$299 Base + $119 for XP Pro (I hate XP Home) + $50 for CD-RW + $20 for the reinstall CD (kinda useful if there is a problem) That brings me up to $490.
I'm not including Office, because I either need that or I don't, and its the same price. Both machines need RAM upgrades, so that is a wash...
I'm just saying that they are in the same price range, and that is for the Dell Dimension... The Optiplex are much more comparable, but the price difference is a wash, +/- $50.
The MAIN difference is the OS. I can't use XP Home as a useful OS for an office environment, I can use OS X.
There are software advantages to both, depending on usage. But I find the machines for office usage to be about a wash on the low end. There are DEFINITE areas where Apple machines aren't competitive, and the lack of customization IS a problem (anytime I make a Dell equivalent, the price is a wash, but with the Apple, I can't save money downgrading unnecessary things).
The Mac Mini is $500, which is pretty cheap. Sure you can "build" a cheaper machine, but if you are "building" a Longhorn machine with a $200 retail license of Windows, it isn't less than $500.
I'm sorry, Dell's "low end" that are below $500 quickly become over $500 with basic upgrades...
I buy both Dell "low end" machines and Apple "low end machines."
Right now, the G4 is a bit underpowered for gaming, but runs our business apps no problem. Apple is going to be in a whole new market with x86... largely because they will have decent processors EVERYWHERE.
The performance difference between top-of-the line x86 and "much cheaper" x86 isn't NEARLY as big as the G5/G4 split, so they are going to be in an interesting situation.
Look, this whole process is retarded, but hiring a consultant to investigate doesn't necessarily mean the end.
Also, while SCO's PR has talking about Linux (after IBM started implying it), this was ORIGINALLY a lawsuit about the derivative works from a company working with a Unix license that IBM bought. It was originally a breach of contract case, not a "Linux is a derivative work" case, it just got weird when they started flailing around.
3 Years ago, my HDTV box was an open box $400 deal (full price was $1000). When it got messed up, DirecTV replaced it with a $750 top of the box less than a year later. 18 months ago, you could get a basic HDTV box for $200-$300, where our prices are sitting.
Right now, there is no demand for a $50 box, because analog works for 15%, and the other 85% have satellite/cable. DirecTV is already planning to obsolete my HD Tivo, but I'll keep my antenna and it will work for a few years until something compelling replaces it.
However, we can get for $200 a basic HDTV decoder... that's a start. The deadline was pushed off another 3 years... I expect $100 entry level ones within the next year or two. The prices will keep dropping for the electronics, people will keep complaining, and the deadline will keep get pushed off.
HOWEVER, while this is happening, more and more ATSC-ready televisions will be sold. Sure, people with 20 year TVs will be upset, but by the time the switch REALLY happens in 2012/2015, any 20 year old or newer set was built in the 90s... Its just a matter of time until most people have ATSC-ready sets.
It just involves pushing deadlines back but making the equipment happen. When things get close, Wal-mart will get a factory in China putting out $20-$50 boxes, and people will whine, and somehow, Wal-mart will walk away with a $30-$40/box subsidy, make real bank, the left will scream and yell about corporate give-aways, but the transition will happen... And somehow, the corporate give-away will exceed to auction revenues, but we'll all move on with our lives...
Assuming that you run Cat5 from your server room to the station (not an uncommon place for your network patch panels), you just replace the cable from a Computer -> Switch connection, it is a Station -> Computer connection.
Yeah, their group sucks. Server 10.2.8 broke my Xserve and shut down mail. I call support, and the "Enterprise Support Group" was all "in a meeting." We ended up upgrading to 10.3 Server which had different problems, but broken system pushed the upgrade a bit faster.
That said, for a SMALL network, OS X Server is a pretty neat way to get an LDAP/Kerberos system running... The poster that I replied to was playing with Unix networking... and OS X Server is a neat addition to the mix...
Dell has to pay Microsoft for each copy of Windows that they ship, somewhere in the $20 - $30 range.
Apple has to pay its employees to develop OS X, but they don't pay them "per machine shipped."
If Dell ships 1 additional computer, they pay Microsoft an extra $25 (I'm simplifying, I'm sure that they buy in lots > 1, whether it is per 10 or per 100 or per 1000 computers).
If Apple ships 1 additional computer, they don't have to pay ANY MORE for "OS X" development.
The operating system is a variable cost that Dell needs to factor into their pricing model. The operating system is a fixed cost that Apple needs to factor into their BUSINESS model.
If Apple wants to make $200/machine, they need for sell for $200 more than the variable costs. Dell has the additional Variable cost of $25 for Microsoft.
Apple needs to recover that OS development cost, but they don't need to "per machine."
That is a MAJOR difference in divisional pricing structures and underlying economics.
Doubling Apple's machines has no increase in their OS costs.
If Steve Jobs makes proper investments, and returns a good return to investors, then he will be able to make more investments and develop more technology that should also make a good return to investors and enhance humanity.
If he develops good technology BUT NOT a good return on investment, then he will have developed that technology but not be able to develop future ones because they don't make a good return.
If you succeed on the ROI front, you get to keep succeeded.
So from a human perspective, making a good return on investment begets other investments, while your "human success" without ROI means not having the capital to make future investments.
We are porting (planning to) an app from a CURLhandle (a libCURL wrapper) to CFNetwork. I poked through Tiger CFNetwork code, and see references to compiling on Win32.
I have seen it in other parts of Apple's code.
