1) No more slow upgrade cycles -- People won't be sitting on 4 year old machines because Apple can't get new chips on the market. No more 12 month waits between speedbumps.
2) Potentially, a broader and less segmented range of hardware, perhaps including something like an affordable minitower.
Both these things should increase sales.
But, in the big picture, you are right -- even if Apple were to double their sales, they'd only be a 5% marketshare or so, and would still be considered a niche platform. However, it would be a huge windfall for Apple.
once Macs are using intel, they will be able to run WINE.
Apple could use Wine. Unlike the Linux world, Apple is also in the position to cut a deal with Microsoft for the real thing. Just something to mull over.
The single processor PowerMac is close to twice as expensive. Other models like the iMac or high-end PMacs are actually very competitive. As for consumer reaction, let's wait and see.
I touched on this in my journal, but I just don't believe that Apple can continue to charge twice as much as the competition (in some cases), when customers can make a direct comparison. It's going to be a lot harder for Apple to maintain that they are special hardware-wise when they aren't.
IIRC, PC99 standardizes all the PC AT legacy cruft that nobody had bothered writing down. Eg, it bans ISA Slots, but basically requires an ISA Controller on the chipset. (But it also required Firewire, and you can see how well that went.) New Macs will be legacy-free on the outside, but not the inside.
Total speculation on my part, but I bet Intel sells more machines to users of legacy AT features (ISA, crummy IRQ controller, DMA, VGA, etc) than Apple sells Macs. Especially when you consider embedded usage of PC-compatibles.
Of course, OS X won't have to deal with most of this stuff, but I just don't see the economics of removing it from standard chipsets just so that Apple can remain pure.
Ha. Maybe for a basement shareware developer. For a large vendor there's QA, marketing, and support costs. Plus there's all those Altive/SSE3 codes that have to be manually kept in sync.
My perspective is that Apple has pretty firm control of their userbase and won't miss this obvious opportunity to encourage upgrades.
They do it right now because they've got no other choice -- there simply aren't any chipsets for PPC970 other than Apple's (even IBM uses it).
--No, they're not going to make the iMac G5 an inch taller so it will fit a mini-ATX motherboard anymore
You don't understand the difference between designing a custom motherboard (cheap) and designing a custom chipset (expensive). Even Dell does custom mobos.
Licensing died the first time because the cloners were undercutting Apple's ridiclously high hardware margins. But, Apple is now a "cloner" themselves, which means the hardware margins are going to inevitably drop -- and that means Licensing will be back on the table for Apple.
Plus a HP or a Sony would be a much stronger partner than that crappy PowerComputing outfit.
Folks need to understand that Apple has just turned itself inside-out. You can no longer make any assumptions based on how they handled things in the past, their business model is going to have to change.
Enjoy your delusions, but if MS Office disappears, so does most of Apple's business sales.
The truth is that Office/Mac is generally much more expensive than the Windows version (due to OEM and corporate discounts), so MS wins either way. They've even bragged in the past that they make more money on each Mac sold than each PC.
Buying a Mac now would not be a bad descision at all, there's still a 4-6 years of life left on the PowerPC.
I see a lot of wishful thinking about this. Remember the OS X transition? Within 2 years Jobs is up on stage sticking OS9 into a coffin and killing hardware support for the thing. Developers got the message and OS9 software disappeared.
I personally believe that Apple is going to quickly move to x86 hardware, and both Apple and ISV software support for PPC is going to start dying off in 2008. That doesn't make your shiny new PowerMac worthless, but it does mean you better be happy with only one generation of new software.
But, yeah, there's a lot of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about PowerPC right now, and rightfully so. Apple could alleviate things if they just released a software/hardware road map.
Well, I think the facts are that everyone had USB peripheral designs that were sitting around waiting for Windows 98 to ship (it was delayed by many months). When the iMac came out, they slapped some blue plastic on 'em and got to sell them. Like you said, it was only a couple months.
And "several years" is just wrong -- By 1998, every single new PC sold had USB ports. I remember some machines had them even back in 1996 (although there were no drivers.) Desktop printers and scanners and the like moved to USB rather quickly in the PC world.
In short, Apple may inadvertantly be creating a market/culture where (rightly or wrongly) they get paid *nothing*.
Or perhaps this isn't so inadvertant. In fact it reminds me somewhat of how Windows initially spread through illegal piracy. Keep in mind that 90% of computer users have never seen nor touched a computer running OS X, so increasing exposure isn't necessarily a bad thing and might increase legitimate sales.
