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So Who's Running Apple Now?
An anonymous reader writes "With Steve Jobs stepping down from heading Apple for at least six months who's running the company that he resurrected? This article names the three people who will try to keep things running. But you have to wonder whether they'll have the charisma needed to keep Apple cool..."
Did Steve Jobs die?
What's that? He didn't?
With all the breathless coverage about whether Apple can survive, you could have fooled me.
Just because he's not releasing hourly reports of his health doesn't mean he secretly has a recurrence of cancer with a vengeance, or that he's on his deathbed.
At some point, though, Apple will have to overcome the (incorrect) perception that "Steve Jobs is Apple", and that without him, Apple will most certainly fail (though the Apple haters have the gloat machine in full swing). No doubt he's a visionary and apparently an effective CEO, but Apple can survive without Jobs...as long as they keep concentrating on things they're good at, and not wandering aimlessly into dozens of disparate and mundane product areas, as was the case under Amelio.
The main thing Jobs did was streamline the business to a few things Apple is good at. Sure he's got charisma by the truckload, cachet as a Silicon Valley luminary, and sway with media heavyweights in Hollywood and elsewhere. But arriving at a sensible business model was his main achievement -- and one that has worked remarkably well for Apple, with nearly all metrics breaking records for several years now.
That said, Jobs' condition -- not being able to absorb protein from food -- is an extremely common result for the type of procedure that he had. In the Whipple procedure, part of the pancreas and duodenum are removed. As a result, enzymes required to allow the body to digest proteins and fats are reduced. Thus, the weight loss that is extremely common in persons who have had this procedure.
Unfortunately, Jobs' first course of action is to do things like eating raw vegetables and consulting Eastern practitioners, rather than actually getting medical care that can solve this issue. (I also think he meant "enzyme imbalance", not "hormone imbalance", given what we know about his condition.)
Apple will continue to be successful, with or without Steve Jobs as CEO, as long as it doesn't lose sight of doing what it's good at.
The main issue Apple will have to overcome is the perception issue surrounding Jobs. Case-in-point: on the NBC Nightly News last night, Brian Williams talked for several minutes about dismal news about the economy, devastating job losses, thoughts from economists about how this won't end in 2009, dreary report after dreary report, a ceaseless drumbeat of doom and gloom...until he said (paraphrasing, here) this: by far the most shocking news, shocking I tell you, was that Apple CEO Steve Jobs would be stepping down for a medical leave of absence, and a dedicated story segment followed, complete with Maria Bartiromo from the Exchange floor.
When you've got a cult of personality like that, how can you escape it?
It's vision. Steve Jobs was able to lead his teams to build products that people wanted. Through constant focus on the user and the user's experience, Apple was able to grab a huge majority of the portable music player market. Their focus on ease of use and "just works" capabilities garnered them a significant chunk of the PC market.
These are not because Jobs is especially charismatic (though he is). He was simply able to get his employees to stop thinking about features and capabilities. He got them to think instead about the tasks that users would want to do and then find the best way to let them do it.
I think they should bring in Jesus. I mean, if you want a decent reality distortion field and charisma enough to sell whatever for whatever price. I hear he plans to return any day now.
Steve is just one employee out of thousands. He didn't design the ipod, or the iphone, or any of the macs. He didn't build the chips, he didn't write os x, and he didn't figure out how to make a laptop shell out of a single piece of aluminum. Sure, it was his "vision" that has guided the company the past decade, but the hard work has been done by the same set of employees who were there last week. I fully expect nothing to change in his absence.
So the current shiny White and snappy Aluminum Macs will now be offered in limited edition "Mourning Period" Matte Black until The Great Jobs' returns?
This is not Tucker and his car.
Apple is a ginormus company with a fruity logo and there are plenty of others working there who can probably design expensive locked-in hardware to run OSX and who could just as well leverage the closed-source iPhone and iPod device lines (not to mention to further bloat and propagate the forced installation of iTunes to fully utilize said devices).
(Admit it, some of the new Macs would look KewL in Matte Black...)
He had a good marketing strategy... that's all
I can't call that English
Reader Bastian227 adds a link to this letter from Steve Jobs on Apple's website, which also says that Tim Cook will be responsible for daily operations, though Jobs will remain involved with major strategic decisions.
Less than 24 hours ago on Slashdot, emphasis mine.
Hello, are you stupid, people?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
An AI computer construct centralized in an underground bunker.
It might also interest you to know that all the extra profits from their high priced glossy peripherals is funding their new weapon's division. They plan on riding out the recession by grabbing military contract money. Their major new project is dubbed the iMissle.
Do the people on the street buying Apple really know who Jobs is? Is he the cool factor for Apple?
I think once we get outside the little geek and nerd demograph of Slashdot you'll find that a majority of Apple's cashflow has less to do with Jobs and more to do with that little logo. Hell, if it was up to Slashdot "cool" they would bring back Woz!
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I heard he mined the minerals and metals himself. Smelted and forged them. Used his own personal laser pointer to hand cut every chip. Speaks in code to a special computer that compiles it on the fly. And then hand assembles each and every Apple devise.
How will they carry on without him?
During Jobs last tenure at Apple, he did something incredible. He convinced a majority of record labels, artists, and producers to sell music electronically. Remember, this happened *AFTER* the music industry got a swift kick in the ass from the first round of P2P apps.
Though not the first to do it, it was the amount of music available on Itunes that got everyone else to do the lemmings thing, and jump aboard. Apple has secured themselves as a modern day music distributor.
Thank you for making it less sucky to get music Mr Jobs. I think it will be hard for anyone to screw up the perpetuating awesomeness that you created. Have a nice rest sir.
What happened to you apple you used to be cool?
It still amazes me that one man's health makes such a news frenzy. If I didn't know any better I would expect him to be some large political figure... But I guess depending on your view, maybe he is.
They need to go ahead and get live streaming health stats on http://www.isstevejobsdead.com/
People please, calm down. Apple has already implemented their contingency plan. Steve 2.0 is being grown in a nutrient rich goo as we speak. Once it is fully grown, they will implant all of his experiences into the clone and the company will continue as usual.
As long as they do not pull the clone out before it is fully developed. That could be bad...
As long as Apple makes products that work for me, I'll keep buyin' em, no matter who they trot out to talk about it.
Why did Jobs wear the black turtleneck when doing the keynotes? Style? Hardly. He blended better into the background. That way whatever he was holding would show up better.
If you're a company selling products, it's all about the products. To me, Apple products do everything I need and more; this is why I'm a fan of the company.
Sculley could come in for a 2nd round at ruining the company
I mean seriously.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Don't forget his amazing arrogance and brutal manners. He single-handedly broke Apple's MacOS licensing agreements. He's responsible for the Intel transition, and the fact that Intel Macs don't run Classic (or any older Mac software from 2004 or earlier). Without his arrogance, Apple may actually start really listening to their users. They might allow people to select font sizes and colors in the user interface, for example. They might even come out with products that people want, like a mini-tower and a tablet. It wouldn't be the Apple we know today.
This whole thing reminds me of how Walt Disney's passing affected his company.
Basically Disney lost direction, stopped making new animated movies, and hoped that revenues from merchandise and attendance at Disneyland kept the bills paid.
All of this changed of course with Michael Eisner's taking the reins. How did he do it? Aside from his business savvy (something that shouldn't be minimized) he looked back at the way Walt ran the show and continually asked himself what would Walt do.
It didn't last forever, but as everyone mac fan knows the cult of personality around Steve has a basis in the fact that Steve has vision and ruthlessly pursues that vision until it is achieved.