I believe Apple maintains Yellowbox/Win32 (which was their name for OpenSTEP/Windows) at least for their internal apps. Remember, NeXTSTEP (whatever the hell the capitalization was) was a brilliant if ahead of their times technology system that built a flexible OO environment that could run on whatever platform they wanted. They were multiple CPU friends, and mulitiple-OS friendly (their OS ran on top of Unix, they ported their APIs to other Unix companies like Sun, the ported to Windows), and they even got toll-free bridging between Java and Cocoa going...
The NeXTSTEP tech is really cool, and it appears that Apple still maintains it... Apple Engineering still maintains and enhances it, even if marketing/Steve Jobs chooses to not market it for strategic reasons. I guess that iTunes/Windows runs inside of Yellowbox/Windows to some extent, but no clue.
Apple keeps LOTS of cool tech going... but they market the hell out of their brand. Doesn't change the fact that 5-10 engineers on a team working on a cool piece of technology is $1m-$2m a year in R&D expenses, which isn't that much for a company of Apple's size IF AND WHEN they decide that it is a $50m/year market that they want to explode.
Apple has a lot of strategic options. They could license the NT kernel from MS tomorrow, OR the Kernel+Win32 environment, and STILL have an option for Cocoa apps running, which is pretty neat.
It isn't about market-share. The win/loss is as follows:
Businesses care (should care) about the net present value of business decisions.
If you can establish a monopoly in say, 5 years, like MS did going from 3.1 -> 95, then it is okay to make "okay" profits or even losses for 5 years because the NPV of a 10+ year monopoly is HUGE. Otherwise, market-share is IRRELEVANT, because it doesn't get you monopoly rents.
Job's doesn't win/lose based on market-share.
He wins/loses based upon the NPV of future cash flows based upon his current decisions, which will effect Apple's long term financial outlook and whether he has returned an adequate return to his investors based upon the estimated Risk premium of Apple's business.
Right now, based upon Wallstreet's evaluations, he has returned a terrific ROI to shareholders from the time he joined Apple. However, now Wallstreet pays more for a dollar of Apple's earnings, so to maintain that ROI, he needs to increase his cash flow faster to make an investor in 2005 happy.
He doesn't fail if market-share is 5%, he fails if he fails to make an adequate return to his investors.:)
Apple can allocate their OS Development costs whereever they want. The can "charge" the hardware division $30/machine (or whatever the MS fee is) and try to make their hardware division compete with the Dell and HPs over the world, they can charge $100 to allocate development costs, or they can charge it $0 and make the Software division make its money from selling "upgrades."
The marginal cost of one extra copy of OS X is ZERO, so Apple DOESN'T have to factor that in. Fixed costs need to be recovered, but Apple DOESN'T need to factor it into the profit margin discussions.
Cost accounting is an entire field of accounting, not a Slashdot thread...:)
The desktop wars are over. Commodity IBM PC-compatibles with Microsoft OSes and Intel chips won. Sure the market is HUGE and niche markets (even #1 player Dell doesn't dominate the market, it owns the niche for moderately supported business machines with semi-custom orders) remain extremely profitable if done right, but Intel and Microsoft have extracted most of the profits. Even highly innovative AMD can only capture 20% of the market.
In 1996 Fortune interviewed Steve Jobs and asked him what he would do if still running Apple. He responded that he would "milk the Mac for all it is worth and move on to the next big thing."
This doesn't mean that those of us with an investment in Apple hardware (or more risky, custom Cocoa software like we have) mean that Apple is going to abandon the Mac....
They are going the milk it for all it is worth.
With OS X, we have a NeXTSTEP/Mac fusion that Steve likes, and Apple will keep profitably pushing out software updates that they sell, but that isn't Apple's growth.
Their growth operations: software, when Steve rejoined they had recently gone from free OS upgrades to selling two upgrades, OS 7 and OS 7.5, IIRC, maybe 6 was sold as well.
Now, Apple sells new OS Versions every 1 - 2 years. They put out an iLife upgrade annually. They will probably put out iWork annually. And they replaced their free iTunes system with a nicely growing.Mac system, where the cost of the storage is going to zero but their annual subscribers are growth.
The average Mac customer pre-Jobs bought a Mac and used it for 6 years. The average Mac customer post-Jobs buys a Mac, and uses it for 3-4 years with 2 OS upgrades, 1 or 2 software purchases, and 20% of a.Mac subscription (or some similar number). That means that Apple can sell a low-margin system like the Mini, pocket $100 on the system, and hope to grab another $200-$300 in software sales over the system's lifetime... So a $500 Mac Mini sale is as good for Apple as a $2000 PowerMac with 40% margins was 5 years ago.
Apple will keep innovating the Mac to milk the cash cow... They will NOT enter price-wars or otherwise fight with MS or Dell or HP for market-share. They will milk the cash cow, try to execute and expand markets, but they are NOT interested in growing to a 10% market with the SAME profits as now by cutting their margins by 75% which would make the software developers happy.
It isn't a zero-sum game, they are selling the iMac or Mac Mini as a digital life system. Sure you have a Windows machine for whatever... but add a Mac Mini and a KVM (and annual OS X + iLife upgrades) to easily put your kid's Soccer Games on DVD and send to his grandparents. That is their "growth" strategy.
It isn't a bad strategy, but selling easy-to-use digital toys is how Apple is a growth company, and Microsoft is becoming a mature company that will steadily increase its annual dividend.
Good for Steve Jobs, good for Apple shareholders, and hopefully good for its customers as long as Apple keeps putting out new products that we want to buy because we are the cash cow to be milked, but we aren't going to benefit from price cuts from a price war because market-share and PC growth just don't interest Apple...
