on my PC any longer.

Re:But what about the Games!?

[Arandir]

One of the biggest reasons new PCs are purchased as well as all of the new componants for the PCs are the games.

Says who? Please cite some references.

The computers are components

[kfstark]

I loved customizing my computers 10-15 years ago. It was fun and the end product was a cool computer. That was the end product.

The end product now is a system of interconnected devices.

Computer, phone, stereo, television, DVR, camera, video, IPod, game system, internet. These are the components of the new system. You would buy slightly different versions of each one to customize your complete system, but you don't worry about customizing each component. You only worry how the component will work with all of your other components.

Apple wins hands down on integrating into this newer interconnected system.

--Keith

Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Skadet]

I like building my own PC's, being able to upgrade this part or the other, and being able to compare prices so I can minimize my expense as much as possible.

You end up paying one way or another. How many of us have found/been given a part (a 28.8 modem in my case, when the 14.4 was king) and spend hours getting it to work? I suppose if you don't value your time at all, your argument makes sense. But more often than not, you can either 1) buy a quality component that Just Works but costs a lot, or 2) "shop around" and "minimize expense" (at the register) and spend a few days tweaking it to work, costing you time with your wife/girlfriend/kids/dog.

My roommate, for example, bought an MB/CPU combo from Fry's along with the rest of the components necessary for a working computer. By all accounts, the thing should be cranking away, but Windows won't get through setup. For the heck of it I tried installing an old version of RH I had lying around, no luck there either. Long story short, he's wasted TONS of his own time and countless hours of mine all in the name of saving a few bucks.

By the way, the 17" Powerbook that's on my desk -- picked it up about 5 months ago. Never crashes. Installed a bluetooth KB & mouse without having to reboot(!). Running an external monitor, and it remembers that if I have my second monitor hooked up, I want the LCD's rez to be lower, but if I don't have that second monitor hooked up, I want full rez on the LCD. Point being -- the stuff just works.

I don't know diddly about Apple...

Maybe if you spent less time shopping around you'd have time to relax and read about Apple or some other tech that interests you? (BTW plenty of good resources to answer your questions above on the web).

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[toleraen]

Your example is absolutely terrible for the point you're trying to prove. You're talking about building a computer from scratch vs buying a prebuilt computer. You should be comparing buying an apple to buying a dell. And from that point of view, I know for a fact that you can buy a dell (with everything you need) for much cheaper than any mac.

And btw...your friend tried to save a few bucks by purchasing everything at Frys? Good lord! Do you buy your discount clothes at Macys too? My friend priced out his computer at frys, went home, in 15 minutes had priced it out on newegg, and saved about $350. Ordered it, came one day later, and in two hours we had a system built from the ground up, and completely operational.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Golias]

The other Macs really are difficult to upgrade. Just take a stroll into an Apple store, pick up a Mac Mini and see if you can tell how to even open the case.

What is the deal with this fear of the Mac mini?

Hard-core overclocking freaks, who think nothing of sinking an entire $1500 game PC into a bath of cooking oil as a solution to keep the processor cool at 112% of the reccommended clock speed, are suddenly terrified of using a putty knife to back a few soft plastic clips on the CASE of a $600 computer.

"Woah! d00d, I heard a rumor on Slashdot that Apple might void your warranty if you even add memory to it! Better just put it up on a pedistal and never even look directly at it, or it might a'splode! I'll call a Certified tech to get this keyboard plugged in."

All I can do is shake my head in disgust.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Golias]

At no extra cost, Apple could have made the Mini serviceable without tools. It might not be difficult, but Apple intentionally didn't make it easy.

More than half of the PCs I've owned in my life required tools to open.

I reject your claim that "Apple intentionally didn't make it easy" to open, because I own one and can tell you first hand, that it's incredibly fucking easy to open. A small child could do it.

You slide a putty knife in on one side to bend back a few of the clips, pull it open a little bit. Do the same on the other side. Then just swing it open.

