I think Apple's TV and print advertising, if it's going to attack Windows-related PC problems, ought to be just as explicit about the actual cause of those problems being Windows.
Good idea, but its just wishful thinking. A 30-second ad can only hope to communicate one idea. Hopefully the idea that Macs are better. It is utterly impossible to communicate this nuance to the target audience. For that you need viral marketing.
I'd be interested to see if Apple's margins have actually dropped much recently on their hardware. Yes iPod is more successful, but as far as I know Apple's 'PC' business is still plenty profitable.
As Apple's marketshare has dwindled everyone translated that into Apple failing... but here's the thing, Apple isn't trying to sell cash registers, or help desk terminals, or word processors, or shipping stations. Those markets have grown explosively over the past 15 years, that's where the majority of PC growth is. The margins are so low Dell and Gateway have to sell 10 machines to equal the profit margin on a single Mac. Meanwhile any of those companies can be blown out of the water by the next bargain basement Chinese manufacturer.
Back in the OS 9 days, I think your argument would make more sense. OS 9 and Windows were so similar that commoditization was a real possibility. These days though, Macs are an a uniquely strong niche market: Professional Apps + UNIX. The value of OS X and it's developer base is not something that can easily be recreated by any other company. It's a lot more conceivable that Apple loses its appeal to the fickle iPod market where the only barrier to entry is creating a device. No one's been able to do it so far, but with the right marketing and a sense among hipsters that the ipod is 'so 2005' anything could happen.
I don't see OS X grabbing a lot of marketshare, or Apple's PC business growing fast, but I see them as having the strongest userbase of perhaps any electronics manufacturer. It may not satisfy Wall Street, but it will keep the profits coming in...
Your best bet is skillful use of Photoshop. Unless they all have some similar characteristic you can make use of, in which case either a Photoshop action and batch mode, or GIMP for improved scriptability.
Don't try and claim you can't rebuild them. It's trivial. I'm sure it would take less then a couple of minutes to extend this to creating transparent pngs, too.
Um, yeah, how does this even apply to the problem? If you can write a imagemagick command that can transform the composited drop shadows on all the icons to alpha transparency then spend the 2 minutes and post it goddammit. Either that or parent it and do a Web 2.0 startup. That shit is huge.
And the fact that this flamebait got modded up is another reason I like Digg's system better. Moderation is in the hands of all users there, not the select few. Diggers dont' have to put up with seeing flamebait and trolls get modded up while they helplessly watch and just hope some meta-mod will take care of it.
I don't see how you can honestly look at Digg and feel that you get better comments. If you browse comments here at +4 or +5 you might get a few clever trolls here and there, but you get a lot of meat. Meanwhile Digg which has lower comment volume has very few lengthy comments at all. Then when you respond the author never knows, and there are no threads to continue the conversation. The result is a million short posts repeating the same ideas over and over. I know slashdot has similar problems, but I don't see how anyone could rationally see Digg as an improvement.
This one made me forget about entering. You listed the main things I hate the most about the current design. And while you say 'you can ignore me of course', it is strongly implied that this would be an exercise in futility.
Love it or hate it,/. has a strong brand. To throw away the brand in pursuit of aesthetics would be kind of silly.
Considering your competition (digg) has a much stronger, cleaner design because they haven't had to be tied to a decade of old design rules
The Digg design is nothing special. Sure it's cleaner: they don't have one-tenth the functionality of/. Sure it looks better, it's newer and has a bit of that Web 2.0 feel about it. But I don't really see Digg competing with/. People have been complaining about slashbots and groupthink and mob rule here for years and years, and yet Digg has all those problems 100 times worse. Not to mention that their comment system is completely worthless for rational discourse. It just goes to show that AJAX doesn't do shit for usability if the underlying architecture is flawed.
All that said, you're right, it's going to be hard to make a substantial improvement to/. without breaking some of the rules.
The hilarious part is you're so envious you hang around here dedicating your life to hating CmdrTaco. I'm sure a lot of psychologists would love to get their hands on you!
Basically, your theory seems to be "If Dvorak were an idiot, people have stopped listening to him by now. Therefore he must be a smart persion who deliberately pretends to be an idiot." That's really not very logical.
No, that's not the right logic. Here's the real argument:
If Dvorak were an idiot then he wouldn't be smart enough to continue writing columns that generate this level of buzz for 20 years. If he were just an idiot his ramblings would be just as inane, except no one would care because he wouldn't know how to manipulate readers.
I really miss the days of my youth when every new system was so awe inspiring. NES, Sega, SNES, Neo Geo, etc. etc. Yes, yes, I know I was just young and naive, but back then it seemed game systems were growing by leaps and bounds (not to mention arcade games), so whatever system you got would have at least a few killer games.