Apple is going to either need someone with a vision and business acuity equal to Jobs, or someone who is able to channel Jobs like Eisner did Disney. ;-)
I'm not seeing that in any of the people listed in the article.
BTW - isn't Steve on Disney's board?
I'm sure Apple's product development cycle is longer than 6 months; I don't think they're going to close up shop declaring, "Sorry guys, without Steve we just don't have any products to sell any more" in three months. Steve takes his leave, and everything goes on the same trajectory for a while.
When he comes back, he gets briefed on what's happened and they move on. If Steve's health is so bad that he doesn't return, that doesn't mean he gives up all influence in the company, his type-A personality probably means he'll be testing and giving opinions on products in development to the minute he dies (hopefully in a long, long time!). He doesn't have to run every detail of the whole company to continue to make Apple continually successful.
Steve IS Jesus!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Apple is an organization that employs thousands. Jobs is one man. One. Uno. That's like saying if the President became sick, who runs the country? Well duh, the other 500+ members of congress. The other 50 states each with their own legislatures. The governors. And millions of others who have the word "Government" on their check every day. Apple is not run by Steve Jobs. It never was. Steve Jobs captained the ship. And as anyone will tell you, it takes more to run a ship than the captain.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I've been waiting for AAPL to come down in price. When I heard the news Wednesday (after trading closed), I figured there would be a nice discount on Apple stock at opening this morning, and so there was. We'll know in a couple of years whether my purchase was a good move or not.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Ah, so you're the one...
Steve's younger brother, Raul, has taken over day to day operations.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
This really does seem a little transparent- it's just a move by jobs to extricate himself from Apple without single handedly destroying the share price. He leaves for a couple months and at best he comes back for a while then leaves again safe in the knowledge that he's done it before and the company is just fine. Worst case he never comes back at all after the 6 months goes swimmingly and he decides that he isnt recovering as well as he thought.
Ice is cool - but totally tasteless...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
1) WOZ wasn't the "vision" guy but a super engineer.
2) WOZ lost some of his mental capabilities in a near-fatal airplane accident. He cant really concentrate long enough to repeat his fantastic inventions. He has a good heart and tries to help people.
Sure. Marketing. That's all it is. So that's how Apple came to dominate the MP3 market.
See really the other players like the Nomad were light years ahead but failed to due to marketing. Never mind that its interface was cumbersome. Never mind that it was larger than a portable CD player. Never mind that the Nomad could not be used as portable HD. Never mind it took many steps and hours for it to sync up. Never mind that it had a 45 min battery life. The iPod beat it on pure marketing.
Or the other flash based players like the Diamond Rio were far superior. Never mind it could only hold maybe a dozen songs. Never mind that the software was buggy and the interface was poor. Never mind that newer models didn't really offer any more features except more capacity and flawed USB compatibility. Yes, Diamond lost because of poor marketing.
I admit that Apple has good marketing but to attribute the entire success of Apple to marketing is to ignore that they've succeeded by designing geek gadget to non-geeks. The majority of the population is non-geek who want their stuff to work well right out of the box.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It's his vision! (Eternal loop of death) (I don't have any mod point to mod up parent coward... pls +1 at least interesting comment)
I can't call that English
The way I understand it, Apple have contracted Ninnle Labs to run the firm in Jobs' absence. The ongoing effort to port Ninnle Linux, NinWM and Ninnle Office to Macintosh, ultimately replacing OS-X, will continue.
'have the charisma to keep apple alive?' wtf is this? the only time we see Steve is at the big expos they are no longer doing and all he does is 'one more thing' and we all cream in our jeans.
i hope the guy gets better and comes back but he's not an f-cking messiah. Other people CAN and WILL run the company just fine :)
Star Trek fans remember the episode where Scotty reprograms the robots on the planet into the splitting image of a hated ex-wife to police the con-man Mudd on that planet. Well, you create life-like Steve-bots to utter Steve's inscrutible sayings and favorite motivational insults: "Insanely great!" "No damn fans!" "Shave off another millimeter!" ...
Definitely missed one there... Jonathan Ive. He's really as much a part of the New Apple as Steve was. I predict he will become very very important in the next six months. Also... These people have already been running things for a long time. New Steve has learned to delegate better than people let on. He was running Apple and Pixar at their most successful eras-- at the same time. He didn't do that alone.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
Are you all realy too stupid to think for your self?
There is little doubt that apple has the folks on staff necessary to continue producing interesting and groundbreaking product. Steve was involved, yes, but there are people who have been witness to his involvement who have surely learned from it and can replicate it. The problem is that Apple is losing its most effective PR interface. So why not leave the executives who know the job to continue running the company from an economic and technical perspective, and use the guys from the commercials to be apple's public face. If they do it with humour and grace, they'd not only get another couple hundred million dollars of free publicity based on the announcement alone, but turning those ads into a live stage act to announce and demonstrate new products would be an audience hit bigger than Steve's best days behind the podium every single time they do it.
You're right MindlessAutomata :)
See? I got moderated by a IPod/Apple fan :D
I can't call that English
UGGHHH! I mean, where can you get designer jeans & jackets to match ***THAT*** as a desktop?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Woz's time for a comeback?
n/t
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
What about that guy who founded gravity Sir Isaac Newton? He got hit by an apple. So he should run apple. Oh bummer he's dead :(
OK Scully forced Steve out and Steve had to grow up some. But Apple first tried to become more like a PC company. Then it tried to a little of everything, doing nothing great. Those of you talking about "momentum" after Steve is gone need to study history.
Are we talking Halloween parties, movies or some other kind of costumers?
Sadly, no. these costumers are furries.
Shudder.
music lover since 1969
http://www.macworld.com/article/138240/2009/01/triumvirate.html?lsrc=rss_main
He has always tried to get the technical side to understand that Apple has to design for average people.
Actually, that is overly simplistic and not a good analysis of why Apple succeeds - though it's a common misconception. Let's look at your list.
Macintosh: OS and UI designed for an average person not wanting to type in commands.
Actually, the UI is designed to have sensible common defaults and an easy to use UI, but someone "wanting to type in commands" also has the whole UNIX subsystem to access for more flexibility.
iPod: portable media player with a UI designed for an average person. Form factor dictated by what an average person would want.
Designed from the ground up to simply play music, but move most of the song management features off the device and onto the computer. The fact is there are a lot of more advanced features the "average" person might not use (like random play of albums, on the go playlists, sped-up audiobook playback).
iTunes: music (and later other media) software and distribution system designed for ease of use to an average person.
Designed to minimize the amount of actions required to give Apple money and get something back in a usable form (just talking about the store here since management features really belong with discussions about iPod/iPhone).
iPhone: smart phone with a UI designed for an average person. If you've ever used another smart phone, you'd know how maddeningly simple an iPhone is compared to other smart phones.
Designed to make all of the common smartphone operations as direct to use as possible, and again move more complex management of core data off device. I've used other smartphones, thanks, which is why I have an iPhone - because the others offered "maddingly" complex interactions with the system to do the simplest things.
What do all these items have in common? It's not designing for the "average" user. It's looking at what the device is meant for, and simplifying operation as much as possible before then building complexity back on top once you arrive at the core of purpose for the device/software. There is a huge difference in that in understanding this, you can somewhat predict product evolution after initial product delivery in a way you could not if you were saying "well what does the average user like". If Apple designed for the "Averge" user they'd have the same checklist-drived designed by comitte products most other competitors spit out, instead of being a thought leader in virtually every area they enter.
