I agree with this approach. Having worked in a three tier system (DEV, TEST, PROD), I can say first-hand that the lack of an integration testing environment can be devastating. Although adding one increases your costs (arguable with good virtualization/VM management), an integration testing environment is invaluable.
I tried to implement such a four-tier design at my last gig during an intensive environmental redesign, in which we moved most of the iron to VMware and implemented DNS indirection in each environment, but ultimately got shot down on trying to break TEST into separate INTEG and ACPT. The managers simply couldn't grok the usefulness...even most of the testers thought it would be a hassle.
Shortly before the end of my consulting involvement with the project, there was a major production meltdown due to a confusion of installed inter-dependent testing versions in TEST with several days of mission-critical PROD downtime as a result. [Thankfully I was not involved in that project.] Unfortunately, to this day, similar problems persist.
An INTEG environment doesn't have to be fully built out, and it shouldn't be used for performance testing. Simply keeping early testing code corralled in the INTEG environment makes sense for when a problem in PROD requires an IMMEDIATE "stable TEST" environment, and if there is pre-ACPT code in there you just can't perform adequate troubleshooting as your infrastructure grows.
Wasn't one of the core arguments that Microsoft made during the US Antitrust trial was that IE could NOT be separated from Windows without fundamentally breaking the OS?
Dammit these people in power in America piss me off. STOP USING THE TERM 'CZAR', 'TSAR', whatever! STOP STOP STOP.
I can't wait until a President is ready to march to Congress and appoint Der Fuehrer of Alternative Energy, which would prove that they have no clue what these titles mean to people around the world as well as citizens in our own country. I doubt Obama would appoint an Imperial Wizard of Credit Debt or Grand Dragon of Terrorism.
The term 'Czar' relates to a despicable history of oppression and murder. The term itself comes from Caesar, not exactly a bright point in Europe's history. There are better terms, and we as a Democratic people are more creative than this.
"Mistakes that are so stupid, no human would ever make them."
Devs must have never been to Pennsyl-tucky. I have some damn dumb people in my "neck of the woods".
I don't see why this shouldn't be done. In fact, it makes a lot of sense for all platforms. Create a third party mechanism by which users/admins can patch Zero day/unpatched flaws that relies on a community effort to provide the patches. Simple. Except it really needs the support of the OS vendor, because at some point, when the vendor releases the patch, you'd want to be able to "turn off" the temporary one. You'd also need an agreed upon "Master List" of vulns, for tracking purposes.
You'd think that this kind of hand-in-hand cooperation would be a no-brainer, but I doubt it. Companies (here's looking right at Apple) still just haven't wrapped their heads around the open exchange of ideas; they are afraid that admitting flaws makes them -look- bad. Ewwww, poor coders. But in reality I think everyone who uses computers by this point in time KNOWS flaws happen...it isn't that they will happen, it has become what are you gonna do about it? And it is pure arrogance by the OS vendors to think that neither the community has the ability to create these patchs nor that the users/admins are interested in them.
Really this is a thing that OS vendors should aspire to, integrating this kind of response mechanism into their existing Software Update suite would be a Good Thing.
I have already seen reports of using such data to "track" drinkers and their habits. People SHOULD care. MADD and their prohibitionist agenda has already advanced the violating of civil rights to a new high as it is, by wrapping drunk driving in the fabric of a social disease; anyone think they won't take it straight into the realm of "preventative therapy" using this information? The war on drugs/alcohol/alternative lifestyles needs to be outed for what it is: an evangelical war on sin. And its front continues to charge into the mainstream of American living, lead by religious bleeding hearts and hypocritical 60's-era hippy soccer moms.
I genuinely feel bad for the coming generations of Americans and the pseudo-fascist oppression under which they will be burdened in the name of "for the children". No matter my age, I will fully support and understand their inevitable backlash.
More Misses (that I forgot) #6- 3GB of RAM. Because 4GB is RIGHT OUT. And no "Pro" really needs that much. Photoshop in a Gig, baby! Real Pros do FinalCut in 512MB...because we can.
#7- No specifics on the type of LCD used. IPS? (No, no IPS 15.4 WXGA+ screens being produced, so far as I can find.) MVA? Prolly pretty much the same screen that Dell is using. Ho. Hum.
New Features: #1- Mac "Pro" users finally get in the 15" MacBook Pro what they've expected since the 17" drop in April: FW 800 and DL DVD+R...albeit at a slower speed.
#2- Mac "Pro" users finally get what every other major PC manufacturer has been giving their users for at least two (upwards of three) months: the Core 2. Christ Intel has been advertising the damn thing on TV!!!