That said, I'm sure at some level Apple sees Linux entering the network market for office networks, and realizes that with the best (and easiest to use) desktop Unix... he can enter that market. If you like Linux, if Apple gets the BEST WINELIB performance, the BEST Qt performance, and best Gtk performance, and has KDELIB and GNOMELIB ported... well how tough is it that Apple is able to compete with Linux for SOME share of the corporate desktop market.
Apple is in a position to make SOME gains in PC market-share, but growing back to 10-20% over 10 years isn't giant tech growth... the iPod and OTHER SIMILAR projects is.
It's a smart business move, and Apple has set themselves up to grow profits steadily in their core markets, and then swing for the fences with new products like the iPod, iTMS, etc.
Right now, Apple has to market Apple machines vs. Windows machines, and they are hard to compare. When the PPC is better, people don't believe it. They are either behind in performance or MHz/GHz, or something.
This lets a comparison with Dell/HP be VERY clear.
If the Apple hardware is $100-$200 more than a Dell, it is a straightforward question, is it worth this premium to get OS X. It makes for a straightforward comparison. In addition, if Apple's manfuacturing gets better (and they grow their share from the #8 player in the PC space to #3/#4, which is probably around a 10% market-share), then they can price equally to PC players and STILL make good margins, because they don't have to pay MS their fee.
Forget JUST the processor difference, they can really enter a straight competition with a minor price premium for a superior system... Plus, if Microsoft stumbles and looks vulnerable, they can compete in the OS market.
Also, think about Government/Corporate contracts. Someone can write an RFP: runs Linux + random software that is x86 only... or runs Office XP... Since the Apple can, they can now compete for that contract.
Lots of good things for Apple, and some minor fears for those of us suffering the transition. (I have in-house Cocoa apps that will now need to be QA'd on two platforms, even if development is "click a button.")
AMD has approximately 20% of the PC Processor market.
Apple has 3% of the PC Market.
3% of the PC market is 15% of AMD's market.
AMD's market is normally capped not by distribution but rather by production. If AMD won the Apple contract, they would EITHER need to increase their production by 15% (not historically AMD's strong suit), or increase prices to the PC market...
If AMD picks up the Apple contract and CANNOT increase production...
Then AMD has to reduce their PC market-share by 15% of their production, which means increasing prices.
Either way, Apple would be a HUGE account for AMD, and would require a substantial portion of AMD's manufacturing resources.
What was smart about Nintendo, is instead of joining the fray and getting bashed by Sony and Microsoft (three companies in cutthroat competition means profits drop considerably...) Microsoft didn't make any money, and Sony didn't mint money the way they did with the Playstation.
Nintendo took their limited Monopolies (Mario, Metroid, Zelda, Pokemon, etc.) and pushed them into that market. They made money along the way, kept their costs down, and sold most of their own titles. Sony/MS make something like $8/game on third-party games. Nintendo makes considerably more per game.
Even if customers bought fewer games/console, Nintendo probably made more per customer, and wasn't trying to recover a $100/customer acquisition cost.
Sony ONLY makes money on its fan base. A recreational player that buys a few sports games each year will never pay Sony enough in its fees to cover the $100 Sony spent subsidizing their hardware.
HOWEVER, in this case, Sony has another advantage. Getting the PS3 out means getting Blu-Ray DVD players into millions of homes. When the HD-DVD crew comes out with their $1000 HD-DVD players, and Apple and Sony have moved their Blu-Ray DVD machines (including Apple machines that will no doubt let you burn HD Blu-Ray DVDs of your kid's little league game), this might be the first time that the superior technology wins DESPITE being backed by BOTH Apple and Sony...:) I loved Blu-Ray, and was saddened to see adoption by Apple, because I feared that it would go like Firewire/iLink that Apple/Sony managed to kill through poor technology marketing (they both rock at consumer marketing, but technology marketing is NOT their strong point). Note, I am typing this from my Powerbook.:)
This Apple is small is a bit excessive. It is 2%-3% of new computer sales worldwide. That's the eighth largest computer manufacturer. In other-words, there are only 7 accounts larger than Apple to fight over.
AMD supplies what, 20%-30% of the CPU market? Meaning grabbing Apple's share would be a 10% increase in market-share. Given the high fixed-cost, low variable costs of chip manufacturing, that could be HUGE for AMD.
In the OS Market, Microsoft TROUNCES Apple. In the hardware market, only real Dell and HP TROUNCE Apple, making them a viable customer.
Here is the problem, unemployment is considered the percentage of people IN THE WORKFORCE that do not have a job.
You are suggesting that the current definition of workforce is wrong (and may not reflect the modern workforce), but you need a NEW definition.
The problem with YOUR solution is your unemployment would be at 30% and rising, and NOT because of changes in the economy.
For example, a 70 year old retiree that isn't working... is he unemployed? A housewife raising 3 kids, is she unemployed? That same housewife doing buying/selling on eBay for a few months, does her status change? Is she unemployed if she stops? Was she employed? A 20 year old that works in construction that stops working in the winter, is he no unemployed? Is he unemployed based upon whether his is looking for work, or still unemployed but not need to look for work because he'll have a job in 3 months. Now, what about a college student at age 20. Is he in the workforce?
I'm not saying that the government's definition is good, and I think that the payroll service completely ignores how much of our economy (at LEAST 5%) is in the fringe... take the 400,000 people that, according to eBay, earn their living buying/selling on eBay... whether that number is correct or not, there are SOME people that make their living buying/selling on eBay, because I have met 2 of them. Therefore, the number is at LEAST 2 and probably NO MORE than 400,000, but I have no idea what it is. However, I can GUARNTEE you that no "payroll survey" picks them up. The household survey has other problems, but it DOES capture those people, but it misses others.