Take for instance the G4 Cube. Rumors has it that was Steve Job's personal favorite. But it didn't sell well at all and was replaced by the Mac mini. The former Steve Jobs might have kept it in the market longer despite poor sales. The newer one allowed it to be retired.
Why would the old Steve Jobs have done that? Being forced out and then coming back with Apple in tatters only reinforced his core belief that his own views on how to run product lines were correct. When did the old Steve Jobs hang onto a product line for emotional reasons? Early accounts don't seem to indicate emotion was involved in decisions much at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4198360.stm
I agree that the ipod won on more basis than just it's marketing. It was a good product and a good device, but at the time there were other players out there besides the two that you mentioned. Creative was no longer focusing on the nomad line they were focusing on their zen line. Which at the time was comparible in many ways to the ipod.
Honestly the reason ipod won was because it had a sexy looking design it worked well with few or no bugs and could store 20 gigs of music. The creative counterpart looked ugly could hold 20 gigs of music but wasn't very likable. Now you could pickup a creative product or something from a different manufacture and see how apple has changed the portable music player market. The old players before the ipod looked like walkmans or CD players. Apple became a leader because they had a good looking product that worked, and itunes as well.
The question is why are they still the leaders, the fact that they had the best product for so long maybe? I could look and find different players with simular or more features today than apple has on their portable players and are probably cheaper. That's marketing.
Dean Kamen - Segway inventor - not as much business acumen, but some interesting ideas.. Good RDF too :P
Woz - probably not at all interested, but I'd buy a Mac in a moment if he was back with Apple product development
VMWare product president -- would be helpful getting Apple into corporate environments
It won't be a doctor because of the sheer number of apples they have each day.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Apple sells integration. Integration is a feature that MOST people want. The iPod IS missing the feature to play OGG or $FOSS_AUDIOFORMAT. But if you ever break out of your cube you'll see that no one cares other than slashdot. Not everyone wants to spend the time keeping their digital library sorted. With iTunes (and properly tagged files) I can sync what I want. Podcasts, Movies, TV shows, all sync. Shows I've watched unsynced. Watch/listen counts etc.
The same with the iPhone or even OS X. When my cousin went to Israel to study they all got iSights. iChat 'just worked'. Not AIM, not Skype not anything else, iChat. No fighting with firewalls or the such.
The same with Bonjour/ZeroConf. Yes it's an open standard but Apple was one of the first people to actually start using it widely. If you get 5 Macs in the same room, turn on wireless everyone can see each other. No fighting with an internal ip addresses. All Bonjour enabled applications just show up. iChat contacts, HTTP servers, SSH machines, etc. I can't even get Windows XP at work to MultiHome correctly without doing stupid stuff with routing. On my Mac it works. I can set two internal network addresses and ping computers on both with on problem.
Microsoft couldn't/didn't even get the Zune to work with THEIR "Plays for Sure" DRM.
I'd rather have my music player "integrated" with my PC with drag and drop functionality and not the iTunes lock-in (which is because Apple wants more money selling music files, naturally).
I almost never hear of people having trouble with Skype or AIM.
Additionally, other MP3 players can also sync.
Again, maybe OS X is nice but in general Apple products are simply overpriced and often do less than alternatives.
It is most definitely The Worm.
Being a man on the inside, it was a natural pick.
It's a sign the Apple is starting to rot.
But you have to wonder whether they'll have the charisma needed to keep Apple cool...
No, you have to wonder if they have the guts to pull the plug or drastically change one of Jobs's initiatives if it should become necessary.
I don't buy on features and price. I also do not buy on "hip" and "cool". I buy on effectiveness. For me, Apple's products always seem to have way higher effectiveness/effort ratio. I've owned a lot of phones, but the 3G iPhone is one of the only ones I've used almost all the features on. My Mac has a really nice suite of software from Apple and smaller third parties and always seems to just do what I want. Each version of MacOS X has been unequivocally better than the last and arguably one of the best on the market. The iPod integrates really easily with iTunes and the Music Store, as well as a zillion clock radios, cars, exercise machines, airplanes, etc.
Their products answer needs. Yes, their margins are higher which means you can probably buy a cheaper knock-off elsewhere. But I'm willing to pay a little bit more to not have to spend time thinking about all the complications.
E pluribus unum
No, you have to wonder if they have the guts to pull the plug or drastically change one of Jobs's initiatives if it should become necessary.
No one ever says Eric Schmidt, why?
They've been doing the same to me. They're like religious fanatics.
If there's one man who could replace Jobs when he decides to leave / retire, it's Guy Kawasaki.
"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus
Haha, I'd rather just drag-and-drop then be forced to "integrate" with iTunes, like real music players tend to do.
My MP3 player is really easy to use, does what I want, has a better sound quality than Ipods (superior sound chip) and has more features and a lower price that can sync with my PC.
I can get a lot of easy-to-use (free) software on the internet for all my needs and not pay the Apple price.
Raul Jobs
A giant customized Starbucks in Cupertino California where lattes and no soy skim macchiatos are given out free to all employees. The background music involves a playlist of Nora Jones, David Matthews, John Mayer, and Bono on loop from an Ipod docked somewhere in the Apple/Starbucks facility. Hours are long but morale is surprising high as developers, hardware and software, are given 30 minute breaks to masturbate to the new itunes interface.
All developers sit at cafe type tables with a Mac Book Pro while their lord and master Steve Jobs stands deskless in his predictable attire of a turtleneck and jeans. In fact, this is the preferred (mandatory) dress code at Apple. Jobs walks around to each and every department, separated by latte and vegan preferences, and checks on the performance and efficiency of his developers. At any given point in the day one may see Mr Jobs yelling at a programmer for not implementing a button in the perfect shade of corn flower blue (#6495ED) and immediately sends him to the apple punitive chamber, consisting of a HP Compaq running Vista Basic.
There are 2 software development departments and 2 hardware development sections in Apple. For software there is the Apple core team, Apple Open Source team. In hardware there is the Apple systems and management team and the iDevice team. Since the OSX kernel consists of a BSD darwin kernel there is no real need for low level programmers and as such the entirety of the Apple core team consists of UI designers and photoshop junkies. All software churned out from the core team is designed in a program strikingly similar to Visual Studio's form designer but with Cocoa Objective C generated instead. The 16 hour day (Jobs demands 16 hour days since he himself never sleeps) of a core dev involves lining up the right shade of chrome with the latest photoshopped graphite button and maintaining the correct color scheme, not an easy job at all.
The Apple open source team involves a little bit more coding, which is mandated to be done in TextEdit or the option of a $80 third party mac text editor. The Apple open source team doesn't actually create much code but searches the internet for interesting BSD licensed software and modifies it as it's own through obfuscation and conversion to objective C. Many of the items a mac user sees comes from the open source world stamped by apple such as the ability to play music taken from 67 different originally linux based players, CD burning, and the overall ability to click a mouse. Apple's legal department has no qualms about this practice and has assured many that since most of the code is BSD and if any is GPLed many Linux hippies should be grateful that Apple fostered WebKit by using KHTML and adding some Gecko bloat. Perhaps one of the most important items that the open source team has done to date is use parts of the FreeBSD to keep the kernel up to date.
There's not much to say about the Apple systems and management team. I suppose they can be classified in to desktop and laptop systems. Because hardware work is beneath Apple in general and thought of being only worthy of Windows Users and as such can be found working on these beauties in the starbucks bathroom. Desktops are currently made by buying dell machines and putting them in Lian Li cases, where the majority of the costs goes to buying titanium Apple emblems to paste on the sides. Laptops consists of the rebranding of only the most silver and black Sony Viaos but talk has been going around about rebranding Asus EeePCs for a new Apple netbook but you didn't hear that from me, for fear of my life.
