Media Loves Apple and Its Army of Fans

cgriffin21 writes "Apple is getting more media attention right now than any other technology company, including Google. Microsoft, meanwhile, is languishing in the shadows like Cinderella on the night of the ball. That's the upshot of a study released Monday (PDF) by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, which found that Apple was the focus of 15.1 percent of media coverage between June 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010. Google received 11.4 percent of media coverage during the period, while Microsoft garnered just 3 percent."

Comments

MS is hurting

[grub]

Apple was the focus of 15.1 percent of media coverage [...] Google received 11.4 percent of media coverage during the period, while Microsoft garnered just 3 percent.

That 3 percent Microsoft garners is reports of bug fixes and failed projects. Look at recent Microsoft tags on /. :

Microsoft To Release Emergency Fix For ASP.NET Bug
Microsoft Migrating Live Spaces Users To WordPress
Microsoft Says IE9 Beta Demand Overwhelming (Nice but it's free)
Researchers Demo ASP.NET Crypto Attack
etc. etc.

Re:MS is hurting

[Pieroxy]

In my view, Apple is the only company focusing on the user experience (and the only company focusing on the user) as opposed to feature lists products that will be close to become unusable. As a result, they release more expensive products, sell more of those than the competition, and then get a bigger revenue. This revenue is invested in R&D. In Apple's terminology, R&D means exploring existing technologies and finding how they can be integrated into end user products.

The users we speak of here are not slashdot readers, they are the general public.

As a result of all that, they get good press. And it seems well deserved.

This is my view on Apple, so you may express your view but you may not say I'm wrong because I don't claim to express a fact.

Re:MS is hurting

[grub]

I'm with you there.

MS has been blinded by their "Windows Everywhere" mantra over the years. They're a rudderless ship.

Re:MS is hurting

[jedidiah]

> In my view, Apple is the only company focusing on the user experience
> (and the only company focusing on the user) as opposed to feature lists
> products that will be close to become unusable.

Yes. Because no one ever uses "features".

The notion that Apple "focuses on the user experience" quickly seems absurd
as soon as you try to do anything that Apple didn't account for or is actually
trying to prevent.

"plays my movies"
"reads my files"
"installs some random app"
"reads some website"

If another device gains traction, it will be due to the fact that it is good
at doing the things that Apple refuses to do. Being able to ignore Steve's
vision is a great feature for a lot of people.

Apple may have cared for the end user once but now they've jumped the shark.

Re:MS is hurting

[mark72005]

MSFT would be even more irrelevant than they are already becoming if it weren't for vendor lock-in.

Seriously, where would they be?

Re:MS is hurting

[MrHanky]

"Experience" == being the current fashion, making products with a brand that makes you feel better about yourself. If you can't describe what distinguishes it, the distinction just isn't there. You're like a Pepsi loyalist who can't pick it out from the other brand in a blind test.

Re:MS is hurting

[Eraesr]

Why is parent rated as troll? Even though he's chosen rather unsubtle wording, he does make a valid point IMO.
There's a reason why I'm closely watching the development of upcoming Win7 powered tablets while the iPad leaves me cold. It's the tyrannical grip Steve has on his hardware and the software that runs on it (or rather, keeping specific types of software from running on it).

Re:MS is hurting

[TehZorroness]

Too bad they don't focus on the poor Chinese wage slaves making their shit for pennies.

Re:MS is hurting

[truthsearch]

The notion that Apple "focuses on the user experience" quickly seems absurd
as soon as you try to do anything that Apple didn't account for or is actually
trying to prevent.

You're confusing offering a great user experience with offering every feature ever invented. Apple is focused on what they perceive to be a very positive user experience. And based on user satisfaction they're very good at it. Many people actually like the walled garden.

Re:MS is hurting

[IndustrialComplex]

MSFT would be even more irrelevant than they are already becoming if it weren't for vendor lock-in.

Seriously, where would they be?

In late 90s and early 2000s I managed a university's student computer labs. These weren't some podunk labs with 2 or 3 machines but entire buildings sometimes with 100-200 Windowsmachines and another 30% of them were Macintosh machines. (There were a few linux labs and when I left, we had 2 linux machines per lab)

If you knew the troubles we had getting the students to even use the Macs just for checking email, it could be a lesson in salesmanship. As it was, even when the windows machines were at 100% usage, you would see a long line stretching PAST the Macs while people waited for the windows machines. Hell, I'd see people more likely to use the Linux machines than Macs.

Microsoft may abuse its position through vendor lockin, but to get TO that position it was doing something right. Even now... last night my wife finally convinced me to install Microsoft Office because the slide software for OpenOffice was causing her so many issues.

It's easy to blame Microsoft's dominance on lockin and unfair practices, but that alone isn't why they are the top dog.

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

Err... Focusing on the 20% of use cases applicable to 80% of users instead of 80% of use cases applicable to 20% of users is a reasonable approach.

I have no idea how you can consider taking that approach to be 'absurd' and being very successful at it 'jumping the shark'.

Re:MS is hurting

[postbigbang]

First, I'm not an Apple Fanboi.

But Microsoft's illegal practices and the evolution of the market is what allowed them to achieve lock-in. Architecturally, their oil-well-in-the-basement Windows core OS was defective by design, a problem that was partially fixed by demoting user from root in XP SP2. The software QA at Microsoft was abysmal.

And Apple isn't any saint. Their pseudo-open source way of looking at the software world benefits users through a thoroughly controled "experience". Apple's done much QA to ensure comparatively high reliability and application interactivity consistency. But Apple eschews "corporate" or large enterprise infrastructure. They want the user to control the influence and experience. Their resources for large organizations is horrific on a good day. It's all about the end-user.

Does Apple have similar controlling policies? Hell yes. They're secretive and instill paranoia in their employees. Yet their activities so far have skirted most legal skirmishes for anti-trust and anti-competitive behavior. Still you can't use MacOS legally on other hardware, you risk lots by jailbreaking their devices, and they still are completely clueless about the insanity of binding their products to vendors whose performance is abysmal (AT&T as an example).

Microsoft may be the top dog in terms of deployed OSes, but Apple's market cap now exceeds theirs. It's not a very good pool of vendors to pick from. As open source quality matures, Apple and Microsoft will have to change the ways that they do business. Apple's stock price, like Microsoft's, is their holy grail. Remember that it's supported only so far as they continue to satisfy the demands of the buying public. We vote with money.

Re:MS is hurting

[commodore64_love]

>>>try to do anything that Apple didn't account for

You've been modded troll, but you make a good point (IMHO). I still haven't found a player for my Mac (or Linux laptop) that can run songs/movies at double speed without making everyone sound like chipmunks. Also Mac doesn't have any Bittorrent clients approved by Ipodnova/videoseed, so I can't download their wares to my Mac.

Meanwhile on my Windows IBM PC clone, it's as simple as installing "2xAV". It plays double speed and everyone has a normal tone of voice. And it runs the approved client Utorrent. Apple probably never anticipated people wanting to alter the speed of playback, while maintaining normal voice tone, and so it never got developed as part of their tools.

Aside:

Interestingly, Sony anticipated it. Fast playback (1.4x) is included with my DVD player.

Re:MS is hurting

[UnknowingFool]

And why don't you give grief to Dell, HP, and almost every other American manufacturer that uses the same factory. Not the same company, but the same factory. And if you haven't been paying attention, Apple has at least negotiated to give the workers that work on their products more money. But it's fun to bash Apple without any facts.

Re:MS is hurting

[Archangel Michael]

Look at Linux ..(and no, I'm not flamebaiting, I like Linux)

Plays my music ... after I figure out how to download and install, configure DeCSS and fiddle with things for 2 hours
Reads my Files ... okay that works
Installs some random app ... first I have to figure out what app does what I want, then double check to see if RGXFido* is what it says it is. only to realize I also need four other apps that RGXFido needs to do whatever it was that I wanted.
Reads some website ... unless it has flash or .Net** or whatever, then it is hit or miss.

* completely made up name, to show how cryptic and silly some names are.

** Who named it Mono? After a freaking Kissing disease? Geez guys, can't you find a better name?

Apple is always "jumping the shark", but usually before people know it. Lots of times Apple does stuff that people like you think is wrong, only to just be way ahead of the curve. I mean Android looks great, and I'm probably going to get one, but that was only after Apple figured out how to do the iPhone right the first time. Before iPhone, smartphones were Palm, Wince, and Blackberry, all of which now look clunky next to iPhone and Android. And Palm, WInce are being relegated to the backburner when they should have evolved. And Blackberry is only surviving on corporate purchases and BES entrenchment.

Other things Apple did better first dumping 3.5" drives, standards of CD and networking built into every machine. USB that worked. Etc Etc. And not to mention a Tablet that everyone wants.

Don't discount Apple yet.

Re:MS is hurting

[UnknowingFool]

I think why the media focuses on Apple is the fact that they don't say much whereas MS has press release after press release. It's kinda like when you have kids. One of them won't shut up so you just drown that one out; whereas one doesn't say much so you pay attention.

Re:MS is hurting

[Archangel Michael]

Oops ... Plays MOVIES ... not music. ... Uggghhh I need more coffee

Re:MS is hurting

[Missing.Matter]

No, what the parent is saying is that the user experience is good as long as you conform to Apple's definition of user behavior. It's not even about including every feature ever, since Apple is notorious for omitting even the most rudimentary industry standard features.

Take copy/paste. Apple allegedly omitted it because for some reason with all their resources they couldn't figure out a way to implement it. I own an iPad, and the implementation they came up with isn't anything special, to be sure. Try selecting a line of text near the top of the screen; the magnifying glass goes over the edge and you can't see what you're doing.

Another example is transferring files from the iPad. This goes beyond the Apple sanctioned usage of the iPad, so they make it really difficult, and it turns out the easiest way to share files is to e-mail them (a function which must be implemented on a per app basis, as the mail application does not allow attachments).

What about downloading a PDF from safari to read in iBooks? You can't do it from safari, you actually have to download it to a computer and transfer it via iTunes (the worst option, as you need the cable due to lack of wireless sync); through e-mail it to yourself (dropbox is a good option too); or download an app like goodreader, copy the link from safari into goodreader, download the PDF, then export it to iBooks. What a great user experience!

Oh, and the calendar app is a dream to use. It can't actually schedule events that repeat on odd schedules, like every Monday and Wednesday. Apple has sanctioned that your events can repeat weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly, or yearly. To solve this I have to create a google calendar, manage my events there, then subscribe to it in the calendar app.

Or what about this slashdot post? typing <p> takes 8 keyboard strokes on the iPad. </p> takes 11.

But yeah I agree, iPad and other Apple products are great if you stay within its narrow Apple sanctioned usage.

Re:MS is hurting

[IndustrialComplex]

Many people actually like the walled garden.

That still doesn't make AOL a good product.

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

Even now... last night my wife finally convinced me to install Microsoft Office because the slide software for OpenOffice was causing her so many issues.

It's easy to blame Microsoft's dominance on lockin and unfair practices, but that alone isn't why they are the top dog.

Pro tip: Don't use compatibility with a proprietary format as your argument against lock-in as being a factor.

Re:MS is hurting

[moosesocks]

I definitely agree with you, although I do think that they seem to be losing their way somewhat -- they're letting their "traditional" computer hardware and software lines languish and become bloated in some areas.

Meanwhile, Microsoft finally do seem to be getting it. Although Win7 still mostly sucks from an IT Professional's standpoint, they've paid a lot of attention to the end-user experience.

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct. That was my experience 10 - 15 years ago. Back in the OS 9 days.
But remember, 10-15 years ago, "iPod" did not exist.

Re:MS is hurting

[nabsltd]

Maybe because parent is trolling. I have a MacBook Pro that just works.

And many millions more people have Windows (or Linux) laptops that "just work".

Re:MS is hurting

[nabsltd]

Or what about this slashdot post? typing <p> takes 8 keyboard strokes on the iPad. </p> takes 11.

I'm curious...what are the key "presses" you need on the iPad for those constructs?

On a normal keyboard, I count 5 for <p> (shift , p shift .) and 6 for </p> (shift , / p shift .).

Re:MS is hurting

[Missing.Matter]

The adage is that 80% of users use just 20% of an application's features. The point many people miss is that it's not the same 20% for every person. For example in excel, I use the statistical functions, while another person may only be concerned about the financial functions. So if you're concerned about the happiness of 80% of your users, and you only implement the intersection of features they use, 80% of your users will be unhappy, as each one will request a different feature you have chosen not to implement.

Apple for some reason is immune to this, however. Call it loyalism or what you will, But users are willing to look past missing functionality (copy/paste, MMS, 3G, multitasking) as long as the device is shiny. As the owner of an iPad, I can report the device is just riddled with gaps in functionality that affect my work flow, and all I can conclude is that my needs are unique among iPad users (because how could they anticipate that someone would want to download a PDF from safari and e-mail it.)

Re:MS is hurting

[sir99]

I still haven't found a player for my Mac (or Linux laptop) that can run songs/movies at double speed without making everyone sound like chipmunks.

MPlayer can supposedly do it, though I haven't tried.

mplayer -speed 2 -af scaletempo foo.avi

Re:MS is hurting

[Missing.Matter]

1. Access numeric keyboard
2. Access character keyboard
3. <
4. Access alpha keyboard
5. p
6. Access numeric keyboard
7. Access character keyboard
8. >

On a normal keyboard shift , is more like one keystroke, in my opinion.

I mean, I understand that most people won't type something like this, but it's just an example of how the iPad is great to use as long as you use it as Apple prescribes. This example obviously applies to a small subset but the calendar example I gave applies to virtually every student, who has a class on MWF or TR. Apple didn't approve their schedules, so they have to do things the long way.

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

And because he posts anti Apple screeds here and elsewhere constantly. He does own some apple products and his points are often valid, but I never need to read past his username to know what his post will say.

Re:MS is hurting

[Azureflare]

In late 90s and early 2000s I managed a university's student computer labs. These weren't some podunk labs with 2 or 3 machines but entire buildings sometimes with 100-200 Windowsmachines and another 30% of them were Macintosh machines. (There were a few linux labs and when I left, we had 2 linux machines per lab)

If you knew the troubles we had getting the students to even use the Macs just for checking email, it could be a lesson in salesmanship. As it was, even when the windows machines were at 100% usage, you would see a long line stretching PAST the Macs while people waited for the windows machines. Hell, I'd see people more likely to use the Linux machines than Macs.

That wasn't because of vendor lockin. That was because no sites worked in any other browser except IE on a Windows computer.

Does anyone else remember the horror of the web back then? Ugh, it was a travesty.

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple offer a hideous user experience - for all their claims of superior usability there seems to be little or no thought in many of their core user interfaces (other than making them shiny). I say this as a reasonably technical user but one who knows lots of non-technical Apple users who have said the same thing. Just look at the first iteration of Apps, just dumping a huge number of tiny icons onto the homepage with no option to group or display the names - sure it's a little better now (but even then they hardly innovated, they simply offered what was already available elsewhere), but are you seriously telling me that was the best solution at the time? It was within the last half a decade, the internet and desktop GUIs and even portable devices had been offering solutions to these issues for many years and the best they could do was dump a ton of shiny icons and have the user scroll and search? Wonderful user experience.

Re:MS is hurting

[delinear]

My GF is an iPhone user and very much non-technical and even she finds the device limiting and even sometimes frustrating, particularly when it comes to synchronising the device or managing her media content. I wouldn't for one minute doubt that a lot of people find the device does everything they need, but even amongst the otherwise generally happy userbase there are a not inconsiderable number of people who wish it could do more, or offered a little more flexibility. You're right that user experience is not about offering every feature ever available, but it should be about ensuring that the ones that are offered are of a good quality - having seen the issues my other half frequently has with her device, I'd say there are at least a few areas where the user experience is sub-optimal (and it's not like we're talking about anything incredibly complex that's difficult to streamline, these are some basic features that can be a pain for users). It is possible to like something but still see room for improvement.

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

spoken like a truly clueless person

Re:MS is hurting

[RedSteve]

"Experience" == being the current fashion, making products with a brand that makes you feel better about yourself. If you can't describe what distinguishes it, the distinction just isn't there. You're like a Pepsi loyalist who can't pick it out from the other brand in a blind test.

Except "Experience" != "Trendy". Experience is something everyone encounters every time they use a device or software. As such, an experience is something that can be designed so that the end user has a positive, useful interaction. Now, the number of attributes that come together to form an experience - visual, spatial, technical, terminology, etc. - can be so numerous that it is hard to put your finger on why an experience is positive or negative, but just because a user can't describe the distinguishing characteristics doesn't mean the experience isn't there.

If your products are known for their good user experience, then by default, that becomes part of your brand. Whether or not the marketing folks explicitly tout that as part of the brand is actually optional. But if a company just says 'we've got a great user experience!' over and over again to try and make it part of their brand, it will almost inevitably fail. Instead, that company will either come off as tone-deaf to the needs of its users or just clueless as to what makes a good experience.

Re:MS is hurting

[LynnwoodRooster]

Maybe because Apple loves to charge twice what those other companies charge for the same basic product? Apple's got the margin, and their fanbois love to crow about it...

Re:MS is hurting

[TheKidWho]

Apple allegedly omitted it because for some reason with all their resources they couldn't figure out a way to implement it

Here is your problem, Apple doesn't behave like a gigantic behemoth would. Apple works with very small focused teams which develop products quickly and bring them to market before their competitors. Those small teams DO NOT have the resources to include everything and the kitchen sink in their products. This is why Apple get's a lot of bad press from /.'s for not including xyz feature until version 2.0.

Fortunately for them, this is one of their greatest advantages because it allows them to outmanuever their competitors and bring innovative products to market much quicker. Once a product has been introduced it then goes on to their larger teams to be further refined.

Re:MS is hurting

[postbigbang]

No guts, no glory, AC. So clue us in, all-knowing-one.

Re:MS is hurting

[nomadic]

they're letting their "traditional" computer hardware and software lines languish and become bloated in some areas.

Smartly; when it comes to Apple's desktop computing business, it's a 30 year history of failure.

Re:MS is hurting

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Take copy/paste. Apple allegedly omitted it because for some reason with all their resources they couldn't figure out a way to implement it. I own an iPad, and the implementation they came up with isn't anything special, to be sure. Try selecting a line of text near the top of the screen; the magnifying glass goes over the edge and you can't see what you're doing.

It's so easy to implement that the first version of Windows Phone 7 also ships without copy&paste. Apple was inventing a new kind of touch device here, using fingers and gestures instead of stylus and menu's, building the API from scratch. You should be glad they took the time to take it step by step instead of half-assing it. Incremental improvement.

And yes there are plenty of problems with ALL of Apple's products but that's beside the point, no product is perfect. The point is they're better than everything else out there for the stuff I do on a daily basis. If that's not the case for you just buy something else already.

Re:MS is hurting

[c 0xFF]

Or what about this slashdot post? typing <p> takes 8 keyboard strokes on the iPad. </p> takes 11.