Our measurement of unemployment is wrong, but your simple metric, # of people without jobs / # of people, won't work. It needs to be # of people IN WORKFOCE without jobs / # of people IN WORKFORCE... otherwise, a wealthy housewife is considered unemployed, as is the college student and retiree, which trashes our ability to understand the "misery" factor of the unemployment.
When it came time to upgrade my phone, the Nokia's looked tempting, they just weren't "smart enough." I also wanted a QWERTY keyboard, and none of theirs supporting them seemed to work with iSync. So I have a Treo650... I love the features, but would be happy to migrate to a more phone-oriented phone in two years, and Nokia seems to be getting there.
Support for Blazer (Palm's Web Browser) is pretty spotty, but I would expect Nokia to do a better job there.
Well, given that two of the machines are in different locations 1500 miles from my office, that's a long serial cable.:)
We used to have them in a colo facility (rackspace, found through a Slashdot banner ad), but we changed those machines to RHEL because they will support them and do the upgrades, and up2date will pull down binary patches without my needing to upgrade from CD every 6 months.
Random point, but Google was founded as a technology company, built to design and license their technology to companies like Yahoo. Google.com WAS simply a proof of concept site, but as it grew as a destination and they changed their business model to be an ad channel.
But originally, they were a technology company selling their tech/search results to media companies that would include the advertisements. Much like a studio that puts shows out in syndication... the local stations sell the ads, NOT the studio.
Not that it matters much, but Google's primary objective WAS to have the best search results so the media companies would license it, now it is to use the search results to accumulate visitors to sell ads to.
The first time I installed it, it took a few attempts. Had to figure out the networking, etc. (I had problems with Redhat 6.2 as well, the installer was great, but no tools that I could find to edit them until I learned my way around the text files).
However, after 3 attempts when we got the hang of it, I looked at my partner (it was our first webserver for our little company) and we were like COOL. Once you get the handle of the installer and ports, its a DREAM, much EASIER than the Redhat what do I want and where is it problem.
That said, RHEL 4 is pretty slick, but nowhere near as impressively simple as OpenBSD + Ports. The installed OpenBSD system is SO FUCKING clean its not funny, and then you add the few ports, nice and customized, that you want.
One day I build 4 OpenBSD machines. Build the (customized) packages on one and distributed, and it was REALLY, REALLY, REALLY nice).
It's a great system, but you gotta really be a Unix-lover. If you want the click-click install, the Linux distros are great, but with OpenBSD I understand what is going on with my system.
That said, you can just TRY to get my OS X Powerbook away from me...:)
Without fail, their bi-annual schedule results in shifting by a few weeks either way, and ALWAYS comes out right around the time I am reconfiguring the OpenBSD machines (currently the Firewall/VPN machines, used to be our web and DB servers too but performance wasn't great, keep considering moving to a RHEL DB Server and an OpenBSD Web Server solution), but they sometimes take FOREVER to ship. What's really frustrating is no binary releases of patches, so you upgrade every 6-12 months, and NO REMOTE UPGRADE capability. That's what kills me now, I have servers all over the place, and I can't remotely upgrade them, and they release 2/year.
With RHEL, I have my subscription, and a major release only comes out ever 2 years and they support the old one with patches for a while. By the time I'm frustrating from not having the newest features available, they are beta-testing a new RHEL version and I can always grab the Fedora SRPMs and rebuild if I can't wait (I like to grab SRPMs when pulling from Fedora, in case an underlying change would create a compatibility issue with the binary one).
OpenBSD is great, but its an amateur project and it shows. We usually by 2-3 CDs each release, depending how I'm feeling, and I LOVE the stickers, but the release process and upgrading is annoying. However, the ports collection is great and supports most common applications. I MUCH prefer ports to SRPMS if I need to customize the install (adding things like Kerberos, LDAP, SSL, etc. to various projects) then mucking around in the SRPMs.
However, the software is AWESOME, I just wish they had some corporate backing to offer something like RHN.
As the machines are more advanced, including emulation "software" is feasible (in the non-backwards days, you had to duplicate hardware, which was pricey. Often the old processor was used as the sound processor on the new system so you could maintain it. With modern systems, an emulator should be feasible, especially with Nintendo using a newer PPC chip, it should be pretty straight-forward.
"Back in the day" when people hooked systems up through the RF modulator (other than as proof of concept, did anyone REALLY use the AV jacks on the NES or even the SNES when stereo televisions were rare)? Nintendo avoided it as front runner because they wanted to repackage and sell the games on the hand helds or as "All Stars" packs, but it was also infeasible.
Now with the devices sported Component Video or DVI jacks, the sets are becoming input limited. For good quality, nobody hooks their modern systems up via RF hookups, and lots of televisions only have one or two component hookups, asking people to give them both up for Nintendo is unreasonable, given that they don't play DVDs (meaning you need a component input for the DVD player).
I've loved all my Nintendo systems, and played them much more than anything but my Genesis, but I've been so busy that I rarely use my Gamecube despite having lots of games that I love. However, with backwards compatibility, I'll probably pick one up within the first 6 months or so, even though otherwise I might pass. Hell, if all it does is let me stop routing Stereo cables around and send it via digital audio, it'll be worth it to simplify wiring.:)
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$299 Base
+ $119 for XP Pro (I hate XP Home)
+ $50 for CD-RW
+ $20 for the reinstall CD (kinda useful if there is a problem)
That brings me up to $490.
I'm not including Office, because I either need that or I don't, and its the same price. Both machines need RAM upgrades, so that is a wash...
I'm just saying that they are in the same price range, and that is for the Dell Dimension... The Optiplex are much more comparable, but the price difference is a wash, +/- $50.
