Raskin is talking about a system that would be preconfigured to do exactly what the user wants to do, but he fails to mention, and possibly fails to consider, that such a system is nearly impossible to produce, simply because there are too many different kinds of user with too many different preferred modes of work
I could be wrong, but I don't think Raskin is suggesting the the OS disappear entirely, but it's just not the appropriate method for 75% of the populous to be dealing with their computers. The more technically-minded will always want to have more control of their machine.
In the *real world* companies and even Open Source projects are going to create applications that use their own metaphors for movement, action, and so on. Currently, the OS is the only thing keeping interfaces even remotely consistent.
Yes, but that's just by default. The OS currently provides consistency, but that doesn't mean consistency has to disappear with the OS crutch gone. Developers just have to get organized. Besides, you can still have a platform owners settings. Their ability to do that is not determined by whether they create a file system manager app or not.
I think Jef's actually correct -- the OS does tend to get in the way too much for the average user. But I don't think we're near the point yet where we can just ditch the OS metaphor on PCs. This stuff is still evolving too rapidly. Attempting to box it in before its had a chance to mature will stunt its growth.
Criticizing OSX because it is an OS is rather pointless, in my opinion. OSX is what Mac users (and arguably, the industry as a whole) needs today. In ten years, the world may look more like Jef's view of it, but there's still al lot more work to do. Appliances will probably become more like PCs, and PCs more like appliances until we find some sort of happy medium that works for most people.
This is all great except for the part about Maya and Adobe apps -- they are written in Carbon, not Cocoa. They are not processor independent. So sure, you could have OSX on Intel, you just wouldn't have any apps for it except the NextStep ones. In fact, from an OS architecture perspective, OSX on Intel would bear a striking resemblence to NextStep for Intel.
Netinfo is used for remote administration, not ssh nor telnet. Having access to the command line to do any form of remote admin is totally unneccissry in MacOS X.
This isn't entirely true. NetInfo has no control over things like Apache.
Sure you can have a bunch of consumer devices to access and consolidate information, view movies, read books, make phone calls. But you're always the passive observer in these situations. Jobs is saying Apple will sell the products that will allow you to create DVDs, create web sites, compose and mix music etc. One-trick pony devices aren't appropriate for this sort of stuff.
And while you may think that Mac OS X will do it all and be the cat's meow today, what about four or give years from now? It will be outdated and stale, lacking new, useful features. Linux and *BSD can and do keep up with the latest OS developments, but Apple will always lag behind.
Read up on your OSX docs, son. You don't have a clue as to what you're talking about:
Consider this, the old NeXT display postscript and NeXT Step code are still proprietary even though neither technology is currently used by Apple.
I'm not sure they could release the source to DPS, even if they wanted to. They had to pay a licensing fee to Adobe for every copy of an OS that shipped with it. NextStep code as a whole, though, is very much in use at Apple. However, some parts of it have been released, such as NetInfo.
Despite the misleading hype, Apple is still closed source. [...] If one has any illusions that Apple is an Open Source company, one need only to speak to the developers of GNU Step who will greet your query with a hearty laugh. Apple open source? No, don't kid yourself.
Who is this attitude going to help?
This is not a black and white issue. It's multilayered and I think it's likely you need more information before you can make a judgement as to the worth of Apple's efforts.
Apple took a big first step with release a fully-functional Unix-based OS in Darwin. True, many of the components (Mach, BSD, etc.) were already available to the public through various other sources and licenses; but this is the foundation for both Apple's consumer and server operating systems. Why is this significant, you ask? It's significant because Apple's engineers are actively developing and improving the core OS on a daily basis. Any time they do this, you benefit. You don't even have to do anything. You just get free code, and Apple writes the check. And furthermore, this code is released under a license that has already had a few revisions, and pretty much everybody seems to be happy with at this point.
Complaining about Apple not releasing the rest of OSX is pointless. Apple, being a publicly-traded, for-profit company, needs to make money. Its positioning as an easy-to-use platform means it cannot possibly justify basing profits entirely on support (not that this business model is flawless in general), and Apple as another x86 box maker just isn't logical. The reason the company could justify the three year development of Mac OS X to its shareholders is that it knew it would gain it back in hardware and software sales. If there was no profit to be made by selling the product, OSX would simply not exist, and the advancement of all operating systems would be affected accordingly. Like it or not, Apple has been and continues to be a is a major influence in evolution of personal computers. As much as slashdotters slam Apple, it's doing pioneering work in Unix usability. This benefits everyone.