Nowadays I'm impressed by new systems for about half an hour before the novelty of the graphics wear off and I'm wondering where the gameplay is at. I'm hoping by the time I have kids they'll be some new and interesting development in the games market, particularly for kids... Nintendo I'm looking at you.
Look, read Dvorak all you like, but know this: Dvorak defined the term sensationalistic editorial. Do you think he actually believes anything he writes? Instead of a true opinion he just picks a topic that is sure to generate controversy and then fluffs together whatever half-baked argument he can come up with on short notice to impart some sense of cohesion. To write a counterpoint to Dvorak is like being the liberal on The O'Reilly Factor: You can't win because the focus is always on Dvorak, his troll, his hits, his job, you lose just by opening your mouth.
Sadly, I doubt that Dvorak will get it. He will pobably think that it is a joke, rather than a poke at a true idiot.
No, he'll get it. Everyone thinks Dvorak is an idiot, but he's actually the most brilliant troll in history. I mean, who else can get their trolls linked on the front page of/. time after time after time, and generate hundreds of well-reasoned serious responses. Just the hits from/. alone are putting his kids through college.
Frankly, anyone who writes a serious response to Dvorak is just as bad as someone who thinks Dvorak knows what he's talking about.
The editors here need to put a ban on Dvorak. It's just ridiculous. There's no way to stop someone like that unless it be with editorial control. He'll always show up on Digg, but there's no reason he should be on/.
Someone should inform the author it's still written "SQL injection" despite how it sounds.
And yet when people pronounce SQL 'sequel' it makes my skin crawl. I'm usually not particular about how people pronounce acronyms, but for some reason whenever I hear that I immediately jump to the conclusion that the speaker is an idiot. Not a true assertion, I know, but I can't shake the feeling.
These days everyone talks about how shitty the IE codebase is, but back then there was Netscape 3 and 4 which were even worse. So much so that Netscape had to throw out the codebase and start fresh with Mozilla. No one likes to remember this, but IE was really a lot better than Netscape. IE5 PC and later IE5 Mac basically brought CSS-P to the maintstream (in that it was finally practical). NS4 CSS support was so bad you had to be a masochist to try anything other than basic typography.
Netscape definitely made mistakes, but it's not really obvious what they should have done instead. As a startup they needed to make money, whereas Microsoft was just trying to eat them for lunch. I think the article gets the most important point right:
The article goes on to say that many people don't associate the iPod with Mac Computers. An interesting point - however it is going to be difficult for Apple to upsell people on a $3K computer, from a $300 purchase.
For decades the price point for music players has been around $100. I look at it the other way. If Apple can convince people to pay $300 (or $400!) for a music player than why not a $3000 (or $600!) computer.
That said, I don't really see Apple gaining a lot of marketshare, but so what? As a company they are plenty healthy. Maybe not growing as fast investors want, but they're certainly not shrinking. Looking at Apple I don't really see much in the way of strategic vulnerability. Yes, Adobe and Microsoft are the gatekeepers of the critical software tools, but neither one of those companies has any reason to hang Apple out to dry; at worst they'll play their hand to get what they can from Apple. Microsoft on the other hand seems a lot more vulnerable with no place to grow their core markets, and open-source chomping at the bit to get into the corporate world. IMO it's only so long before OpenOffice eats MS' lunch; how much can you innovate in a office suite for average office workers? It's a far cry from Apple's strategy of creating a digital lifestyle for the young and hip.
No, I'm making the point that Apple has far more to lose revenue wise than Microsoft. I'm also making the point that this is by implication "No News" - it's not really a big deal for MS.
You make some good points, but this whole "Apple having more revenue to lose" just seems like nonsense. First of all, what percentage of Apple's revenue comes from OS upgrades? You might be surprised how low it is given the lack of copy protection with Mac OS X and the fact that install DVDs are distributed with every new machine, let alone that hardware is their cash cow.
On the other hand you have Microsoft which is almost wholly dependent on Windows and Office. So much so that it clouds their focus and makes it hard to capitalize on emerging paradigms.
Slashdot Mirror
Haven't they finished taking out everything that makes it different from XP yet?!??!?
Of course! That was completed years ago, now they just have to reorganize all the widgets in order to re-make-it-different from XP.
That's the exact opposite of what I have observed.
/. since the beginning of time. Fine, I won't argue with you. That's a fundamental facet of humanity.
Look, everyone has complained about groupthink on
The point is that it's ten times worse on Digg because:
* There's no limit on moderation
* There's meta moderation
and
* There's no real threading
If you think Digg comments is better please explain why instead of the same old "Slashdot sucks!" which we already all know and accept.
I think Apple's TV and print advertising, if it's going to attack Windows-related PC problems, ought to be just as explicit about the actual cause of those problems being Windows.