#3- Mac "Pro" users finally get the privilege of spending nearly $800 more than a similarly configured Dell (and no, FW800 simply isn't a "compelling" feature). In other words, they could almost outfit TWO employees for the cost of ONE. Idiot accountants...always trying to be cheap.
Misses: #1- No eSATA support. Because Mac "Pro" users are obviously stupid and can't read the specs that show that eSATA RAID enclosures kick the shit out of FW800. And of course no "Pro" users use eSATA, especially in video production (which, of course, we all know, is a field that has no Mac users).
#2- No built-in media card reader support. Jeez, couldn't Apple be nice enough to toss in a $5 ExpressCard/34 4-in-1 adapter in the box? No, that would have compromised their already razor thin 28 point margins...
#3- No "Pro" class support options. Then again, no "Pro" user really appreciates On-Site, 3year support contracts...we're PROS! We'll fix it ourselves with a paperclip and chewing gum!
#4- No competitively priced 15" model. Because the rest of the world selling those $1200 15" models are clueless...you really want a 13" screen. With a slower, generation-old CPU...and no expansion slot of any kind...and ho-hum GPU.
#5- No BTO 7200rpm drive option. Because Pros don't need that kind of performance...they just THINK DIFFERENT.
And HEREIN lies the rub. In the cases of the MacBook Pro, the MacBook, and the Mac Pro, Apple initially leapt out of the gates with spectacular pricing. However, long term, their "price once, and forget it" strategy begins to kill them.
In three months, as the holiday season rolls around, Apple won't be able to hold a candle to Dell's pricing...for one, Dell (and all the others) will have a full sub-$700 product spectrum. Apple will have one mini. Granted, the cloners will likely not be putting Core processors in those cheapy boxes, although I could be wrong.
Right now, Apple is showing its complete inability to maintain competive pricing with the MacBook Pro line, and they have only been OUT barely 9 months. The company's old practice of incremental speed bumps won't cut it in Dell-land. But thanks for playing. They are even allowing the MacBook to be cannibalized by Core2 offerings tugging at the $1500 price point. By Christmas, the cloners will be selling MacBook-killers at less than $1000. Same performance or better, same LCDs, same drives...substantially cheaper. Most consumers don't use "that warm, fuzzy feeling you get helping out Steve Job's company" as purchasing rational for doling out an additional $200 over the holidays.
Next up, Apple continues to exhibit near brain-dead marketing. Oh sure, they know how to make really pretty iPod ads, and some rather funny "I'm a Mac, I'm cool; I'm a PC, I'm a TOOL" ads. Wow, an entire, encapsulated marketing plan for all those dumb fucks that grew up on TV and turned out TV. But they completely misunderstand the bulk of the educational market, trying to offer the same computer to K-12 school administrators (make it cheap and capable, "we'll use Apple//e's until 1990!") as they offer to Higher-Ed STUDENTS (who are looking for a computer to LAST 3 or 4 years, "I need beer money and book money, and I might think about buying another computer as a Senior cuz I still get a discount, but otherwise this has got to last...and play Tetris and log me onto FaceBook"). They believe that "Pro" users are too stupid to watch what competing systems are valuing at (MacBook Pros that are $1999, when the competition has moved to a 64-bit processor and dropped the price $400). They fundamentally don't understand warranty and hardware service. In fact, they are so retarded on this point, it comes off like a PeeWee Herman "I meant to do that" when Apple expressly remarks that they aren't interested in the Enterprise market. C'mon, a Pro model with no On-Site service option...Huh? (But it isn't like they don't offer an "extended" warranty that masquerades as a pro-option, at least on price!)
And yet we sit here and argue over 0.2%? Doesn't anyone get the fact that Apple has had Intel-based, no Intel-DESIGNED clone boxes on the market for nearly a year and they've been COMPLETELY unable to grow their market share appreciably above the levels that existed prior, when they were able to white-wash performance metrics and Jobs-note marketspeak about the capabilities of PowerPC chips...when the "Apple" market was PowerPC only, when there was no dramatic growth opportunity. Apple can say what they want; the analysts can say what they want..."the Holy Grail is the Pro Graphic Design Market...all hail the Pro Graphic Design Market!" Horseshit. That is a myth. The market share to be gained is in two places: Enterprise and home use (especially internationally). And Apple has even been unable to ride the iPod "halo" or the Security Scare to its benefit.
In another year, this will be moot...as Apple falls further and further behind the "industry" curve they will become less and less relevent. Just as has happened over the past 10 years...Jobs is turning out to be another Scully, ironically. (Just for giggles...anyone know how long Sony rode the WalkMan?)
So didn't I just see this on a Dead Zone episode? Snake venom, heart attack, problem solved?