Essentially, you're expecting Apple to sit there and spin straw into gold for you. That's not the goal of open source. It's about give and take. Apple is giving you half the kingdom for free, and you just turn around and demand the other half? This attitude only discourages other companies from participating in open source. If you insist on being inflexible and taking an all-or-nothing standpoint on OS source release, then you're going to end up with a whole heap of nothing. You can't just expect Apple to abandon its current revenue streams all at once. That lacks balance and forethought.
The development of every platform cannot be structured identically to Linux. That's just as bad as everything being based on Windows. To avoid inbreeding, you need a variety of concepts, organizations and even business models in order for software to continue to advance. Apple is doing the best thing it can possibly do for the community while still keeping its product line intact.
I'm sure its been posted here before, but can someone update me with what unix apps will be able to run on OSX when its done? I think I remember apache and a few other things being available but what about other main stream apps. Is it just a matter of a recompile or is the BSD part too nonstandard to port to.
Most command line apps should recompile either out of the box, or with a little nudging. Apache comes with the OS, and I believe Fred Sanchez is making sure new builds continue to work. MySQL has built some OSX binaries, but most of them appear to be for the older OSX Server 1.x (Mach 2.5-based, no Aqua). Somebody is working on PostgreSQL.
The X11 apps are a different story because you have to get your hands on a X server first. There are several different efforts/approaches to this. The most seamless is a relatively expensive ($300) commercial product from Tenon. It runs X apps alongside native OSX apps. You can exit to raw Darwin and run something like XFree86, but you cannot run any OSX native GUI apps until you launch back into the window server.
Overall, anything that runs on *BSD should be able to make its way to OSX pretty effortlessly. Some of the remaining kinks should be worked out by the time the shrinkwrapped product hits shelves on March 24, and I'm sure things will continue to evolve via Darwin. Work done on Darwin is routinely synced with the OSX tree and vice-versa.
Also note that the revamped version of Mac OS X Server, which will come up several weeks after March 24, will be based on the same core as consumer OSX. It will add server-specific packages and some very cool GUI tools for things like Apache and IP filters. It comes with PHP, Tomcat, and MySQL preinstalled. WebObjects with an unlimited license is also included (previously, a 50 client connection per minute limit), as is a mail server, ftp server, and samba. The last three have UI interfaces for them.
A have a full write-up of this new version of OSXS2 on my site. It's slick.
Apples and NeXT boxes are extremely proprietary, difficult to service and poorly scalable.
I'm going to lose my mind. Will you pleasevisit this page at Apple and tell me how Apple's G4 tower is not the easiest machine to service on the planet? Other than the chipset, what component in this box is proprietary? The PCI slots? The AGP slot? The PC133 DIMM slots that accept up to 1.5GB of RAM? The USB ports? The NVIDIA card? Perhaps it's the gigabit ethernet controller?
Hey AC, you already posted this stuff 4 days ago in the "Jobs Plays it Frank" article. It doesn't make any more sense now than it did then. I don't suppose it would be worth asking why you are doing this?
to have that viewpoint that Apple keeps coming out with cool things even though they sell like ice cubes in Alaska
~5 million Macs a year. If my math is right (and it's requently not), that boils down to an an average of 9 or 10 Macs sold every minute. I think that's pretty good, however massively bigger the wintel figures may be.
Apple will never ship OS X for Intel until it's too late? The hardware is too expensive, and there's already a HUGE market out there for OSes running on Intel. They could truly give Microsoft a run for their money.
Some questions:
[1] How do you expect Apple to make money?
[2] How do you expect them to take on Windows on its home turf?
[3] How will OSX succeed without any apps (like Office, Explorer, etc)? The only ones that would run on x86 would be the old OpenStep apps. The others are far too processor-specific. Sure, they could come up with a Windows emulator, but what's the point? If you're going to do that, you might as well run Windows.
[4] The Mac loses a lot of its core value once you take it off native hardware. What is it that you like about OSX? Just the interface?
A lot of OSX's value is due to a wide variety of applications and tight intergration with hardware. You lose both of these with OSX86. But at least you'll have seventh OS to select from in lilo.