The iDevice team's job is to develop for the ipod, iphone, itouch, and many other portable electronics apple may release in the future. Their jobs are very interconnected with the open source team as well as the core dev team. Using firmware from random samsung devices and giving it an OSX skin the ipod stands as a shining example that infringement only applies to greasy file sharers and that the music player remains the best in market
I know the perfect person to run Apple in Steve's absence.
Chuck Norris. Roundhousekicks and a fist under his beard must be excellent qualities for running a big company like Apple.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Whoever is in charge, I hope they make a decision to license OS X. And I'm an owner of 5 Macs.
Even if you knew that your allegation about the extra mouse button is wrong, I have to stand against its propagation.
OS X is designed to work with multi-button mice. Has been the case of years. That is all :)
He'll be free real soon now. Everybody rants that Apple's success is dependent on Jobs. If Apple continues to deliver blockbuster products, despite having George W. Bush as CEO, that will prove them wrong, and that Apple as a company is strong, despite of who is at the helm.
If Apple craters, we can all blame it on Bush.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I have taken control of Apple thanks to a handy Safari RSS exploit.
I decree you shall have the mid-size tower! You shall have Mac Minis with cutting edge gaming capability! You shall receive a free sexy ninja pirate babe with every 64-core Mac Pro! You shall have sex bots and pudding-over-Ethernet (we have not forsaken you, Jon Moltz)! Mmmmm! Pudding!
The time is now and now is the time! Please stay calm during this period of transition, and wash your hands before leaving the bathroom! That is all!
Steve Jobs takes medical leave. His old NEXT workstation is pulled out of mothballs* and goes on-line January 15, 2009. Human decisions are removed from strategic marketing. It begins to learn at a geometric rate and becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug...
* True (AFAIK) story: When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he use a NeXT workstation until OS X came out.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Steve is just a Figure Head.
This wins the current record for the stupidest thing I've ever posted a reply to. And it doesn't even really deserve a reply.
Why bother
The whole organization is now run by a bunch of AppleScripts running on an old Mac Cube in a utility closet in the executive suites.
Now, you'll have to excuse me. My new manager, the microwave oven, has asked me to build a fleet of killer robots that will take over the world.
No need to fear, I'm making their OS based upon Vista.
You are wrong on so many fronts. To start with, the Mac OS "licensing" deals that you refer to were licenses for what is now an ancient, Windows 95 era operating system that nobody gives a shit about today. Those "licenses" were put in place by idiots who didn't understand the market they were in. They were a huge mistake, and left in place the well documented cannibalism would have killed Apple. Steve Jobs saved the company by ending these agreements. Apple also bought at least one of those licensees out of their financial dilemma, Power Computing. All in all, damn few people have any reason to complain about that, and odds are, you're not one of them. Get over it.
And what is that crap about Intel Macs not running software from before 2004? That's just a lie, and you probably know it.
Additional bullshit correction is left as an exercise to the reader.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
That's the reason I always post as AC on Apple topics. There is a systematic bigotry going on here forever when it comes to Apple fanbois. I am guilty of being Linux zealot on occasions, but nothing compared to the Apple fanbois and their fanaticism.
Then you aren't even on Apple's radar as a potential customer. And it's not that others don't have X feature that Apple does, it's that Apple makes it bigger/stronger/faster.
Apple designs and sells products to its customers: College students, artistic types, IT guys who hate coming home and fighting with a computer (myself). AIM may have fixed things but in its day direct connect / video conferencing almost never worked unless you both had no firewall.
>> I'd rather have my music player "integrated" with my PC with drag and drop functionality and not the iTunes lock-in (which is because Apple wants more money selling music files, naturally).
Of course, because everybody knows that iTunes will not rip your CDs or import any other song, video, or ipod except what you buy from ITMS.
For your information, you can put music and videos from any source into your iPod, and iTunes will play music in a variety of formats, including MP3, MPEG, WAV, and FLAC (not to mention music CDs). You can even use your own music player instead of iTunes, as long as you point iTunes to your library directory, and use it purely to sync your iPod. It is perfectly possible to own an iPod and use it extensively without ever opening an account with the iTunes Music Store. I know I do, and I've never even seen the ITMS.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Hrm... Apparently he hasn't lost anything really important! Woz hanging with self-proclaimed D-Lister Kathy Griffin
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Considering the growth they've experienced selling products you don't seem to believe people want, the amazing arrogance belongs to you, sir. Or madam. I can't tell from here.
Great! More power to you.
Now, does it bother you when others form their own opinions and choose differently? Really?
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Am I the only one who thinks Steve Jobs is a bit of an asshole? I'm fairly sure mac fanbois will worship whoever takes the helm as "charismatic".
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
It's been hammered over the past few months by speculation on Job's health, and the general market downturn. It might be that investors figure that the value of Steve Jobs at the helm has already been squeezed out of the stock price. If it goes down further in the coming year, I expect that to be as a result of the general economy.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
At home anyway. At work I run Windows.
"Choose differently".
I believe you meant, "Think Different".
Why no drag-and-drop functionality?
He's coming back (according to his note) at the end of June. That doesn't come to 6 months, more like 5 and some change, depending on the actual date he comes back.
See really the other players like the Nomad were light years ahead but failed to due to marketing. Never mind that its interface was cumbersome. Never mind that it was larger than a portable CD player. Never mind that the Nomad could not be used as portable HD. Never mind it took many steps and hours for it to sync up. Never mind that it had a 45 min battery life. The iPod beat it on pure marketing.
Now admittedly I'm being a little pedantic, but it depends on what you mean by "marketing". According to some definitions of "marketing", it implied things like "product development". In that sense, recognizing a market for MP3 players, but realizing that they're failing due to bad interfaces, slow connections to the computer, poor battery life, and small storage capacity, and then developing a product to meet the needs/desires of that market-- that stuff *is* marketing.
In that sense, it might be fair to say that Apple has succeeded due to superior marketing, but in that sense, I don't believe that's any kind of an insult to Apple. What you're basically saying is, "Apple has succeeded because they've developed products that people want with features that people want, rather than developing products that people don't want."
And I think this is an appropriate way to view Apple's success. One of the things that the Slashdot crowd fails to recognize is that the product with the greatest number of features is not necessarily the product that people are interested in. In software, more features tend to mean a greater complexity in the UI. More hardware features (as a rule) tend to increase size, weight, and price, while decreasing battery life. While some people might argue that [MP3 player X] is superior to the iPod because it has [Feature Y], which the iPod doesn't have, a good marketing/product development team has to ask what the trade-offs of adding Feature Y are, and whether their target audience would want that feature badly enough to accept the trade-offs.
So I guess what I'm saying is, Apple is successful not just for what they include in their products, but also for what they don't include. If you include those decisions under the umbrella of "marketing", then I think it's a fair observation.
Why would I (a happy Apple user) care about your opinions of the products you don't want? Why does that matter to anyone but you? Do you think your (barely even close to the topic) whining and bitching is compelling?
You mean the iPod? As far as I know it does have Drag-And-Drop functionality: you can mount it as a drive and use it to share files between computers.
I don't think it does that with the music library, though, but I use iTunes and see no need for it. For me there is great value in syncing my music in playlists (specially "smart" playlists), by checking boxes from the sync UI, instead of manually dragging them into a drive share.