The MAIN difference is the OS. I can't use XP Home as a useful OS for an office environment, I can use OS X.
There are software advantages to both, depending on usage. But I find the machines for office usage to be about a wash on the low end. There are DEFINITE areas where Apple machines aren't competitive, and the lack of customization IS a problem (anytime I make a Dell equivalent, the price is a wash, but with the Apple, I can't save money downgrading unnecessary things).
Alex
The Mac Mini is $500, which is pretty cheap. Sure you can "build" a cheaper machine, but if you are "building" a Longhorn machine with a $200 retail license of Windows, it isn't less than $500.
I'm sorry, Dell's "low end" that are below $500 quickly become over $500 with basic upgrades...
I buy both Dell "low end" machines and Apple "low end machines."
Right now, the G4 is a bit underpowered for gaming, but runs our business apps no problem. Apple is going to be in a whole new market with x86... largely because they will have decent processors EVERYWHERE.
The performance difference between top-of-the line x86 and "much cheaper" x86 isn't NEARLY as big as the G5/G4 split, so they are going to be in an interesting situation.
Alex
Look, this whole process is retarded, but hiring a consultant to investigate doesn't necessarily mean the end.
Also, while SCO's PR has talking about Linux (after IBM started implying it), this was ORIGINALLY a lawsuit about the derivative works from a company working with a Unix license that IBM bought. It was originally a breach of contract case, not a "Linux is a derivative work" case, it just got weird when they started flailing around.
Alex
3 Years ago, my HDTV box was an open box $400 deal (full price was $1000). When it got messed up, DirecTV replaced it with a $750 top of the box less than a year later. 18 months ago, you could get a basic HDTV box for $200-$300, where our prices are sitting.
Right now, there is no demand for a $50 box, because analog works for 15%, and the other 85% have satellite/cable. DirecTV is already planning to obsolete my HD Tivo, but I'll keep my antenna and it will work for a few years until something compelling replaces it.
However, we can get for $200 a basic HDTV decoder... that's a start. The deadline was pushed off another 3 years... I expect $100 entry level ones within the next year or two. The prices will keep dropping for the electronics, people will keep complaining, and the deadline will keep get pushed off.
HOWEVER, while this is happening, more and more ATSC-ready televisions will be sold. Sure, people with 20 year TVs will be upset, but by the time the switch REALLY happens in 2012/2015, any 20 year old or newer set was built in the 90s... Its just a matter of time until most people have ATSC-ready sets.
It just involves pushing deadlines back but making the equipment happen. When things get close, Wal-mart will get a factory in China putting out $20-$50 boxes, and people will whine, and somehow, Wal-mart will walk away with a $30-$40/box subsidy, make real bank, the left will scream and yell about corporate give-aways, but the transition will happen... And somehow, the corporate give-away will exceed to auction revenues, but we'll all move on with our lives...
Alex
Assuming that you run Cat5 from your server room to the station (not an uncommon place for your network patch panels), you just replace the cable from a Computer -> Switch connection, it is a Station -> Computer connection.
Alex
Yeah, their group sucks. Server 10.2.8 broke my Xserve and shut down mail. I call support, and the "Enterprise Support Group" was all "in a meeting." We ended up upgrading to 10.3 Server which had different problems, but broken system pushed the upgrade a bit faster.
That said, for a SMALL network, OS X Server is a pretty neat way to get an LDAP/Kerberos system running... The poster that I replied to was playing with Unix networking... and OS X Server is a neat addition to the mix...
Alex
Dell has to pay Microsoft for each copy of Windows that they ship, somewhere in the $20 - $30 range.
Apple has to pay its employees to develop OS X, but they don't pay them "per machine shipped."
If Dell ships 1 additional computer, they pay Microsoft an extra $25 (I'm simplifying, I'm sure that they buy in lots > 1, whether it is per 10 or per 100 or per 1000 computers).
If Apple ships 1 additional computer, they don't have to pay ANY MORE for "OS X" development.
The operating system is a variable cost that Dell needs to factor into their pricing model.
The operating system is a fixed cost that Apple needs to factor into their BUSINESS model.
If Apple wants to make $200/machine, they need for sell for $200 more than the variable costs. Dell has the additional Variable cost of $25 for Microsoft.
Apple needs to recover that OS development cost, but they don't need to "per machine."
That is a MAJOR difference in divisional pricing structures and underlying economics.
Doubling Apple's machines has no increase in their OS costs.
Alex
If Steve Jobs makes proper investments, and returns a good return to investors, then he will be able to make more investments and develop more technology that should also make a good return to investors and enhance humanity.
If he develops good technology BUT NOT a good return on investment, then he will have developed that technology but not be able to develop future ones because they don't make a good return.
If you succeed on the ROI front, you get to keep succeeded.
So from a human perspective, making a good return on investment begets other investments, while your "human success" without ROI means not having the capital to make future investments.
Alex
We are porting (planning to) an app from a CURLhandle (a libCURL wrapper) to CFNetwork. I poked through Tiger CFNetwork code, and see references to compiling on Win32.
I have seen it in other parts of Apple's code.
I believe Apple maintains Yellowbox/Win32 (which was their name for OpenSTEP/Windows) at least for their internal apps. Remember, NeXTSTEP (whatever the hell the capitalization was) was a brilliant if ahead of their times technology system that built a flexible OO environment that could run on whatever platform they wanted. They were multiple CPU friends, and mulitiple-OS friendly (their OS ran on top of Unix, they ported their APIs to other Unix companies like Sun, the ported to Windows), and they even got toll-free bridging between Java and Cocoa going...