This simply doesn't make any sense if you look at the details.
Secondly, I wouldn't use OS X if I had nothing else! The System requirements are huge
You're clearly referring to the beta because the GM isn't out yet. The latter will have lesser requirements. And furthermore, the requirements are largely so outlandish because they have to take into account the Classic environment -- which is, more or less, emulating Mac OS 9 on Mach. If you stick to Carbon (OSX native port of Mac API), Cocoa, BSD and Java apps, then you'll be stylin'. Classic does work very well -- a true achievement in emulation -- but it is a resource hog.
Things like quartz which contains things (I am assuming) licensed from Adobe.
As far as I know, this is not the case. One of the goals with the transition from NextStep to OSX was to ditch licensing fees that raised the price of the product. This included getting rid of Display Postscript in favor of the PDF-based Quartz engine.
I don't suppose you've looked at the Nasdaq composite recently.
Preliminary indications are that Apple users are not particularly interested in the complexity and sluggishness of Apple's latest operating system.
Didn't realize you were conducting a survey.
Processor speed is stuck at 500 MHz.
No need to waste time on research before posting.
Alternative architectures and software are killing Apple on features, price, and performance.
You're certainly right on price, but I'm not going to let you get away with features and performance. Apple is currently kicking ass in terms of desktop video editing and DVD production. And in terms of performance the G4 is, at worst, competitive with x86, and at best, is noticeably faster in things like certain types of encoding and Photoshop performance. Comparing two chip families by megahertz alone just doesn't cut it, otherwise Sun and IBM would be using P4s in their super servers.
There are legions of corporations and individuals who have been disrespected by Apple--from the BeOS community to the Apple clone industry
I don't understand how they "disrespected" the BeOS community except deciding not to buy them. I heard something about them not releasing system specs at some point, but LinuxPPC seems to be doing fine.
The Apple clone industry threw down the first gauntlet by marketing within the fold, rather than attempting to grow the platform user base. They were reaping all the profits, but eliminating much of the core value of the Mac in the process. That would have been fine if they had actually advertised somewhere other than Macworld.
Today Motorola announced 2500 layoffs.
Yes, at the MOBILE PHONE plant.
Everyone does GUI and mice nowadays.
Everyone makes cars with steering wheels and a gas pedals too. So what?
Apple is left marketing decor.
More great research. You're conveniently forgetting the three years of hard work by Apple's software engineering to create OSX. Not to mention all the pro/consumer video stuff they've been doing.
The most reasonable solution would be for Apple to open up. Open up its hardware specs and software so that where now exists little more than a corporate cult, there might exist a vibrant autonomous industry of developers, hackers, and alternative hardware vendors.
Yee-haw! Now just to figure out the part about how to make money. SGI forgot that step.
What makes Linux cool (popularly usable) to the masses? A Web appliance whose software is mostly open source and free
How many users that make up "the masses" will actually ponder the software license as part of their purchase decision? Hackers will, sure, but the masses aren't hackers.
whose programmers are somewhat accessible/responsible to user feedback
Which programmers? Nokia or the Linux/Mozilla people?
and the ability to upgrade and update without repeatedly paying fees and buying licenses
I don't know any set top box maker that charges for software updates. You generally have to pay for the ISP, or in the case of Tivo, the programming service. But software updates are free last time I checked.
Overall, I think this is probably step in the right direction. But I think the concept needs some more focus. Right now, it sounds as if Nokia is positioning it as an "everything" box, which makes it very hard to market (except on the Home Shopping Network). You need to define boundaries of the product. You need to define who you think will buy it. And it's not exactly cheap. $400 for a 366 Celeron?
Maybe I'll be a bit less skeptical if they had some screenshots of the UI.
When Apple can justify the loss it will ensue by not selling some hardware versus the gain it will generate by further hardware market penetration, they will release an X86 version. It's simple business sense.
It's a little more complex than that. Apple is about the entire experience, not just individual parts of it. Jobs has said this time and time again. This is beyond business, this is what they do. Case in point: if some generic video card doesn't work on OSX86, it's Apple fault. This kind of thing doesn't mesh well with the brand.
It's easy to fault them for taking so long with OSX, until you see the newest build in action (the one at Macworld). Then you see what they've been doing all this time.