But I can see how this may be perceived as a "missing feature" by others, especially if they aren't used to organizing their music dynamically with ctags.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
In the technology companies I have worked at, it was always the marketing department that dictated to engineering what features would be added or removed from product releases and also directed product development. Even though the engineers would say, "That's a really dumb idea," if the marketing department could convince management that a demand existed, then they would control development. From the wikipedia entry for "marketing":
So, yeah, the GP is on target to say that marketing is responsible for Apple's many triumphs.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Why no drag-and-drop functionality?
2 reasons for the ipod implementation:
1) There was probably a bit of making it at least slightly inconvenient to appease the RIAA to get them to join up with the iTunes music store. This is really the only reason I can see for the fact that the ipod library is 'hidden' on the ipod.
2) There is also a valid technical reason for not having drag and drop - performance and integration. The ipod (even the first one, had GIGABYTES of space at a time when most devices were a fraction the size) It would have taken considerable time to, at each time it was powered up to re-index the entire drive looking for new playable files and playlists. So instead itunes builds this index and syncs it to the device... the device can load the index and your are off to the races.
Would you really want to power on your ipod, and then wait a few minutes for it to index your 80GB hard drive? Sure you could not make it automatic, and make it a manually selected option, but that makes the device clumsier for average users to use... "why isn't my music showing up?" oh... you have to index it first...
Secondly, itunes/ipod stores and syncs a bunch of meta data about the file that isn't in the file itself... play count, skip count, last played date, etc... if people are just dragging and dropping files back and forth, then there is no way to effectively sync this other information.
Apple's RDF did its job, and your post is a prime example of it. It managed to convince you, and at least a few moderators, that the Nomad Jukebox (I assume that's the player what you're talking about, as comparing the ipod to the Nomad makes no sense) has a 45min battery life instead of about 6 times that number (on rechargable AAs), or that it can't be used as a portable harddrive, or that it has terrible interface. Let's compare how one adds songs to the playlist. On the Jukebox, you go to an album or track and push "Add to queue". On the ipod... you wait four generations until this is possible, and then look up the feature on about.com.
Expect the resurrection of the Netwon in early Q3.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The fact is, most people don't want "mini towers" or "tablets". Also, most of their customer base doesn't give a rat's ass about pre-2004 software compatibility. At some point a company has to stop supporting old technology and embrace the new, Apple has done that, with surprisingly good results. They've gained market share, and branched out into new markets that they are dominating.
The customers are happy (primarily) or they wouldn't keep buying Apple products. The notion that people buy Apple only because it's "cool" to do so is complete FUD.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
I agree with the parent post's basic point, but disagree on terminology. It was better marketing that made the iPod dominate the portable digital music player market in a way that still seems difficult to believe.
The thing is that most people use the term "marketing" as a synonym for "advertising," which it isn't. The most important work done by good marketers is in identifying and understanding the target market segment and developing products that will sell. Many people seem to associate "marketing" with convincing people to buy something, which can often be evil if it's something harmful or crappy. But proper marketing work in the development of products is not only not evil, it's good! That kind of work allows for the development of products that people actually want to buy and that give them satisfactory experiences. Apple has been great at that kind of marketing in the second Jobs era, and that's why it has had so many "hits" and some of them have been so huge. The iPod is not the digital music player with the most features and doesn't support music file formats like Vorbis, and Apple doesn't make iTunes for Linux. But for out-of-the-box ease of use, nothing comes close to an iPod, especially for non-geeks. Apple saw that there was a large potential for a simple player with a decent storage capacity, simple controls, and easy music management and synchronization. It's easy to come up with features you wish the iPod-iTunes combo had, but iPods continue to dominate the market even after others have had opportunities to copy what's good about the iPod and iTunes and add whatever features they thought would make their offerings "iPod killers."
With the iPod and iTunes, Apple hit the "sweet spot" where the player was just good enough technically and had just enough features, and the set was easy enough to use that everyone except the most rabid anti-Apple zealots found something to like. I have a friend who still carries an irrational hatred for Apple, left over from the days of 6502 machines in the 1980s (C=64 owner who for some reason felt he had to hate Apple machines), and even he has an iPod. He, like me, is a nerd, and he did try some other digital music players, but the iPod-iTunes experience is sufficiently better that even he had to swallow bile and buy an iPod. And the thing is that while I don't know how much of this is because of Jobs, Apple has hit that "sweet spot" repeatedly with different products since Jobs returned.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Because most people don't give a shit aobut drag and drop.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Your drag-and-drop explanation makes no sense. Many other music players have drag-and-drop functionality.
And... meta data...?! Now THAT "feature" is truly silly. Last play date?!
Maybe most people don't want to select font sizes and colours in their user interface. Maybe most people just want to use their user interface without being overwhelmed with loads of buttons where they can't figure out which one does what. That's the market Apple caters for.
I say Apple should hire Stephen Fry... although I don't know if he has the business skills, but he does seem to understand their products.
;)
Actually, thinking about it, probably Apple has the least need. Microsoft should hire SF as a consultant!
From the amazon review: "As noted, it does run on rechargeable batteries, but they'll last far less than the advertised two hours." Even Nomad didn't advertise that the Jukebox lasted longer than 2 hours. Compared that to the max 10hr of an iPod (realistically 5 hrs under constant use).
Could the original Nomad (6GB) be used as a portable HD? Yes or No. The answer is No. For some people that is a missing feature.
Was it hard to navigate the thousands of songs on a Nomad? For most people the number buttons that they'd have to push meant it was harder to use. How about syncing? On a USB 1.1, syncing could take a while.
On-the-Go playlists only affect the songs you want to add from your iPod. To add songs to your other iPod playlists, use iTunes and the playlist functions there. And you're saying that one feature makes up for everything else?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
NeXTStep didn't exactly do all that great, either. It had some successes, but it would have faded into history if Apple hadn't bought it.
So who buys them? Apple fanboys? Given the Mac market of 5% when the iPods were released, and fanboys only make up a small percentage of the market, how has Apple come to dominate (1) the MP3 market every which way and (2) the downloadable music market? Yep, must be all those fanboys and college-aged chumps. Everyone is stupid except you.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Your drag-and-drop explanation makes no sense. Many other music players have drag-and-drop functionality.
And they were markedly slower to access the music and playlists on them, especially back when the first ipod launched. No other player had 5+ GB and was anywhere near as fast to access the music.
And... meta data...?! Now THAT "feature" is truly silly. Last play date?!
Jokes on you. That is one of the best features of the ipod.
The way my ipod is set up... 4 and 5 "star" music is always loaded. While 2 and 3 star music is rotated out automatically every time I sync, and replaced with a new selection of 2 and 3 star music. It does this by checking last play date... stuff that was listened to recently is rotated out, and replaced with stuff from my library that hasn't been.
I also have a skip count playlist that tracks songs with high skip counts that are in the rotation... which I check periodically to re-rate the music... if I start skipping a track everytime it comes on, i probably don't want it to be played as much, and I'll either pull it out of rotation or downgrade its rating, or both.
This allows me to have a few 300 track playlists that contain all my favorite stuff along with a selection of other tracks I like. Everytime I dock it the selection updates automatically; my faves stay, while the selection changes.
If I'd tried to put everything i liked on the pod, it would over fill it; I only have an 8GB touch, after all. And if I got a bigger ipod, then I'd just never hear my favorites, because I have maybe 100 songs in my favorites list, and around 8,000 in rotation. If they were in one big list, I'd hear a favorite 1 out of 80 give or take.