Meh. Just use copy/paste to fix that.

Re:MS is hurting

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

No, what the parent is saying is that the user experience is good as long as you conform to Apple's definition of user behavior. It's not even about including every feature ever, since Apple is notorious for omitting even the most rudimentary industry standard features.

Take copy/paste. Apple allegedly omitted it because for some reason with all their resources they couldn't figure out a way to implement it.

Good point, but not for your argument - most things people "need" the retarded implementations of copy/paste on other "smartphones" for were already implemented easier to use on the iPhone.

Re:MS is hurting

[MrHanky]

When "experience" is touted again and again, as the sole selling point, with nothing quantifiable whatsoever to back it up (or when the little there is, is evidently bullshit), as is the case with Apple, then I take "experience" to be marketing.

Also, Apple worshipers tend to disregard everything that sucks when it comes to Apple: iTunes. Finder. The BSD subsystem. Support for non-sanctioned hardware. The fact that their computers are obsolete much faster than any competing platform (OS9 --> OS X PPC --> OS X i686 --> OS X x86_64, and fanboys have complaints with the likes of Adobe for not catching up). You could say that the user experience is utterly shit, and it would be just as true as saying it's brilliant. So, to repeat: it's marketing.

And Apple still has less than 10% of the computing desktop, less than 10% of the mobile phones, so I guess your point has been proven: Apple's brand of "superior experience" has failed.

Re:MS is hurting

[node_chomsky]

I can relate to two of things you mentioned. I also worked in a (medium in my case) 'integrated' computer lab around the same era (early 2000's), and it was absurd how much people preferred them, even though half of the windows machines hardly worked because they were choked up with 100+(not exaggerating) copies of Bonzai Buddy installed. It was horrible to look at that troop of gorillas everyday. I tried to manage the spyware garbage as well as I could, but the university consistently ignored requests for administrative software that would allow me to keep that lab in better shape. Despite the decrepid nature of the windows machines, days would pass where not a single walk in would attempt to use a mac, despite the lines for everything else. The macs were not steller machines either, 1st gen imacs, but at least the screens did not contain dancing monkeys and machine-gun style pop-up advertising when nothing (seemed) to be running.

The second thing was that I had to do the exact same thing for my sister yesterday because she was having trouble with open office. I love Open Office for many reasons, I use it, but it needs to get out of Beta testing soon*, because it's astoundingly buggy.

* Yes, I know it's not actually in the beta stage.

P.S. I learned about the nightmare that is Vista in the process.

Re:MS is hurting

[UnknowingFool]

Define "basic product". If you mean in the same general category, you might be right. If you want to include details, you'd see that they are not the same. Dell focuses mainly on lower margin products. They have lower margins because they make them cheaper and sell them cheaper.

Re:MS is hurting

[BarryJacobsen]

because how could they anticipate that someone would want to download a PDF from safari and e-mail it

They may have recognized that copying a link to the PDF and e-mailing that link is probably just as effective for most users.

Re:MS is hurting

[travisco_nabisco]

On the PS3, when you fast-forward a video at 10x you get the audio playing at 10x the speed with normal voice tone as well. It is very useful for fast-forwarding past credits because you can still hear when the music stops and the voices start.

Re:MS is hurting

[joeyblades]

Take copy/paste. Apple allegedly omitted it ...

I'm confused by this. I don't own an iPad, so perhaps this is an exclusively iPad issue. I do own an iPod Touch and copy/paste has been supported for as long as I've had it.

My Samsung Mythic (touch screen) does not support copy/paste. My Blackberry Pearl does, but it's almost painful. My point is that supporting copy/paste for small handheld devices is a challenge. Apple's implementation is pretty decent.

But as long as we're talking about copy/paste implementations let's talk Microsoft. Microsoft's implementation of copy/paste is brutal. When I copy something to the clipboard, I expect it to stay there until I replace it.

...iPad and other Apple products are great if you stay within its narrow Apple sanctioned usage.

I'm not a big fan of iPod, iPhone, or iPad for exactly the reasons you mention (I only have an iPod because it was a gift). However, you should be careful not to lump all Apple products into the same toilet. Macs are the most unfettered computing platform available... the opposite of what you claim.

Re:MS is hurting

[hrimhari]

because how could they anticipate that someone would want to download a PDF from safari and e-mail it

They may have recognized that copying a link to the PDF and e-mailing that link is probably just as effective for most users.

Try that with a link to an intranet or any site with restricted access. I'd love to hear what your receivers will tell you.

Re:MS is hurting

[RightSaidFred99]

I love when some guy on SlashDot claims Microsoft is "irrelevant" or is rapidly becoming so. Reminds me of some fat ugly guy talking about how gross Megan Fox is because she has some weird clubbed thumb.

The problem is you have no idea what the real world is like outside of your cloistered technical existence. And I don't mean your existence is cloistered because it's technical, I mean you have a limited technical view of the world.

Re:MS is hurting

[PopeRatzo]

sell more of those than the competition

Can you list the products that Apple "sell(s) more of than the competition"?

you may express your view but you may not say I'm wrong

Thank you for clarifying the ground rules. In my confusion I might have made a terrible error by saying that you're full of shit.

Re:MS is hurting

[Missing.Matter]

However, you should be careful not to lump all Apple products into the same toilet. Macs are the most unfettered computing platform available... the opposite of what you claim.

Well, this is true, but more and more it's becoming obvious the future of Apple is not macs, but iDevices in a closed iEcosystem.

Re:MS is hurting

[NiteShaed]

I think this is the part that causes confusion for some people:

But yeah I agree, iPad and other Apple products are great if you stay within its narrow Apple sanctioned usage.

Everything you say is true enough for iOS gizmos, but "Apple products" also includes OSX machines, which are an entirely different animal (leopards mostly at the moment, lol). I suspect that some people get annoyed at their Macs getting lumped in with the phones and MP3 players as being "locked down" or more appropriate for the less-tech savvy than other machines.

Re:MS is hurting

[Tuan121]

Because the articles on slashdot have no bias against microsoft... nice sample you have there.

Re:MS is hurting

[Missing.Matter]

Please, tell me AC, from the iPad, how do I transfer files from x application to another computer? If the answer has anything to do with iTunes, you've lost me. Often I use my iPad at school, where I don't have a personal computer or access to iTunes. The only way I can send a file created on say Pages from my iPad to someone else is through e-mail.

What's more, each app has to implement this functionality, so implementation can vary. For example, Penultimate (a note taking app) does not email an editable file, but a PDF of your notes. How do I send it to someone so they can open my notes and edit them in Penultimate? Or take Pages for example, you can only send one document at a time. How do I send my colleague the 3 documents and 4 spreadsheets I've been working on for our project? Apple's answer is send 7 different e-mails, or subscribe to their beta iWork.com service (expect fees after beta). There's that Apple elegance for you.

Re:MS is hurting

[not flu]

Being consistently right does not make him a troll. I also have a macbook pro and "just works" is a joke if you're going against Steve's vision.

Re:MS is hurting

[Andrewkov]

I think most people would be happy if they could reliably make calls on their iPhone at this point.

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

what things are you referring to that fall under the "Apple didn't account for" section?

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

You kind of made his point. Windows was dominate in the pre-Ubuntu, OS X, Intel PB and iMac 2000's. Now that Windows competitors have caught up, it's harder for buildings with 100-200 windows machines to move on to something better.

Re:MS is hurting

[almondo]

I was going to say gee there must be a decline in the number of discovered compromises but I guess that accounts for the 3% coverage they have.
I did heard a rumor that they are coming out with a new phone, the Flop-Phone.

Re:MS is hurting

[IndustrialComplex]

Pro tip: Don't use compatibility with a proprietary format as your argument against lock-in as being a factor.

Pro tip: Don't blame compatibility for open software's piss poor track record in usability from a Human Factors standpoint. Especially when I didn't explicitly mention compatibility.

Pro example 2: GIMP. Another bit of software that has LONG been hobbled by poor design from a HMI perspective.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's easy (that's why I haven't tried to help), but don't fall into the trap of blaming someone else (Microsoft) for putting out a product that is easier to use and then act surprised when people prefer Microsoft's product.

Re:MS is hurting

[IndustrialComplex]

That wasn't because of vendor lockin. That was because no sites worked in any other browser except IE on a Windows computer.

In our labs, we had a serious issue in dealing with mobile profiles on the MacOS of the time. (8 or 9?)

Early on, the mechanism for your profile was a floppy disk you would carry around with you. Later it was 'partially' fixed and a tool was provided to access network storage with just a click and a login prompt. But an automated solution didn't seem to come about until OSX.

(I might be confusing OS versions there, I just remember earlier versions didn't play well in the networked environment)

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

That anecdote is over a decade old. You know nothing about the state of Macintosh and Apple and why everybody cares about them NOW if that was your last experience.

Re:MS is hurting

[the_B0fh]

what the f*ck is wrong with your brain?

Apple pays $10 to get a music maker made in a factory
Dell pays $10 to get a music maker made in the same factory
every one else pays $10 to get a music maker made in the same factory

The factory that makes the music maker has people die.
Apple says we'll pay you $11, and the extra $1 goes to the workers
Dell still pays $10 to get a music maker made in the same factory
every one else still pays $10 to get a music maker made in the same factory

and somehow, Apple is the bad guy? Did it hurt when your mother dropped you on your head?

Re:MS is hurting

[jedidiah]

On Linux...

> Plays my music ... after I figure out how to download and install, configure DeCSS and fiddle with things for 2 hours

      Plays music out of the box.

      Also plays movies out of the box.

      It does both of these MUCH MUCH better than MacOS does.

      I'm still trying to figure out how to get Quicktime to play mpegps files.

      The whole "paying to decode MPEG2" in Quicktime thing also seems rather absurd since it can do that for a DVD.

      The fact that XBMC and VLC are readily available for MacOS is one of it's key redeeming qualities.

> Reads my Files ... okay that works

> Installs some random app ... first I have to figure out what app does what I
> want, then double check to see if RGXFido* is what it says it is. only to realize
> I also need four other apps that RGXFido needs to do whatever it was that I wanted.

      You use the "app store" and everything "just works".

      Figuring out what you want is the same exact problem as it would be on MacOS or PhoneOS.

> Reads some website ... unless it has flash or .Net** or whatever, then it is hit or miss.

      Flash is in the Linux "app store" too.

> USB that worked

      No. Apple forces the issue and leaves you in the lurch. When Apple was trying to force
the issue with USB, all Intel motherboards already came with USB on them. It was built in
and ready to use. It just wasn't forced on anyone.

      USB is an example of how Apple was a abusive tyrant, not a visionary.

      USB is a great analogy for how Apple only partially implements h264 with mp4 and ignores
everything else. In 5 or 10 years perhaps everything else will have died out and Apple's
support of what standards it does follow will improve.

Re:MS is hurting

[stewbacca]

In my view, Apple is the only company focusing on the user experience (and the only company focusing on the user) as opposed to feature lists products that will be close to become unusable.

While I agree 100% with your sentiment, I'm guessing the replies to your post are going to be ugly. People on slashdot are going to eat "focusing on the user" for lunch. While Apple is a little deserved of criticism for their hyper-control, the end (generally speaking) justifies the means for MOST people (non-nerds).

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the case with my university library's main computer cluster. There are something like 60 or so Windows machines and 8 Macs. Between 10 am and 2 am, there is a fairly consistent line for the Windows machines, yet there is almost always a Mac open. Granted, this is a predominantly technology focused university so necessary software isn't always on the Macs, but there isn't much of a reason people can't put their slides together on one.

Re:MS is hurting

[chartreuse]

You don't know about tap-and-slide for shifting? That gets it down to four moves. On a regular physical keyboard it's five moves because the delimiters are symbols accessed by the shift key, which must also be pressed.

Still, the larger point is valid: the standard keyboard is lousy for HTML. (Why this is proof of some evil twisted conspiracy aimed to neuter you and fill Apple's coffers with fanboi cash has I guess been left as an exercise for the reader.) If you can suggest a better arrangement it can be coded into a custom keyboard layout by any programmer or even added to the SDK by Apple.

I feel your frustrations with what in the case of the iPad is a 1.0 product and in iOS' case 4.x. The file sharing is awkward, iTunes is beginning to look as though one wafer-thin mint would make it explode, iCal apparently sets monthly events by counting from the beginning of the week containing the first of the month (so that "second Monday" is actually the first one unless the month begins on Sunday or Monday), and syncing basically requires a wire. Yeah, it could all be lots better, and weigh half a pound less too.

Still, afaik nobody made you buy it at gunpoint. (Which would be proof of a conspiracy, come to think of it, so feel free to inform us if that was the case.) You can resell it for a decent price if it doesn't meet your needs sufficiently, and at the same time teach Apple a lesson through the miracle of the free market when you spend that money on whatever device it is that does. Apple, suitably chastened when informed of your actions (as they surely will be), will resolve through bitter bitter tears to do better next time, and if they don't they'll no doubt be buried by their more-nimble competition, as they should be.

In the meantime you'll be just another one of us bloodied first-adopters, victimized by the finite resources of Apple. How dare they not be above complaint! We were promised magic!

Re:MS is hurting

[stewbacca]

Microsoft may abuse its position through vendor lockin, but to get TO that position it was doing something right.

I'm trying to think of what "something" means in this context. A cycle of forced upgrades, ensuring steady cash flow? Proprietary media codecs? Purposeful non-cross-platform compatibility ensuring strangleholds on market shares? Making sales of an OS by shipping OEM versions instead of, you know, earning the demand of customers who actually WANT your product and don't just get it pre-bundled? Copying (badly) anything innovative that other companies do and re-brand it as a feature set?

Nope. Can't figure out what that "something" is that Microsoft supposedly did right, other than shrewd business practices leading to monopoly convictions. Of course they are good at making money, if that's the "something" you are referring to.

Re:MS is hurting

[stewbacca]

That wasn't because of vendor lockin. That was because no sites worked in any other browser except IE on a Windows computer.

I think you just nicely described the phenomena of vendor lock in by saying it wasn't vendor lock in. Ironic.

And yes, I remember the web "back then". I've been surfing the web with some variant of MacOS since 1989, and the claims of incompatibility are grossly overstated. If it weren't for the web and it's open standards, there'd BE no MacOS, as it only survived the dark years because of the healthy online support community. Can't buy Office for Mac at your local Best Buy? Go online. Can't find a retailer within 100 miles? Buy a Mac online. That web service only works with IE and WinPC? Choose any of the other thousands of sites that will work. Can't play that video codec? Go online and get a converter.

Re:MS is hurting

[stewbacca]

Yes. Because no one ever uses "features".

The notion that Apple "focuses on the user experience" quickly seems absurd
as soon as you try to do anything that Apple didn't account for or is actually
trying to prevent.

But you can't just slap together a piece of software that crashes every 5 seconds and only exports one file format and call it Windows Movie Maker!!! and list it as a "feature". That's the problem with Microsoft...they do the bare minimum so they can add it to their features list. Quantity over quality.

I prefer the Jobsian method of, "if it doesn't work to my unrealistic high standards, then it doesn't ship" over, "you can kind of make .avi files with that right?? Ship it! And make sure you tell everyone it's just as good as iMovie!"

Re:MS is hurting

[VanGarrett]

Microsoft got into their current position by not charging a licensing fee to develop for their system, early on. They've retained their position by giving business users what they want. That's really the key, right there-- Whenever someone goes to work, they generally end up using a Windows-based machine. There are notable exceptions to this, such as some multimedia-oriented jobs which tend toward Mac and scientific research which tends toward *NIX, but the vast majority of the business world uses Microsoft's products. The result of this, is that when these people go to buy their own computers for their homes, they buy one with software that they're familiar with. This means that they aren't buying Macs, and they sure as hell aren't buying bare machines with a couple of Red Hat discs.

I'd also like to point out that Apple isn't really excelling in the desktop market, at this point. Microsoft has that area pretty well dominated, even if they are starting to lose a little ground. Apple's recent success has been related to the iPod and the iPhone. Not their desktop machines. Meanwhile, Microsoft isn't really doing much in the way of competing with the iPod and iPhone; while there is the Zune and Windows 7 Mobile, it's evident that they just aren't devoting a lot of their resources to these things. To me, they seem more like a, "me, too!" effort.

That's pretty much the lay of things. Until Apple starts convincing businesses to switch over to their software, we're not going to see Apple overtake Microsoft. At all. Not in the desktop market, anyway.

Re:MS is hurting

[IndustrialComplex]

That anecdote is over a decade old. You know nothing about the state of Macintosh and Apple and why everybody cares about them NOW if that was your last experience.

That anecdote was chosen primarily because it reflected the time just before Apple instituted a MAJOR change to their operating system and products. It reflected the time just before the iPod was released (and one maybe two years into it). Did you ever wonder why they had to shift so much?

I posted the anecdote because I had direct face to face interaction with hundreds if not thousands of users per day. Users who were intelligent enough to be able to handle being introduced to a new Operating System but for a variety of reasons did not. I used macs daily, and I still do. But today's environment isn't important when discussing reasons why microsoft programs rose to dominate the market.

Re:MS is hurting

[stewbacca]

Your list is typically overstated and filled with relatively irrelevant nit picks.

The Calendar app is actually quite nice to use (more "dreamy" than Outlook, less feature-rich, but easier to use). Not allowing random Joe Slashdotter for Monday and Wednesday scheduled events is not some conspiracy by Apple to force you to use the software their way. It's a trade-off. To make what you are asking requires resources and Apple sees no benefit of adding a feature that doesn't really do anything for most people.

Copy/paste was omitted due to engineering trade-offs and getting stuff to market in a timely manner. They added it later because it's deemed to be an important feature, unlike your Calendar issue. Why people keep bitching about Apple product shortcomings after the shortcoming no longer exists is beyond me.

Not sure what your PDF problem since I don't have an iPad. My iPhone, however downloads pdfs and makes them available in the iBooks app without using iTunes. I'm not sure I believe you, since it doesn't make any sense for the same app to work differently on a iPhone or an iPad.

As for transferring files FROM an iPad, I've seen the logic here is that the iPad is a media consumption device, not a production device. As Steve Jobs would say, you're using it wrong. Seriously, though, you are applying your vision and definition of a tablet computer to be a desktop computer that comes in a skinny form, when Apple is defining it as something completely different (and magical!)

With that, I don't like the iPad, and have no need for it (I'm a content producer more than a consumer). I suggest, like me, if you don't like the feature set, don't buy the device.
 

Re:MS is hurting

[stewbacca]

You said it yourself. "Most" people won't type html tags. This is not a case of Apple forcing you to do anything "their" way. It's Apple's way of making a good user experience based on an analysis of how people will most likely use this device.

I design training user interfaces. We make hard decisions about placement of buttons and prompts all the time based on an analysis of the learner. Military customers get a different UI than corporate customers...not because either one is better than the other, but because an analysis of their skills and ways of doing things shows they are different and learn differently, thus need a different learning environment.

Re:MS is hurting

[stewbacca]

but more and more it's becoming obvious the future of Apple is not macs, but iDevices in a closed iEcosystem.