And in reality, OSX shipping last fall wouldn't have done anyone any good. There were virtually no native apps at the time. The press would have slammed Apple hard for that one. At MWSF, though, there were plenty of booths running native software.
Look at his history. He always and ever acts solely in his own interest.
I bet he also eats spotted owls and pushes old ladies into oncoming traffic.
This is just silly. The guy doesn't even take a salary, and didn't even have stock for some time after he came back to the company. He doesn't need money. He works at Apple because it's his baby. Anything eccentric thing he has done as the head of Apple's has been a function of that. I wish the CEOs of other large corporations cared half as much about their company's products as Jobs does about Apple's. It's an extremely personal issue to him.
The worst thing you can say about him is that he is fanatical about people experiencing Apple's work as he intends. He holds contempt for retailers that do a poor job of displaying Macs, or rumor sites that announce products outside of the context of an event. Though, if I was involved in such a project for 12-18 months, I would probably feel the same way.
You make this sound as if this could actually happen anytime soon. They have $4 billion in the bank
Steve is dealing with a changing world that is not bending to Apple the way it used to because the younger generation doesn't remember the "old" Apple and, frankly, couldn't care less
I would agree with you, to a point. The catalyst, though, is Mac OS X. It's drawn interest from all sorts of people that didn't give a thought to Apple before. Maya is certainly one of the most visible, and had quite a sizeable/packed booth at Macworld Expo last week. But I was also quite surprised to see Roxen there!
With Mac OS X and software like iDVD, Apple has a much more compelling story that it has had in some time. And except to see the advertising change accordingly. After March 24, there will actually be very good reasons to own a Mac beyond it just sucks less than Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Take a minute and look at how consumers have soundly thrashed other lame single-provider "solutions" such as DivX.
Unfortunately, DivX is fundamentally different than Media Player in two ways:
1) DivX didn't sneak into the TV
2) You can get rid of DivX without getting rid of the TV
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Raskin is talking about a system that would be preconfigured to do exactly what the user wants to do, but he fails to mention, and possibly fails to consider, that such a system is nearly impossible to produce, simply because there are too many different kinds of user with too many different preferred modes of work
I could be wrong, but I don't think Raskin is suggesting the the OS disappear entirely, but it's just not the appropriate method for 75% of the populous to be dealing with their computers. The more technically-minded will always want to have more control of their machine.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
In the *real world* companies and even Open Source projects are going to create applications that use their own metaphors for movement, action, and so on. Currently, the OS is the only thing keeping interfaces even remotely consistent.
Yes, but that's just by default. The OS currently provides consistency, but that doesn't mean consistency has to disappear with the OS crutch gone. Developers just have to get organized. Besides, you can still have a platform owners settings. Their ability to do that is not determined by whether they create a file system manager app or not.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
I think Jef's actually correct -- the OS does tend to get in the way too much for the average user. But I don't think we're near the point yet where we can just ditch the OS metaphor on PCs. This stuff is still evolving too rapidly. Attempting to box it in before its had a chance to mature will stunt its growth.
Criticizing OSX because it is an OS is rather pointless, in my opinion. OSX is what Mac users (and arguably, the industry as a whole) needs today. In ten years, the world may look more like Jef's view of it, but there's still al lot more work to do. Appliances will probably become more like PCs, and PCs more like appliances until we find some sort of happy medium that works for most people.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
This is all great except for the part about Maya and Adobe apps -- they are written in Carbon, not Cocoa. They are not processor independent. So sure, you could have OSX on Intel, you just wouldn't have any apps for it except the NextStep ones. In fact, from an OS architecture perspective, OSX on Intel would bear a striking resemblence to NextStep for Intel.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Netinfo is used for remote administration, not ssh nor telnet. Having access to the command line to do any form of remote admin is totally unneccissry in MacOS X.
This isn't entirely true. NetInfo has no control over things like Apache.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
You're missing the point.
Sure you can have a bunch of consumer devices to access and consolidate information, view movies, read books, make phone calls. But you're always the passive observer in these situations. Jobs is saying Apple will sell the products that will allow you to create DVDs, create web sites, compose and mix music etc. One-trick pony devices aren't appropriate for this sort of stuff.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
And while you may think that Mac OS X will do it all and be the cat's meow today, what about four or give years from now? It will be outdated and stale, lacking new, useful features. Linux and *BSD can and do keep up with the latest OS developments, but Apple will always lag behind.