I've pointed out elsewhere that Apple's hardware margins are eventually going to drop substantially. If Dell and others were knocking on Apple's door asking them to license OS X, I think they would seriously consider it.
How is Apple going to cost-justify designing their own chipset? Can they make it any faster than Intel's or NVidia's? Wouldn't this lock them out of using the latest CPUs from Intel or AMD, ensuring they are always behind Dell and other PC vendors?
Customers don't care about the A20 line or the keyboard controller or any of that jazz. As long as Apple doesn't ship a conventional PC BIOS, all of the fuglyness of a IBM PC can be well hidden under the OS.
To some extent, they can hide the margins the same way they do right now -- by building unique formfactors and high-quality cases that defy direct comparion to Dell's line up.
But, yeah, their margins are going to have to drop. However, they can also get rid of most of their hardware engineers and revamp their delivery channel in order to become more like a lean&mean box-pusher. No more 6-12 month model cycles.
I would think that the annual OS X upgrades are plenty profitable also.
Because they have negigible desktop marketshare. The presumption here is that OS X is something that people would actually want to run.
You will note that where Linux/Solaris is popular (server installations), there's a ton of scripts and hacks available to comprimise systems with, so it's not like people lack the motivation or ability.
You know, the PC hardware world is a lot less diverse that it used to be back in the OpenStep days.
Intel has 60-70% of the chipset market. Video cards are handled by "universal" ATI and NVidia drivers (even on PPC). Sound is still kind of screwy, but even there is the AC97 standard and so on. Nobody cares about 8 year old SCSI cards and other legacy parts any more -- the new stuff is so cheap. All DVD and hard drives now look the same from a software perspective. And so on.
The point here is that it's going to be awfully difficult for Apple to build a PC that doesn't look almost exactly like a Dell or a 'homebuilt shitbox' internally. It's all the same crap nowdays. Therefore any restrictions on OSX booting a stock PC are going to be entirely artificial -- either DRM or some kind of firmware check.
UID 703910 says Slashdot is not a blog in any meaningful sense of the word.
When Slashdot first appearer it was clearly the type of site that people called "weblogs". Just some links and minimal comment functionality.
The comment functionality got beefed up, and some blogs became more substance-oriented, but the weblog roots of this site really show through (especially when compared to BBS sites.)
Due to popular request, QuickTime 7 (due soon on Windows) no longer nags Yea!
The behavior of the QuickTime plugin can be set to play in a browser window or in the Player. How do you change this setting? Maybe it's not obvious, but I can't find it in either Windows v6 or Mac v7.
As for QTP's crappyness, I think the best one could say about the program is that it's "functional". It's not really "good" and it's certainly not "best in class" like other Apple software such as iTunes, and it's actually kind of funny watching you go to lengths to defend such a mediocre piece of software.
I understand that on the Mac the alternatives are often worse, but for Windows it's a very competitive. WMP has gone through 3-4 major revs since QuickTime Player settled on it's current featureset. If Apple wants to make sure that their/MPEG's video technologies win, the first thing they should do is deliver a topnotch Windows player. (Although I don't see that happening until there's a VOD store feature as with iTMS.)
I'll stay away from the video format stuff -- I have nothing against H.264, so you may win the offtopic argument.
I personally don't like QTP because it's starts up slow, spams me with upgrade messages, has a crappy browser plugin that plays media in a blank browser window by default (rather than a floating player window), feels very clunky on Windows and lacks features like fullscreen in the free version.
Recently we posted a video in WM/RM/QT format, and QuickTime was the least popular pick. If there isn't a widely held "crappy" perception about the player, why would that be? It's certainly on a lot of machines due to itunes.
Besides, there wouldn't be *any* problem if Microsoft had joined the OASIS working group in the first place
The thing that bugs me about OASIS is that they have neither Microsoft nor WordPerfect on board -- it is basically the least-popular-wordprocessor standard. I have nothing against Sun, but I just don't think they've got very much credibility or installed base in the desktop realm to push standards. (And IBM's there, but Lotus is dead, so who cares.)
The main value of OASIS will probably be just unifying the 100 different Unix document formats, or as a translation step to/from MS Office XML.
Slashdot Mirror
The x86 world brings a few advantages to Apple:
1) No more slow upgrade cycles -- People won't be sitting on 4 year old machines because Apple can't get new chips on the market. No more 12 month waits between speedbumps.
2) Potentially, a broader and less segmented range of hardware, perhaps including something like an affordable minitower.