Anyone who thinks Apple will quit making consumer desktops and laptops obviously hasn't been alive very long. They also aren't paying attention to the laptop market share numbers either. And last I checked, the film, sound and print industries aren't porting all their Adobe CS5 Master Collections to iPads and iPhones.

Re:MS is hurting

[stewbacca]

The only way I can send a file created on say Pages from my iPad to someone else is through e-mail.

Just curious, what's so bad about that solution? I host all my files to my Mobile Me account so I have access to them anywhere. Do iPads not have Mobile Me (or similar apps/services)?

I haven't burned a disk in years and thumb drives are not allowed in my work environment. Files over the network/cloud/internet are pretty good options. I prefer them to physical media (to a reasonable degree, depending on file size).

Re:MS is hurting

[stewbacca]

Apple for some reason is immune to this, however. Call it loyalism or what you will, But users are willing to look past missing functionality (copy/paste, MMS, 3G, multitasking) as long as the device works well for most needs.

.

FTFY. "Shiny" can bite my shiny metal ass.

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Maybe because parent is trolling. I have a MacBook Pro that just works.

My Macbook Pro "just works" too, except when it doesn't and I have to use some funky key combo to fix it.

In terms of things "just working" Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are on par with one another. This is obviously just my opinion, but I use them both every day. Oddly enough I use the Mac for work and the PC for home; go figure, right?

Re:MS is hurting

[stewbacca]

when it comes to Apple's desktop computing business, it's a 30 year history of failure.

So you are saying Apple used 20 years of failure experience to produce the most defining electronic gadget of this lifetime? Mod +1 Interesting!

I'm not sure I've ever read a technical review (or even a casual review) defining OSX as "failure" either.

Re:MS is hurting

[LynnwoodRooster]

Apparently logic is wasted on you...

.
Dell gets that music player for the same price as Apple, and sells it to you for $20. Apple sells it to you for $40.

Now you tell me who can afford to pay more for the product - Dell or Apple?

BTW: insults and invectives are the surest sign of ignorance.

Re:MS is hurting

[Rakarra]

Maybe because parent is trolling. I have a MacBook Pro that just works.

Disagreeing with the Apple user experience is "trolling" now?

Re:MS is hurting

[Missing.Matter]

Just curious, what's so bad about that solution?

Well in my particular case I'm often in areas where I have no wifi (or 3G for that matter). So if I want to transfer files stored on my iPad, I'm SOL. My other devices can transfer files through bluetooth, ad hoc networks, mass storage devices, etc. In a world where our devices are communicating more and more, the iPad refuses to.

Re:MS is hurting

[Missing.Matter]

Still, afaik nobody made you buy it at gunpoint. (Which would be proof of a conspiracy, come to think of it, so feel free to inform us if that was the case.) You can resell it for a decent price if it doesn't meet your needs sufficiently

Well, I bought it for textbook reading, and since the iBooks updates it does an amazing job at that function. I also have two killer apps for students: iStudiez Pro and Papers, which I use constantly. I've thought about selling it a few times before I found these apps, but I'm keeping it for sure now. I've also been holding out for the November update, since it seems it will fix at least a few of my gripes.

So even though I'm going on about the negatives of the iPad, there are also many positives which make it an overall positive device. That said, if Steve Jobs gets to go on stage and call this thing the most magical perfect device ever created, I at least get to come on slashdot and bring it back down to reality.

Re:MS is hurting

[nomadic]

"So you are saying Apple used 20 years of failure experience to produce the most defining electronic gadget of this lifetime? Mod +1 Interesting!"

Uhh...huh? You know what a "desktop" is, right?

I'm not sure I've ever read a technical review (or even a casual review) defining OSX as "failure" either.

Oh, OS X is a beautiful OS, probably the best desktop OS ever. I'd get a Mac if the hardware wasn't so overpriced just for OS X. But how has it done in the marketplace?

Re:MS is hurting

[Missing.Matter]

It's a trade-off. To make what you are asking requires resources and Apple sees no benefit of adding a feature that doesn't really do anything for most people.

Not allowing odd schedule events essentially cuts out every student who uses the iPad. At least in America, classes are usually scheduled MWF, or TR. When I hear story after story about how college X or school district Y is looking to purchase iPads for every student. I spoke with the head librarian at my university, who is running a pilot program with the iPads. When I told her about this limitation her reaction was "Huh, well that's dumb".

And you know, it wouldn't be such a problem if Apple would let other calendar apps in the app store. But no, you're left with a bunch of portals to google calendar for $9.99 (which, actually you might as well use since my solution to the calendar app is to sync with google calendar).

Copy/paste was omitted due to engineering trade-offs and getting stuff to market in a timely manner. They added it later because it's deemed to be an important feature, unlike your Calendar issue. Why people keep bitching about Apple product shortcomings after the shortcoming no longer exists is beyond me.

Not bitching, just an example of how Apple is often missing basic features. Call it an engineering trade off or smart business, but that doesn't change the fact that the omission made the device harder to use.

I'm not sure I believe you, since it doesn't make any sense for the same app to work differently on a iPhone or an iPad.

It makes perfect sense. iPad is OS 3.2, iPhone is OS 4.1. I'm hoping this will be fixed in the 4.2 update, but as of now I can tell you for a fact you cannot save a PDF to iBooks from Safari on iPad.

As Steve Jobs would say, you're using it wrong.

And this is exactly my point. Steve Jobs says I'm using my device wrong. The iPad is meant for XYZ and the user experience is great as long all you want to do is XYZ. Remember the topic of discussion was "Apple receives so much media attention because they make their devices easy for people to use." If you are someone who only wants to do XYZ, then ignore everything I'm saying. In fact, this may be most people the majority of the time. But I wager ever iPad owner out there at some point said to himself "I wish it could do W."

Re:MS is hurting

[stewbacca]

You missed my point. You don't survive 20 years of desktop failure before you have your first success. You aren't around after 20 years if all you have is failures. So it follows that their desktop computing business is by no measurement a 30 year failure, because they made enough money to make it into the uber-crazy income years of the iStuff.

How has OSX done in the market place? Don't ask me, because I'm in the Education/Flash/Premiere/After Effects realm. I'd say that every 95 out 100 computers are Macs, given my world-view.

Re:MS is hurting

[joeyblades]

If anything, I think the opposite is true. Mac market share is at an all time high. Apple continues to innovate the Macintosh line. The iEcosystem seems to be giving the Mac line a boost as it becomes more "acceptable" to use Apple products and people start to intuitively understand Apple value.

Re:MS is hurting

[mjwx]

In my view, Apple is the only company focusing on the user experience

Nope, this just proves you've fallen victim to the marketing.

Marketing is more important then anything else. This is the single biggest thing holding back Linux adoption. Microsoft does not market to you, the end users because they do not have to. MS's core business is Operating Systems, they market to CIO's, procurement managers and OEM's because in the final analysis the end user will use at home, what they use at work and that remains Microsoft Windows with Microsoft Office. By the same token, Apple markets at you, it's not the device that makes you feel special but the marketing.

Secondly, "User Experience" is a meaningless marketing term. By it's own definition (how a user feels about a system), it's unquantifiable (due to the fact it's entirely subjective, based on emotion) thus useless as a measurement (due to no common point of reference between test subjects). This makes it the perfect marketing term because if you have a different "user experience" your perception was wrong, not the system. Please Note: User Experience is not HCI/HMI or usability design, those are quantifiable disciplines, User Experience is a marketing catch-all phrase that avoids any real commitment. I've got a long list of problems with OSX's and IOS's usability not the least of which is no task bar/poor task switching (OSX, doesn't exist on IOS) and over-reliance on modal popups/dialogues (IOS).

The users we speak of here are not slashdot readers, they are the general public.

Lets be honest, the general public are sheep. They'll use what they're told to. If we, the geeks of /. dont make some decisions then the decisions will be forced on us by far less scrupulous organisations. Also I dont know about you but I tend to have enormous sway in what tech my friends buy (maybe that's because I analyse their needs and present them with a variety of good options rather then just frothing "buy Apple" at them). Please re read my first paragraph for further clarification on this phenomena, people use what they use at work (because as many Apple fanboys will point out, people like simple and handling multiple OS's isn't simple).

Re:MS is hurting

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Why are you typing HTML on an iPad? If you do want to code on an iPad, then perhaps look for an app designed for that purpose. If you're talking about a forum like Slashdot, then why not use the other formatting options? Users should never have to type code to post a text comment, anyway.

Re:MS is hurting

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

What makes you think that they hadn't anticipated such a thing? Maybe they had other priorities such as copy/pastes and multitasking.

Re:MS is hurting

[Icekold]

I'm not defending Apple's decision (or lack of action) in implementing this feature in the core system, however I would like to point out to you that Mac OS X has a native VLC client, download that, if you go and play a song or movie, then go to the "Playback" menu and see the "Faster" menu item. Hit it twice for 2x playback speed. This makes voices talk quickly without altering the pitch, therefore there's no chipmunking. This is surely as simple as the "installing 2xAV' as you mentioned above for your PC.

I'm not privy to the list of supported BitTorrent clients for Ipodnova/videoseed, however you did mention Utorrent, and this also has a native Mac client available. I would assume that the Utorrent guys use the same implementation of the BitTorrent core protocol, so you should be able to use it just fine on those sites.

Re:MS is hurting

[Pieroxy]

sell more of those than the competition

Can you list the products that Apple "sell(s) more of than the competition"?

Phones?

Re:MS is hurting

[Pieroxy]

The fact remains that my mother uses an iPhone and knows how to read/send emails and SMSs. I would never ever have tried to explain that to her on any other smartphone, ever (that was 2 years ago, things have changed)

Because what makes non tecchies scared of a computer is that you can put by accident the computer in a state where you don't know how to get out of. You know, a computer is stateful. iOS, for all its criticism address this issue with the one button that consistently brings you back to the starting point. That is a core part of the user experience: making sure no user ever gets lost.

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes (am avid Mac user) I agree that in the public discussion, Apple comes of very well. Microsoft has technologies that just are not sexy. Does all this mean Apple is better" in any absolute sense? No, Just better at PR and building a better common user experience, a consistent interface and state-of-the art (or close to it) industrial design. That's all.

Re:MS is hurting

[PopeRatzo]

Phones?

I believe you'll find that RIM sells more phones.

I think the only category that Apple Computers sells more of than their individual competitors is mp3 players.

And this is the company that brought the world the Macintosh.

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAAHAAaa.

  Win7 tablet, you crack me up.

Re:MS is hurting

[tendays]

I still haven't found a player for my Mac (or Linux laptop) that can run songs/movies at double speed without making everyone sound like chipmunks.

Not developed by Apple, but vlc does that fine (at least on my Linux box, with VLC media player 1.0.6 Goldeneye).

Re:MS is hurting

[Gilmoure]

I did Mac support at a college back in late '90's. Best we could do was a Netware share mount on login. Back then, Mac OS 8/9 was not geared towards a multi-lan, client/server environment. And with all the trouble we now have with OS X, Kerberos and AD authentication, yeah, still not the best. And forget SMB server use. Seems every time Microsoft applies a server patch, Apple breaks Samba and users can't connect to our win2008 servers.

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

How strange. I run compiled-from-source Apache/MySQL/PHP and tons of other open source development tools. All installed with ease from a simple command-line (thanks, MacPorts). I can't really think what I could be missing. I do boot into Macbook into Gentoo or Ubuntu now and again, just to have a play about. Now tell me again about why the Macbook is a joke?

Re:MS is hurting

[commodore64_love]

>>>This makes voices talk quickly without altering the pitch, therefore there's no chipmunking.

Are you sure? The VLC players I have on my IBM PC clone and Linux laptop make everything sound like Chip & Dale. Of course I am using an older version, so maybe it's time to upgrade.
.

>>>Utorrent, and this also has a native Mac client available

It does? (checks). Oh yeah! Ipodnova/videoseed just approved it last month. Cool. Prior to that Mac users were verboten, because all the Mac torrent clients "cheated" on the seeding ratio.

Re:MS is hurting

[bandmassa]

Yeh, Macroslop is more like an ugly stepsister getting her comeuppance at the end of the Cinderella story ;-)

Re:MS is hurting

[exomondo]

Apple pays $10 to get a music maker made in a factory Dell pays $10 to get a music maker made in the same factory every one else pays $10 to get a music maker made in the same factory

Everyone pays the same do they? I doubt that.

Re:MS is hurting

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you try VLC because it will do exactly what you mentioned as I just tried it...

If by Languishing they mean Hiding

[erroneus]

That would make sense. If Microsoft were put into the spot light, people would start taking shots before they would start celebrating.

Re:If by Languishing they mean Hiding

[BlueStraggler]

I also drink a lot before using Microsoft products.

Duh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Articles like this one just prove their point

Re:Duh...

[Pojut]

As seen in a printed newspaper:

"Study finds printed newspapers are huge paper wasters!"

Media Loves Apple...

[Push Latency]

Media love is usually a good indicator of things I can safely and happily ignore. Good to know that I can happily continue ignoring Apple.

Re:Media Loves Apple...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its no surprise to me that the creative industry loves the company with the gadgets that have most restrictive walled garden.

A story ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... about how many stories are done about Apple

We're through the looking glass here people.

- Sent from my iPhone

It will pass

[js3]

Give it one or 2 years and something new will come along to replace it. Remember myspace (lol) or RIM (lol)? The only thing that surprises me about Apple is how they found millions of people willing to throw money away at frivilous toys in this "tough" economy.

Re:It will pass

[Anonymous Coward]

The "tough" economy is controlled by the government.

If they want to have a low economic time to enforce more social control, they raise the taxes on business causing a slowdown in the market. When they want you to look the other way or declare war, they lower business taxes and get you working again so you don't care as much.

Re:It will pass

[somersault]

How has Apple got anything to do with Myspace? And RIM's products have always been shit. The difference with Apple here is that their products have relatively intuitive interfaces and are therefore easy for people to pick up. I wouldn't buy an iPhone or an iPad, but I am happy that iOS inspired stuff like Android, so that I finally have a smartphone that has a decent UI.

Re:It will pass

[zombieChan51]

Yeah seeing a guy complaining about how bad the economy is, and that he can barely feed his family while he checks out what's Hot or Not on his new iPad.

Re:It will pass

[jedidiah]

We need Apple around to steal good ideas from. However, it would be a disaster if they were the predominant force in the industry.

Re:It will pass

[Anonymous Coward]

but I am happy that iOS inspired stuff like Android

Google acquired Android inc in August, 2005.

Re:It will pass

[somersault]

Well, they already are in certain markets, ie MP3 players and tablets. I don't think it's a problem if they're popular, but it would of course be a problem if they had a monopoly.

I already gave in to buying an iPod because it's the only device that works nicely with my car stereo. USB drives work too but it takes ages to read the filing system every time you switch the car on. On the upside, I now can use the wide array of toys designed to dock with iPods.. but I wish they could just use standard USB connections and have a standard interface for sending control commands, music, video etc so that any MP3 player would work with any device. Grrr. I'm wondering if there are any apps out there for Android that can simulate an iPod so that I can just use my phone with my car's stereo instead..

Re:It will pass

[beelsebob]

Except that MySpace was founded in 2003, wasn't really popular until 2005, by comparison, apple's laptops, and iPods have been starting their current popular trend since way back in 2001. My space faded from it's "success" (read, it was bigish in america and never managed anything in europe at all) in two years, while apple is getting ever more popular.

The reason? Apple's products are actually good ;)

Re:It will pass

[Penguinisto]

... millions of people willing to throw money away at frivilous toys in this "tough" economy.

A bit of research on The Great Depression will invariably turn up some related neat little facts as well - one of them being that movies (back then a similar luxury) were amazingly popular during a time when folks could barely keep food on the table.

Escapism from shit times isn't exactly a new phenomenon, you know.

Re:It will pass

[somersault]

The iPhone came out in 2007, actual Android phones in 2008. Before the iPhone there were no smartphones available with interfaces that were actually nice to use. Are you trying to say that Android interface wasn't inspired by the iPhone interface at all? If not then Apple completely ripped off Android's UI. It's one or the other, but Apple had a product out a year earlier and methinks they were once again the ones leading the way.

They were certainly the ones that pioneered capacitive touchscreens on phones, which is a large part of what actually makes them pleasant to use these days.

Re:It will pass

[Anonymous Coward]

Android pre iPhone. http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/12/a-visual-tour-of-androids-ui/

Re:It will pass

[krinderlin]

Off topic...

Yeah seeing a guy complaining about how bad the economy is, and that he can barely feed his family while he checks out what's Hot or Not on his new iPad.

THIS. OMG THIS. The mentality of people today is so alien to me I can't even imagine comprehending it.

I have a neighbor who just bought a $2000 T.V. He was laid off last month. Literally, he was bringing the T.V. into his duplex and complaining that he didn't know how much longer he was going to live there. Why? Because the land lord raised the rent $50 a month and unemployment wasn't covering it. I bit my tongue and walked inside. I still have the coppery taste of blood in my mouth.

Re:It will pass

[nabsltd]

I already gave in to buying an iPod because it's the only device that works nicely with my car stereo. USB drives work too but it takes ages to read the filing system every time you switch the car on.

See, this is because your car stereo doesn't have Microsoft software.

Seriously, Microsoft Sync works great with USB drives. It does take a few seconds to read the drive (about a second per 1000 files), but not much. But, the iPhone is one of the more problematic to use with Sync, because Apple chose to implement only the part of the Bluetooth spec that they felt their users would need.

Re:It will pass

[rsborg]

However, it would be a disaster if they [Apple] were the predominant force in the industry.

It's a bad thing when ANY company is predominant in an area... that's why we have anti-trust regulators and believe in free markets, as they tend to reduce prices and increase innovation for everyone. Apple is not special here.

Re:It will pass

[TheKidWho]

Actually, pre iPhone, the Android UI was designed to mimic the Blackberry OS.

Kinda hideous actually.

Re:It will pass

[Anonymous Coward]

[Apple] were certainly the ones that pioneered capacitive touchscreens on phones, which is a large part of what actually makes them pleasant to use these days.

...which tells me that you almost certainly do not have long nails. Capacitive touchscreens are a bugger for anyone who does.

Re:It will pass

[somersault]

Um yes, try nail clippers, or just get a resistive touch screen, duh. You don't need to press with fingertips either, often you'll be pressing with your actual fingerprint and in that case long nails wouldn't be an issue..

I've only known one person who really enjoyed having properly long nails, and she's just an attention seeking whore. Obviously with this one data point I can deduce that all people with long nails are attention seeking whores.

Re:It will pass

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

Haha, people keep complaining "why do I have to use iTunes?", "why does it rename all my files into obscure 4 letter filenames?", "why can't I just mount the iPod as a USB device and drag files on there?"

The answer isn't:
1) To lock people in.
2) To annoy Linux users.
3) some evil conspiracy.

And the real answer is:

USB drives work too but it takes ages to read the filing system every time you switch the car on.