Read up on your OSX docs, son. You don't have a clue as to what you're talking about:
Mac OS X System Overview PDF.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Consider this, the old NeXT display postscript and NeXT Step code are still proprietary even though neither technology is currently used by Apple.
I'm not sure they could release the source to DPS, even if they wanted to. They had to pay a licensing fee to Adobe for every copy of an OS that shipped with it. NextStep code as a whole, though, is very much in use at Apple. However, some parts of it have been released, such as NetInfo.
Despite the misleading hype, Apple is still closed source. [...] If one has any illusions that Apple is an Open Source company, one need only to speak to the developers of GNU Step who will greet your query with a hearty laugh. Apple open source? No, don't kid yourself.
Who is this attitude going to help?
This is not a black and white issue. It's multilayered and I think it's likely you need more information before you can make a judgement as to the worth of Apple's efforts.
Apple took a big first step with release a fully-functional Unix-based OS in Darwin. True, many of the components (Mach, BSD, etc.) were already available to the public through various other sources and licenses; but this is the foundation for both Apple's consumer and server operating systems. Why is this significant, you ask? It's significant because Apple's engineers are actively developing and improving the core OS on a daily basis. Any time they do this, you benefit. You don't even have to do anything. You just get free code, and Apple writes the check. And furthermore, this code is released under a license that has already had a few revisions, and pretty much everybody seems to be happy with at this point.
Complaining about Apple not releasing the rest of OSX is pointless. Apple, being a publicly-traded, for-profit company, needs to make money. Its positioning as an easy-to-use platform means it cannot possibly justify basing profits entirely on support (not that this business model is flawless in general), and Apple as another x86 box maker just isn't logical. The reason the company could justify the three year development of Mac OS X to its shareholders is that it knew it would gain it back in hardware and software sales. If there was no profit to be made by selling the product, OSX would simply not exist, and the advancement of all operating systems would be affected accordingly. Like it or not, Apple has been and continues to be a is a major influence in evolution of personal computers. As much as slashdotters slam Apple, it's doing pioneering work in Unix usability. This benefits everyone.
Essentially, you're expecting Apple to sit there and spin straw into gold for you. That's not the goal of open source. It's about give and take. Apple is giving you half the kingdom for free, and you just turn around and demand the other half? This attitude only discourages other companies from participating in open source. If you insist on being inflexible and taking an all-or-nothing standpoint on OS source release, then you're going to end up with a whole heap of nothing. You can't just expect Apple to abandon its current revenue streams all at once. That lacks balance and forethought.
The development of every platform cannot be structured identically to Linux. That's just as bad as everything being based on Windows. To avoid inbreeding, you need a variety of concepts, organizations and even business models in order for software to continue to advance. Apple is doing the best thing it can possibly do for the community while still keeping its product line intact.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
I'm sure its been posted here before, but can someone update me with what unix apps will be able to run on OSX when its done? I think I remember apache and a few other things being available but what about other main stream apps. Is it just a matter of a recompile or is the BSD part too nonstandard to port to.
Most command line apps should recompile either out of the box, or with a little nudging. Apache comes with the OS, and I believe Fred Sanchez is making sure new builds continue to work. MySQL has built some OSX binaries, but most of them appear to be for the older OSX Server 1.x (Mach 2.5-based, no Aqua). Somebody is working on PostgreSQL.
The X11 apps are a different story because you have to get your hands on a X server first. There are several different efforts/approaches to this. The most seamless is a relatively expensive ($300) commercial product from Tenon. It runs X apps alongside native OSX apps. You can exit to raw Darwin and run something like XFree86, but you cannot run any OSX native GUI apps until you launch back into the window server.
Overall, anything that runs on *BSD should be able to make its way to OSX pretty effortlessly. Some of the remaining kinks should be worked out by the time the shrinkwrapped product hits shelves on March 24, and I'm sure things will continue to evolve via Darwin. Work done on Darwin is routinely synced with the OSX tree and vice-versa.
Also note that the revamped version of Mac OS X Server, which will come up several weeks after March 24, will be based on the same core as consumer OSX. It will add server-specific packages and some very cool GUI tools for things like Apache and IP filters. It comes with PHP, Tomcat, and MySQL preinstalled. WebObjects with an unlimited license is also included (previously, a 50 client connection per minute limit), as is a mail server, ftp server, and samba. The last three have UI interfaces for them.