It opens in less than a third of the time it takes to open a typical cheap ATX case that's screwed shut.

Why is it clipped like that? Bacause Apple's priority with the mini case design was size and air flow, not simplicity of popping it open.

But you still didn't answer my question: Why is it that otherwise "1337 hardware haX0rs" seem to be so terrified of slipping the top off from this simple and inexpensive computer???

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[Golias]

Holy crap, that's a lot of FUD you're spreading.

If you're not familar with the hardware, go to the Apple store and see for yourself what it looks like.

Or better yet, ask actual Mac owners, who have actually made upgrades to their Macs yet still enjoyed full coverage on the rest of their Macs. I'm one of them. I upgraded both the memory and the hard drive on my mini. Zero problems carting it up to a "Genius Bar" and getting supported.

Never stick a putty knife into a computer. I can't believe someone would even suggest such a thing.

The magical special tool which most Certified Apple Repair techs use to open the Mac mini is (drum roll) a bevelled putty knife. It's perfect for the job. Have you actually seen a Mac mini in person? Ever?

Upgrading your Mac yourself does void your warrenty. See for yourself on the Apple website: http://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/hardware.html

That link does not back up your claim. It just sayd that the warranty doesn't cover the shit that you, yourself, break while trying to upgrade it. That's true of pretty much any hardware warranty.

Don't believe me? Snap off the clips that secure the RAM on your Dell motherboard and call them to fix it for you.

Re:Expense is more than cash at the register.

[MayorDefacto]

Hard-core overclocking freaks, who think nothing of sinking an entire $1500 game PC into a bath of cooking oil as a solution to keep the processor cool at 112% of the reccommended clock speed, are suddenly terrified of using a putty knife to back a few soft plastic clips on the CASE of a $600 computer.

To be fair, I did wind up putting a huge scratch in the side of my Mini when my hand slipped while popping the case off to upgrade my memory. $600 computer or not, it bugs me that my sexy case was sullied by a huge gash caused because Apple's tool of choice (yes, it's in the official service manual) is a freaking putty knife.

Of course, a bit of rubbing compound took care of everything...

Macs can network; Windows boxes can't.

[mrchaotica]

The problem is not that Macs don't support Microsoft's proprietary technology; the problem is that Windows doesn't support real standards like NFS and Kerberos!

Ultimately, Apple only needs a solid minority...

[Stick_Fig]

...to come out a winner long-term. The PC market is huge, and as long as Apple keeps its niche comparable to the market share that other hardware companies have (i.e. its market share should be compared with HP and Dell, not Microsoft), then they've succeeded in the market.

Let's stop making this a Apple v. Microsoft fight, because it hasn't realistically been one for a while.

USB != "Windows" device

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is the USB standard a "Windows" standard? As far as I know, I can also plug my USB mouse and keyboard into my Playstation 2 and they work. These are not "WINDOWS" devices. These are UNIVERSAL devices. So what makes a Mac so damn special for supporting USB?!?!

Re:USB != "Windows" device

[dbialac]

They were the first to include it on their entire product line. Intel had been pushing USB for years, and only a few niche computer manufacturers like Sun incorporated USB previously. Apple brought it to the mainstream. That fact, though, is old news as pretty much everything does USB these days.

THAT MADE NO SENSE!!

[Anonymous Coward]

From above:

Even the Mac isn't as closed as its critics charge. It's still designed to work with Apple's own operating system and software. But it can handle all the common files Windows uses, can network with Windows machines, and can use all of the common Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice.

In order for the Mac stuff to be interoperable it must have the ability to be used on other systems, not vise-versa. Can any of Apple's OSX apps run on anything else besides a Mac. Can you use music you purchased from the iTunes music store on another MP3 player besides Apple branded ones? Can you play songs purchased at any of the other online stores on your iPod? How is Apple any better than Microsoft when it comes to interoperability? At least with Microsoft I can still build my own system if I wished to do so. I'd hate to see a world dominated by Apple, where that was no longer possible.