The NeXTSTEP tech is really cool, and it appears that Apple still maintains it... Apple Engineering still maintains and enhances it, even if marketing/Steve Jobs chooses to not market it for strategic reasons. I guess that iTunes/Windows runs inside of Yellowbox/Windows to some extent, but no clue.
Apple keeps LOTS of cool tech going... but they market the hell out of their brand. Doesn't change the fact that 5-10 engineers on a team working on a cool piece of technology is $1m-$2m a year in R&D expenses, which isn't that much for a company of Apple's size IF AND WHEN they decide that it is a $50m/year market that they want to explode.
Apple has a lot of strategic options. They could license the NT kernel from MS tomorrow, OR the Kernel+Win32 environment, and STILL have an option for Cocoa apps running, which is pretty neat.
Alex
It isn't about market-share. The win/loss is as follows:
:)
Businesses care (should care) about the net present value of business decisions.
If you can establish a monopoly in say, 5 years, like MS did going from 3.1 -> 95, then it is okay to make "okay" profits or even losses for 5 years because the NPV of a 10+ year monopoly is HUGE. Otherwise, market-share is IRRELEVANT, because it doesn't get you monopoly rents.
Job's doesn't win/lose based on market-share.
He wins/loses based upon the NPV of future cash flows based upon his current decisions, which will effect Apple's long term financial outlook and whether he has returned an adequate return to his investors based upon the estimated Risk premium of Apple's business.
Right now, based upon Wallstreet's evaluations, he has returned a terrific ROI to shareholders from the time he joined Apple. However, now Wallstreet pays more for a dollar of Apple's earnings, so to maintain that ROI, he needs to increase his cash flow faster to make an investor in 2005 happy.
He doesn't fail if market-share is 5%, he fails if he fails to make an adequate return to his investors.
Alex
OpenLDAP / Kerberos is a dream on OS X, and a nightmare on Linux.
:)
:)
For a while I had ONE OS X Server (now I have 3, one in each location) to serve up LDAP and Kerberos... and some AFP/NFS shares because I can.
mod_auth_kerb for authentication on Webservers
netatalk for kerberized AFP to Linux machines
If you need any COOL networking, the open source/open standards that underlie OS X rock...
Join Joel of AFP548.com in bugging me to finish my RHEL 4 on a OS X Network write-up...
Alex
Apple can allocate their OS Development costs whereever they want. The can "charge" the hardware division $30/machine (or whatever the MS fee is) and try to make their hardware division compete with the Dell and HPs over the world, they can charge $100 to allocate development costs, or they can charge it $0 and make the Software division make its money from selling "upgrades."
:)
The marginal cost of one extra copy of OS X is ZERO, so Apple DOESN'T have to factor that in. Fixed costs need to be recovered, but Apple DOESN'T need to factor it into the profit margin discussions.
Cost accounting is an entire field of accounting, not a Slashdot thread...
Alex
The desktop wars are over. Commodity IBM PC-compatibles with Microsoft OSes and Intel chips won. Sure the market is HUGE and niche markets (even #1 player Dell doesn't dominate the market, it owns the niche for moderately supported business machines with semi-custom orders) remain extremely profitable if done right, but Intel and Microsoft have extracted most of the profits. Even highly innovative AMD can only capture 20% of the market.
.Mac system, where the cost of the storage is going to zero but their annual subscribers are growth.
.Mac subscription (or some similar number). That means that Apple can sell a low-margin system like the Mini, pocket $100 on the system, and hope to grab another $200-$300 in software sales over the system's lifetime... So a $500 Mac Mini sale is as good for Apple as a $2000 PowerMac with 40% margins was 5 years ago.
In 1996 Fortune interviewed Steve Jobs and asked him what he would do if still running Apple. He responded that he would "milk the Mac for all it is worth and move on to the next big thing."
This doesn't mean that those of us with an investment in Apple hardware (or more risky, custom Cocoa software like we have) mean that Apple is going to abandon the Mac....
They are going the milk it for all it is worth.
With OS X, we have a NeXTSTEP/Mac fusion that Steve likes, and Apple will keep profitably pushing out software updates that they sell, but that isn't Apple's growth.
Their growth operations: software, when Steve rejoined they had recently gone from free OS upgrades to selling two upgrades, OS 7 and OS 7.5, IIRC, maybe 6 was sold as well.
Now, Apple sells new OS Versions every 1 - 2 years. They put out an iLife upgrade annually. They will probably put out iWork annually. And they replaced their free iTunes system with a nicely growing
The average Mac customer pre-Jobs bought a Mac and used it for 6 years.
The average Mac customer post-Jobs buys a Mac, and uses it for 3-4 years with 2 OS upgrades, 1 or 2 software purchases, and 20% of a
Apple will keep innovating the Mac to milk the cash cow... They will NOT enter price-wars or otherwise fight with MS or Dell or HP for market-share. They will milk the cash cow, try to execute and expand markets, but they are NOT interested in growing to a 10% market with the SAME profits as now by cutting their margins by 75% which would make the software developers happy.
It isn't a zero-sum game, they are selling the iMac or Mac Mini as a digital life system. Sure you have a Windows machine for whatever... but add a Mac Mini and a KVM (and annual OS X + iLife upgrades) to easily put your kid's Soccer Games on DVD and send to his grandparents. That is their "growth" strategy.
It isn't a bad strategy, but selling easy-to-use digital toys is how Apple is a growth company, and Microsoft is becoming a mature company that will steadily increase its annual dividend.
Good for Steve Jobs, good for Apple shareholders, and hopefully good for its customers as long as Apple keeps putting out new products that we want to buy because we are the cash cow to be milked, but we aren't going to benefit from price cuts from a price war because market-share and PC growth just don't interest Apple...