(Well, in normal cases, the mp3 player.)

Re:It will pass

[Anonymous Coward]

Nails are clean. Fingerprints are greasy. Touchscreens are grease traps.

On another note:

I've only known one person who really enjoyed having properly long nails, and she's just an attention seeking whore.

Sorry to hear that you only know one woman, and that she said no. Better luck next time.

Re:It will pass

[somersault]

Have never had a problem with grease, I tend to wash my hands.

No, I only know one woman that thinks so highly of herself that she likes to take infinite pictures of herself and her nails. The other women I've dated haven't cared for such things, and that's because I'm not into traditional shopping loving, makeup-addled bimbos..

Re:It will pass

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

I have a neighbor who just bought a $2000 T.V. He was laid off last month. Literally, he was bringing the T.V. into his duplex and complaining that he didn't know how much longer he was going to live there. Why? Because the land lord raised the rent $50 a month and unemployment wasn't covering it. I bit my tongue and walked inside. I still have the coppery taste of blood in my mouth.

So you rather have him live without a TV, so he could afford to live 3 years longer in an apartment where the landlord raised rent in a deep recession - if he doesn't jack up the rent any more.

Re:It will pass

[somersault]

My iPod is "on" constantly, and even after a reset (it crashes occasionally, I got it pre-owned) then it doesn't take that long to start up as it has its own DB and isn't just reading through the whole filing system table..

I've never used iTunes, I use gtkPod. It's obviously not as nice as drag and drop, but it works..

Re:It will pass

[Adambomb]

Yes, or perhaps to go with a cheap 100$ piece of crap tv until his luck changes and hes in a position to choose to break his lease with the asshat.

This is called not being retarded.

Re:It will pass

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Yes, or perhaps to go with a cheap 100$ piece of crap tv until his luck changes and hes in a position to choose to break his lease with the asshat.

This is called not being retarded.

Of course, continued renting from an asshat landlord who has nothing better to do than jacking up your rent as soon as you lose your job is far more masochistic than retarded. If you ask him nicely, he may even pee in your punchbowl, thank you master.

Ctrl+F Aggregation

[cosm]

This is my new internet filter. Load news / aggregation site , press "Ctrl+F" in chrome, type "apple" and count. If count > 10 on a single page, I never go there again. Oh cra

Re:Ctrl+F Aggregation

[Thanshin]

This is my new internet filter. Load news / aggregation site , press "Ctrl+F" in chrome, type "apple" and count. If count > 10 on a single page, I never go there again.

Not the greatest fan of orchards or cider, I gather.

Yeah I Can See That

[Greyfox]

If you want a lot of hits, just post something vaguely bad about an Apple product and pretty much the entire army will hit your product. Too bad they'll all be pregnant in a couple of months. That's right folks, iPhones can make you pregnant! Even if you're a man! ESPECIALLY if you're a man!

You're welcome.

lolwut?

[somersault]

Microsoft, meanwhile, is languishing in the shadows like Cinderella on the night of the ball.

Is this trying to imply that they're going to arrive later as the belle of the ball? Pfft.

As for the main point - anyone who follows tech news at all would have noticed that Apple is getting the most press. I fail to see how this meta-news is news.

Re:lolwut?

[camperslo]

>Microsoft, meanwhile, is languishing in the shadows like Cinderella on the night of the ball.

>>Is this trying to imply that they're going to arrive later as the belle of the ball? Pfft.

Hmmm, seems a bit odd for Cinderella to be dressed in black, and with that funny hat. Oh... wait...
I think I here a voice....

"help me, I'm melting.... mellllting..."

Cinderella

[Experiment 626]

languishing in the shadows like Cinderella on the night of the ball

So right now Microsoft is getting decked out in cool clothes from its fairy godmother, and about to make a stunning entrance that turns everybody's head?

Re:Cinderella

[Thanshin]

So right now Microsoft is getting decked out in cool clothes from its fairy godmother, and about to make a stunning entrance that turns everybody's head?

... Inside a carriage made of a fruit with attached mice?

It's a PROPHECY!

The Windows powered IDesktop is coming!

REPENT!

Re:Cinderella

[Anonymous Coward]

You made me imagine Steve Ballmer in a princess costume!!!
Fuck you!

Re:Cinderella

[ifiwereasculptor]

Yes, but at midnight the carriage will turn into Windows Vista...

Cinderella?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, this ends with Apple users trying to fit their iphones into glass footwear?

Re:Cinderella?

[KumquatOfSolace]

No, I think it ends with Microsoft trying to sell pumpkins disguised as smartphones. It's a shorter story than the original.

The apple backlash is going to be amazing one day

[assemblerex]

When all of these "fashionable" people turn against apple because it's no longer "cool" I wonder if the company will survive.

It's about the market's they serve

[Old97]

This is not surprising. Apple and Google cater to consumers. That means the masses, the general public, the hordes. Microsoft's activities the last 10 years and all their successes have been in the enterprise space along with SAP, Oracle, IBM and HP. That makes them boring to most people and that includes the media. Apple creates really cool products that capture imaginations. Even Apple haters want things like what Apple produces - just not from Apple - witness Android phones and tablets. Google touches everybody too. We all use one or more Google services.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[jaymz666]

I guess you never heard of Windows Vista, XP or 7. 90 odd percent of computers run it.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Wocka_Wocka]

Google touches everybody too.

Hope that doesn't include little kids, or Google might be in trouble.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Old97]

Consumers rarely buy Windows. It comes pre-installed on their computers and they don't tend to upgrade until they buy their next computer. Microsoft markets to PC manufacturers and large enterprises. A huge portion of Windows licenses are installed on business computers. Their marketing to end users is pathetic. When was the last time masses of the general public got excited about a Microsoft product?

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Sockatume]

Sure, but nobody actually gives a crap about what version of Windows they're running in the real world. Witness the media coverage: nominal interest in the fact that there's a new version of Windows, and the only other coverage is how they've managed to screw it up. It's like the space program, nobody bothers writing about it unless something goes wrong. By contrast, Apple and Google's activities are an active source of curiosity for the average newspaper-scanning city-dweller.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[jaymz666]

Netbooks came out with Linux initially, consumer demand basically pushed a lot of them to run Windows.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[jaymz666]

Of course they do, there was a load of negative coverage over Vista, and everyone knew they didn't want it. Then when 7 came out people started moving to it and bitching it wasn't XP.

The point is, all their successes have not been in the enterprise space in the last 10 years. XP sold in droves and EVERYONE wanted it compared to ME. Vista not so much, 7 perked up demand again.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[TeethWhitener]

When was the last time masses of the general public got excited about a Microsoft product?

*Cough, Xbox, cough* But I dunno, I've seen Ivy-League-educated, advanced-degree-bearing, Mac-using scientists get pretty worked up if they don't have access to the Office suite. I think Microsoft products (especially Office) are probably looked upon by the general public in the same way as a dishwasher. They're convenient, ubiquitous, people use them all the time, and the only time anyone really notices them is when they're not present.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Rayonic]

I just want some of Apple's innovations without the drawbacks. That's not hypocritical, and certainly doesn't merit a three paragraph rant about "haters".

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[zombieChan51]

Doesn't mean they get excited about Windows. They wanted Windows, because they know how to use Windows. People like a familiar enviroment.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Old97]

So I've heard. Users want what they know and they know Windows from work and their regular PC. Many also want compatibility with the systems of their employers and others they work with. That's not the same though as having an exciting consumer product. It's more like having your steering wheel on the left side of the car if you drive in North America.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[schmidt349]

Yeah, that's kind of Microsoft's problem. Windows is the Helvetica of the OS world. To most lay people it's just "the computer" or "the windows." It has basically zero brand recognition, in spite of these ridiculous ads I keep seeing on TV about ordinary people "inventing" Windows features.

Apple has spent decades cultivating public perception of its products in terms of its difference from Microsoft, the consumer default. When Jobs came back in 1997 they put that strategy into overdrive, and it has really paid off for them. It's like all those BILLY MAYS ads where they have the Super Product compared against "Brand X." Everybody knows what Brand X is, it's whatever happens to be sitting in their mudroom. But it has no face, no personality, and gets no recognition of its own characteristics.

If Microsoft wants to get back into the consumer foreground on the OS side they need to give their products some personality and possibly even engage in self-competition.

How about a completely new ground-up operating system that they sell initially as a niche product alongside Windows? That worked really well for Apple.

How about giving Windows features names that don't sound like they were thought up by a Congressional committee? I mean, come on. Who in God's name is going to prefer Windows Shadow Copy or Windows Media Player over Time Machine or iTunes? Also, they need to drop the "Windows" prefacing everything. That probably kills consumer recognition of the individual features as well.

So far Microsoft's only been willing to take these kinds of chances in emerging markets, like search and mobile, and then they come up with names that sound like they're trying to be cool but failing miserably. "Bing?" "Kin?" Yeah, those are really hip and with it. I recognize the logic underlying the two names but again they sound like they came out of a committee.

In short Microsoft needs to stop acting like a Soviet-era bureaucracy if it wants to reclaim mindshare.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Abcd1234]

I just want some of Apple's innovations without the drawbacks.

Yeah, you just admitted Apple innovates. That immediately disqualifies you as an Apple hater. You then followed it up with a reasonable, coherent statement. That disqualifies you from Slashdot.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[DarkXale]

Still XP was just as much of a mess as Vista until SP2; not a lot of people remember this though. And for performance; XP generally wanted 256mb RAM to run most programs fully. While 128mb was 'ok', most machines at the time contained a mere 64mb, and newer kits generally sold with 128mb. The 256mb systems only came out later.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Old97]

Xbox was first released in November 2001. It's been awhile. I do know one guy who was all atwitter about the Zune. Just one. He's using an iPod Touch now.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Fishead]

Meh. The next door neighbours are an Apple household. The neighbour lady was showing my wife her Ipod Touch and how it lets her organize stuff on the fly, so my wife has been bugging me to get her one. Problem is, I'm not ready to let go of my "Apple hating" just yet, and I have no intentions of installing Itunes on any of my systems. I like the organization of my media server just the way it is, thanks.

I love Apple innovation, but hate their walled gardens. I'm thinking of buying the wife a Galaxy Tab for her birthday next spring.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[lowrydr310]

The funny thing about OSX is that you could use it 100% of the time and still maintain your "1337 cred."

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[chrisj_0]

I bought an OEM copy of Windows 7 for a home built PC. :P

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[recoiledsnake]

Android is not an iPhone alternative; it simply doesn't offer the same benefits. No, no, no it doesn't. The social benefits (the app store and its cleanliness) are not equivalent; not even close.

An alternative has to match everything? Sure, Android is not perfect, but offers a lot of alternatives in hardware choice. Want a hardware keyboard for your phone? Nope, the iPhone does not do the job. Shitty AT&T coverage coverage near your home or office? iPhone does not do the job for you.

While I agree that there are irrational haters, there are legitimate reasons to not like Apple too. The reasons being barely any choice in hardware, and the total locking down of the software ecosystem and treating developers like crap on their mobile devices and tablets. The next biggest reason is a profileration of Apple fanbois(who are otherwise very intelligent and geeky) but who absolutely worship anything coming out of Apple, demonize alternatives regardless of merits and try to justify and downplay any shortcomings. They get very touchy about any criticism, and have been known to give out death threats to people who may be seen as exposing Apple's flaws(remember the OS X wireless exploit?).

Is someone a 'hater' because they come to know something like this http://www.businessinsider.com/latest-app-store-rejection-outrage-apple-rejects-app-that-teaches-kids-to-program-2010-4 and decide that iPads are something that don't do the job for them?

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[mcgrew]

I disagree. Google caters to "the masses" while Apple caters to the elite (the monetary elite that is); that's where they get their "cool" from. It's like buying a Lexus; my sister has one. My old Chrysler has more comfortable seats than her car, a better sounding stereo, more legroom and elbow room, and the motor is just as powerful. But the Lexus has the vanity aspect, just like Apple products. Unless you're doing high end graphics or some other such, any computer and OS will do. But my daughter still wants a MacBook Pro.

Google touches everybody too.

Well, most everybody. I know a few people who don't even own computers.

Microsoft is so sucessful first, because they rode IBM's coattails, second because it's hard to buy a computer that doesn't have Windows pre-installed. As to the enterprise, the mantra used to be "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", now it's "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft". I suspect there may be kickbacks and other shenanigans involved as well, considering some of their past history.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Sockatume]

It's a great success in the same sense that Colgate is a great success. Everyone pays for it, everyone sticks with it, nobody gives much of a shit about it unless it's causing problems.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Duradin]

If only iTunes would have an option that left all the files where they were...

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[ContractualObligatio]

You might want to re-think your sarcasm there. XP's development started back in 1999, and most of Microsoft's customers are happy to keep using it. It's also a business product, as are Vista and 7.

Do you really think the operating system is a good example of how exciting and successful Microsoft has been in the consumer market in the last 10 years?

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumers rarely buy MacOS. It comes preinstalled on their computers. And the MacOS upgrades that Apple sells, MS calls those service packs and they're given away free. Ill pay for a software update when it hits at new whole number version not a 10.xx upgrade. So how long till OS XI comes out?

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[O('_')O_Bush]

And by consumer demand, you mean vendors putting windows+higher end hardware into netbooks to raise their price into the low end notebook range, because 250$ netbooks running linux were hurting the notebook market.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[pckl300]

When was the last time masses of the general public got excited about a Microsoft product?

The Xbox 360 comes to mind.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Anonymous Coward]

...the way RPG gamers make fun of people that don't walk through Manhattan wearing suits of armor, carrying plastic swords, and speaking in Shakespearean English.

I think you're referring to LARP gamers. And as much as I may find LARP hilarious, I don't believe I've ever heard or heard of a single LARPer make fun of someone for not LARPing (in Manhattan or elsewhere). Ever.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[pleasegetreal]

Is this post a joke? Apple commands a tiny fraction of the market. I would say that tech writers are about as biased in their reporting as the MSM is, as study after study has reported. And about as reliable.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[TheRedDuke]

My little bro just stood in line for a launch copy of Halo Reach. He and all his friends were pretty excited. Maybe not OMFG IPAD excited, but hey, whadaya gonna do?

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[Anonymous Coward]

I placed my server's audio file shares in read only mode just in case Steve Jobs decided to rearrange them one night.

Re:It's about the market's they serve

[nolife]

Not quite. MS did not have an OS at a price point that made sense for makers of netbooks. MS saw Linux catching on in the netbooks and released a scaled down version of XP and more recently Win7 starter at a reduced price and artificial limitations put on what hardware it could run on (amount of memory limited to 1GB, screen size at 10.2, HD size etc..). This was a version specifically created for only netbooks. There was pressure on the hardware vendors to include this as an option to the Linux versions and the deals were sweet. Shortly there after, Linux is rarely an option on netbooks any more and you wont find any at most retailers. Basically, Linux had an inroad, MS saw it, sweetened the deal for hardware companies and Linux netbooks went away. The netbook market could be more robust now but with MS's standards for what hardware can be used to run their cheap version of the OS, the hardware netbook market is 100% defined and lives and dies by MS's requirements of there OS. The "consumer" demand had little to do the process because the Linux netbooks were doing fine before MS got involved and if netbooks could evolve without MS's limitations, it would be better for everyone involved except MS.

Yes, consumer demand pushed up sales of MS netbooks but the demand was driven by a strategic effort to give the consumers less to choose from.

Meanwhile, in reality land...

[bsDaemon]

Meanwhile, in Reality Land... Microsoft continues to hold a dominate position in a mature market, targeting business customers Apple doesn't seem to care about. They have a market cap over $211bn and have started paying out dividends. They're in IBM territory now, but the media loves underdogs and sexy startups, and one thing Microsoft has never been is sexy, even when they were a startup. However, I don't really think they care. Not that I really have terribly much use for any of their products, and my personal situation is in no way tied to their fortunes. But to say that only getting 3% of the media coverage is going to hurt them is just kind of stupid. Its almost like Boeing running commercials -- anyone in a position to be purchasing ANYTHING from Boeing isn't going to make that decision off of a 30-second ad. For some companies, media interest is irrelevant, because they're entrenched in their market.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[frostfreek]

On the other hand, Microsoft is about to launch a major campaign for Windows Phone 7. My inside source tells me they have a marketing budget of $1 Billion. I had to capitalize and spell that out, writing $1B doesn't seem to do it justice.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[Thanshin]

My inside source tells me they have a marketing budget of $1 Billion. I had to capitalize and spell that out, writing $1B doesn't seem to do it justice.

It's better to spell it out, otherwise some people may think it was $1 Bullion.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[Amorymeltzer]

The comparison isn't really about Apple vs. Microsoft - as you point out that was decided years ago - but rather the other findings. Mainstream media coverage of technology is 1.6% of the total - miniscule, yet ahead of religion or immigration. There's twice as much coverage about how tech is changing our lives than about corporate folk. Twitter coverage is very different from the mainstream. These are useful metrics that tell us something about who we are and how we get our news.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[Xest]

Microsoft's market cap is quite impressive, but still simply doesn't do them justice.

When you look at the important stats- their net income, then they're still pulling in around 3 times the amount of post-outgoings cash as Google and Oracle, and about twice as much as HP, and around 2.5 times as much as Apple. Their equity and assets trump pretty much all the other players as well. In comparison with Dell- a truly dying tech company, they've got a staggering 12 times the profit Dell has nowadays.

As you say the media interest doesn't matter, Microsoft is still by far the biggest tech company in the world, no other company comes close, and of course with Microsoft still reporting record profit year on year there's no sign of anyone catching up to them any time soon. Google and Apple's growth over the last decade has become phenomenal, no one can argue that, but even with their epic growth they've still not been able to reach half the size of Microsoft and their momentum has certainly slowed recently- certainly the rate of growth isn't close to what it was some years back so if they do catch Microsoft up, it's still going to be a long hard slog and take them an awful long time yet.

The other point is about the negativity of the articles too, certainly not all of the press Apple and Google have received has been positive- a company like Apple riding on a wave of positive publicity to drive sales of it's products is going to get hit much harder by negative stories than a company like Microsoft that's had pretty much nothing but negative publicity for the last 20 years, but still manages to thrive.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[DrgnDancer]

Meh. You're right adn you're wrong. Microsoft certainly isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and they do in fact dominate the business market in PCs and (to a slightly lesser extent) servers. This isn't in doubt. On the other hand they're showing themselves increasingly unable to adapt to changing market conditions. They were famously late on the web (and had to bludgeon Netscape to death to win), their attempts to me-too their way into search, social media, cloud computing, game systems, etc have met with various degree of success; but nearly universally cost more than they make. Most importantly right now, they can't get a mobile platform going.