Re:macs are great

[Wizard Drongo]

I call bullshit. My pal has a MacBookPro. It's damned cool. If I had £1500 I would have one too. It runs every game you can think of for Windows very well. Doom 3 plays flawlessly at native res, with all the options. So does HL2, GTA3, Tomb Rider Legend, and a whole shitload of older games. I don't think it can currently play older DOS-based games, but that's more that XP can't do them old games, and the MacBookPro won't run anything older than Win2k. No matter whether you love or hate Mac's, or your opinion of the switch to Intel, there is no excuse for the FUD you spouted. Now, the old PowerPC macs, yeah, due to the limitations of virtualisation couldn't do 3D, but that wasn't Apple's fault. They didn't write VirtualPC. Microsoft and before them Connectix did. But the new Macs run games exceptionally well. So much so that when the MacBookPro was launched, it was (famously) the fastest windows laptop you could buy! Please get it right in future!

Missing the change...

[alexhmit01]

Here is the thing to remember...

1985, Apple's offering is about $4000, the IBM offering is ONLY $3000... A few years later, Apple's offering remains about $3500, IBM compatibles are $2000...

Now, remember we have 20+ years of inflation... That $4000 machine from Apple is like spending $10,000 in today's dollars ($8000 from inflation, another $2000 from income increases)

For a while, the price differential was huge.

Now? The "Apple is expensive" crowd is sounding increasingly absurd. The Mac Mini is like $500-$700, the Dell is $400-$600... Sure there is a price differential, but it's now small. $100-$200 difference is NOTHING compared to the $1500 ($3000-$3500 in today's dollards) difference.

A family today often has two computers, maybe more. My Apple //c was the family computer for 5 years, because even the cheap Apple was expensive.

Five years ago, the idea of a central home computer with WinTerms seemed like a possible future. Now, why bother, the workstations are basically free. We don't have modular systems, we have digital hubs...

10 years ago I went to college with a computer containing: a motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card, 3D acceleration card, ethernet card, SCSI card, sound card, 2-3 hard drives, CD-ROM, CD-Recorder, etc....

Now, I use a MacBook Pro, but it wouldn't matter if I had a PC... I'd have a machine with a keywork, mouse, monitor, and box. Upgrades? Everything is on-board, USB/Firewire peripherals add my expansion. Do I need to upgrade a video card? Why bother, when you can get an entire computer for $400-$600 why do I need replacable parts? Only on laptops where a $2k-$3k replacement cost may matter do I even think about how nice it would be for a speed up.

Computers are cheap and disposable.

Alex

And savings often comes later...

[QuasiEvil]

Hours getting a modem to work? Sheesh, but then again that's why I only did external modems. RS232 is so simple it's really damn hard for any manufacturer to screw it up. Internal modems always seemed like a kluge, except for the ones that literally had a UART connected to the bus, and then that was connected to the modem guts. Software-based modems? Don't get me started - total ugly kluge to save a few bucks. It's like anything else - if you buy a serious kluge, you're going to have trouble.

I probably build an average of a system every two months (friends, family, etc.) for other people. In the last six years, I haven't had any components that "just didn't like each other". Most of them go off without a hitch, and wind up being very easy to upgrade (future cost savings) because they all use robust, standard components, not some bizarre crap an OEM/VAR decided was a good idea. I find that most of the ways that VARs add "value" is really adding nonstandard crap that can't be fixed, supported, or upgraded later.

The savings come in when I can do selective upgrades. Upgrade my vid board because I want better framerates for a new game I just picked up? No problem. Need a dual core because of some new project? No problem - planned for that when I bought the motherboard. Want to upgrade the PS to an 80% efficient one, or an ultra-quiet one? No problem. Consider that I haven't upgraded my actual case in five years, nor my power supply in the last three, yet I've gone through several rounds of motherboards/procs. Each time I just upgrade pieces, I save over either having to a) do without or b) go buy a whole new box.