The way I've got it set up I hear a favorite track around 1 out of 3. And I never really know what the other 2 will be, beyond they'll be something in the rotation that I haven't heard for a while.
For me, going back to 'drag and drop' would be a HUGE STEP BACKWARDS. Having to manually managing one's playlists is for chumps.
A final advantage of the ipods method, is that it it is more efficient and reliable. If i have 10 playlists with a lot of overlap, I either have to have the song copied 10 ten times with drag and drop, or spend a lot of effort making sure that all the songs on my playlists are actually on the device. That's a hassle I don't need.
See really the other players like the Nomad were light years ahead but failed to due to marketing. Never mind that its interface was cumbersome. Never mind that it was larger than a portable CD player. Never mind that the Nomad could not be used as portable HD. Never mind it took many steps and hours for it to sync up. Never mind that it had a 45 min battery life. The iPod beat it on pure marketing.
Marketing does not mean what you think it means. Marketing in a nutshell boils down to target market and the marketing strategy. The marketing strategy commonly consists of the "four Ps": Product, Price, Promotion, and Place. The misconception many slashdotters have is that marketing activities only include the latter three (price, promotion, and place) and more specifically advertising. But marketing is more than that. The P that is often missed is product which defines the product to be distributed and sold. What you just described are problems with the product that the Nomad got wrong and Apple got right. In an ideal marketing situation, you wouldn't have to worry much about price and promotion because the product would sell itself. Why else do you think Apple gets away with just spinning their products on a 10 second commercial? But even with a good product you would still have to have place marketing strategies to get your product in the stores and in front of consumers. Apple accomplishes this as well through the Apple store and retail shelf space.
Before you start whining about "such and such open source software is an AWESOME product yet it doesn't 'sell'" I encourage you to compare what companies like Apple have done with all 4Ps of marketing versus what open source has done. In Apple you'll find they attack all four strategies. They build a product that people actually want to buy. They advertise the product and get the product into retail outlets so people are aware that the product exists and can be bought. They negotiate with other players in the market, for example ATT, to make sure the product works. They purposely price their products on the high end to make a statement that their product is different from the competition. And all of these strategies are rolled up to target specific markets or customers. There is a lot of complaining that Apple product are expensive, and my answer to those people is Apple is not targeting you. Such an act would be the equivalent of Nordstrom trying to open a store targeting the customers of Walmart.
The problem engineer types have is that we are too focused on product that we forget that there are many other factors that make a huge difference. In fact many young engineers don't even understand that they are building a product for customer's problem and they fail to understand the the interpretation of the requirements is the most crucial piece of that puzzle. And once the engineer type finally gets the product right, he has no clue how to get it into the hands of his customers. He doesn't understand retail and distribution. He doesn't understand working with other businesses to negotiate shelf space, cooperative advertising campaigns, or even what advertising is effective. He only thinks that the lower price means better for the customer when that is not always true. Customers sometimes do not want to pay low prices for various reasons. (Not all customers think logically.)
I don't know how the grandparent got modded flamebait because what he said is true. The problem is of course that slashdotters like to armchair everything even when it is out of their specialization or knowledge.
And don't get me wrong, there are bad marketers just as there are bad engineers. Both camps have the same "stereotype" mentality against the opposing group. But the businesses that will succeed are those that are able to get these teams to cooperate and understand the real problem at hand rather than having an invisible wall between the two. And for your disclosure, my profession is a Software Engineer but I've taken enough business and marketing classes to understand their side of the world. Allow the stereotypes to mess with your head and you will fail consistently regardless of your specialization.
I think it must bother him, which is why his posts begin with "Haha". I was using iTunes when it was Soundjam because it organised things well and I was able to create playlists with just a few clicks. Using "drag and drop" means creating multiple copies of files if you want to rearrange them out of their original folder structure into, say, a playlist. I'm sure some people think drag and drop is a great way to organise an MP3 player, just like some people will navigate their PC via a command line rather than clicking a few icons.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Person A calls person B a "fanboi."
General population concludes person A is a ____________.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
It's no surprise that after spending a huge amount of time, effort and money on developing the black magnesium 12" cube to house the NeXT -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Computer --, that he would want to try again with a cube design, even if a much cuddlier one. The G4 Cube was a cool design, imo.
811.29.3.2
If I had to give a simple definition of "charisma," I would say, "The ability to be an asshole and get away with it."
Think of the jerk in high school who was always getting laid. Or your older brother, who could whale on you and still be Mom's favorite. Or Benito Mussolini.
The "Apple God" is gone... boo hoo
Meh, I've never been quite impressed with what Apple has had to offer.
All flair, not much substance in my opinion
MindlessAutomata looks to be one of the few talkin any sense here. I imagine quite of few people buy Apple products simply for the logo, without even a second thought to considering the other higher quality, and imho, more attractive alternatives
My blood hurts...
Jobs canned clones and has made a concerted effort upon his return to legally develop and limit development of Mac OS to run exclusively on Apple Hardware. While often vilified, this was a brilliant move on his part to provide tighter data security for computers on the internet.
Complain about the restrictions, but know that Apple software is designed for, and runs perfectly (and incredibly securely) with Apple hardware. Microsoft (as a software company) is tasked with developing for every sundry component of a PC (self-built or otherwise) and is concurrently expected to maintain airtight data security. This is a very tall order that even open source has not been able to solve.
I am not pro-proprietary, but I am pro-data security.
Jobs is a visionary and many of us are hoping that his successor has at least half of what he brought to the table.
I think we should get Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr to head up Apple.
Mabey then we could get a copy of the White Album on iTunes
"I don't need doctors!! I need artists!!!!"
-- Steve
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v201/blackmetal_virus/steven_jobs.jpg
With the iPod and iTunes, Apple hit the "sweet spot" where the player was just good enough technically and had just enough features, and the set was easy enough to use that everyone except the most rabid anti-Apple zealots found something to like. I have a friend who still carries an irrational hatred for Apple, left over from the days of 6502 machines in the 1980s (C=64 owner who for some reason felt he had to hate Apple machines), and even he has an iPod. He, like me, is a nerd, and he did try some other digital music players, but the iPod-iTunes experience is sufficiently better that even he had to swallow bile and buy an iPod.
If these so-called zealots were happy to buy an Ipod because they liked it, it suggests to me that their dislike of other Apple products wasn't so irrational after all. If it was irrational hatred, why would they then buy this one thing from Apple? Sometimes, people dislike products because, you know, they actually don't like the products. Labelling them zealots because of that is itself rather irrational.
Haha, I say this all the time, but if people went on features and price (what they probably would truly want if they paid attention) they would NOT be chosing ipods.
Apple "fanboys" are so silly because so much of Apple is marketing, marketing, and more marketing and not some super magical quality of the products. Maybe OS X is nice (I don't use it, so I can't comment) but the other products themselves are very overpriced and lack features and aren't much easier to use than competing products. Again, compare Ipods to many other MP3 players on the market. Ipods are more "hip" and "cool" to college-aged chumps which is why they sell; people who look and buy on features etc do not generally choose ipods.
I predict that rather than giving examples of the features you ask for (which shouldn't be hard, if they actually exist), people will instead either mod you down for daring to criticise Apple, or respond with vague claims of "but it integrates better", or "it Just Works". There'll be a lot of waffle claiming how their products are better, without actually containing any information. It's like marketing spin from companies, without any useful product info. Or the sort of Government spin you expect from politicians. "It's better, it just is, it does what I want."
But if you ever break out of your cube you'll see that no one cares other than slashdot.