That said, I'm sure at some level Apple sees Linux entering the network market for office networks, and realizes that with the best (and easiest to use) desktop Unix... he can enter that market. If you like Linux, if Apple gets the BEST WINELIB performance, the BEST Qt performance, and best Gtk performance, and has KDELIB and GNOMELIB ported... well how tough is it that Apple is able to compete with Linux for SOME share of the corporate desktop market.
Apple is in a position to make SOME gains in PC market-share, but growing back to 10-20% over 10 years isn't giant tech growth... the iPod and OTHER SIMILAR projects is.
It's a smart business move, and Apple has set themselves up to grow profits steadily in their core markets, and then swing for the fences with new products like the iPod, iTMS, etc.
Alex
Right now, Apple has to market Apple machines vs. Windows machines, and they are hard to compare. When the PPC is better, people don't believe it. They are either behind in performance or MHz/GHz, or something.
This lets a comparison with Dell/HP be VERY clear.
If the Apple hardware is $100-$200 more than a Dell, it is a straightforward question, is it worth this premium to get OS X. It makes for a straightforward comparison. In addition, if Apple's manfuacturing gets better (and they grow their share from the #8 player in the PC space to #3/#4, which is probably around a 10% market-share), then they can price equally to PC players and STILL make good margins, because they don't have to pay MS their fee.
Forget JUST the processor difference, they can really enter a straight competition with a minor price premium for a superior system... Plus, if Microsoft stumbles and looks vulnerable, they can compete in the OS market.
Also, think about Government/Corporate contracts. Someone can write an RFP: runs Linux + random software that is x86 only... or runs Office XP... Since the Apple can, they can now compete for that contract.
Lots of good things for Apple, and some minor fears for those of us suffering the transition. (I have in-house Cocoa apps that will now need to be QA'd on two platforms, even if development is "click a button.")
Alex
AMD has approximately 20% of the PC Processor market.
Apple has 3% of the PC Market.
3% of the PC market is 15% of AMD's market.
AMD's market is normally capped not by distribution but rather by production. If AMD won the Apple contract, they would EITHER need to increase their production by 15% (not historically AMD's strong suit), or increase prices to the PC market...
If AMD picks up the Apple contract and CANNOT increase production...
Then AMD has to reduce their PC market-share by 15% of their production, which means increasing prices.
Either way, Apple would be a HUGE account for AMD, and would require a substantial portion of AMD's manufacturing resources.
Alex
What was smart about Nintendo, is instead of joining the fray and getting bashed by Sony and Microsoft (three companies in cutthroat competition means profits drop considerably...) Microsoft didn't make any money, and Sony didn't mint money the way they did with the Playstation.
:) I loved Blu-Ray, and was saddened to see adoption by Apple, because I feared that it would go like Firewire/iLink that Apple/Sony managed to kill through poor technology marketing (they both rock at consumer marketing, but technology marketing is NOT their strong point). Note, I am typing this from my Powerbook. :)
Nintendo took their limited Monopolies (Mario, Metroid, Zelda, Pokemon, etc.) and pushed them into that market. They made money along the way, kept their costs down, and sold most of their own titles. Sony/MS make something like $8/game on third-party games. Nintendo makes considerably more per game.
Even if customers bought fewer games/console, Nintendo probably made more per customer, and wasn't trying to recover a $100/customer acquisition cost.
Sony ONLY makes money on its fan base. A recreational player that buys a few sports games each year will never pay Sony enough in its fees to cover the $100 Sony spent subsidizing their hardware.
HOWEVER, in this case, Sony has another advantage. Getting the PS3 out means getting Blu-Ray DVD players into millions of homes. When the HD-DVD crew comes out with their $1000 HD-DVD players, and Apple and Sony have moved their Blu-Ray DVD machines (including Apple machines that will no doubt let you burn HD Blu-Ray DVDs of your kid's little league game), this might be the first time that the superior technology wins DESPITE being backed by BOTH Apple and Sony...
Alex
This Apple is small is a bit excessive. It is 2%-3% of new computer sales worldwide. That's the eighth largest computer manufacturer. In other-words, there are only 7 accounts larger than Apple to fight over.
AMD supplies what, 20%-30% of the CPU market? Meaning grabbing Apple's share would be a 10% increase in market-share. Given the high fixed-cost, low variable costs of chip manufacturing, that could be HUGE for AMD.
In the OS Market, Microsoft TROUNCES Apple. In the hardware market, only real Dell and HP TROUNCE Apple, making them a viable customer.
Alex
Here is the problem, unemployment is considered the percentage of people IN THE WORKFORCE that do not have a job.
You are suggesting that the current definition of workforce is wrong (and may not reflect the modern workforce), but you need a NEW definition.
The problem with YOUR solution is your unemployment would be at 30% and rising, and NOT because of changes in the economy.
For example, a 70 year old retiree that isn't working... is he unemployed?
A housewife raising 3 kids, is she unemployed?
That same housewife doing buying/selling on eBay for a few months, does her status change? Is she unemployed if she stops? Was she employed?
A 20 year old that works in construction that stops working in the winter, is he no unemployed? Is he unemployed based upon whether his is looking for work, or still unemployed but not need to look for work because he'll have a job in 3 months.
Now, what about a college student at age 20. Is he in the workforce?
I'm not saying that the government's definition is good, and I think that the payroll service completely ignores how much of our economy (at LEAST 5%) is in the fringe... take the 400,000 people that, according to eBay, earn their living buying/selling on eBay... whether that number is correct or not, there are SOME people that make their living buying/selling on eBay, because I have met 2 of them. Therefore, the number is at LEAST 2 and probably NO MORE than 400,000, but I have no idea what it is. However, I can GUARNTEE you that no "payroll survey" picks them up. The household survey has other problems, but it DOES capture those people, but it misses others.