Look: faced with a life-long jail sentence and plunging my family into poverty or winking out prematurely and letting them collect my fat-ass life insurance...which would I choose? Hrm.
The last greedy, selfish thing the man ever did was perhaps the most selfless, at least to his family. I hope somebody is running tox screenings for exotic substances...Kevorkian meets Capitalism.
Let me get this straight...those people who are currently computing like ALMOST ALL the other people (94% of them at least), who can probably not give a particularly good reason why that is other than "because that's what everyone else is using", and who on a whim decide to try out something new, something different AND LIKE IT...wait for it...are LEMMINGS?
Up is down, left is right, black is white, and now the lemmings are deviants. Fuck me, I need a drink.
These turbines are in the same area as the ones Jon Boone (my uncle) is protesting. Jon started his protest primarily from his love of both migratory birds and the "pristine" nature of the old-growth forests in that area. The basis of argument was that, in the vein of NIMBY, why build these things in "untouched" areas, just because they are far from everything else? But Jon IS fiercy NIMBY...he and his wife fought recently to block Wal*Mart from coming to their area. (I believe they lost that one.)
I offered nuclear as the "one true option" to him at a holiday gathering several years ago, but he would have none of it. However, the grain of truth in his arguments regarding the "corporate" nature of these wind farms is definitely true. The companies building these windfarms are getting HUGE kickbacks in the form of tax incentives and subsidies...all in a very short-term, short-sighted political game. It is difficult for me to understand how these windfarms would ever pay for themselves otherwise. The whole thing is a pretty bad excuse ("to show we did SOMETHING") to go building ugly aluminum towers that will be abandoned once the sweets run out.
For all of you who misconstrued my question as a preference for a BIOS-based solution rather than the EFI solution that got implemented, you are WAAAAAY off base and poorly informed.
Intel's EFI solution can include the ability to present a (masquerade as?) legacy BIOS-like environment...and this is currently in use for production PCs currently booting WinXP X86-32. Apple did not include this compatibility layer. (And yes, it is possible that Intel shied away from allowing them to implement it due to other vendor pressure--Dell--however I find that HIGHLY unlikely.) Further, the EFI includes "definitions" for various drive partitioning schemes that allow it to 'talk' to drive partitions in order to load boot code from them...again the "definitions" for ElTorito etal are used in current production EFI-based systems to boot Windows and Linux. Apple did not include them.
I'm not advocating for Apple to NOT be progressive...instead I'm advocating that Apple both be progressive technically as well as culturally. Include the necessary components of EFI (which are available and proven to be production viable) and let us get on with our business. If they had done so, the installation of Windows (which is already running on the hardware found in the iMacIntel) and Linux would have been a month or more ahead of where we find ourselves...not to mention it would have been a very interesting and welcome tip of the hat to the geeks and early adopters that Apple NEEDS in order to grow marketshare (and who everyone with a braincell KNEW would jump right off and try such dual-booting shenanigans).
This has nothing to do with losing Firewire boot mode, DRM, a shackling to BIOS hell, and other such nonsense...EFI obviously ALLOWS such things, a testiment to its power and breadth. It has EVERYTHING to do with a company showing itself willing to 'Think Different' and show some courage/self esteem when entering a very difficult, bigger marketplace. Apple just blinked.
For me, a dye'd in the wool Mac-o-phile, the real question is not which alt-OS will come first...I know that they WILL come soon, so when is rather moot.
No, for me the "Real" question is "Why?", as in "Why was Apple so asinine and inane as to not just make the new Intel-based iron capable of booting Windows and Linux disros as is?" To save a couple of bucks? To restrict the practice (even after they said they wouldn't)? To be consistent (Apple's track record for doing stupid, head-scratching things)?
In the end it probably doesn't REALLY matter...the community will conjure up the fix and we'll go about our merry ways, installing whatever floats our proverbial OS boats on genuinely well-crafted hardware. But, somewhere deep inside, I guess I had been hoping that Apple might take this MOMENTOUS opportunity to do something unexpected, something out of character, something indicative of a company that -gets- the new culture, something "Not Evil": just make it so. Don't make the community struggle to come up with the fix, just make it work. Put it out there. Let us get on with the adventure.
They didn't. And, unfortunately, I'm sure it will come out that they not only didn't, they PURPOSEFULLY didn't. And that makes me sad, as a professed "Apple man".
I have a coffee table book that explores the history of Apple's Advanced Design Group, and it has photographs of a prototype Apple 'puter that worked around the "bookshelf" paradigm. That would have been back in the early Nineties...
I'll see if I can't dig it up for more info (and maybe some pics).