There are strong indicators that smart phones and tablets are going to be what PCs were 15-20 years ago. Not that they are going to replace PCs (not yet anyway, who knows with advances in miniaturization what a decade from now will look like), but they are the big ticket, high margin items that everyone wants and is willing to pay for. PCs are commodities. You have the fridge, the washer/dryer, the TV, and the computer. (Before I get flamed that computers are bigger ticket than mobile devices: yes, but notice "big ticket, high margin")

For right now, this merely means that Microsoft is missing out on the cash cow of the moment. Kinda sucks, but they make plenty of money on other things so not the end of the world. But what *about* ten years from now? When these micro devices get the power and peripherals they would need to be a serious threat to PCs and laptops on the desktop. History has shown that smaller and slightly less powerful often wins out over larger and slightly more powerful when it comes to technology.

IBM wasn't worried about PCs. They were toys. Until they weren't. Everyone said laptops were great for a short term "I have to be mobile" scenario; but when you were at your desk you wanted a "real" computer with some power. Then suddenly laptops *were* real computers, and people were using them as primary systems. Sometimes "docked" to peripherals, sometimes not.

Your comparison to IBM is apt. Microsoft is in *precisely* the position that IBM was in at the dawn of the PC. They made the wrong decisions, went the wrong directions, and it very nearly killed them. Will mobiles make have the same kind of long term trajectory as PCs? Will Microsoft make the same mistakes as IBM? I don't know the answer to either question, but I do know the IBM's position seemed just as unassailable once. I don't think Microsoft is going anywhere, don't get me wrong. PCs didn't kill IBM, and (even if they don't pull a rabbit out their collective hats and actually get in the game) mobile won't kill Microsoft. For all that they're a great company though, IBM is not the behemoth they used to be. Someday, perhaps someday soon, Microsoft won't be either.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[paiute]

Meanwhile, in Reality Land... Microsoft continues to hold a dominate position in a mature market, targeting business customers Apple doesn't seem to care about. They have a market cap over $211bn and have started paying out dividends.

Apple market cap today: 260B
Microsoft market cap today: 212B

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[beelsebob]

The have a market cap over $211bn and have started paying out dividends. They're in IBM territory now, but the media loves underdogs and sexy startups

You do realise Apple's the second biggest company in the world with a market cap of $263.2bn (figure subject to change with the winds of time)... Welcome to reality land Apple is bigger than Microsoft.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[Mongoose Disciple]

(and had to bludgeon Netscape to death to win),

Hey, let's not be revisionist about the history of Netscape. At best, that was an assisted suicide.

Having to support the many differently-broken versions of latter-day Netscape is why web developers of 10 years ago will be having 'Nam-like violent PTSD flashbacks someday. Charlie in the trees has nothing on that action.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[StuartHankins]

Apple's market cap is bigger -- substantially so, approx $50 BILLION bigger. And growing, unlike Microsoft's, which has languished. Microsoft has had to announce a dividend just to try and keep investors interested -- their stock has been a very poor return on investment for many years. It's a desperate move.

I hope everyone gathers 'round and delivers to Microsoft the beating they've earned. They've caused SO much damage and left so many companies crippled or dead in their wake.

It's about time, and I've got my popcorn ready.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[zach_the_lizard]

Here in Northern Virginia, I sometimes see Boeing ads in newspapers and magazines, especially magazines geared towards the military. I think they want politician / bureaucrat / general XYZ to see the ad and think of Boeing next time they go on a spending spree (which is almost always).

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[strokerace]

...had to bludgeon Netscape to death to win

Wrong! Joel Spolsky had a different take: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[O('_')O_Bush]

Except stock, which is why Boeing does run commercials.

I heard Boeing/Northrop Grumman commercials on the radio all the time when there was the refueling tanker contract bid going on.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Apple market cap today: 260B Microsoft market cap today: 212B

Yes, bubbles driven by media exposure pumps up market caps way beyond reality.

Company 1: more revenue, more profit in absolute dollars, higher profit margin, complete dominance in its markets which are core to the functioning of modern society, pays a decent dividend. Diversified beyond the "cult of personality" of being all about a specific individual/founder.

Company 2: less revenue, less profit in absolute dollars, lower profit margin, losing market share in its markets (which are not core to society), pays no dividend. Still a cult of personality that relies upon the ideas/guidance of a single man with health issues.

Yeah, company 2 only has a higher market cap if it's in a bubble. And bubble is what Apple's stock price certainly is.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[jmorris42]

> You do realise Apple's the second biggest company in the world with a market cap of $263.2bn

You do realize that is a bubble waiting to burst. What exactly does Apple do that justifies that cap? They make nothing, everything is made by contract houses in China. They don't have a monopoly like Microsoft to justify it by virtue of an ensured future revenue stream. Yes they have pretty good sales numbers right now, but that could change in a quarter, especially if we have a double dip since the products they sell aren't exactly 'must have' for most people.

I have rode AAPL up twice in the past and wish I had got in for this last ride since it has been the biggest, but now is the time to be SELLING. This is .bomb territory now. Same as everyone with a clue looked at the dozens of huge cap .com companies and asked "ok, so what the hell justifies that price?" and couldn't find an answer... right before a critical mass realized the same thing.

I mean, even if you believed Amazon was soon going to sell every book and video, when they had a market cap bigger than Boeing the smart money was cashing out. Simple matter of running the numbers. Total annual sales in the books/videos etc. market Amazon was attempting to dominate would never justify the market cap Amazon had in the peak of the bubble. Plus they had almost no assets on their balance sheet, only a couple of warehouses and rapidly depreciating server farms. The only real asset was their 'brand'.

Apple is now in the same position, they have almost zero physical assets, some useful IP but most of the balance is 'goodwill' from the RDF. The bulk of what you are buying is the theory that Apple will continue to dominate and sell a lot of really high margin product.... into a recession with new competitors ramping up.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[TheRedDuke]

Not to mention Microsoft's postion in the gaming market - yet another market segment Apple (and Google) has largely ignored. TFA didn't even talk about Xbox with the exception of some random fact about banning Xbox Live users. Note to researchers: Halo Reach sold $200m on launch day alone - MS has to be doing something right in the marketing department.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[paiute]

Apple market cap today: 260B
Microsoft market cap today: 212B

Yes, bubbles driven by media exposure pumps up market caps way beyond reality.

Company 1: more revenue, more profit in absolute dollars, higher profit margin, complete dominance in its markets which are core to the functioning of modern society, pays a decent dividend. Diversified beyond the "cult of personality" of being all about a specific individual/founder.

Company 2: less revenue, less profit in absolute dollars, lower profit margin, losing market share in its markets (which are not core to society), pays no dividend. Still a cult of personality that relies upon the ideas/guidance of a single man with health issues.

Yeah, company 2 only has a higher market cap if it's in a bubble. And bubble is what Apple's stock price certainly is.

One company has a couple of products which provide the majority of its profits. And these products are at risk as applications transition to the cloud. Most other lines break even or lose money.

The other company sells high profit margin products as fast as they can produce them and is constantly finding ways to make moribund and imaginary product areas fabulously profitable.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[Anonymous Coward]

or 1 Baht

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[Leon Buijs]

So it's not important for MS to get attention for their products? I guess they don't care that their Zune was a flop either then. Are you suggesting they created it for flopping? If there's one reson they are in the business market, it's because they failed in consumer markets.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, MS was and still is a geek's company.
Apple is basically one of the first non-geek tech companies (like Google, yahoo, FB, etc..)--I see it more of an ad agency & car company nowadays compared to a tech company.
And the media--they may want to be geeks, but in high school reality, they aren't, they're just social ladder folks, and geeks are popularized currently.Once geeks fall out of pop culture, they'll be back to their hipster ways.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[LynnwoodRooster]

One company has a couple of products which provide the majority of its profits. And these products are at risk as applications transition to the cloud. Most other lines break even or lose money.

Yep, you just described Apple perfectly. The iPhone and the iPod Touch are where they make the lion's share of their money. And with apps moving to the cloud, functionality like running Flash and supporting dynamically loaded libraries and client-side scripting becomes critical. Of course, those are the very things Apple refuses to allow you to do...

The other company sells high profit margin products as fast as they can produce them and is constantly finding ways to make moribund and imaginary product areas fabulously profitable.

Yes, that would be Microsoft. Their profit margin is about double that of Apple, indicative of selling high profit margin products.

Thanks for proving my point - Apple's stock price is in a media-hype-driven bubble.

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[Rakarra]

You do realize that is a bubble waiting to burst. What exactly does Apple do that justifies that cap? They make nothing, everything is made by contract houses in China.

Doesn't that apply to just about every non-service-based corporation in the US?

Re:Meanwhile, in reality land...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you apparently don't understand is that stock prices and thus market cap are based on future expectations. That means that the company with the larger growth rate in profits will support a much larger stock price and thus market cap. Apple has been able to maintain (or increase, I didn't bother to check) it's growth rate of profits during one of the longest recessions in recent history all the while selling their high margin non necessity products. That says they are definitely doing something right.

Now I'm not saying it's not a bubble, because the stock price is based on this growth in profits, and they won't be able to keep that up forever, but they've been doing remarkably well for a while now

Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[goombah99]

People love apple and it's fabuously high quality ineffebly well designed products. Media's write stories about things people are interested in or find fascinating.

The weird thing here is that somehow people think this works in reverse. That the media is supposed to somehow find something people dont' care about and make it fascinating. E.g. Linux. SOny walkmans, corvettes, and basketball got media attention because people got excited about them about them and not the reverse.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[Abcd1234]

People love apple and it's fabuously high quality ineffebly well designed products.

What are you, new here? Haven't you heard? People love Apple because they're "fashionable". And they're, like, brainwashed fanbois, who are mindlessly drawn to the Apple store thanks to Steve Jobs' mind control techniques.

Well-designed products... honestly, what are you, some kind of "consumer choice", "people pick what they want", "the best product wins" capitalist pig or something?

Err... no, capitalism is good, that can't be right.

Now I'm confused. Confused and hungry.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[Zarf]

Now I'm confused. Confused and hungry.

Go eat some bacon and calm down.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[MrHanky]

Wrong. There's a tiny minority of loudmouths who like Apple. Even the huge success of the iPhone -- the only phone in the world, according to the media -- only has something like 10% market share.

Also, their supposedly ineffably well designed laptops have a worse malfunction rate than Asus, Toshiba and Sony, despite Apple only catering to the midrange and high end. So: no better than others, which means you're fraudulently advertising their quality. Yes, your comment is an advertisement.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[AltairDusk]

People love apple and it's fabuously high quality ineffebly well designed products.

Having owned a few of their products I would hesitate to call them high quality, especially in the reliability department. The iPod Classic has been trouble free but both the original iPhone and the 3gs gave me quite a few issues, as a matter of fact the original is still sitting in a desk drawer, only useful as a paperweight now.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[Anonymous Coward]

"There's a tiny minority of loudmouths who like Apple..."

Of course it has nothing to do with Apple having the highest customer satisfaction rating of any PC maker AGAIN:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20017064-260.html

You should probably cite the source for your claim about failure rates. Even if true it doesn't really change the fact that Apple's customers are the most satisfied. I'd say there is more than a "tiny minority" (whatever that means) who like Apple.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[Anonymous Coward]

fabuously high quality ineffebly well designed products

do you mean fucking ineffably ?

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. There's a tiny minority of loudmouths who like Apple.

You are spending time in a forum complaining about "loud mouths" who post their opinions to forums. Pot, Kettle, Black.

There are people who like Apple, people who hate people who like Apple, and people who don't care. Some people who like Apple are loud. Some people who hate people who like Apple are loud. Both sets of loud people are tiny minorities

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[bzipitidoo]

For the publishing industry, Apple software was far and away the best for many years. They were good with fonts and layout when no one else was really trying. That's a big reason why the media reports on it constantly. They themselves are the fanbois.

At the university I attended, the labs were about 50/50 on PCs and Macs, but the users weren't. Long wait to get a PC, while the Macs sat there idle. Therefore I used a Mac fairly often. And I can say all this talk about the intuitiveness of the user interface is hype. The first thing that threw me was the titlebar on their GUI, and that's entirely their fault for getting nasty with patents. MS style GUIs have the titlebar attached to the top of the respective window. The Mac has the active window's titlebar glued to the top of the screen. MS would have done it the same way, but Apple waved their "look and feel" patents at the industry. And now Apple is the weirdo, ha ha! The next thing I gradually learned about were various "open-apple some-key" commands. Nothing intuitive at all about those.

The other thing about Apple is they make sure young people are exposed to their products. They have always pushed their computers hard to educational institutions. I started on an Apple II because the school had a few of those and a few TRS-80s, and of the 2 there was no comparison. Color graphics and floppy disk vs monochrome and cassette tape. That's the only time I've seen it the other way around. No one using the TRS-80s, and a wait to use the Apples. Later, when it was PC-XT versus Apple IIc, you could see Apple was slipping. Apple ought to watch for that. It's no good making sure the school's lab is well equipped if students won't use them.

Macs aren't cool. These days, seems Apple is all about iThings. OSX, and possibly the shift to x86 architecture, is the most recent coolness about Macs that I recall offhand, and that's been a few years. Their proprietary lock down business strategy has remained essentially unchanged from even before the Mac debuted. It's why when I moved on from the Apple II, I moved to the PC, not the Mac.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[paimin]

And both sets of loud people are fucking annoying as hell.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Yes, your comment is an advertisement.

Yes, your comment is an advertisement for SquareTrade Laptop Warranty plans. Because its based on people who have a SquareTrade Laptop Warranty plans. I guess there are much more people Asus, Toshiba and Sony laptops and such a plan than people with a MacBook.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[joeyblades]

Except for my Motorola RAZR I have yet to own a phone that continues to function correctly for more than two years (my Blackberry almost made it)... and I baby my phones.

I've had to send three Samsungs back for warranty in the last year alone. Nokias were crap. Sony Ericsson - crap. HTC - crap. LG - crap.

It almost seems like all mobile phones are designed to fail within a year or so. Of course, that doesn't make sense. I mean, why would these companies want you to purchase another device in such a short period of time???

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[AltairDusk]

Hmm, my last Samsung was actually pretty rugged, it was the verizon A930. In addition to taking a beating in general it survived a rage-propelled flight down a concrete staircase and off the .5 story landing onto the ground in a parking garage. I must have been lucky with that one, granted it was a big plastic beast of a phone, even for the time.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[stewbacca]

Wait, what? You expect an Apple hater to provide sources for his made-up statistics? Blasphemy! Don't you know we all buy iStuff because we are insecure and only care about what people think about us based on our consumer electronic devices!?

And Apple hardware historically is rated very high (usually tops) in reliability. I personally don't care about user opinions, because users are people and people, in general, are stupid. Just take a look at cnet or amazon user reviews someday.

He's a sample of laptop reliability from 2009: http://mac.blorge.com/2009/05/05/macbooks-sweep-consumer-reports-quality-survey/

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[stewbacca]

There are people who like Apple, people who hate people who like Apple, and people who don't care.

But loudly hating somebody because they like something is far more egregious than being loud about liking something. Except in college football. Everyone hates SEC fans.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[stewbacca]

That's a big reason why the media reports on it constantly. They themselves are the fanbois.

Exactly.

And I can say all this talk about the intuitiveness of the user interface is hype.

And the vast majority of usability experts would tell you that you are wrong. Not that Apple stuff is perfect, it does set a high bar. Try http://www.nngroup.com/ for starters.

The first thing that threw me was the titlebar on their GUI, and that's entirely their fault for getting nasty with patents.

No, it is the product of user interface engineering called conveyance that allows the user to always expect a certain behavior to behave the same way (i.e. the title bar is always at the top of your screen).

MS style GUIs have the titlebar attached to the top of the respective window. The Mac has the active window's titlebar glued to the top of the screen.

Yes they do. Not because they didn't want to get sued by Apple, but because of the notion of "proximity". MS decided proximity was a more important design feature than conveyance. While I agree with the MS stance, it clearly is more confusing to have multiple windows with multiple title bars open than having one title bar for the active window.

The next thing I gradually learned about were various "open-apple some-key" commands. Nothing intuitive at all about those.

Nothing intuitive about using English? Apple Key + "S" for "S"ave, O for open, Q for quit (as if ALT + F4 is more intuitive than Quit?) Additionally, Apple does a better job of standardizing keyboard shortcuts. MS does a better job of customizing shortcuts, but that doesn't make it more intuitive (it makes it more customizable).

The other thing about Apple is they make sure young people are exposed to their products.

I'm pretty sure Apple is more interested in people with large amounts of disposable income. I haven't really seen a cheap Apple computer in a while.

They have always pushed their computers hard to educational institutions.

What company wouldn't?

It's no good making sure the school's lab is well equipped if students won't use them.

Not to toot my own horn, but I have published curriculum on teaching technology, and kids now days don't care about the platform as long as it has an Internet connection.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[joeyblades]

You don't understand. I've never dropped any of those Samsungs. In fact, I can't remember ever dropping any of my cell phones. My problem has been basic infant mortality issues. The damn things just stop responding to touches or the radio stops sending or the phone just randomly powers itself off with a full battery.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[bzipitidoo]

I am aware of Apple's reputation in UIs, and that there are numerous supporting studies. But I disagree. Yes, such things as multitouch screens are very cool, but they're not all that profoundly new and different and better. It is that the UI is like the user manual. For many products those things are an afterthought, and are neglected. It is easy to look brilliant in an area when everyone else routinely ignores it. If Apple had any real competition there, they wouldn't look so great.

Apple Key + "S" for "S"ave, O for open, Q for quit

This is just what I mean. You call that intuitive? What about all the people whose native language is not English? Then, Apple could have at least used "ctrl" or "alt" instead of inventing their own key. And why a 2 key combo? Why not 1 key, like the PC's function keys can be? (Did Amazon patent that too?) If any other manufacturer wants to standardize on what Apple did, what are they supposed to do for the "Apple" keys? Asking Apple for permission is no good. But most of all, why are some of these functions not available in the menus? For instance, screen capture presents some unique difficulties. Apple found it necessary to keep some back door functionality, some sort of escape mechanism.

Point and click is NOT the best way to do quite a number of things. Else we would no longer have a keyboard. They hung on to the keyboard, but they tried to bury the command line. And didn't succeed. Even a seemingly simple task like file management is sometimes best done at the command line. File managers cannot specify files as flexibly as command lines with wildcards. Mostly though, menus cannot be too large, or people get lost. The inherently hierarchical nature only makes it worse. We've all had the experience of hunting through menus trying to find a function. (GIMP is a good one for that.) Look at how much MS has juggled the Windows menu. It's a mess. And it's not because everyone except Apple is bad at it, it's because the hierarchical menu itself is a bad way to organize functionality.

And think about batch commands. How would I tell a computer to do some set of transforms on an image? Load the image into something like the GIMP, and do it. Now, what about several thousand images? It might takes weeks to do it through a GUI.

Been 10 years since I was in a school computer lab. The Internet certainly wasn't the trump card you're saying it is today. Then, it was all about the apps, with MS Office, particularly Word and the doc file format, being the kingpin. Science and math software such as MATLAB were pretty important too. (I used an XWindows server and plain old remote terminals and Emacs and vi, and by that means dodged the issue, doing programming assignments on a UNIX system rather than using whatever compilers and environments may have been on the Mac.) Always, the Mac version of an app was more trouble. It would have minor incompatibilities, maybe missing functionality. And cost much more. Or often, there just wasn't one.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[stewbacca]

Quickly, because I have to go to work.