Good idea, but its just wishful thinking. A 30-second ad can only hope to communicate one idea. Hopefully the idea that Macs are better. It is utterly impossible to communicate this nuance to the target audience. For that you need viral marketing.
I'd be interested to see if Apple's margins have actually dropped much recently on their hardware. Yes iPod is more successful, but as far as I know Apple's 'PC' business is still plenty profitable.
As Apple's marketshare has dwindled everyone translated that into Apple failing... but here's the thing, Apple isn't trying to sell cash registers, or help desk terminals, or word processors, or shipping stations. Those markets have grown explosively over the past 15 years, that's where the majority of PC growth is. The margins are so low Dell and Gateway have to sell 10 machines to equal the profit margin on a single Mac. Meanwhile any of those companies can be blown out of the water by the next bargain basement Chinese manufacturer.
Back in the OS 9 days, I think your argument would make more sense. OS 9 and Windows were so similar that commoditization was a real possibility. These days though, Macs are an a uniquely strong niche market: Professional Apps + UNIX. The value of OS X and it's developer base is not something that can easily be recreated by any other company. It's a lot more conceivable that Apple loses its appeal to the fickle iPod market where the only barrier to entry is creating a device. No one's been able to do it so far, but with the right marketing and a sense among hipsters that the ipod is 'so 2005' anything could happen.
I don't see OS X grabbing a lot of marketshare, or Apple's PC business growing fast, but I see them as having the strongest userbase of perhaps any electronics manufacturer. It may not satisfy Wall Street, but it will keep the profits coming in...
If by "meat" you mean: a lot of people repeating the popular opinion while those who may be arguing the counterpoint are modded down to -1.
If people form a cogent argument that goes against popular opinion, they will often get modded up. On Digg that is almost impossible.
Your best bet is skillful use of Photoshop. Unless they all have some similar characteristic you can make use of, in which case either a Photoshop action and batch mode, or GIMP for improved scriptability.
Slashdot has 100 times the features of Digg. Geeks like features. 'nuff said.
Don't try and claim you can't rebuild them. It's trivial. I'm sure it would take less then a couple of minutes to extend this to creating transparent pngs, too.
Um, yeah, how does this even apply to the problem? If you can write a imagemagick command that can transform the composited drop shadows on all the icons to alpha transparency then spend the 2 minutes and post it goddammit. Either that or parent it and do a Web 2.0 startup. That shit is huge.
And the fact that this flamebait got modded up is another reason I like Digg's system better. Moderation is in the hands of all users there, not the select few. Diggers dont' have to put up with seeing flamebait and trolls get modded up while they helplessly watch and just hope some meta-mod will take care of it.
I don't see how you can honestly look at Digg and feel that you get better comments. If you browse comments here at +4 or +5 you might get a few clever trolls here and there, but you get a lot of meat. Meanwhile Digg which has lower comment volume has very few lengthy comments at all. Then when you respond the author never knows, and there are no threads to continue the conversation. The result is a million short posts repeating the same ideas over and over. I know slashdot has similar problems, but I don't see how anyone could rationally see Digg as an improvement.
This one made me forget about entering. You listed the main things I hate the most about the current design. And while you say 'you can ignore me of course', it is strongly implied that this would be an exercise in futility.
/. has a strong brand. To throw away the brand in pursuit of aesthetics would be kind of silly.
Love it or hate it,
Considering your competition (digg) has a much stronger, cleaner design because they haven't had to be tied to a decade of old design rules
/. Sure it looks better, it's newer and has a bit of that Web 2.0 feel about it. But I don't really see Digg competing with /. People have been complaining about slashbots and groupthink and mob rule here for years and years, and yet Digg has all those problems 100 times worse. Not to mention that their comment system is completely worthless for rational discourse. It just goes to show that AJAX doesn't do shit for usability if the underlying architecture is flawed.
/. without breaking some of the rules.
The Digg design is nothing special. Sure it's cleaner: they don't have one-tenth the functionality of
All that said, you're right, it's going to be hard to make a substantial improvement to
The hilarious part is you're so envious you hang around here dedicating your life to hating CmdrTaco. I'm sure a lot of psychologists would love to get their hands on you!
Basically, your theory seems to be "If Dvorak were an idiot, people have stopped listening to him by now. Therefore he must be a smart persion who deliberately pretends to be an idiot." That's really not very logical.
No, that's not the right logic. Here's the real argument:
If Dvorak were an idiot then he wouldn't be smart enough to continue writing columns that generate this level of buzz for 20 years. If he were just an idiot his ramblings would be just as inane, except no one would care because he wouldn't know how to manipulate readers.