Bottom line is decide what fits your needs. If you know what you're doing, build a machine if you want. If you're willing to invest time in learning, build a machine if you want. If you have no clue and/or don't want to invest the time to learn, pay somebody else to do it for you. Ain't specialization a great economic concept?

It's not an end-to-end model.

[Inoshiro]

Capitalism is a funny system because of a few basic assumptions it needs to function well. One of those assumptions is that users will know things, like what is a better product to buy. Because of this, people who sell shoddy equipment on unreliable gear will not succeed.

Now let's apply this. I have a PowerBook that is very reliable. I also have a desktop that's very reliable (in fact, 3). However, these desktops are component-based machines; they run Linux. How is it that these component-based macchines are as reliable as my end-to-end model PowerBook? I bought components which aren't garbage. AMD CPUs, Kingston lifetime warranty RAM, Enermax power supplies, etc. It's more expensive than what most people probably buy, but I've never had a peap of trouble. I know what components to buy because I take the time to look into it, and because I only buy components that the Linux kernel supports (which, for some reason, happen to me more reliable than random Taiwanese garbage).

With Apple's model, we skip this step. Apple themselves takes the time to try and get quality components that work reliable with OS X. Since they vend the machine and the hardware, they can't hide behind the "Windows sucks" excuse the way cheaper component suppliers can. However, and this is important to note, they're still interested in shrinking costs as much as possible to maintain their fat margins, and they still like to charge a high markup. Plus, they're not immune from mistakes (note the GOBS of heatsink goo on the heatpipes of the 15" MacBook Pros). This means they don't always do as good a job as someone who knows what I do.

Really, it's just moving the burden of choosing chocolates from shit from the consumer up the chain a bit, but even then it's not perfect. If you want thinks done right, do it yourself -- learn about PC construction, or pay someone you trust (be it Apple or your friend). If you just go buy the cheapest thing you can, you're on a roller-coaster ride to the bottom in terms of quality and consistency -- that's why Wal-mart's stuff is different (they have different product badged the same to cut costs), and also why Wal-mart is not always the best place to shop.

Adam Smith's invisible hand requires you to do research!

The market has changed

[Ryan Amos]

There's a good reason for this: Home PCs are commodity equipment. Unless you are a gamer (which means you're not part of Apple's target market anyway,) you will probably buy a $500 HP or Dell. All the $500 Dells I've ever worked with don't have more than 3 32-bit PCI slots anyway. No AGP, no PCIe. Usually only 1 SATA connector and 2 EIDE connectors.

The point is, you're not going to be upgrading your economy PC from Dell or HP anyway. If something faster comes out, you just buy a new PC because they're $500. Apple is now in this price sphere though, and the Mac mini looks sexy and small compared to a $500 Dell in a mid-tower case. Home PCs are commodity hardware, and this fits Apple's business model a whole lot better. Who cares if it's expandable if you're just going to replace it anyway?

The Mac mini is Apple's $500 box, and when you compare it spec wise to a comparably priced Dell or HP, it stands up. Of course, a $500 Dell comes bundled with Google Desktop and MusicMatch Jukebox, and the Mac comes with the whole iApp suite, which is more powerful and easier to use for a home user than anything even available on Windows.

Which would you choose? The $500 Dell or the $550 Mac Mini?

Apple gave up the end-to-end model

[version5]

Wikipedia tells me that when Apple started to make a come back with the iMac, they discarded legacy Apple ports like Apple Desktop Bus, GeoPort and SCSI. That's why they can support Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice, and with AGP and PCI-E support, high performance video cards too. They also support the standard internet protocols, RSS feeds for podcasting and a POSIX kernel.

So how is this a good example of an end-to-end model?