Apple didn't invent their own key...that key is there on Windows as well (it just has a different name). Apple is more consistent in which key to use and why, unlike Windows. This is debatable based on your preference, but from a pure HMI stand point, the Apple way is "easier" (notice I didn't say better).

Screen shots can be done with keyboard shortcuts (UNIX legacy) or by opening Grab and using the menus. Non-issue.

Apple has done nothing to hide the command line. It's applications/utilities/terminal, or just type terminal in the system search bar in the top right corner.

If you want to argue that command line file management makes it *easier* for people to not get lost, then you obviously can't appreciate the UI of OSX (or Windows, for that matter).

Windows has juggled the Windows menu. Apple doesn't so much. That's yet another reason the Apple UI is considered "better" or "easier" by experts. Hierarchical menus work for most people, but not all. It's a preference, and obviously not one of yours.

Reading your last paragraph, it seems your distaste for Macintosh stems from pre-OSX issues. OSX has been around for nearly 10 years now, though, so most of your complaints seem to be outdated.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[AltairDusk]

Were these more recent models? I'm wondering if their quality has gone downhill or if I just managed to get the one exceptionally sturdy model by accident.

Re:Uh that's what media is supposed to do

[joeyblades]

Yes, two Mythics and one Flight. I can't speak to past quality, but I don't have a very good first impression (no pun intended) and will probably never buy another Samsung product of any kind.

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[betterunixthanunix]

I doubt it will happen any time soon. Maybe after Steve Jobs is dead, buried, and an entirely new generation that has never heard of him starts buying computers.

Well duh

[hsmith]

The media wants to make more money. So, if you were in the business of selling newspapers/magazines/stupid shit what would you do to attract customers? Would you talk about things no one cares about or would you talk about things PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT.

While the two feed off one another (is the iPhone popular because it is "great" or is it popular because we keep saying it is popular), if something people liked more came along it would certainly get more attention.

Re:Well duh

[jaymz666]

Android sells more than the iPhone, so which is more popular?

Apple plays the press, they do it well. That's about it really.

Re:Well duh

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Android sells more than the iPhone, so which is more popular?

let's see:

Apple iPhone versus other brands of Android phones: Apple iPhone is more popular.

Apple iOS versus Google Android: Google Android has the plurality of the installed base.

Perceived leader in the smart phone market: Apple iPhone since EVERYBODY seems to compare their phone to the iPhone.

Bloomberg TV gave Gates some love.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloomberg TV did a story on the Stuxnet/Iranian nuke facility story in the past week. The host opined that systems running Microsoft were "already" unstable without "viruses". She asked the barely-containing-his-smirk-of-agreement guest tech pundit if people really ran important things like Nuclear facilities on Microsoft. B-roll behind this conversation: a factory pumping out shiny new discs of Windows7. FTW!

Yeah, fashionable people.

[aussersterne]

They use it because it... goes with their shoes. It has nothing to do with the fact that Apple software does the job it was meant to do, for less money, and with a better interface than the alternatives (Windows in the first case, Linux in the second).

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[jedidiah]

Apple doesn't do anything for less money.

Whether or not it "does the job" is another matter. More than likely, it only "does the job" because the requirements of the job have been restricted to the point where success is a lot less meaningful.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[AnonymousClown]

Less money?!?!

The only time I've ever seen Apple come in cheaper than a competitor is with the high end all-in-one desktops - HP costs more at least back when I checked.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[colinrichardday]

And how many people buy the boxed version of Microsoft Windows, as opposed to just getting it with a computer? That's the point; how much does a computer with Windows cost compared to a computer with Mac OS?

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[Mongoose Disciple]

You have to be deep, deep, deep into the Apple Kool-Aid to seriously compare Office to iWork. Its grape-tastic deliciousness is spilling from your mouth and running down your chin.

iWork is to Office as my $30 Walkman is to a 64 GB iPod Touch. Yeah, one's cheaper. There's a reason for that.

And hell, I love my $30 Walkman for what it is -- it does the job I bought it for perfectly, but let's not pretend it's something it's not.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[recoiledsnake]

And that software runs by itself? What about the hardware to run it on? You're not counting the Apple tax which is used to subsidize Mac OS X and other software.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple bullshit.

Mac Box Set
(Mac OS 10.6.3, iWork 2009, iLife 2009)
$169.00

Windows 7 Home + Office 2010 Home
$328.00

Nevermind that the Microsoft set doesn't have any equivalents at all (much less included in the cost above) for iDVD, iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, or GarageBand...

 
I don't use functionality included in that extra crap you listed (GarageBand? really?), but as for simple, I'm not sure why you compared the software costs in isolation, given that Apple is a hardware company, and Microsoft is a software company. Just a quick check, the cheapest Mac at Best Buy is a laptop for $999, and the cheapest equivalent non-Apple laptop is a Compaq for $349. If MS Works isn't bundled with that machine, it's only $39, and it provides identical functionality to iWork, plus it's compatible with MS Office file formats.
 
Why do you Kool Aid-drinking fanbois refuse to admit this? Apple machines are much more expensive than the equivalent Windows machines. You should revel in that as another point of the magicalness that is Apple. "Our toys are shinier, AND more expensive!"

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[UnknowingFool]

And your Windows software runs on your toaster? You need to buy Windows compatible hardware. One of the reasons MS pissed so many people off with Vista was not so much because it was buggy and badly deployed; one reason was MS defined "compatible" very loosely and people buying machines they thought were Vista compatible found out they could only run the least featured version of Vista.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[Anonymous Coward]

Point me to the cheapest PC that I can run that Mac Box Set on, and I will gladly do it......

Oh, it only runs on Apple hardware legally. *walks away*

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[UnknowingFool]

Probably a better example would be the Snow Leopard desktop upgrade is $29. The cheapest retail Windows 7 Upgrade is like $79. And that's if you are upgrading the same version. If you're upgrading Home Basic to Home Premium, then the price differs. I'm confused myself what I would need to pay.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[recoiledsnake]

The point that I was making(that obviously went over your head) is Apple gets a huge chunk of money from selling you a Mac and uses that money to subsidize Mac OS and software. Microsoft does not do this.

i.e There is a hidden extra cost behind the numbers in the parent post for OS X and iWork that you HAVE to pay when buying the hardware to use that software. i.e The Apple tax. This is the reason that Apple disallows you from running it to non Mac hardware and even prohibits virtualizing it, showing that their software is subsidized by their hardware.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be sucking on the Microsoft shaft to compare what Microsoft offers in comparison to iLife. I don't see anything even close.
Windows 7 is an OS X wanna be and even if Orifice was left off, you get an even better user experience.
Have a napkin, there's milk on your face.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[UnknowingFool]

The point you don't get it that if you did your research you would find that there are both Microsoft and Apple Taxes but you only recognize one of them. If you actually priced out hardware you would find that you do pay more for Apple hardware but it is often higher quality hardware. The premium you are paying is mostly the difference in quality as Apple does not sell low-end hardware. With MS you get Windows Genuine Advantage which locks to a particular version (if you can get it to run at all). Apple only sells one desktop version and one server version of OS X. Even then they don't really too much care if consumers install the wrong version on the wrong hardware; they just won't support it.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[Rockoon]

A MacBook is "just $999" (thats a quote from their page.. "just")

That has a 2.4ghz Core Duo, 2GB DDR, 13.3" LED, and a 250GB Hard Drive.

A quick check of Dell reveals the Inspiron 14 for just $725.

That has a 2.5ghz Core Duo (better), 2GB DDR, 14" OLED (better), and a 320GB Hard Drive (better).

Both come with an OS..

Now, you can take your $275 in savings for the better gear, add $25 and also buy a Inspiron Mini 10 for $300 (that ALSO comes with an OS)

Face the facts, fanboy. Macs are way overpriced. If the OS is as cheap as people claim, then why the fuck is there such a disparity in price? Looks to me like the REAL price of OS/X is $275 more than the price of Windows 7.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to get involved in this little war, but that $349 Compaq is hardly on par hardware-wise with the $999 MacBook.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it's 275 cheaper, but now I'm stuck with Windows... I'm not a fanboy (or fanboi), but I do prefer Mac OS over Windows. I always have (going back long before OS X [except when it comes to HTPCs, I give MS credit there Media Center is nice and I use it for that]) These days I just buy from the Apple refurb store. Sure it sucks paying more, but I'm ok with that as long as I can run Mac OS (legally). It doesn't hurt that Apple laptops hold resale value better too. I typically pay for at least half of my new laptop by selling my old one.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Uh, Windows 7 Home plus Microsoft Works (more akin to the iWork lightweight stuff that Apple ships) is about $150. Cheaper. Sorry!

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[BlueStraggler]

Face the facts, fanboy. Macs are way overpriced. If the OS is as cheap as people claim, then why the fuck is there such a disparity in price?

Because there's no Windows, genius. Face the facts, some people would pay $1000 premium for that feature. And most of the rest would wish they could.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[Bassman59]

The point that I was making(that obviously went over your head) is Apple gets a huge chunk of money from selling you a Mac and uses that money to subsidize Mac OS and software. Microsoft does not do this.

i.e There is a hidden extra cost behind the numbers in the parent post for OS X and iWork that you HAVE to pay when buying the hardware to use that software. i.e The Apple tax. This is the reason that Apple disallows you from running it to non Mac hardware and even prohibits virtualizing it, showing that their software is subsidized by their hardware.

You do realize that Apple is a hardware manufacturer, right? The hardware isn't very useful without software. So of course Apple wants you to buy their hardware.

And if you weren't lazy, you could compare the costs of similarly-equipped Dell and Apple computers and the cost is about the same.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[Bassman59]

Uh, Windows 7 Home plus Microsoft Works (more akin to the iWork lightweight stuff that Apple ships) is about $150. Cheaper. Sorry!

And the various versions of Windows 7 confuses most people. Home? UItimate? What? Gimme a break. Snow Leopard, one version: $29.

Plus Microsoft doesn't offer anything like Garage Band, which a bunch of my friends use for podcast-creation and the like. (I use Logic Studio.)

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[scot4875]

If you actually priced out hardware you would find that you do pay more for Apple hardware but it is often higher quality hardware.

No, it really isn't. The screens aren't any better (they used to be, but aren't any more) the hardware is the same as you'll find in any Windows machine (same Intel chips, same end-user grade RAM, same end-user grade HDs), the video hardware is from stock chips. Maybe they have better optical drives. And maybe the touchpad could be considered higher quality. Those don't add up to a 50% price premium.

About the only thing "high-end" about it is the machined aluminum case. (I say this as a 17" MacBook Pro owner.)

--Jeremy

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[mikael_j]

Actually, Apple builds systems that consist of both hardware and software. A bit like the UNIX workstation manufacturers that used to be all over the place. In fact, I seem to recall their operating system being a UNIX. Hey, maybe that's why I have a 27" iMac? Yeah, it is, it's a capable UNIX workstation that doesn't require me to edit xorg.conf, putz around with kernel modules, spend hours trying to make the network configuration stick or curse over audio subsystem incompatibilities just to get a usable system (yes, that pretty much describes when I setup Ubuntu 10.04 on my netbook a while back and that's as someone who's been a Linux/UNIX user since the mid-90s with experience working as a Linux sysadmin managing a cluster of machines that each cost more than a decent used car). Really, if you're a *nix user who wants a desktop *nix system that works out of the box these days it's Apple that offers the best solution.

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[the_B0fh]

and unix geeks such as the London perlmongers moving to an Apple platform indicates what? Perlmongers care about the color of their shoes?

Re:Yeah, fashionable people.

[tibman]

I can upgrade my computer. That is my only gripe to Mac desktops.

I don't know why iWork2009 or Office2010 is a requirement for anything.. can't you use OpenOffice or an older version of iWork or MSoffice? There's no need to buy the latest version of that crap when the older ones work exactly as well.

So MacOS 10.6.3 comes with iDVD, iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb and GarageBand? You should see what $DISTRO linux comes with.

You are right about the cost of OSs though, that crap is expensive. I think Win7pro is 170$ right now? I was able to buy a key for 20$ though.

Bringing Socrates into this..

[airfoobar]

All people can be fanbois.
Journalists are people.

=>
Journalists can be fanbois.

Re:Bringing Socrates into this..

[Anonymous Coward]

you got it all reversed :

Journalists are people.
Fanbois are people.

=> Journalists are fanbois.

MS : Apple :: Ugly Step Sister : Cinderella

[Anonymous Coward]

MS is not cinderella at the ball....more like one of the ugly step sisters!

Do the innovation - get the attention.

[rclandrum]

Since the return of Jobs to Apple, they have defined the mass-market consumer computing industry. The iMac redefined how computers can look, introducing the concept of high-design into a buyers decision. The iPod and iTunes defined an easy, safe, legal means for carrying your music around and purchasing it online. The iPod Touch pushed into territory previously occupied by PDAs and showed how applications and music players could co-exist in the same device. The iPhone took the Touch a step further and integrated your cell phone. Finally, the iPad leveraged the phenomenal user interface that Apple engineered for its new portable consumer devices and made the screen large enough to be attractive to use in an armchair at home. And during all this, their computers have made major switches to Intel CPUs and OS X.

Everyone else has been just trying to keep up. It has actually been an incredible accomplishment by Jobs. Say what you will about the man or his methods, but he has completely and authoritatively defined the interaction of humans and their computing devices during his lifetime. Apple deserves the attention.

Herd mentality

[Kupfernigk]

Have journalists ever had such a herd mentality? Probably. What we are seeing is that #2 in the list - Google - has transformed their jobs. Search means that everybody is singing from the first page returned. Nowadays, you can read ten articles on the same subject and get only two points of view - over the top pro and anti. Apple is dying. Apple is cool. Obama is the saviour. Obama is a Muslim. A mildly centric British politician is suddenly "Red Ed". In three weeks he'll be accused of selling out to the Right.

Meanwhile, strangely, the real world goes on. Acer is the big growth story in laptops. Android has the (world) expanding market share in phones. Client/server computing is growing very rapidly, in a new guise, with very interesting things happening. But they don't actually make for exciting stories, just like the rise and rise of Hyundai gets less attention than Ferraris that catch fire.

The moral? Go to journalists to find out what incurious people are thinking.

Re:Herd mentality

[Penguinisto]

Nota Bene - Journos have had the luxury of Lexis-Nexis long, long before Google ever existed. :)

More Bias Please

[whisper_jeff]

Could we please have a bit more bias in our summaries please. I mean, things like "Apple and Its Army of Fans" and "Microsoft, meanwhile, is languishing in the shadows like Cinderella on the night of the ball." don't quite make it obvious that the story is trying to make a point. Feel free to throw in references to Nazis, if necessary, to make the story bias more obvious.

sigh... I know it's a pipe dream, but I really do enjoy story submissions that just cover the details and let me make up my own mind on how I view the information...

Re:More Bias Please

[Amorymeltzer]

Read the actual report instead of the "News, Analysis, and Perspective" from CRN: http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/when_technology_makes_headlines

Re:More Bias Please

[Enderwiggin13]

I may disagree with your computing preferences but I'm pretty sure you're not a Nazi.

Re:More Bias Please

[Duradin]

It's an Apple story posted by Taco.

Of course there's going to be bias. Someone's still bitter about the whole Nomad thing.

Re:More Bias Please

[Anonymous Coward]

Ladies & gentlemen I give you whisper jeff, the man with an apple shaped hole in his heart!

watch and wonder as this pitiful little creep demonstrates his devotion to steve jobs by taking his member into his mouth once again, and going at it like there is no tomorrow.

on second thoughts you'd probably rather not =(

Re:More Bias Please

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I am not able to pick up on what the slant is from those two statements, so perhaps they should add Nazi references to make it clear to those of us without English degrees.

Really let's look at other industries.

[LWATCDR]

Let's go right to cars.
I bet if you couldn't up all the coverage about cars you will find that Porsche, Ferrari, and Bugatti get a lot more press than they should based on market share.
That is because people are interested in them more than Chevy's and Kia's.
If you look at models you will see that that there is a lot more coverage of the Mustang than the Focus even though the Focus probably out sells the Mustang 10 to 1.
When you look at computers it is also much the same. You just don't see a lot of coverage on low end Dells and HPs.
It is all interest driven. A lot of it is also we are interested in what we don't have.
I really don't need to read about Windows XP or Windows 7 much. I use them everyday.
I do like reading about Supercomputers, BSD, and VMS because I don't have them to play with.

So no Apple does interesting stuff and do not produce commodity PCs. Apple is more in the BMW range than say Ferrari or Bugatti IMHO but Microsoft is Kia or maybe Honda.
BTW being Kia or Honda isn't a bad thing. It just isn't all that sexy and interesting.

Re:Really let's look at other industries.

[arikol]

I wish I had mod points to mod you up..

But yes. MS is not doing sexy stuff. They're also not being brave or showing vision (which may be more serious in the long run).
Even when Apple is being super conservative they still manage to dress it up as being revolutionary. I mean, I use Apple products (you might even call me a fanboi) but seeing the gall of El Jobso in his keynotes when he shows stuff that is very, very and thoroughly just an incremental upgrade (or even just a fix for something that was broken) and manages to dress it up as awesome, great and revolutionary.
The man has skill!

Re:Really let's look at other industries.

[LWATCDR]

I do not think that is even fair to say about Microsoft.
The IE 9 looks pretty interesting. Everyone is jumping on the HW acceleration for browsers now.
Zune Pass is also interesting. If Microsoft had created an app store and SDK for the ZuneHD I would have gotten one.
The 360 is very popular and had NetFliz streaming for a while now.
Microsoft does do some cools stuff. The problem is that they are now acting like a drunk elephant.

Apple in some ways I find to be sad. I so wanted an Apple II back when I got my C64. It was a real computer and had slots and everything.
IMHO Apple needs to bring back some of the spirit of the other Steve.
I would love for them to open up the specks on the new IPhone/Ipod doc so hackers can make their own devices for them.
But they are a consumer company now and not a hacker company.

Re:Really let's look at other industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

...but seeing the gall of El Jobso in his keynotes when he shows stuff that is very, very and thoroughly just an incremental upgrade (or even just a fix for something that was broken) and manages to dress it up as awesome, great and revolutionary.

 
You forgot "magical". He actually calls his consumer toys magical.
 
I'm still pissed at this assclown and the others at Apple who retreated to their niche "ooh, shiny" market instead of going toe to toe with Microsoft in the 90's. (Yes, I know Jobs left Apple in a snit in 1985 and sulked until 1996.) If they had toughened up their delicate sensibilities enough to produce software that business wanted and slugged it out with Microsoft, both companies would be much better today, and the state of consumer computing would be far in advance of where it is now.
 