Both these things should increase sales.
But, in the big picture, you are right -- even if Apple were to double their sales, they'd only be a 5% marketshare or so, and would still be considered a niche platform. However, it would be a huge windfall for Apple.
once Macs are using intel, they will be able to run WINE.
Apple could use Wine. Unlike the Linux world, Apple is also in the position to cut a deal with Microsoft for the real thing. Just something to mull over.
The single processor PowerMac is close to twice as expensive. Other models like the iMac or high-end PMacs are actually very competitive. As for consumer reaction, let's wait and see.
I touched on this in my journal, but I just don't believe that Apple can continue to charge twice as much as the competition (in some cases), when customers can make a direct comparison. It's going to be a lot harder for Apple to maintain that they are special hardware-wise when they aren't.
IIRC, PC99 standardizes all the PC AT legacy cruft that nobody had bothered writing down. Eg, it bans ISA Slots, but basically requires an ISA Controller on the chipset. (But it also required Firewire, and you can see how well that went.) New Macs will be legacy-free on the outside, but not the inside.
Total speculation on my part, but I bet Intel sells more machines to users of legacy AT features (ISA, crummy IRQ controller, DMA, VGA, etc) than Apple sells Macs. Especially when you consider embedded usage of PC-compatibles.
Of course, OS X won't have to deal with most of this stuff, but I just don't see the economics of removing it from standard chipsets just so that Apple can remain pure.
there's no cost to building 2-way applications
Ha. Maybe for a basement shareware developer. For a large vendor there's QA, marketing, and support costs. Plus there's all those Altive/SSE3 codes that have to be manually kept in sync.
My perspective is that Apple has pretty firm control of their userbase and won't miss this obvious opportunity to encourage upgrades.
--They do this now.
They do it right now because they've got no other choice -- there simply aren't any chipsets for PPC970 other than Apple's (even IBM uses it).
--No, they're not going to make the iMac G5 an inch taller so it will fit a mini-ATX motherboard anymore
You don't understand the difference between designing a custom motherboard (cheap) and designing a custom chipset (expensive). Even Dell does custom mobos.
Licensing died the first time because the cloners were undercutting Apple's ridiclously high hardware margins. But, Apple is now a "cloner" themselves, which means the hardware margins are going to inevitably drop -- and that means Licensing will be back on the table for Apple.
Plus a HP or a Sony would be a much stronger partner than that crappy PowerComputing outfit.
Folks need to understand that Apple has just turned itself inside-out. You can no longer make any assumptions based on how they handled things in the past, their business model is going to have to change.
Yeah, I even said so. FUD is a legitimate phenomenon, especially when Apple ain't talking.
As for VersionTracker, that's all old software. The shareware developers stopped OS9 support even before the commercial guys did.
Enjoy your delusions, but if MS Office disappears, so does most of Apple's business sales.
The truth is that Office/Mac is generally much more expensive than the Windows version (due to OEM and corporate discounts), so MS wins either way. They've even bragged in the past that they make more money on each Mac sold than each PC.
Buying a Mac now would not be a bad descision at all, there's still a 4-6 years of life left on the PowerPC.
I see a lot of wishful thinking about this. Remember the OS X transition? Within 2 years Jobs is up on stage sticking OS9 into a coffin and killing hardware support for the thing. Developers got the message and OS9 software disappeared.
I personally believe that Apple is going to quickly move to x86 hardware, and both Apple and ISV software support for PPC is going to start dying off in 2008. That doesn't make your shiny new PowerMac worthless, but it does mean you better be happy with only one generation of new software.
But, yeah, there's a lot of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about PowerPC right now, and rightfully so. Apple could alleviate things if they just released a software/hardware road map.
Yep, just like Dell ;)
Well, I think the facts are that everyone had USB peripheral designs that were sitting around waiting for Windows 98 to ship (it was delayed by many months). When the iMac came out, they slapped some blue plastic on 'em and got to sell them. Like you said, it was only a couple months.
And "several years" is just wrong -- By 1998, every single new PC sold had USB ports. I remember some machines had them even back in 1996 (although there were no drivers.) Desktop printers and scanners and the like moved to USB rather quickly in the PC world.
In short, Apple may inadvertantly be creating a market/culture where (rightly or wrongly) they get paid *nothing*.
Or perhaps this isn't so inadvertant. In fact it reminds me somewhat of how Windows initially spread through illegal piracy. Keep in mind that 90% of computer users have never seen nor touched a computer running OS X, so increasing exposure isn't necessarily a bad thing and might increase legitimate sales.