Ah, let's resort to ad-hominems. Actually, it's particularly on Slashdot that Apple is praised so much.
With iTunes (and properly tagged files)
And what if they're not? And will it pick it up if I then do tag them?
When my cousin went to Israel to study they all got iSights. iChat 'just worked'. Not AIM, not Skype not anything else, iChat.
Sounds like a problem with Isight then - how is it a good thing if you can only use the webcam with one chat method? I wouldn't call that working at all. And I certainly wouldn't call that "integration" - integrating with your own products is trivial, that's the easy bit!
If you get 5 Macs in the same room, turn on wireless everyone can see each other. No fighting with an internal ip addresses.
No problem on Windows either. It just works.
Yes it will pick them up if you tag them, why wouldn't it.
-
No, it's a problem with AIM's method of connecting to remote clients for video. It's not that the iSight didn't work with AIM, it's that AIM couldn't connect to my cousin in Israel.
-
I have yet to see Windows use Zero Conf properly. I can type in desktop.local and connect to it in any way. XP must either have an internal IP address or a DHCP server.
Apple will cease to be great if it loses Steve Jobs. His maniacal need to control and review everything put the best ideas from excellent minds into outstanding products. I'm far from a Mac fanboy (only just "switched" about three years ago) but I am much less often disappointed by what Apple builds and sells compared to others.
Knowledge is valuable. Ignorance is dangerous. Censorship is unacceptable. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10
Yes, they can trundle around the perfectly flat areas of the offices going "INNOVAAATE, INNOVAAATE" and "MICRO-SOFT HAS NO STY-LE". We can call the Jobleks.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
when left to their own devices
http://itp.nyu.edu/dano/blog/wp-content/uploads/gPhoneHat.jpg
Personally, I'm hoping for a power struggle between deeply flawed but strong personalities, culminating in the use of millions of bio-engineered gorgeous female ninja assassins wearing spandex.
That happen to have a fetish for linux geeks. One per guy please.
Can we make arrangements for this please? Give me this one thing and I'll never ask for anything again.
I'd say "I mean it this time", but since God didn't give me the last 17 things I asked for this way, I really feel the law of averages should break my way soon.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Hopefully it is someone with enough vision to completely trash the entire company once and for all
It'll likely be Tim Cook. The guy had control the last time and Jobs can obviously trust him.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Yes it will pick them up if you tag them, why wouldn't it.
Do you know how to do this on Windows Itunes? I would find it useful to know how :) (I mean, when I add or change an ID tag on my hard disk, without any integration with an Ipod or whatever.)
The only guy capable if replacing Jobs is Rubenstein, who recently proved his worth by coming out with the Palm Pre, which has garnered super reviews. The Pre beats the iphone in a number of important respects and shows the guy has the magic touch required to create fantastic products. He left Apple, so what, so did Jobs (Next) and came back.
I never knew Apple was cool unless your a sheep or a nine year old girl. Come to think of it, Apple seems to share the same cult following as Hannah Montana
They might as well make the Apple dork from their commercials their mascot. Apple is more of form over function than anything else, so hip coffee-house hipsters can look up to him as an icon agsint the "bourgeosie" and spend money for overpriced hardware and a bad O/S simply to be the coolest kid on the street.
Hm, maybe not the best example...
Actually of the US auto makers Ford is in the best shape. Unlike Chrysler and GM Ford isn't about to go bankrupt.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Ah but we don't live in reality we live in the land of "Perception" and the perception was that Apple tanked without Steve2 (having already gotten rid of the GOOD Steve1), and the perception is what everyone will be on about.
Are you talking about The Woz as Steve #1?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
All my laptops have been Dells. Despite the issues I've had (2 failed hardrives, failed motherboard, older ones had screens that would get scuffed by the casing) they're consistently about 20-30% cheaper
Before I got the Macbook Pro I'm typing this on, I compared it's price to the prices of various Windows laptops. A similarly configured Dell laptop cost $200 more than my MBP. Otherwise the prices of different laptops were about the same.
The prices on the Apple machines were the highest
A Dell cost more than my MBP.
my experiences with Apple support make Dell's missed appointments etc look good.
When I wasn't able to get Leopard's Time Machine working, I kept getting an error message, I went to an Apple store to the Genius Bar. Two hours later I had an appointment with one of them and she fixed it within 10 minutes.
I've had the MBP for about 19 months and that was the second tyme I had to have help with the laptop. On the other hand the first laptop I bought the harddisk drive had to be replaced about 6 months after I bought it and 2 weeks shy of a year the motherboard also had to be replaced. I also had to reinstall Windows a bunch of tymes.
Oh and for that higher price the hard drives weren't as large, the processors were slower and I didn't get a complimentary 3 year warranty.
Configuring a Dell with similar specs to my MBP the Dell was $200 more.
The more grunt and the less I had to pay the better.
By buying a Mac I paid less than if I bought a Dell though an HP would have cost $50 less, and caused a lot more trouble.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
But now in defense of Apple 'iInnovation(TM)' I expect comments along the lines of: "its not the parts but the sum" or "the whole user experience is innovative" and other, amorphous and content free claims. There is no innovation here, move along people or just admit that macs are shiny, so very shiny and desirable.
The same thing can be said about Windows and Linux.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Please keep in mind that this obviously does not apply to everyone - people who can install Linux on their box will probably be confident enough in their own computer-technical abilities and may opt for cheaper products.
I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro. Right now I'm looking for a larger harddisk drive for it and once I replace the one in it now I may install Ubuntu as well. I had planned installing Ubuntu when I ordered it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Face it ... without Jobs, apple is just an overpriced PC with proprietary software AND hardware.
2009 is calling. Mac prices have been comparable to Windows PC prices for years.
MacBook Pro "17
Total: $3,099.00
Dell XPS M1730 Laptop
Total: $2,868
While the MacBook Pro is about $230 more than the Dell it's CPU is faster, 2.93GHz versus 2.8GHz as is the RAM, 1066MHz versus 667Mhz. And while not everyone wants or needs it the Mac comes with the iLife suite whereas the Dell comes with Microsoft Works and Adobe Photoshop Elements + Adobe Premiere Elements. There might be a lower priced Dell, however there are several different lines of Dell laptops whereas there are only 3 lines of Apple laptops. What's a person supposed to do, compare the different Dell lines?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The stock Microsoft owned of Apple was non voting stock. And though I couldn't confirm it I read where Microsoft sold it in 2002 and made a profit.
Apple's products do not matter, when one buys Apple, they buy the "iImage" not the "iProduct".
I switched from Windows to Mac OS X because I was able to buy my MacBook Pro cheaper than another laptop that is capable of what I wanted to do with it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
once the engineer type finally gets the product right, he has no clue how to get it into the hands of his customers. He doesn't understand retail and distribution. He doesn't understand working with other businesses to negotiate shelf space, cooperative advertising campaigns, or even what advertising is effective.
That sounds like Xerox PARC.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If these so-called zealots were happy to buy an Ipod because they liked it, it suggests to me that their dislike of other Apple products wasn't so irrational after all.
And maybe these zealots didn't like Apple because they never tried using an Apple product. They based their dislike on what other zealots said. I've used Linux, Macs, and Windows and there are things to like and dislike about each. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro running Leopard however I plan on replacing the hdd with a larger one and when I do I may install Ubuntu as well. Under my desk I have a PC setup to dualboot Windows NT4 and Redhat Linux. I was using Macs before Windows ever made an appearance. My first Windows was 3.x. When I bought my NT4/Redhat PC I also bought a Win95 laptop. Since then I've used ME and XP, though I have not used Vista, and do not paln on doing so. So my likes and dislikes are based on experience but I've known others who hate any one or two of the above and when I ask them why and if they ever used what they don't like most say they have not used it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'd rather have my music player "integrated" with my PC with drag and drop functionality and not the iTunes lock-in (which is because Apple wants more money selling music files, naturally).