So the article mentions specifically that the iTunes software is NOT going to be included. Hrm. Did any of the bad press the first ROKR get revolve around the mobile iTunes software or the integration of a phone and iTunes? Not that -I- recall; if memory serves Moto was lambasted for a trivial 100 song limit, no expandability, and the inability to sync over Bluetooth.
So how to fix? Take away the one part that WAS GOOD, and that falls into line with what the GROSS majority of users are currently DOING: using iTunes, the iTunes store, and a move towards user-centric music collections. Instead implement a crappy subscription service that every cell carrier CEO will gripe about because customers "expect" reception in their homes. (And what a dumb expectation, too...not like there's any precedent for it!)
Will the goofy thing at least still play AAC (.m4a) audio files?
What morons. Seriously. Moto is dead. Long live Moto. Nokia, bay-beee.
Anyone have any info on IMAP/SSL support? Webmail is nice, but being able to use Thunderbird/Mail.app/Outlook Express (ugh) is what really makes these free/cheap services nice for Grandma.
Okay, for all of you saying you would be willing to buy a copy of OS X for Intel, let's take a look at what it might actually cost...
Using a nice round number of $1500 as an average Mac price, and knowing that Apple typically reports mark-ups in the 25 point range, with another ~$100 going to the retailer/distributor (that's probably high), we can calculate what Apple actually pays for the computer: ((Selling price - $100 markup) - COST)/COST =.25 margin. That yields $1,120.00 for the COST. Assuming that Apple has factored in some value for OS X and iLife into that, Apple is making about $250 per Mac. Now, part of that assumption about the value of OS X is that Apple is probably nearly loss-leadering the OS (they'll get you on the upgrade anyhow). So, we can safely appraise the COST of OS X and iLife to be in the $30-$50 range, combined; I'd venture further than they're probably equal. So out of a $150 price tag for OS X (which we know Amazon sells for $115, Apple takes in a little less than $85, subtracting development COST and packaging materials COST.
What does this mean? Well, roughly, if you buy a Mac from Apple, they take in $250. If you buy OS X at the current price, they take in $85. That's a big difference, and keep in mind that since OS X currently runs only a Mac they've already made the $250 at some point, too!
OTOH, the question to ask is what is the sustainable asking price for OS X on an x86 whitebox? Windows XP Home is only available as an upgrade at Amazon for $98. Windows XP Pro, non-upgrade version, is $280. I'd say that OS X fits in between the two, feature-wise. Competively priced, they might be able to go $199. At that price, with current development and packaging costs, they could be making, say, $165 per sale. That's nearly double what they make on a "Mac" OS X sale, and two-thirds what they make on a Mac hardware sale.
If they could double their market share (4% of the overall computer market??) they would have converted to a more profitable, less volatile business model. (Well, from one point of view---competing directly with M$ can never be called less volatile!)
So, are you willing to pay $200 for OS X on your white boxen?
Learn how to properly compare prices. First off, you bundled Office with the Dell. AppleWorks isn't MS Office. -$339.
Plus that price includes three years onsite warrant. bzzzzzt. Can't get that with Apple...not without AppleCare. And Apple's idea of "on site" is where you put your computer in the cardboard box that they send.
Heap on the Dell coupons that any Google monkey can find on the web and take another couple of hundred bucks off.
Finally, I'll preemptively dismiss the "you need to add Windows XP Pro" argument. Windows XP Home doesn't work on an Active Directory network. Neither does 10.3 very well. So it is wash...XP Pro = $79. ADmit Mac ~$79.
I never understood the importance of cursive when I was a kid. To me, it was just another, more tedious way of writing; a diversion from truly teaching writing by stressing the ridiculous notion of how hard it could be. Further, it was unnecessarily sloppy and, IMHO, only served to muddy the natural beauty of the letterforms. Later in life, during my discover of typography and type art, I realized the vast range of letterform stylization--a lesson I think would have been much better served than the rote copying of a single design alternative we teach children now. Promote creativity, not conformity. Good riddance, I say.
First off, I can't see how, in any conceivable way, this would pass judicial overview in terms of due diligence. We really do need to implement better "Junk" lawsuit legislation quickly. Further, going past that and having PennState say it was an "honest" mistake is a disservice to every other person falsely accused by the RIAA. I'm rather pissed to be a Pennsylvanian taxpayer, and I'll be letting my congressal delegates know. Honesty, by definition, implies integrity...and the RIAA has shown absolutely NONE in the many cases such as this that has been brought to light. The shear fact they continuously support a deceptively incorrect interpretation of copyright law is evidence enough of their less than virtuous behavior.