Oh, well. At least I still get to watch as Bill Gates uses his billions (plus what he's shaming others into donating) to wipe out disease and improve the world. That's like watching an Orc ride a unicorn.

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[Abcd1234]

When all of these "fashionable" people turn against apple

Wow, cool, I've never, in my life, been called "fashionable" before... pragmatic, sure. Focused on actually Getting Things Done, as opposed to fiddling around with inferior solutions, yes. Matured past the need to paint entire groups of people with the same brush in order to make myself feel superior, yes.

But never fashionable.

This includes ALL coverage, good and bad

[bomanbot]

Well, according to TFA, this includes ALL coverage of Apple, whether it is good or bad.

That means all the negative Apple articles and Apple bashing will be counted in as well. No wonder Apple got the highest number in the media coverage count, I am pretty sure there are very few companies that are so emotionally charged either way right now, so those articles tend to draw huge reactions either way :)

Also, the media selected for this survey is a bit odd. Of the 52 news outlets, 12 are websites, six are television channels, but a whopping 10 radio stations? That seems like the wrong ratio to me.

Re:This includes ALL coverage, good and bad

[DrgnDancer]

The only thing worse than bad press is no press. OK, having *all* bad press isn't a good thing (it probably means your product sucks); but having *lots* of press, as long as it's mostly good or reasonably balanced, is much better than having a little bit of good press. "Haters gonna hate", so no one is too chuffed about the occasional bad review or article. It just shows that you're popular enough for people to go out of their way to hate you.

Cindarelly, Cindarelly, Night and Day...

[D Ninja]

Microsoft, meanwhile, is languishing in the shadows like Cinderella on the night of the ball.

Now, is this *really* the best analogy to use? I mean, I understand what the poster was going for, but, in the end, Cindarella goes to the ball, dances with the prince, and, ultimately, ends up "happily ever after" while her two wicked stepsisters (presumably Apple and Google) are forever tormented by her success.

I mean, I'm all about analogies to make concepts easier to understand, but, I think this one is a bit of a fail.

Re:Cindarelly, Cindarelly, Night and Day...

[js3]

I think the analogy was meant like "hey look there's this other company that makes billions of dollars in revenue and profit, makes similar products that isn't getting any attention. It's only a matter of time before they strike it big again.".

I agree with you that the wording is a little too out there, maybe "lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike" would be more appropriate.

Re:Cindarelly, Cindarelly, Night and Day...

[theghost]

Here's the thing about analogies - they are very good at taking a complex issue and making it understandable at a very surface level to an uninformed person. They are also very good at taking an issue and skewing it so that one side looks better than the other. If someone uses an analogy to describe something simple, they either think you are a drooling idiot or they are trying actually trying to influence you towards one side.

Re:Cindarelly, Cindarelly, Night and Day...

[Jafafa Hots]

Now you're just being pedantic, like a cat wearing my dirty underwear.

Re:Do the innovation - get the attention.

[jedidiah]

> Everyone else has been just trying to keep up. It has actually been
> an incredible accomplishment by Jobs. Say what you will about the
> man or his methods, but he has completely and authoritatively defined
> the interaction of humans and their computing devices during his lifetime. ...yes. You can only move data through one poorly crafted overloaded proprietary application.

That's a definition that we could all do without.

In order to understand recursion....

[david_thornley]

And we see another example of this phenomenon, as news outlets rush to report how news outlets cover Apple.

Re:In order to understand recursion....

[indiechild]

In Australia, I've noticed that most traditional news outlets seem to be highly critical of Apple and their products. And on news sites where comments are enabled, there's always a huge army of Apple haters who jump in to add their kicks and punches, every time, without fail. Slashdot is positively Apple-friendly by comparison.

So I don't really see where the supposed "media love" for Apple is coming from.

Personally, I think it's all about pageviews and eyeballs. Post something about Apple, and the hordes of fans and haters descend to make their mark.

it's like M$ circa 1995

[alen]

i remember when Windows 95 was released and the geeks not only lined up to buy it but they spent hundreds of $$$ buying RAM, hard drives and other upgrades to run it. This is back in the days when $150 per MEGABYTE of RAM was a killer deal. MS freed geeks from the tyranny of overpriced IBM and Sun hardware. in a few years Windows became boring and something you have to buy.

same thing with Apple. in a few years smartphones and maybe tablets will become something everyone buys like a computer or blu ray player and someone else will have the spotlight

Re:it's like M$ circa 1995

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... I remember that time, too, but I remember it all differently. As I recall, the geeks already had all the hardware they'd need for '95, but they were running NT 3.51 instead. And laughing at Windows 95 as an OS/2 clone, and decrying it for lack of multi-processor support, etc....

Re:it's like M$ circa 1995

[TeknoHog]

To me, Windows 95 was when Microsoft turned from a somewhat serious business (cheap, shoddy, but mostly adequate software at the time) into a cult. It was all about the new and shiny, while the true geeks could see beyond the hype. Eventually, Windows became the boring business status quo, but at the time it was not so different from what Apple is now.

Re:it's like M$ circa 1995

[sootman]

> in a few years smartphones and maybe tablets will
> become something everyone buys like a computer
> or blu ray player and someone else will have the spotlight

iMac -> iBook -> PowerBook G4 -> iPod -> more iMacs ->more iPods -> iPhone -> iPad

My bet is that the next company to have the spotlight will be... Apple.

Re:it's like M$ circa 1995

[shutdown -p now]

You had to have '95 around anyway because most games of the day simply wouldn't run on NT.

Media Loves MS

[gmuslera]

Kin flopped, vulnerabilities still on (they are even being used as weapons), somewhat is losing relevance (much fanfare about IE9, and will FF and Chrome keep gaining ground). Keeping them under the radar until they manage to get out something positive is a favor right now.

Re:Do the innovation - get the attention.

[rclandrum]

> That's a definition we could all do without.

But the majority of users have elected to use that very mechanism, haven't they? Yes, it's overloaded. Yes, it is proprietary. Market share would seem to indicate that it doesn't matter much.

hype because its white

[Torvac]

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4s5pmFL_ZlQ/R8oOJBdFI1I/AAAAAAAAAC8/1LD15q92N4I/s1600-h/BLIND+FAITH+ALTERNATIVE+MOTIVATIONAL+POSTERS.jpg

Ha ha ha ha!!

[Kludge]

Slashdotters, true to stereotype, don't understand anything

Slashdotters are basically wedded to the fantasy that they are living inside a dystopian cyberpunk novel

Slashdotters that are blind, self-defeating enthusiasts

Says the guy who reads and posts on slashdot.
Thank you for the belly laugh. I needed one.

Mac OS, which has superior social benefits

Dude, you are obviously a bigtime fanboy, and very ignorant of the benefits of diverse array other systems available.

Media uses Apples

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. However... What computer is most commonly used by those in the media?

I'm just saying... it might be a little bias at the source. Not the people who made the study, but the people that they are studying.

Sleeping Beauty

[colinrichardday]

Shouldn't Microsoft be compared to Sleeping Beauty instead? After all, it seems to have affected by an Apple.

Recent Events

[DarkXale]

Still, how much of this coverage was caused by the iPhone 4 antenna debacle?

Because on a lot of places there would be dozens of articles on that very issue - which would significantly push up the percentage.

Save for Windows 7, the latest Xbox, and the Kinekt - nothing much has really happened from Microsofts end - and Apple I expect should be able to match those articles with various product revisions of their own.

As for Google - they tend to be on the forefront a lot in general - search update here, mail changes there, new service here - and so on, not to mention its somewhat different compared to physical product businesses as well.

Re:Recent Events

[david_thornley]

The iPhone 4 antenna debacle was not a cause of media overcoverage, it was an effect.

It wasn't nearly as bad as many news stories made it sound. If I lick my finger and press it on the joint, I can get something over a bar of diminished coverage. Other iPhones seem to be better or worse. It's a lot of degradation for a sensitive spot on a phone, but it isn't abnormal. When Steve Jobs demonstrated that, the media was all over him.

Sure, putting the external antennas like that was an obvious bad move, but that's not the sort of thing the media pays attention to. The typical reporter doesn't know anything about electronics, but does know about how to find a story that will sell.

In short, if that issue had happened with RIM, or Nokia, or an Android phone, there wouldn't have been all that publicity. Only because it was an Apple produce.

Re:Recent Events

[DarkXale]

My point was simply that the overcoverage as you say may have skewed the percentages, since they only cover 12 months, simply because there was a lot of coverage on it. That was all I was implying.

Re:Recent Events

[Anonymous Coward]

Still, how much of this coverage was caused by the iPhone 4 antenna debacle?

Seeing as this study ended on June 30, 2010, and the iPhone 4 wasn't in customer hands until sometime in late July I'd have to say none at all.

The summary doesn't mention this, but the study also tracked the percentage of stories that were positive and negative, so while including the antenna-gate would have increased the amount of coverage, the overall percentage of positive stories would have dropped.

Easy answer...wait and one up

[UseCase]

It is safer to play the "wait and one up" game but the publicity goes to the innovator.

Right now the innovation and engineering is coming out of Cupertino so they garner all of the attention. Everyone else, in the table/mobile market, is playing wait and see whats good and copy/one up.

And What Was Happening That Month?

[DannyO152]

We had the WWDC keynote, which included news of This Years Model: iPhone. We also had the release of the iPhone.

So there were articles about predictions, articles about leaks, articles about why the prediction and leaks were nuts, articles about which predictions and leaks were plausible.

We had liveblogs. We had deadblogs. We had linkbaitblogs and usual casts saying "Apple awesome," "Apple evil," and "My fellow commenters are idiots and/or shills." To date, I haven't seen any "Apple is the new Nokia" arguments. Go figure.

We had the legions of Apple's marketing forces pumping content into the system. We had the legions of non-Apple's marketing forces dismissing the iPhone and promoting their phone/carrier/operating system, some of which were going to be totally awesome when they arrive next month, next quarter, next year, with almost exactly the features and functionality we are showing, via animation.

Then we had articles about the impending release.

Then we had articles about the Apple Store situation around the country on the day of release.

We had iPhone release reviews.

We had an Apple press release about how many phones were sold in the first weekend. We had posts that said the numbers were crazy and Apple are liars.

(We note that iPhones, as a popular consumer device, and Apple's success as a company mean Apple news goes mainstream media, i.e., jumps from the tech or business pages.)

Oh yeah. Apple and Flash, Flash, Flash.

And then, during the last three days of the month, news of the antenna and face-proximity bugs appeared.

Phew. Talk about sucking all the oxygen out of the media.

But the implication above - and I apologize, I'm not checking whether it was source or summary - that plurality of column-inches, to use a quaint measure, is entirety of attention is not particularly valid. People have deadlines and have space to fill and need to attract the attention of Billy and Betty Webnewssumer, so things are skewed to what the new outlets think drives those herds.

Of course -doesn't the media love Cults?

[filesiteguy]

That's why they hired Steve Jobs.

The Cult of Apple is alive.

Now if they'd only bring back the multi-colored Apple logo like on my IIe.

Hipster Herpes

[oic0]

Most media these days is for hipsters by hipsters. Its all about saving the children, saving the environment, and buying overpriced apple products made in sweatshops by people paid so little they choose to commit suicide so their family can get the little bit of death benefit cash. Wired is REALLY bad, I've switched almost exclusively to /. because of it.

Re:Hipster Herpes

[DrgnDancer]

As opposed to buying other consumer electronics "made in sweatshops by people paid so little they choose to commit suicide so their family can get the little bit of death benefit cash." That company makes most of the mobile devices on the market, not just the iPhone. Not that I'm defending the situation, but acting like Apple has some kind of monopoly on Chinese sweat shop labor is disingenuous at best. The reality is that the western world wants cheap products and right now countries like China and India are willing to work people to death in order to provide those cheap products. What needs to happen is that we all need to accept that all our gear *should* cost 50-100% more than it does, so the people making it and providing the raw materials can having a living wage. Any takers?

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[GMThomas]

My friend just got an Apple tattoo on his arm. Big and clearly visible. He's only 16. I weep for mankind.

I only pay attention to...

[sjonke]

... the Pew Pew Research Center. Sorry.

Now remember kids!

[sammysheep]

Negative attention is better than no attention!
-Apple (remembering Antenna-gate)

Re:Do the innovation - get the attention.

[AltairDusk]

The iPod and iTunes defined an easy, safe, legal means for carrying your music around and purchasing it online.

Easy, safe, and legal means of carrying your music around existed before the iPod as did means of purchasing music online or did you forget about Rio and eMusic?

The iPod Touch pushed into territory previously occupied by PDAs and showed how applications and music players could co-exist in the same device.

PDAs with applications and music players also existed well before the iPod Touch.

The iPhone took the Touch a step further and integrated your cell phone.

Ever heard of Windows Mobile? It may not have been the best OS ever but it was certainly around and on smartphones long before the iPhone existed. It was also fully capable of multitasking and copy/paste, both of which took Apple quite a while to introduce for the iPhone line (their multitasking implementation still leaves much to be desired).

Finally, the iPad leveraged the phenomenal user interface that Apple engineered for its new portable consumer devices and made the screen large enough to be attractive to use in an armchair at home.

As a former iPhone owner who switched to Android for more freedom in what I do with my phone I have no interest in the iPad mainly because it faces the same Apple-imposed limitations as the iPhone did. Many people won't care but there are a significant minority who do.

And during all this, their computers have made major switches to Intel CPUs and OS X.

I fail to see how switching to the same CPU architecture the rest of the industry was on is innovative. OS X has some neat UI innovations and I consider it to be a pretty good OS but you can't treat that as a completely new innovation either. It's mostly Unix under the hood, poke around with a Mac for a bit and you'll see for yourself.

Everyone else has been just trying to keep up. It has actually been an incredible accomplishment by Jobs. Say what you will about the man or his methods, but he has completely and authoritatively defined the interaction of humans and their computing devices during his lifetime. Apple deserves the attention.

I completely disagree that Steve Jobs has completely and authoritatively defined the interaction of humans and computers. There are many pioneers in this field and Jobs is not even top among them. He is certainly not the one and only (as implied by "completely and authoritatively"). If you want to see a huge pioneer in HCI do some research on Xerox PARC.

All media whores uses Apple products

[Rogerborg]

...love to talk about themselves, and assume everyone else is just like them. End of mystery.

Re:All media whores uses Apple products

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy who writes as Ross O Carroll Kelly for the Irish Times did not know how to permanently remove a deleted file from the recycle bin. Finger on the pulse these crapple astroturfers eh?

But of course!

[Dreth]

They'll get attention since it's so much fun to mock their blind fanaticism.

It's interesting to note.....

[scosco62]

In my experience, mob behavior has a role in this. In other words, every entity - person in a job at a company, a new product, a business - has a "popularity" cycle. Everyone forgets when Microsoft first came on the scene, they were everyone's darling - Apple went through that, went astray, took a beating, re-invented themselves successfully and chewed away at Microsoft the whole time. I guess what I am saying is the challenge is how much of this is just the public perception that "its time for Apple to lose it's gloss", and how much of it is the fact that reality of a scaled up company overcoming the creative, clever marketing. In my specific situation, I chose Apple for my family's computers was that I was getting tired of spending 4 hrs/week rehabilitating....I don't do that anymore, so my choice was sound. However, it's naive to think it's sustainable - the additional integration of devices, the shifting threat landscape, the commercialization of the product lines and the attendant quality issues --- will force me, eventually, to revisit that. So who knows......

Apple just sucks less

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Because no one ever uses "features".

How many of those features do people use? If they're convoluted or "non-intuitive", who'll use them even though they're on the checklist? My sister recently got a BlackBerry, but uses neither GPS nor the web browser because they suck.

If another device gains traction, it will be due to the fact that it is good at doing the things that Apple refuses to do. Being able to ignore Steve's vision is a great feature for a lot of people.

You mean with like iPods? Apple wasn't the first, but they suck less than most other devices out there, and so Apple has over 75% of the portable music player market. I like Gruber's take on this:

I’m deeply suspicious of Mac users who claim to be perfectly happy with Mac OS X. Real Mac users, to me, are people with much higher standards, impossibly high standards, and who use Macs not because they’re great, but because they suck less than everything else. [Mark] Pilgrim, to me, is a quintessential Mac user in that regard; and what he’s doing is wondering if maybe things might suck less somewhere else.

http://daringfireball.net/2006/06/and_oranges

I don't think much has changed in the four years since he wrote the above.

You're right that Apple's stuff has lots of problems. but so do other company's.

Re:Apple just sucks less

[Anonymous Coward]

I love my mac and I love my iPhone, but I bitch constantly about even the smallest UI idiosyncrasies and I don't give apple a free pass on them any more than I do with any other software company.

On the other hand, unlike so many other professional software developers. I do recognize that the engineers at Apple make the same decisions and trade offs that I have to make every day. I bet there are a ton of features that the engineers and product designers at apple would love to implement but they arent high priority enough and the team is probably already stretched pretty thin, just like the dev team at any company I have ever worked for. There is always more to do that what you have time for.

Sure, it seemed surprising that Apple didn't have copy and paste or a landscape keyboard worked out on the first release, but its a much lower priority feature than "can read mail" and "can surf the web" so they made some trade offs and shipped some features in the next version. My company does this all the time and yet when Apple does it its because they are either Evil or totally incompetent because they haven't implemented every feature for the 1.0 release.

Snow White

[xzvf]

Snow White was layed out by the poison apple, Sleeping Beauty was done in by the needle of a spinning wheel.

Re:Do the innovation - get the attention.

[Archangel Michael]

You are suggesting we all go back to CLI because that isn't bloated overloaded application (aka windowing desktop) ?

Change your perspective, and realize that people want to move their data around easy, and Apple makes it easy, either because of the bloat or in spite of it. Again depending on your perspective.

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[Duradin]

It's super hip to not be fashionable, and to make an effort to be seen not being fashionable, so the super hip have to go to great pains to clearly define some other group as being fashionable.

Imagine the horror of a super hipster when they realize that they are fashionable in their bashing of the 'fashionable' group that they defined.

   

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[not-my-real-name]

People have been predicting the demise of Apple since about 1976. Eventually, they will be right, but I'm not holding my breath.

Microsoft != Cinderella

[Art3x]

Microsoft, meanwhile, is languishing in the shadows like Cinderella on the night of the ball.

Are you kidding me? Microsoft is like a wicked stepsister!

So Steve was like 'I'm awesum' and Bill was like

[Anonymous Coward]

Less Pew Pew more QQ?

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a Venn diagram of Apple users. You are not in a circle of users that is labeled "uses Apple because it's cool to" even though they most certainly exist. Rather you are in a circle of people who are labeled "use Apple because they like it more." Also probably in the part of the diagram that is labeled "thinks their solution is better than others and likes to call other solutions names."
 
Get a grip on this diagram. It may save you from getting egg on your face in the future.

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[paimin]

Have you ever heard the phrase "pot calling the kettle black"?

Entrenched in a dying market

[Infonaut]

For some companies, media interest is irrelevant, because they're entrenched in their market.