Our measurement of unemployment is wrong, but your simple metric, # of people without jobs / # of people, won't work. It needs to be # of people IN WORKFOCE without jobs / # of people IN WORKFORCE... otherwise, a wealthy housewife is considered unemployed, as is the college student and retiree, which trashes our ability to understand the "misery" factor of the unemployment.
Alex
When it came time to upgrade my phone, the Nokia's looked tempting, they just weren't "smart enough." I also wanted a QWERTY keyboard, and none of theirs supporting them seemed to work with iSync. So I have a Treo650... I love the features, but would be happy to migrate to a more phone-oriented phone in two years, and Nokia seems to be getting there.
Support for Blazer (Palm's Web Browser) is pretty spotty, but I would expect Nokia to do a better job there.
Hardly true...
:)
Frum is Yiddish...
Non-Hebrew speaking Ashkenazi Jews will get it, while your Hebrew speaking Sephardis may not.
Well, given that two of the machines are in different locations 1500 miles from my office, that's a long serial cable. :)
We used to have them in a colo facility (rackspace, found through a Slashdot banner ad), but we changed those machines to RHEL because they will support them and do the upgrades, and up2date will pull down binary patches without my needing to upgrade from CD every 6 months.
Alex
Random point, but Google was founded as a technology company, built to design and license their technology to companies like Yahoo. Google.com WAS simply a proof of concept site, but as it grew as a destination and they changed their business model to be an ad channel.
But originally, they were a technology company selling their tech/search results to media companies that would include the advertisements. Much like a studio that puts shows out in syndication... the local stations sell the ads, NOT the studio.
Not that it matters much, but Google's primary objective WAS to have the best search results so the media companies would license it, now it is to use the search results to accumulate visitors to sell ads to.
Alex
The first time I installed it, it took a few attempts. Had to figure out the networking, etc. (I had problems with Redhat 6.2 as well, the installer was great, but no tools that I could find to edit them until I learned my way around the text files).
:)
However, after 3 attempts when we got the hang of it, I looked at my partner (it was our first webserver for our little company) and we were like COOL. Once you get the handle of the installer and ports, its a DREAM, much EASIER than the Redhat what do I want and where is it problem.
That said, RHEL 4 is pretty slick, but nowhere near as impressively simple as OpenBSD + Ports. The installed OpenBSD system is SO FUCKING clean its not funny, and then you add the few ports, nice and customized, that you want.
One day I build 4 OpenBSD machines. Build the (customized) packages on one and distributed, and it was REALLY, REALLY, REALLY nice).
It's a great system, but you gotta really be a Unix-lover. If you want the click-click install, the Linux distros are great, but with OpenBSD I understand what is going on with my system.
That said, you can just TRY to get my OS X Powerbook away from me...
Alex
Without fail, their bi-annual schedule results in shifting by a few weeks either way, and ALWAYS comes out right around the time I am reconfiguring the OpenBSD machines (currently the Firewall/VPN machines, used to be our web and DB servers too but performance wasn't great, keep considering moving to a RHEL DB Server and an OpenBSD Web Server solution), but they sometimes take FOREVER to ship. What's really frustrating is no binary releases of patches, so you upgrade every 6-12 months, and NO REMOTE UPGRADE capability. That's what kills me now, I have servers all over the place, and I can't remotely upgrade them, and they release 2/year.
With RHEL, I have my subscription, and a major release only comes out ever 2 years and they support the old one with patches for a while. By the time I'm frustrating from not having the newest features available, they are beta-testing a new RHEL version and I can always grab the Fedora SRPMs and rebuild if I can't wait (I like to grab SRPMs when pulling from Fedora, in case an underlying change would create a compatibility issue with the binary one).
OpenBSD is great, but its an amateur project and it shows. We usually by 2-3 CDs each release, depending how I'm feeling, and I LOVE the stickers, but the release process and upgrading is annoying. However, the ports collection is great and supports most common applications. I MUCH prefer ports to SRPMS if I need to customize the install (adding things like Kerberos, LDAP, SSL, etc. to various projects) then mucking around in the SRPMs.
However, the software is AWESOME, I just wish they had some corporate backing to offer something like RHN.
Alex
As the machines are more advanced, including emulation "software" is feasible (in the non-backwards days, you had to duplicate hardware, which was pricey. Often the old processor was used as the sound processor on the new system so you could maintain it. With modern systems, an emulator should be feasible, especially with Nintendo using a newer PPC chip, it should be pretty straight-forward.
:)
"Back in the day" when people hooked systems up through the RF modulator (other than as proof of concept, did anyone REALLY use the AV jacks on the NES or even the SNES when stereo televisions were rare)? Nintendo avoided it as front runner because they wanted to repackage and sell the games on the hand helds or as "All Stars" packs, but it was also infeasible.
Now with the devices sported Component Video or DVI jacks, the sets are becoming input limited. For good quality, nobody hooks their modern systems up via RF hookups, and lots of televisions only have one or two component hookups, asking people to give them both up for Nintendo is unreasonable, given that they don't play DVDs (meaning you need a component input for the DVD player).
I've loved all my Nintendo systems, and played them much more than anything but my Genesis, but I've been so busy that I rarely use my Gamecube despite having lots of games that I love. However, with backwards compatibility, I'll probably pick one up within the first 6 months or so, even though otherwise I might pass. Hell, if all it does is let me stop routing Stereo cables around and send it via digital audio, it'll be worth it to simplify wiring.
Alex