But on another note...why hasn't a RIAA/MPAA Apache-based honeypot been rigged up yet? Is anyone aware of one? I would be more than happy to GI/GO (Garbage In/Garbage Out) their search engines. I can't imagine it would be hard, and, AFAIK, doing so does NOT violate the DMCA. Every OS X user out there could become a weapon!
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I agree with this approach. Having worked in a three tier system (DEV, TEST, PROD), I can say first-hand that the lack of an integration testing environment can be devastating. Although adding one increases your costs (arguable with good virtualization/VM management), an integration testing environment is invaluable.
I tried to implement such a four-tier design at my last gig during an intensive environmental redesign, in which we moved most of the iron to VMware and implemented DNS indirection in each environment, but ultimately got shot down on trying to break TEST into separate INTEG and ACPT. The managers simply couldn't grok the usefulness...even most of the testers thought it would be a hassle.
Shortly before the end of my consulting involvement with the project, there was a major production meltdown due to a confusion of installed inter-dependent testing versions in TEST with several days of mission-critical PROD downtime as a result. [Thankfully I was not involved in that project.] Unfortunately, to this day, similar problems persist.
An INTEG environment doesn't have to be fully built out, and it shouldn't be used for performance testing. Simply keeping early testing code corralled in the INTEG environment makes sense for when a problem in PROD requires an IMMEDIATE "stable TEST" environment, and if there is pre-ACPT code in there you just can't perform adequate troubleshooting as your infrastructure grows.
Wasn't one of the core arguments that Microsoft made during the US Antitrust trial was that IE could NOT be separated from Windows without fundamentally breaking the OS?
Sooooo...guess, uh, they lied.
I hope this new 'decision engine' wasn't consulted about its own name, otherwise it should be avoided given the quality of its decision-making.
What a joke. Begin with the proctological comments...
Dammit these people in power in America piss me off. STOP USING THE TERM 'CZAR', 'TSAR', whatever! STOP STOP STOP.
I can't wait until a President is ready to march to Congress and appoint Der Fuehrer of Alternative Energy, which would prove that they have no clue what these titles mean to people around the world as well as citizens in our own country. I doubt Obama would appoint an Imperial Wizard of Credit Debt or Grand Dragon of Terrorism.
The term 'Czar' relates to a despicable history of oppression and murder. The term itself comes from Caesar, not exactly a bright point in Europe's history. There are better terms, and we as a Democratic people are more creative than this.
Yeah, what foniksonik said. A space seine seems to be a no-brainer to me, since they now have the "net".
"Mistakes that are so stupid, no human would ever make them." Devs must have never been to Pennsyl-tucky. I have some damn dumb people in my "neck of the woods".
I don't see why this shouldn't be done. In fact, it makes a lot of sense for all platforms. Create a third party mechanism by which users/admins can patch Zero day/unpatched flaws that relies on a community effort to provide the patches. Simple. Except it really needs the support of the OS vendor, because at some point, when the vendor releases the patch, you'd want to be able to "turn off" the temporary one. You'd also need an agreed upon "Master List" of vulns, for tracking purposes.
You'd think that this kind of hand-in-hand cooperation would be a no-brainer, but I doubt it. Companies (here's looking right at Apple) still just haven't wrapped their heads around the open exchange of ideas; they are afraid that admitting flaws makes them -look- bad. Ewwww, poor coders. But in reality I think everyone who uses computers by this point in time KNOWS flaws happen...it isn't that they will happen, it has become what are you gonna do about it? And it is pure arrogance by the OS vendors to think that neither the community has the ability to create these patchs nor that the users/admins are interested in them.
Really this is a thing that OS vendors should aspire to, integrating this kind of response mechanism into their existing Software Update suite would be a Good Thing.
I have already seen reports of using such data to "track" drinkers and their habits. People SHOULD care. MADD and their prohibitionist agenda has already advanced the violating of civil rights to a new high as it is, by wrapping drunk driving in the fabric of a social disease; anyone think they won't take it straight into the realm of "preventative therapy" using this information? The war on drugs/alcohol/alternative lifestyles needs to be outed for what it is: an evangelical war on sin. And its front continues to charge into the mainstream of American living, lead by religious bleeding hearts and hypocritical 60's-era hippy soccer moms.
I genuinely feel bad for the coming generations of Americans and the pseudo-fascist oppression under which they will be burdened in the name of "for the children". No matter my age, I will fully support and understand their inevitable backlash.
More Misses (that I forgot)
#6- 3GB of RAM. Because 4GB is RIGHT OUT. And no "Pro" really needs that much. Photoshop in a Gig, baby! Real Pros do FinalCut in 512MB...because we can.