I really miss the days of my youth when every new system was so awe inspiring. NES, Sega, SNES, Neo Geo, etc. etc. Yes, yes, I know I was just young and naive, but back then it seemed game systems were growing by leaps and bounds (not to mention arcade games), so whatever system you got would have at least a few killer games.
Nowadays I'm impressed by new systems for about half an hour before the novelty of the graphics wear off and I'm wondering where the gameplay is at. I'm hoping by the time I have kids they'll be some new and interesting development in the games market, particularly for kids... Nintendo I'm looking at you.
a minor shift in his departure time results in saving driving hours equivalent to over a third of the vacation time
Which was spent doing a study on driving departure times...
Ironically, enough the part that still hasn't been introduced is Winfs.
Far be it from me to be a grammar nazi, but even so I gotta say:
"Worst... Comma... Placement... EVER!"
Damn, that was the best non-sequiter thread I've ever started.
Look, read Dvorak all you like, but know this: Dvorak defined the term sensationalistic editorial. Do you think he actually believes anything he writes? Instead of a true opinion he just picks a topic that is sure to generate controversy and then fluffs together whatever half-baked argument he can come up with on short notice to impart some sense of cohesion. To write a counterpoint to Dvorak is like being the liberal on The O'Reilly Factor: You can't win because the focus is always on Dvorak, his troll, his hits, his job, you lose just by opening your mouth.
Don't you remember when he wrote for MacUser?
Sadly, I doubt that Dvorak will get it. He will pobably think that it is a joke, rather than a poke at a true idiot.
/. time after time after time, and generate hundreds of well-reasoned serious responses. Just the hits from /. alone are putting his kids through college.
/.
No, he'll get it. Everyone thinks Dvorak is an idiot, but he's actually the most brilliant troll in history. I mean, who else can get their trolls linked on the front page of
Frankly, anyone who writes a serious response to Dvorak is just as bad as someone who thinks Dvorak knows what he's talking about.
The editors here need to put a ban on Dvorak. It's just ridiculous. There's no way to stop someone like that unless it be with editorial control. He'll always show up on Digg, but there's no reason he should be on
way to totally miss the point.
Someone should inform the author it's still written "SQL injection" despite how it sounds.
And yet when people pronounce SQL 'sequel' it makes my skin crawl. I'm usually not particular about how people pronounce acronyms, but for some reason whenever I hear that I immediately jump to the conclusion that the speaker is an idiot. Not a true assertion, I know, but I can't shake the feeling.
These days everyone talks about how shitty the IE codebase is, but back then there was Netscape 3 and 4 which were even worse. So much so that Netscape had to throw out the codebase and start fresh with Mozilla. No one likes to remember this, but IE was really a lot better than Netscape. IE5 PC and later IE5 Mac basically brought CSS-P to the maintstream (in that it was finally practical). NS4 CSS support was so bad you had to be a masochist to try anything other than basic typography.
Netscape definitely made mistakes, but it's not really obvious what they should have done instead. As a startup they needed to make money, whereas Microsoft was just trying to eat them for lunch. I think the article gets the most important point right:
Distribution Wins
The article goes on to say that many people don't associate the iPod with Mac Computers. An interesting point - however it is going to be difficult for Apple to upsell people on a $3K computer, from a $300 purchase.
For decades the price point for music players has been around $100. I look at it the other way. If Apple can convince people to pay $300 (or $400!) for a music player than why not a $3000 (or $600!) computer.
That said, I don't really see Apple gaining a lot of marketshare, but so what? As a company they are plenty healthy. Maybe not growing as fast investors want, but they're certainly not shrinking. Looking at Apple I don't really see much in the way of strategic vulnerability. Yes, Adobe and Microsoft are the gatekeepers of the critical software tools, but neither one of those companies has any reason to hang Apple out to dry; at worst they'll play their hand to get what they can from Apple. Microsoft on the other hand seems a lot more vulnerable with no place to grow their core markets, and open-source chomping at the bit to get into the corporate world. IMO it's only so long before OpenOffice eats MS' lunch; how much can you innovate in a office suite for average office workers? It's a far cry from Apple's strategy of creating a digital lifestyle for the young and hip.
No, I'm making the point that Apple has far more to lose revenue wise than Microsoft. I'm also making the point that this is by implication "No News" - it's not really a big deal for MS.
You make some good points, but this whole "Apple having more revenue to lose" just seems like nonsense. First of all, what percentage of Apple's revenue comes from OS upgrades? You might be surprised how low it is given the lack of copy protection with Mac OS X and the fact that install DVDs are distributed with every new machine, let alone that hardware is their cash cow.
On the other hand you have Microsoft which is almost wholly dependent on Windows and Office. So much so that it clouds their focus and makes it hard to capitalize on emerging paradigms.