A have a full write-up of this new version of OSXS2 on my site. It's slick.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Apples and NeXT boxes are extremely proprietary, difficult to service and poorly scalable.
I'm going to lose my mind. Will you please visit this page at Apple and tell me how Apple's G4 tower is not the easiest machine to service on the planet? Other than the chipset, what component in this box is proprietary? The PCI slots? The AGP slot? The PC133 DIMM slots that accept up to 1.5GB of RAM? The USB ports? The NVIDIA card? Perhaps it's the gigabit ethernet controller?
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Hey AC, you already posted this stuff 4 days ago in the "Jobs Plays it Frank" article. It doesn't make any more sense now than it did then. I don't suppose it would be worth asking why you are doing this?
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
to have that viewpoint that Apple keeps coming out with cool things even though they sell like ice cubes in Alaska
~5 million Macs a year. If my math is right (and it's requently not), that boils down to an an average of 9 or 10 Macs sold every minute. I think that's pretty good, however massively bigger the wintel figures may be.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
One of the things that made NeXT work so well was their "developers" app (whose name I can't remember)
Apple is now distributing a much-updated Interface Builder for free, along with all the other OSX dev tools like Project Builder.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Apple will never ship OS X for Intel until it's too late? The hardware is too expensive, and there's already a HUGE market out there for OSes running on Intel. They could truly give Microsoft a run for their money.
Some questions:
[1] How do you expect Apple to make money?
[2] How do you expect them to take on Windows on its home turf?
[3] How will OSX succeed without any apps (like Office, Explorer, etc)? The only ones that would run on x86 would be the old OpenStep apps. The others are far too processor-specific. Sure, they could come up with a Windows emulator, but what's the point? If you're going to do that, you might as well run Windows.
[4] The Mac loses a lot of its core value once you take it off native hardware. What is it that you like about OSX? Just the interface?
A lot of OSX's value is due to a wide variety of applications and tight intergration with hardware. You lose both of these with OSX86. But at least you'll have seventh OS to select from in lilo.
This simply doesn't make any sense if you look at the details.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Secondly, I wouldn't use OS X if I had nothing else! The System requirements are huge
You're clearly referring to the beta because the GM isn't out yet. The latter will have lesser requirements. And furthermore, the requirements are largely so outlandish because they have to take into account the Classic environment -- which is, more or less, emulating Mac OS 9 on Mach. If you stick to Carbon (OSX native port of Mac API), Cocoa, BSD and Java apps, then you'll be stylin'. Classic does work very well -- a true achievement in emulation -- but it is a resource hog.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Things like quartz which contains things (I am assuming) licensed from Adobe.
As far as I know, this is not the case. One of the goals with the transition from NextStep to OSX was to ditch licensing fees that raised the price of the product. This included getting rid of Display Postscript in favor of the PDF-based Quartz engine.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Apple's stock is in the tank.
I don't suppose you've looked at the Nasdaq composite recently.
Preliminary indications are that Apple users are not particularly interested in the complexity and sluggishness of Apple's latest operating system.
Didn't realize you were conducting a survey.
Processor speed is stuck at 500 MHz.
No need to waste time on research before posting.
Alternative architectures and software are killing Apple on features, price, and performance.
You're certainly right on price, but I'm not going to let you get away with features and performance. Apple is currently kicking ass in terms of desktop video editing and DVD production. And in terms of performance the G4 is, at worst, competitive with x86, and at best, is noticeably faster in things like certain types of encoding and Photoshop performance. Comparing two chip families by megahertz alone just doesn't cut it, otherwise Sun and IBM would be using P4s in their super servers.
There are legions of corporations and individuals who have been disrespected by Apple--from the BeOS community to the Apple clone industry
I don't understand how they "disrespected" the BeOS community except deciding not to buy them. I heard something about them not releasing system specs at some point, but LinuxPPC seems to be doing fine.
The Apple clone industry threw down the first gauntlet by marketing within the fold, rather than attempting to grow the platform user base. They were reaping all the profits, but eliminating much of the core value of the Mac in the process. That would have been fine if they had actually advertised somewhere other than Macworld.