#7- No specifics on the type of LCD used. IPS? (No, no IPS 15.4 WXGA+ screens being produced, so far as I can find.) MVA? Prolly pretty much the same screen that Dell is using. Ho. Hum.
New Features:
#1- Mac "Pro" users finally get in the 15" MacBook Pro what they've expected since the 17" drop in April: FW 800 and DL DVD+R...albeit at a slower speed.
#2- Mac "Pro" users finally get what every other major PC manufacturer has been giving their users for at least two (upwards of three) months: the Core 2. Christ Intel has been advertising the damn thing on TV!!!
#3- Mac "Pro" users finally get the privilege of spending nearly $800 more than a similarly configured Dell (and no, FW800 simply isn't a "compelling" feature). In other words, they could almost outfit TWO employees for the cost of ONE. Idiot accountants...always trying to be cheap.
Misses:
#1- No eSATA support. Because Mac "Pro" users are obviously stupid and can't read the specs that show that eSATA RAID enclosures kick the shit out of FW800. And of course no "Pro" users use eSATA, especially in video production (which, of course, we all know, is a field that has no Mac users).
#2- No built-in media card reader support. Jeez, couldn't Apple be nice enough to toss in a $5 ExpressCard/34 4-in-1 adapter in the box? No, that would have compromised their already razor thin 28 point margins...
#3- No "Pro" class support options. Then again, no "Pro" user really appreciates On-Site, 3year support contracts...we're PROS! We'll fix it ourselves with a paperclip and chewing gum!
#4- No competitively priced 15" model. Because the rest of the world selling those $1200 15" models are clueless...you really want a 13" screen. With a slower, generation-old CPU...and no expansion slot of any kind...and ho-hum GPU.
#5- No BTO 7200rpm drive option. Because Pros don't need that kind of performance...they just THINK DIFFERENT.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
This is, obviously, Apple's Enterprise-grade Security and Communications teams in action. Bravo!
And HEREIN lies the rub. In the cases of the MacBook Pro, the MacBook, and the Mac Pro, Apple initially leapt out of the gates with spectacular pricing. However, long term, their "price once, and forget it" strategy begins to kill them.
In three months, as the holiday season rolls around, Apple won't be able to hold a candle to Dell's pricing...for one, Dell (and all the others) will have a full sub-$700 product spectrum. Apple will have one mini. Granted, the cloners will likely not be putting Core processors in those cheapy boxes, although I could be wrong.
Right now, Apple is showing its complete inability to maintain competive pricing with the MacBook Pro line, and they have only been OUT barely 9 months. The company's old practice of incremental speed bumps won't cut it in Dell-land. But thanks for playing. They are even allowing the MacBook to be cannibalized by Core2 offerings tugging at the $1500 price point. By Christmas, the cloners will be selling MacBook-killers at less than $1000. Same performance or better, same LCDs, same drives...substantially cheaper. Most consumers don't use "that warm, fuzzy feeling you get helping out Steve Job's company" as purchasing rational for doling out an additional $200 over the holidays.
Next up, Apple continues to exhibit near brain-dead marketing. Oh sure, they know how to make really pretty iPod ads, and some rather funny "I'm a Mac, I'm cool; I'm a PC, I'm a TOOL" ads. Wow, an entire, encapsulated marketing plan for all those dumb fucks that grew up on TV and turned out TV. But they completely misunderstand the bulk of the educational market, trying to offer the same computer to K-12 school administrators (make it cheap and capable, "we'll use Apple //e's until 1990!") as they offer to Higher-Ed STUDENTS (who are looking for a computer to LAST 3 or 4 years, "I need beer money and book money, and I might think about buying another computer as a Senior cuz I still get a discount, but otherwise this has got to last...and play Tetris and log me onto FaceBook"). They believe that "Pro" users are too stupid to watch what competing systems are valuing at (MacBook Pros that are $1999, when the competition has moved to a 64-bit processor and dropped the price $400). They fundamentally don't understand warranty and hardware service. In fact, they are so retarded on this point, it comes off like a PeeWee Herman "I meant to do that" when Apple expressly remarks that they aren't interested in the Enterprise market. C'mon, a Pro model with no On-Site service option...Huh? (But it isn't like they don't offer an "extended" warranty that masquerades as a pro-option, at least on price!)