Re:whatever...

[tbone1]

until the mac (and accessories) costs as little as the pc, and
until the mac plays ALL the games that i can play on the pc, and
I don't give one stinking fart what anyone thinks of the mac. nor will i for a second consider even getting one.

And until you are willing to pay money for quality software and hardware, you aren't in Apple's target market. While Apple has had a few quality issues, like any manufacturer in any industry, overall their quality is pretty high. The hardware lasts. My old 6500, in the course of nine years of heavy use, had a Quantum hard drive fail after five years, a bearing go in a fan after six, and the Apple monitor just died. My Performa 631-CD still has all the original equipment after 11 years and still runs fine. My wife's old original iMac still runs OS X (though it's no speed demon, I'll grant you). Yes, we have upgraded since then, but by choice, not because we had to.

And just what accessories are you talking about? All Macs come with USB and Firewire ports, and I've rarely seen something . Do you mean a clunky old PS/2 keyboard? 1997 called, they want their standards back.

If you want to play games, fine, then the Mac isn't for you. I use mine for iLife, web surfing, e-mail, development, and the weekly multiplayer Neverwinter Nights on family game night. While you might be able to build a cheap box, my time is limited because of job and family; the cost of building and maintaining my own box, and keeping Windows secure and running infection-free, would cost me too much of my time.

Re:Modularity was because things broke easy

[vertinox]

To the extent that the PC is modular, it fills that role better, because increasing the functionality beyond the design conception is cheaper and easier. Perhaps some people would be willing to give up the flexibility of a PC in favor of something like a game console: slicker, better at doing what it was intended to do, but limited to its designed functionality.

The reason PCs were so modular back in the day is because A.) They were expensive and sometimes you didn't need to buy everything and B.) Cheaper and easier to replace parts of the computer than the whole thing.

Remember the good old days when a 386 or 486 came with just the cpu, ram, HDD, and maybe a video card? And the thing still costed $3,000 for the base unit?

However, you could add on a modem, sound card, and CD-Rom for extra money? And those were even $500 per unit.

Also, computer parts didn't seem as reliable back then depending I still have an old IBM ps1 that is still kicking and has all its original parts but there were plenty of computer that come in our shop that the modem, video card, or cpu died and we just had to swap out just that part. It sucked when a part died and you could remove it and get a new one. Which is why I loathed integrated video and modems because they were the first to go. (Damn you Packard Bell! Damn you!)

These days... You can get a cd rom, modems, sound cards, basic video cards for $20 bucks brand new.

And they are generally reliable enough that you can just integrate them in the system without the problems of old... Heck, you can't hardly find a mother board these days without sound and network not built in.

If it breaks, you can literally throw out the whole thing and get a new one for a fraction of what it cost when you originally bought the thing a few years ago.

What we are seeing is not that modularization isn't as good as end to end, but the prices and quality of hard ware these days make a moot point.

Re:Can Network With Windows Machines

[Midnight Thunder]

Yea because getting Active Directory and a Mac is so easy to do... :(

This is my only complaint about macs in a PC dominated world. It's a struggle to get AD working properly. Once this is a simple point and click wizard I'll be thrilled!


Well, as other have pointed out AD is a properiety technology. On the other hand if the network admins knows what they are doing, then Macs can easily be supported. Truth is LDAP is actually supported by the AD Server, but a number of admins never bother to activate it. Similarly Exchange supports SMTP and POP, but it needs to be activated. The issue here is not so much the Macs, but the system admins making it possible.

Re:Modularity was because things broke easy

[cmacb]

"Heck, you can't hardly find a mother board these days without sound and network not built in."

I won't not fail to come back and not read this post when I don't have less time on my hands to not figure out what it doesn't say.

Or something.