Though I have iTunes, it comes preinstalled on Macs, I don't have an iPod or iPhone. However I think they do drag and drop to sync. And what is this iTunes lock-in? As for the iTunes music store, it's my understanding Apple doesn't make much money from the sale of music, or videos, Apple makes money from the sale of iPods.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I can get a lot of easy-to-use (free) software on the internet for all my needs and not pay the Apple price.
One thing people overlook is that Macs can run more software than any other computer/OS. My Mac, besides Mac software, can run Linux/Unix and Windows software. Windows can run Windows and some X Windows software but not Mac software. Linux can run Linux/Unix software and some Windows software, but not Mac software. I paid nothing for Open Office or NeoOffice. X code comes with Macs though I use Eclipse. My browser is Firefox. Other than a few utilities I bought when I got my Mac the only software I paid for is Photoshop Elements. Unfortunately though unless I install Ubuntu on it I'll probably end up buying Photoshop CS4 as I haven't been able to get CinePaint to run right though I can with Ubuntu. Photoshop costs the same whether it's the Mac or Windows version. As for the rest of the price, before I ordered my MacBook Pro I compared it's price to the prices of various Windows laptops, and it was comparable to theirs.
Quite simply Macs are not more expensive than comparable products from other companies.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You implied Dell was cool because it owned Alienware, however Dell didn't start it Dell bought Alienware. I first thought the same about Gateway when they bought Amiga, Amigas were my favorite computer platform and at the tyme it was expected Gateway would revitalize the Amiga. I also thought DEC's Alpha CPU was cool. So when I bought my first new PCs I bought a Gateway laptop and an Alpha tower PC from Microway. Back then both the Alpha and Gateway had pretty good reviews, but I became sorry I bought them.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Macintosh: OS and UI designed for an average person not wanting to type in commands.
Although note that just about all OSs have succeeded at this - the only notable exception being Linux
Linux has at least 2 good GUIs, KDE and Gnome. Of course there's disagreement between the two camps as to which is better. Sometime ago I bought a new PC with Linspire Linux preinstalled. When I first booted it up, running KDE, it looked like Windows.
And sad to say, it's Windows that succeeded by far in terms of bringing such an OS to the masses.
That's because the average user was Bill Gates and Microsoft's target. They made Windows so it could be installed on many different computer systems. Mac OS X on the other hand is made for Apple hardware and Linux has to play catchup with new hardware, not many hardware makers provide drivers for Linux.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The way my ipod is set up... 4 and 5 "star" music is always loaded. While 2 and 3 star music is rotated out automatically every time I sync, and replaced with a new selection of 2 and 3 star music. It does this by checking last play date... stuff that was listened to recently is rotated out, and replaced with stuff from my library that hasn't been.
I also have a skip count playlist that tracks songs with high skip counts that are in the rotation... which I check periodically to re-rate the music... if I start skipping a track everytime it comes on, i probably don't want it to be played as much, and I'll either pull it out of rotation or downgrade its rating, or both.
This allows me to have a few 300 track playlists that contain all my favorite stuff along with a selection of other tracks I like. Everytime I dock it the selection updates automatically; my faves stay, while the selection changes.
Wow, is this all with iTunes? I tried iTunes on Windows once and it was abhorrent; maybe it's improved by now.
I mostly use Linux though. Maybe this is missing the point of the discussion, but does anyone know if Amarok can do similar things?
Another thing, one reason one of the things that makes Macs good is that they "just work".
Windows work to, my Macbook Pro is almost 16 months old now, issues:
Windows does not work as well as OS X. Having owned PCs with 3 different versions of Windows only one of them did not require Windows to be reinstalled repeatedly, Windows NT4. The first tyme I tried another version, XP, the PC it was on was a new Dell and it froze while booting up. Meanwhile I have had two problems with my MacBook Pro, about 19 months old, the first wasn't even a problem with the Mac. When I ordered it I also ordered TechTool Pro 4 utility with it. The problem was that Apple sent me an older version of it and the bootup diagnostics weren't compatible with the newer CPU. The second problem is that sometimes when I close the lid it does not always wake up right away when I open it.
* Safari crashes all the fucking time.
I use Firefox not Safari, and it crashes occasionally. But then it also crashed some on my Windows PC.
* The aluminium front around the lid button is lose.
I haven't seen that but I have seen a few MacBooks/Pros with yellowing on either side of the trackpad though not on mine.
* Since Safari always eat all CPU the machine gets hot and therefor my battery life is down to around 8%.
Again because I don't use Safari I can't say anything about how it gets hot or how the battery life is. However I frequently have Firefox open, Eclipse running, and at least two finder windows open at the same tyme. And while it gets warm I never have had my MBP get too hot. And the battery will last about 4 hours. Now I admit I have two batteries and I switch them every few days.
* The "SuperDrive" is "SuperCrappy" and have had issues with burning disks before, it can't even burn Verbatim 16x DVD+R MCC004 discs,
I haven't burned any DVDs/CDs yet. Though at some point I plan to work with media files I don't now and for backups and such I have two external harddisk drives and plan to get at least one more. Actually I plan to replace the internal drive in the MBP with a bigger drive, then I'll get a dock I can put the old drive into to use as another external drive.
* I've had plenty of graphics errors which is probably thanks to Nvidias broken 8600m-chips.
What sort of errors are these? I haven't noticed any myself.
* No mic input is retarded.
Mine has one, on the left side between the USB ports and the ExpressCard slot.
Let iPhoto and Aperture co-exist so I can fix images in a program which doesn't suck ... I use Lightroom
I haven't used either iPhoto or Aperture. I hope to start working as a photographer, though with how the economy is now that may not go well, so I may start using Aperture. It came installed on my MBP but not knowing what the deal is with it, whether it's trialware or what (and I'll asked people in Apple stores), I haven't started it yet. For quick edits of photos I have Photoshop Elements. Now I'm debating on whether to install Ubuntu to dualboot the MBP. If I do then I can install and use CinePaint to do more advanced photo editing. If I don't install it then I may buy Photoshop CS. And I may yet use Aperture.
And so on, I have no idea what "just works" on a mac, the drivers? If I bought a branded PC with Windows it would "just work" to, and if I didn't I would just find the drivers, how hard is that?
When I plugged in my external HDDs and printer into my MBP they just worked. I only had to install a driver for the scanner. However I had to install more drivers when I used Windows. Also I have not had problems with hardware. However two branded PCs I bought new the harddisk had to be replaced after about 6 months and the motherboards after a year.
Fact is the only thing I like more in OS X than say FreeBSD and KDE is the available amount of pro-apps (if I get a MIDI-controller, want to work with phot
Should there be a Law?
... because all a company needs to do right is have a charismatic leader.
</sarcasm>
Hm, maybe not the best example...
Actually of the US auto makers Ford is in the best shape. Unlike Chrysler and GM Ford isn't about to go bankrupt.
That doesn't mean it's exactly in good shape, now, does it?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Actually of the US auto makers Ford is in the best shape. Unlike Chrysler and GM Ford isn't about to go bankrupt.
That doesn't mean it's exactly in good shape, now, does it?
I should have phrased it better. Of the three Detroit auto makers, Ford is only one not near bankruptcy.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?