And yet we sit here and argue over 0.2%? Doesn't anyone get the fact that Apple has had Intel-based, no Intel-DESIGNED clone boxes on the market for nearly a year and they've been COMPLETELY unable to grow their market share appreciably above the levels that existed prior, when they were able to white-wash performance metrics and Jobs-note marketspeak about the capabilities of PowerPC chips...when the "Apple" market was PowerPC only, when there was no dramatic growth opportunity. Apple can say what they want; the analysts can say what they want..."the Holy Grail is the Pro Graphic Design Market...all hail the Pro Graphic Design Market!" Horseshit. That is a myth. The market share to be gained is in two places: Enterprise and home use (especially internationally). And Apple has even been unable to ride the iPod "halo" or the Security Scare to its benefit.
In another year, this will be moot...as Apple falls further and further behind the "industry" curve they will become less and less relevent. Just as has happened over the past 10 years...Jobs is turning out to be another Scully, ironically. (Just for giggles...anyone know how long Sony rode the WalkMan?)
So didn't I just see this on a Dead Zone episode? Snake venom, heart attack, problem solved?
Look: faced with a life-long jail sentence and plunging my family into poverty or winking out prematurely and letting them collect my fat-ass life insurance...which would I choose? Hrm.
The last greedy, selfish thing the man ever did was perhaps the most selfless, at least to his family. I hope somebody is running tox screenings for exotic substances...Kevorkian meets Capitalism.
Let me get this straight...those people who are currently computing like ALMOST ALL the other people (94% of them at least), who can probably not give a particularly good reason why that is other than "because that's what everyone else is using", and who on a whim decide to try out something new, something different AND LIKE IT...wait for it...are LEMMINGS?
Up is down, left is right, black is white, and now the lemmings are deviants. Fuck me, I need a drink.
These turbines are in the same area as the ones Jon Boone (my uncle) is protesting. Jon started his protest primarily from his love of both migratory birds and the "pristine" nature of the old-growth forests in that area. The basis of argument was that, in the vein of NIMBY, why build these things in "untouched" areas, just because they are far from everything else? But Jon IS fiercy NIMBY...he and his wife fought recently to block Wal*Mart from coming to their area. (I believe they lost that one.)
I offered nuclear as the "one true option" to him at a holiday gathering several years ago, but he would have none of it. However, the grain of truth in his arguments regarding the "corporate" nature of these wind farms is definitely true. The companies building these windfarms are getting HUGE kickbacks in the form of tax incentives and subsidies...all in a very short-term, short-sighted political game. It is difficult for me to understand how these windfarms would ever pay for themselves otherwise. The whole thing is a pretty bad excuse ("to show we did SOMETHING") to go building ugly aluminum towers that will be abandoned once the sweets run out.
For all of you who misconstrued my question as a preference for a BIOS-based solution rather than the EFI solution that got implemented, you are WAAAAAY off base and poorly informed.
Intel's EFI solution can include the ability to present a (masquerade as?) legacy BIOS-like environment...and this is currently in use for production PCs currently booting WinXP X86-32. Apple did not include this compatibility layer. (And yes, it is possible that Intel shied away from allowing them to implement it due to other vendor pressure--Dell--however I find that HIGHLY unlikely.) Further, the EFI includes "definitions" for various drive partitioning schemes that allow it to 'talk' to drive partitions in order to load boot code from them...again the "definitions" for ElTorito etal are used in current production EFI-based systems to boot Windows and Linux. Apple did not include them.
I'm not advocating for Apple to NOT be progressive...instead I'm advocating that Apple both be progressive technically as well as culturally. Include the necessary components of EFI (which are available and proven to be production viable) and let us get on with our business. If they had done so, the installation of Windows (which is already running on the hardware found in the iMacIntel) and Linux would have been a month or more ahead of where we find ourselves...not to mention it would have been a very interesting and welcome tip of the hat to the geeks and early adopters that Apple NEEDS in order to grow marketshare (and who everyone with a braincell KNEW would jump right off and try such dual-booting shenanigans).
This has nothing to do with losing Firewire boot mode, DRM, a shackling to BIOS hell, and other such nonsense...EFI obviously ALLOWS such things, a testiment to its power and breadth. It has EVERYTHING to do with a company showing itself willing to 'Think Different' and show some courage/self esteem when entering a very difficult, bigger marketplace. Apple just blinked.
For me, a dye'd in the wool Mac-o-phile, the real question is not which alt-OS will come first...I know that they WILL come soon, so when is rather moot.
No, for me the "Real" question is "Why?", as in "Why was Apple so asinine and inane as to not just make the new Intel-based iron capable of booting Windows and Linux disros as is?" To save a couple of bucks? To restrict the practice (even after they said they wouldn't)? To be consistent (Apple's track record for doing stupid, head-scratching things)?