I've pointed out elsewhere that Apple's hardware margins are eventually going to drop substantially. If Dell and others were knocking on Apple's door asking them to license OS X, I think they would seriously consider it.
How is Apple going to cost-justify designing their own chipset? Can they make it any faster than Intel's or NVidia's? Wouldn't this lock them out of using the latest CPUs from Intel or AMD, ensuring they are always behind Dell and other PC vendors?
Customers don't care about the A20 line or the keyboard controller or any of that jazz. As long as Apple doesn't ship a conventional PC BIOS, all of the fuglyness of a IBM PC can be well hidden under the OS.
To some extent, they can hide the margins the same way they do right now -- by building unique formfactors and high-quality cases that defy direct comparion to Dell's line up.
But, yeah, their margins are going to have to drop. However, they can also get rid of most of their hardware engineers and revamp their delivery channel in order to become more like a lean&mean box-pusher. No more 6-12 month model cycles.
I would think that the annual OS X upgrades are plenty profitable also.
Because they have negigible desktop marketshare. The presumption here is that OS X is something that people would actually want to run.
You will note that where Linux/Solaris is popular (server installations), there's a ton of scripts and hacks available to comprimise systems with, so it's not like people lack the motivation or ability.
You know, the PC hardware world is a lot less diverse that it used to be back in the OpenStep days.
Intel has 60-70% of the chipset market. Video cards are handled by "universal" ATI and NVidia drivers (even on PPC). Sound is still kind of screwy, but even there is the AC97 standard and so on. Nobody cares about 8 year old SCSI cards and other legacy parts any more -- the new stuff is so cheap. All DVD and hard drives now look the same from a software perspective. And so on.
The point here is that it's going to be awfully difficult for Apple to build a PC that doesn't look almost exactly like a Dell or a 'homebuilt shitbox' internally. It's all the same crap nowdays. Therefore any restrictions on OSX booting a stock PC are going to be entirely artificial -- either DRM or some kind of firmware check.
UID 703910 says Slashdot is not a blog in any meaningful sense of the word.
When Slashdot first appearer it was clearly the type of site that people called "weblogs". Just some links and minimal comment functionality.
The comment functionality got beefed up, and some blogs became more substance-oriented, but the weblog roots of this site really show through (especially when compared to BBS sites.)
Due to popular request, QuickTime 7 (due soon on Windows) no longer nags
Yea!
The behavior of the QuickTime plugin can be set to play in a browser window or in the Player.
How do you change this setting? Maybe it's not obvious, but I can't find it in either Windows v6 or Mac v7.
As for QTP's crappyness, I think the best one could say about the program is that it's "functional". It's not really "good" and it's certainly not "best in class" like other Apple software such as iTunes, and it's actually kind of funny watching you go to lengths to defend such a mediocre piece of software.
I understand that on the Mac the alternatives are often worse, but for Windows it's a very competitive. WMP has gone through 3-4 major revs since QuickTime Player settled on it's current featureset. If Apple wants to make sure that their/MPEG's video technologies win, the first thing they should do is deliver a topnotch Windows player. (Although I don't see that happening until there's a VOD store feature as with iTMS.)
Just as a note, you can make a pretty good Word report by just changing the MIME type of a HTML document.
I'll stay away from the video format stuff -- I have nothing against H.264, so you may win the offtopic argument.
I personally don't like QTP because it's starts up slow, spams me with upgrade messages, has a crappy browser plugin that plays media in a blank browser window by default (rather than a floating player window), feels very clunky on Windows and lacks features like fullscreen in the free version.
Recently we posted a video in WM/RM/QT format, and QuickTime was the least popular pick. If there isn't a widely held "crappy" perception about the player, why would that be? It's certainly on a lot of machines due to itunes.
Congrats, you read the headline, but not the article. Good for you.
Where I come from starting a offtopic flamewar is called "trolling". I'm sorry for continuing it.
Besides, there wouldn't be *any* problem if Microsoft had joined the OASIS working group in the first place
The thing that bugs me about OASIS is that they have neither Microsoft nor WordPerfect on board -- it is basically the least-popular-wordprocessor standard. I have nothing against Sun, but I just don't think they've got very much credibility or installed base in the desktop realm to push standards. (And IBM's there, but Lotus is dead, so who cares.)
The main value of OASIS will probably be just unifying the 100 different Unix document formats, or as a translation step to/from MS Office XML.