Today Motorola announced 2500 layoffs.
Yes, at the MOBILE PHONE plant.
Everyone does GUI and mice nowadays.
Everyone makes cars with steering wheels and a gas pedals too. So what?
Apple is left marketing decor.
More great research. You're conveniently forgetting the three years of hard work by Apple's software engineering to create OSX. Not to mention all the pro/consumer video stuff they've been doing.
The most reasonable solution would be for Apple to open up. Open up its hardware specs and software so that where now exists little more than a corporate cult, there might exist a vibrant autonomous industry of developers, hackers, and alternative hardware vendors.
Yee-haw! Now just to figure out the part about how to make money. SGI forgot that step.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Playing devil's adovcate...
What makes Linux cool (popularly usable) to the masses? A Web appliance whose software is mostly open source and free
How many users that make up "the masses" will actually ponder the software license as part of their purchase decision? Hackers will, sure, but the masses aren't hackers.
whose programmers are somewhat accessible/responsible to user feedback
Which programmers? Nokia or the Linux/Mozilla people?
and the ability to upgrade and update without repeatedly paying fees and buying licenses
I don't know any set top box maker that charges for software updates. You generally have to pay for the ISP, or in the case of Tivo, the programming service. But software updates are free last time I checked.
Overall, I think this is probably step in the right direction. But I think the concept needs some more focus. Right now, it sounds as if Nokia is positioning it as an "everything" box, which makes it very hard to market (except on the Home Shopping Network). You need to define boundaries of the product. You need to define who you think will buy it. And it's not exactly cheap. $400 for a 366 Celeron?
Maybe I'll be a bit less skeptical if they had some screenshots of the UI.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
When Apple can justify the loss it will ensue by not selling some hardware versus the gain it will generate by further hardware market penetration, they will release an X86 version. It's simple business sense.
It's a little more complex than that. Apple is about the entire experience, not just individual parts of it. Jobs has said this time and time again. This is beyond business, this is what they do. Case in point: if some generic video card doesn't work on OSX86, it's Apple fault. This kind of thing doesn't mesh well with the brand.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
It's easy to fault them for taking so long with OSX, until you see the newest build in action (the one at Macworld). Then you see what they've been doing all this time.
And in reality, OSX shipping last fall wouldn't have done anyone any good. There were virtually no native apps at the time. The press would have slammed Apple hard for that one. At MWSF, though, there were plenty of booths running native software.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Look at his history. He always and ever acts solely in his own interest.
I bet he also eats spotted owls and pushes old ladies into oncoming traffic.
This is just silly. The guy doesn't even take a salary, and didn't even have stock for some time after he came back to the company. He doesn't need money. He works at Apple because it's his baby. Anything eccentric thing he has done as the head of Apple's has been a function of that. I wish the CEOs of other large corporations cared half as much about their company's products as Jobs does about Apple's. It's an extremely personal issue to him.
The worst thing you can say about him is that he is fanatical about people experiencing Apple's work as he intends. He holds contempt for retailers that do a poor job of displaying Macs, or rumor sites that announce products outside of the context of an event. Though, if I was involved in such a project for 12-18 months, I would probably feel the same way.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
If Apple dies in the process
You make this sound as if this could actually happen anytime soon. They have $4 billion in the bank
Steve is dealing with a changing world that is not bending to Apple the way it used to because the younger generation doesn't remember the "old" Apple and, frankly, couldn't care less
I would agree with you, to a point. The catalyst, though, is Mac OS X. It's drawn interest from all sorts of people that didn't give a thought to Apple before. Maya is certainly one of the most visible, and had quite a sizeable/packed booth at Macworld Expo last week. But I was also quite surprised to see Roxen there!
With Mac OS X and software like iDVD, Apple has a much more compelling story that it has had in some time. And except to see the advertising change accordingly. After March 24, there will actually be very good reasons to own a Mac beyond it just sucks less than Windows.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
What is wrong with tape?
You can't put it in a computer, it's linear, and it's more prone to damage.
And while I don't think you can put a DVD-RAM disc in consumer DVD player (anyone know for sure), this is a step in the right direction.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Seriously, just what kind of an ass-hole are you? You've got the processor wrong. Its a G4 not a G3.
I'm pretty sure that post was a joke.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
WildTofu