It's really about adaptive

[Swift2001]

End-to-end has some great points. If you choose a limited amount of devices that you support (according to industry standards, by and large, and the exceptions are more and more Microsoft-generated), then you can ensure much more ease of use. Support of Internet standards, common file standards, all of those things are important, and have received a lot of attention in Jobsland. More work is to be done. But most important, possibly, is that, since you have a limited number of platforms to support, you can do transitions more successfully. Since OS X was released, there have now been 4 major changes, with a fifth on the way. And that includes Motorola, IBM, and now Intel processors. Meanwhile, Vista, with its necessity to support every piece of equipment that you find in PCs, will take about 7 years to produce a version of Vista with much of the innovation actually removed. Leopard will be out before Vista, I'll bet; and since BootCamp is just one of its features, I can't wait to see what they've got in mind. Working from a solid core, and developing for a narrower subset of machines, you can really ramp up the speed of changes.

Busted

[SuperKendall]

Sounds to me like he had your number on that first email, and I'm afraid your rambling was a bit too much to take on the second, I couldn't finish reading it so I rather doubt Walt did as well.

Accusing someone of corruption is a pretty easy path to take when you lack the intellect to come up with real counterarguments.

How is that closed?

[jejones]

From TFA: "Critics attack the iPod and iTunes as 'closed' and 'proprietary'...but..iTunes and the iPod work on Windows computers, not just Macs. So how is that closed?"

From The Blues Brothers: "We have both kinds o' music here—country and western!"

Re:Actual Email sent to Walt Mossberg

[Swift2001]

"Are you always in the habit of assuming that anyone with whom you happen to disagree must be crooked?"

Walt asked you a good question, which you never answered.

By the way, an extensive security update just arrived in Software Update yesterday, and I believe it clears up some of your overheated security objections. The vulnerabilities in OS X are a matter of concern, but the fact is, nobody has been bitten. So it is somewhat comic to hear someone assume that Mac worms and viruses are somehow approaching Windows. I've also heard the MS FUD about how vulnerable Linux is, and there's always scary-sounding stats behind it. Except any linux users I talk to laugh like crazy when you cite these articles.

I hope that Vista cleans up the mess on the MS side. I have a virus checker on my Mac, but so far, all it's done is identify some viruses passed along to me in e-mail from poor, benighted Windows people. I've deleted it, saving the world some troubles.

Re:Actual Email sent to Walt Mossberg

[idsofmarch]

Still waiting for a response... I doubt it will come. He appears to be in the business of answering the moronic questions and misleading his readers. While ignoring readily available facts and using his apparent fame as a coverup for not responding to valid emails.

That must be it. Of course, there's absolutely no other reason he'd stop reading or responsding to your emails; I mean since you're the only guy who writes to the Mailbag and you're not annoying or combative. I guess that's why nobody hires international news correspondents to write software or run networks. Comments like this are probably why nobody hires software engineers or network admins to write international news columns.

Your critiques are valid, but are poorly written, difficult to address and smack of simple name-calling.

Perhaps phenomenon similar to hi-fi audio industry

[mooncaine]

When I was small, there were more options for hi-fi audio components, for many years after the all-in-one systems had been on the market. But the components' appeal seemed to fade over the years, as a younger generation seemed to prefer the all-in-one sets, in spite of the fact that all-in-ones could rarely approach the audio quality, or even reliability, of the components. The cost was far less, and the all-in-ones did a passable job.

Now components are a smaller piece of the market, I think. That's how it looks from the street where I'm standing. I didn't do any research. I just see fewer hi-fi stores with fewer products to choose among now.

Apparently Mossberg thinks a similar shift will happen with personal computing. I hope that shift doesn't harm my interests. I want access to components for building general-use PCs that I can use for graphics production, games, web design or audio production ... for my home use. For the paying work, I pick the Mac, which has proven reliable for me for years now.

But when my old stereo power amp or tuner dies, I sure hope I can find a suitable, quality replacement. No all-in-ones for me. I can see similarities between the two industries in light of this article.