That would be awesome for Microsoft if the computer market remained unchanged. If IT departments continue to purchase most of the computers in use, if office software remains a barrier to entry, if smartphones remain a sideshow, and if customers continue to think of overall user experience as secondary in importance, Microsoft can sit fat and happy from here until the sun engulfs the earth.

The "mature market" you're talking about is fast becoming a dried-up market, as IT wields less influence and the definition of computing changes. We're living in a consumer-driven tech economy, and Microsoft is struggling to find its place in it.

To do it justice...

[Infonaut]

Write it out like this. One billion dollars. Then say it out loud, with the tip of your pinky finger in your mouth.

Oh, please.

[fyngyrz]

What crap. Install Parallels. Install Windows. Install Office.

There you have it. A Mac with Office. And whatever else you think you need that runs under Windows. And you have everything the Mac offers at the same time. And for *that* matter, you can run Linux as well. Concurrently. In a window. On the same monitor, or on another one. But with network, filesystem, etc. connectivity -- even drag and drop -- to the host OS (OS X), while sharing the keyboard and mouse, etc.

If your "scientists" are bitching as you report, they ought to either (a) learn how to use a computer (and if they don't know how, I wonder at your definition of "scientist"), or (b) lynch the IT guy responsible for keeping their shit running.

OS X is far from perfect. But a Mac that's been set up by someone who even slightly knows what they're doing is, as of right now, by far the best desktop environment you can set up.

Re:Oh, please.

[fyngyrz]

Cool! I got a "-1, moderator is stupid"!

Time for the cluebat again

[fyngyrz]

Apple produces plenty of free upgrades. There's one waiting to install on my machine right now. It contains a new web browser, a new iTunes, and updates for my Logic Pro and Aperture software. That's the Apple equivalent of a service pack.

All you're doing is getting confused by the different naming schemes between Apple and Microsoft. Apple releases 10.X, there will generally be a lot of new features, capabilities, etc. And they'll charge you for them. Microsoft, on the other hand, releases something with a new name, and they'll charge you for that. And it will have new features, capabilities. Apple releases 10.X.X, there will generally be bugfixes, driver support, etc. And its free. Microsoft, on the other hand, releases something called a service pack, and it'll be free. And it will generally provide bugfixes, driver support, etc.

Both companies follow very similar paths. The differences that have your panties in a bunch are simply semantics.

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our impartial media overlords

iPad users are a selfish elite. A radio reporter was asked to compare the iPhone to a Blackberry. He never even bothered to turn the Blackberry on. The media covers apple more because they are whores.

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[assemblerex]

If we could only power devices off the smugness I get from your response.

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[BlueStraggler]

By then, computers will be exotic pieces of machinery only used by scientists and engineers. Everyone else will just automatically network through their black turtlenecks.

Personal Theory

[ThatsNotPudding]

Apple avoids BusinessLand because even though you might land that large exclusive world contract with OligarchCorp, you instantly find they demand support for thier kludgy, home-grown, built-by-summer-interns-two-decades-ago software. In perpetuity. Given His Steveness' huge ego, that dog will never accede to being wagged by its own tail.

Re:Uh that's what media are supposed to do

[Bassman59]

People love apple and it's fabuously high quality ineffebly well designed products.

The possessive form of it does not have an apostrophe. And that's just for starters.

Media's write stories about things people are interested in or find fascinating.

Wow, double-fail with Media's there, goombah. Media is the plural of medium. And as we all should have learned in grade-school grammar class, a plural doesn't use an apostrophe-s. And your post title? It should be "... that's what media are supposed to do."

Of course the title of this whole /. post is wrong, too; it should be, "Media love Apple and its Army of Fans." At least the editors got the possessive form of it right.

Re: Don't flatter yourself.

[Anonymous Coward]

"fashionable" people use apple products. Not all people that use apple products are fashionable.
"porn stars" use apple products. Not all people that use apple products are porn stars.

turn in your logic card please...

Re:Uh that's what media are supposed to do

[hrimhari]

You should work on your sarcasm. It almost made me believe that you were serious.

But of course you aren't. Who would try to beat on a post just because of grammar and say nothing about its contents?

Or worse, who would do it ignoring that "media" is used as a mass noun for the agencies of mass communication and not just as the plural of medium?

This is *interesting* ???

[Space cowboy]

Let's just go through the points the poster regards as OSX 'sucking':

• iTunes - What's wrong with iTunes ? It's easy to use, it plays my music (paid for, from the iTunes store, and ripped from personal CDs), and it's trivial to interact with the iPhone with. It's fast, efficient, has that genius thing which I've sometimes even used... Can't see what's not to like.
• Finder - Um, it's a hierarchical disk interface, which seems to work pretty well for me. Quick Previews works great, networked drives don't block these days, love the dock, has Spaces for multiple workspaces, love the dashboard, and the way it integrates with Time-machine. Again, what's not to like ?
• The BSD subsystem - Say what ? You're actually *complaining* that the BSD userland layer is there, overlaid on top of Mach ? This is one of the reasons I bought the machine!
• Support for non-sanctioned hardware - um, who cares ? We're talking about buying Macs here, they're all sanctioned.
• Obsolescence - Odd - I can still run PPC programs (I never cared about OS9, that's a 10-year old OS and macs weren't my thing until they metamorphosed into truly excellent unix workstations.)

Either you're just a hater (a far worse breed than the "fanbois", at least the fanbois are positive about their cult) or you're trying to make the opposite point (badly) using irony. Perhaps that's it - really you love Macs, but were trying to be clever.

As for market-share, again, who cares ? Sure, those numbers you quote are small, but Apple owns about 50% of the tablet market, about the same as Google (21%) in the mobile-ads market, almost 40% of the worldwide mobile phone profits (with only 3% market-share) and their shares of these markets is (as you say) really small. In other words, they're just getting started and there's a lot of room to grow.

Here's a thought. You don't get to be the most valuable tech stock on the planet by only appealing to "fanbois". You have to be able to sell to a wide marketplace to get that sort of traction. Apple does. Deal.

Simon

Re:This is *interesting* ???

[MrHanky]

iTunes isn't fast at all, and it's about as efficient as the United Nations. We're talking about a ~100MB music player app here. It consumes vast amounts of RAM and disk space, has extremely poor support for formats not officially sanctioned by Apple, and for music players not produced by Apple. For its extreme bloat, it's not very feature rich. Oh, and you have to use it if you want to use Apple's latest gizmos. There's a lot of hatred of iTunes out there, jfgi. I thought it was a Windows only thing, but many Mac users seem to agree. Another thing is that iTunes dominates the Mac platform to such a degree that no one has developed a decent mp3 player for it.

Finder: Just not as good as most of the others. Windows Explorer, Dolphin, Konqueror, possibly even Nautilus. How about doing even the simplest things? Slow, sometimes unresponsive w/spinning beach ball.

The BSD subsystem is just poorly done. There's a reason why many of its userspace utilities are replicated by package collections like Fink: the ones in OS X suck. Is python still compiled without readline support?

Hardware support: Yes, let's stick to buying overpriced crap from Apple only. Like any other cult, Apples don't get to hang with the cool guys.

Obsolescence: Now try running this years software on a five years old Mac. It's obsolete.

I'm a hater, yes, but I hate fanboys, not Apple's products. Many of their products are fine (the laptops especially; I've owned one), I just happen to be fed up with the frauds who advertise them at any opportunity. There are tons of those here on Slashdot, often hovering at +5, insightful just for saying they love Apple products. I'm fed up not with their products, but with how they're supposedly "revolutionary" while doing absolutely nothing new, and few things better.

re: market share, we were talking about Apple's supposedly extreme popularity here, which is effectively debunked by their market share. Their profits are entirely irrelevant. You should ask: who cares about their profits? Their stockholders, and the stockholders only, should be the answer. Customers taking joy from the fact that a big corporation makes a profit on them is absurd, yet you see this all the time ... but only with Apple's customers. Why? Because they're fans, rooting for one corporation as if it were a hockey team. But it's a giant tech corporation, and being a supporter of one of them is simply delusional behaviour.

re: massively overpriced tech stock: the stock market is rarely right when everyone has jumped the same bandwagon.

Re:This is *interesting* ???

[Space cowboy]

iTunes is blazingly fast on both my Mac Pro and my Macbook Pro. I don't know what you're talking about. I've heard it's not the best on Windows, but since I don't *use* windows apart from for EDA, I don't care.

Finder - far better than any of the others. See, I can make unjustified statements too. When you link to an article that says "here's how to do cut-n-paste rather than copy-n-paste", it's not such a good idea to be critical... The automater services are one of the cool things about OSX (in general) and Finder (in particular).

The BSD subsystem is not poorly done. Another blanket accusation. The reason why Fink (and MacPorts for that matter) roll their own is to maintain a single dependency graph as OS's change - surely that's obvious ?? For those who prefer more flexibility, Apple *provide* macports.

The "overpriced crap" *opinion* you state just makes you come across as a cheapskate who doesn't want to pay the price of entry. If the Mac is as bad as you suggest, you'd be saying things like "thank [insert deity here] I don't have to make the choice of Mac vs [insert system here] because the Mac is too expensive". You'd not be decrying that it's too expensive. Obviously it is desirable for you, or you'd not be complaining about it being more expensive.

Obsolescence: I can run *10* year old software on my current Mac. What's your point ?

Yes, you just hate. You don't like the fact that some people are very happy with their purchase, whereas you would not be. Mac users are the most-satisfied of every PC maker (and have been for years). This behaviour of yours is pretty much the definition of an antisocial troll.

Um, you can be popular without being omnipresent. An Aston-Martin DB9 Vantage is a massively popular car (as in: lots of people would love to own one, and those who have it, love it), but it's not anywhere near as commonplace as a Ford Focus. Popularity does not imply ownership.

Customers who want a company to prosper, to best-realise their investment in buying that hardware, *should* wish the company they've paid cash to (for products) to have high profits and a secure future.

Apple, IMHO, couldn't give a fig for whether they were .1 of a GHz faster or slower than their competition. They care about how the user interacts with the machine. They are far and away better at making that easy than anyone else. End of. No spewed vitriol by a self-confessed hater will change that.

Simon.

Re:This is *interesting* ???

[stewbacca]

My thoughts exactly. I love it when critics of OSX dismiss any criticism of their criticism as "fanboyism". If you are going to criticize something like iTunes, you should probably state your case why it sucks and not just assume everyone thinks it sucks.

Re:This is *interesting* ???

[mjwx]

re: massively overpriced tech stock: the stock market is rarely right when everyone has jumped the same bandwagon.

Exactly right,

Every financial analyst/trader I know has come to the same conclusion I have, Apple is in a boom or economic bubble. The stock is vastly out of sync with the companies actual value. This kind of thing is quite common in the financial sector, even in the tech sector (remember the .com boom). The thing about bubbles is that they always bust, no avoiding this (remember the .com bust). The Apple bust (iBust?) is bound to happen as soon as speculators feel the boom has peaked and start to sell (which is how most stock busts happen). With APPL stock not paying divs, investors will be more likely to jump ship.

Re:This is *interesting* ???

[Elbowgeek]

I have to agree on the general assessment of iTunes - it's as bloated as a whale that's been beached for a month in the middle of summer.

My problem with the Finder is that it's interface paradigm, with a single menu bar at the top of the screen, is hopelessly outdated and inefficient. I feel like I'm using an OS from the early 90's.

Otherwise, I will say that it runs it's native software beautifully. I have a first generation Intel Mac Mini which only accepts 2GB of RAM, and it runs as a media server and player for my projector without complaints or hesitation, often playing hi-rez media files that my quad-core, 8GB Windows 7 64-bit machine hiccups with. And I've used it occasionally for audio production, with similar results.

So all they really have to do is ditch their user interface and they've got a winner in my opinion ;-)

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[cowscows]

I dunno, the iPod came out in 2001, although windows support didn't really come about until 2003-2004. So if we go with 2004 for when the "Apple fad" started, that's already 6 years, which seems like an awfully long time in today's culture, especially when you consider that we're also talking about technology, which evolves at least as quickly as fashion.

Most People are resistant to change

[cybernanga]

For If all you've ever used is Windows, then using something else is uncomfortable, possibly even scary.

I've noticed that many of the individuals I see have memorised the location of the menu's, shortcut's commands etc they need, There's nothing wrong with that, (I memorise menu's etc, too), however, the key is understanding. I understand what the computer is doing when I click a menu, so I'm not too worried about the consequences. If you don't understand, then everything appears "magical" and people know that messing with magic is dangerous.

I've had people ask if they can use my computer to check their email, and when they see it's a Mac, they get nervous, um and ahh, and say they'll check it later. This happens even when I have Windows running. They've heard that Mac's work differently, and this makes them uncomfortable, and the same thing happen's when they are faced with Ubuntu.

In other areas I've met people who've been driving for years, but won't drive my car because it has Automatic Transmission.

P.S. A very long time ago, (Pre-Windows) I used to set up a Mac and a PC next to each other at IT events, and people would always flock to the Mac, this was because the desktop is much friendlier than the C:\ prompt. ;-)

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[Duradin]

Exactly.

Though I feel /. as a medium is insufficient to accurately portray the reactions of the Droidbois et al. when they realize that they are just as trendy and fashionable as their despised foe, the Apple Fanboi.

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[Anonymous Coward]

How about "pretentious"? Does that suit you better?

Re:Do the innovation - get the attention.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong. The LG Prada came before the iPhone or iPod touch and had all the same features, but without the rotten fruit on the back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada

If you ignore the lack of a touchscreen, you get a bunch of nokia phones that did the same stuff, mostly the n7 and n9 series'
Climb out of your hole, look around at the world, don't believe journalists, and don't blindly follow Apple.

Re:Do the innovation - get the attention.

[tibman]

I don't think he was implying we all go CLI. There are other ways to load up your ipod without using the iTunes abomination. Some people just want a portable music player and not drag around an entire apple inc ecosystem to do it.

You are right, people want to move their data around easily, but that doesn't have to involve losing control of it.

There is a very simple explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

The showbusiness has always been gay-friendly :-)

Re:The apple backlash is going to be amazing one d

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are interested in getting things done, why on earth would you try to do so on OSX?

Oh right, you don't have anything of *importance* to get done.

Google Doesn't Need as Much Coverage

[zbobet2012]

Ironically one of the things Pew failed to account for is that Google's is one of the largest forms of media consumption on its own. Unlike Apple, where they MUST drive a new feature or product with advertising for it to be seen Google's new features appear on the Google frontpage. Probably the most visited site in the world (facebook has higher residence time though). No one reports the new Google doodle or search extensively because whats there to report? Everyone has already seen it. More importantly though Google has never really advertised extensively, not like Apple. And if you don't think advertisement dollars drive media focus in a huge way you are out of touch.

Ironically Google's success in some ways precludes it form media reporting. They don't really need to advertise, they are the word for internet search. They don't need to drive the hype that Apple spends billions of dollars on. When Google turned on instant search I never saw a single report on it. But everyone I knew, everyone, had an opinion immediately. Apples WISHES they could drive that kind of advertising with their heart and soul.

Re:Uh that's what media are supposed to do

[Bassman59]

Or worse, who would do it ignoring that "media" is used as a mass noun for the agencies of mass communication and not just as the plural of medium?

"Mass noun for the agencies of .."

Agencies is plural, too.

It wasn't always thus

[mhollis]

I suppose I'm old. And crusty.

But honestly, folks, this is a huge comeback (from the dead!)

Not too long ago, Apple's demise was being spoken of regularly by the Wall Street Journal, by the New York Times, the Washington Post and many other newspapers back when newspapers really meant something. The stock sunk to 14 dollars a share. I bought 100 shares thinking that, if you sold off the component parts of the company, you would get more than $14 per share. My target price was $35 and, like a fool, I sold shortly after the iMac came out.

But parallel to that was a triumphant Microsoft. Bill Gates still ran that company and he could speak to the software people. Microsoft could do no wrong and Steve Jobs, when he took over Apple again, had to end a lawsuit against Microsoft (over Windows 3.x) in order to get Microsoft to develop a version of Office for the Mac. Microsoft also bought up a huge tranch of Apple stock. the press lionized Gates and Microsoft. They were the juggernaut that could do no wrong, and Apple was "The Beleaguered Apple" and on its last legs.

I see positive press on Apple these days and I remember all that. And I think, "Wow, what a comeback."

Really?

[colinrichardday]

Aside from the sound not muting the speakers when I use headphones (Damn you, pulseaudio!), I haven't had any such issues with Ubuntu 9.10. Of course, that copy of Ubuntu User cost $15. My copy of OpenSuSE 11.3 didn't even have that issue, as the computer on which I installed it lacks built-in speakers. It cost me an entire blank DVD. Oh, the agony!

Does Mac OS X include emacs, gcc, python, TeX/LaTeX, apache, PostgreSQL, etc, out of the box? Does Apple have repositories?

Re:Really?

[Rakarra]

(Damn you, pulseaudio!)

Just about anyone who has used a Linux distribution that has included Pulseaudio has shouted the same. >_>

Re:Really?

[mikael_j]

OS X includes Apache and Python. I can't remember if gcc and emacs are in the default install or if you have to install XCode (free and included on the install DVD that comes with new macs, also available from Apple's website) to get it. As for TeX/LaTeX and PostgreSQL, those can be installed with little effort. And if you want to be able to install and upgrade *nix software easily you can use MacPorts which is basically the FreeBSD ports system but for OS X.

Re:Do the innovation - get the attention.

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

And there in lies the problem. People want something, but disregard exactly how that thing they want came to be.

If the iPod wasn't backed by a desktop-based management software (in most cases, iTunes), it wouldn't be as good of a product as it is now.

Much of the ease of use and the polished experience comes from leverage of other software and hardware.

For those who want a portable music player without the Apple ecosystem, whatever their reasoning is, the iPod isn't for them. And there's plenty of other options.

Grammar cops

[bobcote]

Shouldn't that headline be "Media Love Apple and Its Army of Fans"?
Remember "media" is a plural But then how often do most members of the media forget that too? I'm just saying...

Re:Grammar cops

[neminem]

"Media" is a plural in Latin. Do we speak Latin? No, we speak English. In English, "media", in the sense of "the media", is a singular mass noun, because there's no such concept of just one of them - to me, saying "the media are" sounds awkward, or at the least, very British. (Yes, it's also the plural of the singular "medium", "a thing by which information is transmitted or stored", though even there, "mediums" is neither ungrammatical nor even particularly awkward.) But I love (this is sarcasm) how nitpickers complain about "media" and "data", yet English has *borrowed* hundreds of Latin nouns and torn the irregularity off of them, turning them into regular English nouns, that not even the sticklers complain about. (Would you bicker about the fact that the singular form of "agenda" should be "agendum"? No, because that sounds stupid.)

FALSE advertising!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read TFA: "... The mainstream media’s coverage of technology was not vast. It made up less than 1.6% of the total coverage over the course of the year ...", the "media coverage" for Apple comes to mere 0.24%, 0.18% for Google, etc..