I downloaded and installed iTunes in Virtual PC. With iTunes running I can see my shared playlist from the Windows side immediately. That's the first time I've seen anything "just work" with zero configuration on a PC.
Apple has developed convection-cooled no-fan computers in the past. My wife's iMac DV has no fan, as do some of the other first generation body iMacs (though not the first-generation first generation iMacs, if that make sense.)
The Cube was also convection cooled.
They can do it, when feasible and appropriate. However, with a new-design tower case that's made to have all sorts of third-party crapola stuffed into it, I doubt it was appropriate. Much easier with the non-upgradeable consumer models.
I agree that the towers are upgradeable. And I agree it's good to have a set pool of officially supported hardware. However, the major complaint I see here is that the base configuration price is still too high for a certain crowd that wants OS X in a less expensive and highly configurable box. I think Apple should do all they can to extend and embrace this crowd, because a large chunk of them could become third party developers.
I'm more on the graphics side of things than most posters here, but I did start to play around with Solaris and LinuxPPC before Mac OS X, and I've noticed since the release of OS X that Apple has a growing contingent of people who want to be users but can't deal with their hardware restrictions. My thoughts on how they might feasibly begin to encroach on Windows/Intel/AMD/Linux.
The need to address a new market. Currently their hardware appeals mainly to:
1. Professional graphics dorks 2..edu (losing battle) and home users 3. Some small business professionals - music, a few lawyers, etc. 3. Servers meant for Pro use, but too pricey for pro-sumer or consumer use.
But their new OS appeals to computer professionals, higher end educational and scientific professionals, and anybody else who wants to experiment with and learn about an OS from the ground up. The robustness of the OS is going to be fairly transparent to their current hardware purchasers, manifested by the fact that it doesn't crash and is easy to use (two things which should be expected). But the people who are attracted to the OS by its capability and flexibility expect the same from the hardware and Apple doesn't currently offer that.
I say reconfigure the product line and the store. Keep the beautiful professional and entry level laptops. Keep the readymade economic and powerful desktop options. But give us one more category. The Tinker-Mac.
-Appealing yet super-functional case. Easy to open. Designed more to the aesthetic of the Xserve than a desktop. Sleek, basic, tough looking. -"Apple" processors in several grades. -The option to add another processor. -Optional HD's. Space for 2-3. -Optional optical media. -Optional video board. -One Enet card + slot for at least one more. -As many open PCI slots as possible -Firewire, USB, etc (optional?) preferably on the front -Feel free to contribute what I'm forgetting. ~$400-500
Apple needs to capitalize on the fact that many people who like to tinker with the OS and box love their OS, and want a box that's affordable enough to truly personalize. And I think they'd make a ton of dough by offering this option. They give us the option of an empty case with that's capable of running their OS on their processor spec, and accept that the people buying it are capable of researching compatible components on their own will not only sell a boatload of boxes, but persuade more HW developers to write drivers for OS X. Or the open source community will.
Screw all this "port to Intel" crapola. Apple needs to accept that there are people who want to run their OS in a build-your-own manner, and they can build the bare bones machines for that crowd, make it a unique selling point, and still make their margins.
I saw Apple's presentation on PowerSchool at the big technology-in-education convention in Chicago last summer. Their presentation showed a very mature and highly functional solution, though obviously what they presented was a best case scenario. Ideally, each teacher using the system would have a workstation at their desk, and everything would be web enabled. They would take attendance via the software in the morning from a list that would reflect things like students out sick that day, and submit the attendance roll.
Apple also claimed to offer hosting in an Apple datacenter of the PowerSchool application and data, to remove that burden from school districts. They claimed that "you should see our server rooms light up at five after eight" when parents are supposedly checking the just-posted attendance logs for that day.
There were a lot of other features that seemed useful, however most of it depends on how much the teacher wants to use the system: posting all the homework daily so parents know what their kids should be doing that night; checking off and posting whether that homework was completed on a daily basis.
Pretty powerful stuff, yet all dependant upon whether the schools can bear the cost, and how much time the teacher will commit to using the system. I can't vouch for how much of it actually "works" if a teacher is committed to using it as I haven't seen it in action.
My Telocity account is currently at:
416000b up
137949b down
The down is low for what I've seen. It's 11:46 pm and traffic is probably high
$49 a month. Including, importantly to me, a static IP. I'll pay more for that.
Telocity DNS goes down pretty frequently, an hour or two 1-2 times a week.
But at least I still have DSL. And if you're in Chicago and want DSL and think Ameritheft will have it running in 2-4-6 weeks, revise said estimates.
Regardless of your provider, Ameritheft still needs to "bless" the box. Be prepared to chill with your Playstation while Quake sits on your desk for about six weeks. At least.
Amen amen.
I dropped Sprint on behalf of my fiancee, and Cingular on behalf of me for AT&T. They have great coverage in the Loop and River North. Not only were her Sprint calls unconnected in Chicago, but the problem extended to CA, AZ, and NY.
Even weirder, her calls would come to our home Ameritech phones with the correct caller ID number, but would then connect with different callers. WTF is that?
From the point of view of my last company, it rhymes with ExoSucks Communications, this means very little, which is probably will be good for Sun. For a pipe company like ExoSucks, a company which benefits from being platform independent (sure, we'll run a Mac OS X Server , , , admin . . . anyone? . . . Bueller?) being able to put as many popular logos at the bottom of their press releases is all that matters. Cisco Powered! bling! Powered by Java! bling! These things have meaning to the people who write or and work on the systems that run in the datacenter. And those people ultimately (usually) bless the purchase rec. for the sales moron who makes the buy. By disenfranchising those individuals, M$FT makes a big mistake. No more logo on the releases. No more free adverts. No more deep core support.