In the end it probably doesn't REALLY matter...the community will conjure up the fix and we'll go about our merry ways, installing whatever floats our proverbial OS boats on genuinely well-crafted hardware. But, somewhere deep inside, I guess I had been hoping that Apple might take this MOMENTOUS opportunity to do something unexpected, something out of character, something indicative of a company that -gets- the new culture, something "Not Evil": just make it so. Don't make the community struggle to come up with the fix, just make it work. Put it out there. Let us get on with the adventure.
They didn't. And, unfortunately, I'm sure it will come out that they not only didn't, they PURPOSEFULLY didn't. And that makes me sad, as a professed "Apple man".
Spirit of Woz, where are ye?
I have a coffee table book that explores the history of Apple's Advanced Design Group, and it has photographs of a prototype Apple 'puter that worked around the "bookshelf" paradigm. That would have been back in the early Nineties...
I'll see if I can't dig it up for more info (and maybe some pics).
So the article mentions specifically that the iTunes software is NOT going to be included. Hrm. Did any of the bad press the first ROKR get revolve around the mobile iTunes software or the integration of a phone and iTunes? Not that -I- recall; if memory serves Moto was lambasted for a trivial 100 song limit, no expandability, and the inability to sync over Bluetooth.
So how to fix? Take away the one part that WAS GOOD, and that falls into line with what the GROSS majority of users are currently DOING: using iTunes, the iTunes store, and a move towards user-centric music collections.
Instead implement a crappy subscription service that every cell carrier CEO will gripe about because customers "expect" reception in their homes. (And what a dumb expectation, too...not like there's any precedent for it!)
Will the goofy thing at least still play AAC (.m4a) audio files?
What morons. Seriously. Moto is dead. Long live Moto. Nokia, bay-beee.
Anyone have any info on IMAP/SSL support? Webmail is nice, but being able to use Thunderbird/Mail.app/Outlook Express (ugh) is what really makes these free/cheap services nice for Grandma.
Using a nice round number of $1500 as an average Mac price, and knowing that Apple typically reports mark-ups in the 25 point range, with another ~$100 going to the retailer/distributor (that's probably high), we can calculate what Apple actually pays for the computer: .25 margin.
((Selling price - $100 markup) - COST)/COST =
That yields $1,120.00 for the COST. Assuming that Apple has factored in some value for OS X and iLife into that, Apple is making about $250 per Mac. Now, part of that assumption about the value of OS X is that Apple is probably nearly loss-leadering the OS (they'll get you on the upgrade anyhow). So, we can safely appraise the COST of OS X and iLife to be in the $30-$50 range, combined; I'd venture further than they're probably equal. So out of a $150 price tag for OS X (which we know Amazon sells for $115, Apple takes in a little less than $85, subtracting development COST and packaging materials COST.
What does this mean? Well, roughly, if you buy a Mac from Apple, they take in $250. If you buy OS X at the current price, they take in $85. That's a big difference, and keep in mind that since OS X currently runs only a Mac they've already made the $250 at some point, too!
OTOH, the question to ask is what is the sustainable asking price for OS X on an x86 whitebox? Windows XP Home is only available as an upgrade at Amazon for $98. Windows XP Pro, non-upgrade version, is $280. I'd say that OS X fits in between the two, feature-wise. Competively priced, they might be able to go $199. At that price, with current development and packaging costs, they could be making, say, $165 per sale. That's nearly double what they make on a "Mac" OS X sale, and two-thirds what they make on a Mac hardware sale.
If they could double their market share (4% of the overall computer market??) they would have converted to a more profitable, less volatile business model. (Well, from one point of view---competing directly with M$ can never be called less volatile!)
So, are you willing to pay $200 for OS X on your white boxen?
Learn how to properly compare prices. First off, you bundled Office with the Dell. AppleWorks isn't MS Office. -$339.
Plus that price includes three years onsite warrant. bzzzzzt. Can't get that with Apple...not without AppleCare. And Apple's idea of "on site" is where you put your computer in the cardboard box that they send.
Heap on the Dell coupons that any Google monkey can find on the web and take another couple of hundred bucks off.
Finally, I'll preemptively dismiss the "you need to add Windows XP Pro" argument. Windows XP Home doesn't work on an Active Directory network. Neither does 10.3 very well. So it is wash...XP Pro = $79. ADmit Mac ~$79.
No faster than 24x? Smoke another brand. Myth Busters is smarter than you...
R.I.P. -- Cursive, Zapf Chancery, and Tekton
But on another note...why hasn't a RIAA/MPAA Apache-based honeypot been rigged up yet? Is anyone aware of one? I would be more than happy to GI/GO (Garbage In/Garbage Out) their search engines. I can't imagine it would be hard, and, AFAIK, doing so does NOT violate the DMCA. Every OS X user out there could become a weapon!