Slashdot Mirror
I downloaded and installed iTunes in Virtual PC. With iTunes running I can see my shared playlist from the Windows side immediately. That's the first time I've seen anything "just work" with zero configuration on a PC.
Apple has developed convection-cooled no-fan computers in the past. My wife's iMac DV has no fan, as do some of the other first generation body iMacs (though not the first-generation first generation iMacs, if that make sense.)
The Cube was also convection cooled.
They can do it, when feasible and appropriate. However, with a new-design tower case that's made to have all sorts of third-party crapola stuffed into it, I doubt it was appropriate. Much easier with the non-upgradeable consumer models.
I agree that the towers are upgradeable. And I agree it's good to have a set pool of officially supported hardware. However, the major complaint I see here is that the base configuration price is still too high for a certain crowd that wants OS X in a less expensive and highly configurable box. I think Apple should do all they can to extend and embrace this crowd, because a large chunk of them could become third party developers.
I'm more on the graphics side of things than most posters here, but I did start to play around with Solaris and LinuxPPC before Mac OS X, and I've noticed since the release of OS X that Apple has a growing contingent of people who want to be users but can't deal with their hardware restrictions. My thoughts on how they might feasibly begin to encroach on Windows/Intel/AMD/Linux.
.edu (losing battle) and home users
The need to address a new market. Currently their hardware appeals mainly to:
1. Professional graphics dorks
2.
3. Some small business professionals - music, a few lawyers, etc.
3. Servers meant for Pro use, but too pricey for pro-sumer or consumer use.
But their new OS appeals to computer professionals, higher end educational and scientific professionals, and anybody else who wants to experiment with and learn about an OS from the ground up. The robustness of the OS is going to be fairly transparent to their current hardware purchasers, manifested by the fact that it doesn't crash and is easy to use (two things which should be expected). But the people who are attracted to the OS by its capability and flexibility expect the same from the hardware and Apple doesn't currently offer that.
I say reconfigure the product line and the store. Keep the beautiful professional and entry level laptops. Keep the readymade economic and powerful desktop options. But give us one more category. The Tinker-Mac.
-Appealing yet super-functional case. Easy to open. Designed more to the aesthetic of the Xserve than a desktop. Sleek, basic, tough looking.
-"Apple" processors in several grades.
-The option to add another processor.
-Optional HD's. Space for 2-3.
-Optional optical media.
-Optional video board.
-One Enet card + slot for at least one more.
-As many open PCI slots as possible
-Firewire, USB, etc (optional?) preferably on the front
-Feel free to contribute what I'm forgetting.
~$400-500
Apple needs to capitalize on the fact that many people who like to tinker with the OS and box love their OS, and want a box that's affordable enough to truly personalize. And I think they'd make a ton of dough by offering this option. They give us the option of an empty case with that's capable of running their OS on their processor spec, and accept that the people buying it are capable of researching compatible components on their own will not only sell a boatload of boxes, but persuade more HW developers to write drivers for OS X. Or the open source community will.
Screw all this "port to Intel" crapola. Apple needs to accept that there are people who want to run their OS in a build-your-own manner, and they can build the bare bones machines for that crowd, make it a unique selling point, and still make their margins.
I saw Apple's presentation on PowerSchool at the big technology-in-education convention in Chicago last summer. Their presentation showed a very mature and highly functional solution, though obviously what they presented was a best case scenario. Ideally, each teacher using the system would have a workstation at their desk, and everything would be web enabled. They would take attendance via the software in the morning from a list that would reflect things like students out sick that day, and submit the attendance roll.
Apple also claimed to offer hosting in an Apple datacenter of the PowerSchool application and data, to remove that burden from school districts. They claimed that "you should see our server rooms light up at five after eight" when parents are supposedly checking the just-posted attendance logs for that day.
There were a lot of other features that seemed useful, however most of it depends on how much the teacher wants to use the system: posting all the homework daily so parents know what their kids should be doing that night; checking off and posting whether that homework was completed on a daily basis.
Pretty powerful stuff, yet all dependant upon whether the schools can bear the cost, and how much time the teacher will commit to using the system. I can't vouch for how much of it actually "works" if a teacher is committed to using it as I haven't seen it in action.
My Telocity account is currently at: 416000b up 137949b down The down is low for what I've seen. It's 11:46 pm and traffic is probably high $49 a month. Including, importantly to me, a static IP. I'll pay more for that. Telocity DNS goes down pretty frequently, an hour or two 1-2 times a week. But at least I still have DSL. And if you're in Chicago and want DSL and think Ameritheft will have it running in 2-4-6 weeks, revise said estimates. Regardless of your provider, Ameritheft still needs to "bless" the box. Be prepared to chill with your Playstation while Quake sits on your desk for about six weeks. At least.
Amen amen. I dropped Sprint on behalf of my fiancee, and Cingular on behalf of me for AT&T. They have great coverage in the Loop and River North. Not only were her Sprint calls unconnected in Chicago, but the problem extended to CA, AZ, and NY. Even weirder, her calls would come to our home Ameritech phones with the correct caller ID number, but would then connect with different callers. WTF is that?
From the point of view of my last company, it rhymes with ExoSucks Communications, this means very little, which is probably will be good for Sun. For a pipe company like ExoSucks, a company which benefits from being platform independent (sure, we'll run a Mac OS X Server , , , admin . . . anyone? . . . Bueller?) being able to put as many popular logos at the bottom of their press releases is all that matters. Cisco Powered! bling! Powered by Java! bling! These things have meaning to the people who write or and work on the systems that run in the datacenter. And those people ultimately (usually) bless the purchase rec. for the sales moron who makes the buy. By disenfranchising those individuals, M$FT makes a big mistake. No more logo on the releases. No more free adverts. No more deep core support.