Let's see. iTunes has been a hit on the Macintosh. Folks were clamoring for awhile to see it on Windows, too. Now that it's on Windows, even more folks are using it. So far, so good. 25 million songs (I'm probably responsible for around 40 of them) is a lot of songs, no doubt. But we tend to forget what Steve Jobs clearly says in light of all this hype:
The iTunes Music Store makes little if no profit. At all.
Why, pray tell, is this not a problem for Apple? Because Apple uses the iTMS as a Trojan Horse to sell more iPods. And they make a bundle on every iPod. Between the iTMS and iTunes for Windows, there's a lot more iPods being sold nowadays than there were when the iPod was just a Mac novelty (OK, a Windows version came out with the first refresh, but it was Firewire-only and used MusicMatch).
Sure, iTunes locks you into buying songs in AAC format. At least it's an open spec. Most of the Windows jukeboxes lock you into buying Windows Media songs, 'nuff said. And nobody of any significance offers downloadable unencumbered MP3 files. If you buy, you get DRM. Apple's is at least fairly transparent.
What iTMS does prove is that there is a demand for buying one-off songs and permanent downloads. It proves that the subscription model the publishers wanted to force down the buyers' throats was a stillborn idea. It also proves that most of the other music stores that are springing up right now are doomed - because unless there's a secret cabal lined up to screw Apple out of extra money, the only way any of these companies can compete is if they use their stores to help sell high-margin peripherals. Like their own MP3 players.
Now, if some other company comes up with a player that's a far better unit than the iPod, attaches it to a store, and manages to wrestle the lead from Apple, then Apple might have problems justifying staying in the music biz at zero profit. But this kind of thing is right up Steve's alley, and I doubt he'll let this lead slip away without a fight. You know, it wouldn't be the first time Dell walked away from a market with a bloody nose. It doesn't happen often, though.
Plus, as formats go, once you buy into a DRM format they've got you for good. Every iTunes for Windows user is one that'll probably never go to Windows Media.
Way back at the beginning of the last decade, I worked for an Apple reseller. The Iomega rep gave me a couple of the then-new Bernoulli 90MB drives, and I wound up using them to shuttle data between home and work. The drives were pretty rugged, but the disks were awesome.
I used to leave them in my car for days on end in mid-winter (and this is New England - it gets pretty danged cold here) and use them with no problem. But one time, I had no better alternative to use as an ice scraper, so I used a Bernoulli 90 disk, figuring the disk would be toast afterwards (but hey, it was free, so why not sacrifice it?). So I chipped the ice off my car with it and didn't think twice about it.
The disk worked with no problems at all for years afterwards.
Needless to say, the later Zip and Jaz drives were nowhere near as rugged, but Zip was the most rugged small media format (the drives were fragile, but the disks were pretty tough) you could get easily until flash drives took off the last couple of years. SyQuest disks, OTOH, would die if you looked at them funny.
I read MacRumors faithfully already. However, I feel OK about the current 17" iMac I have for two reasons: first off, the 17" is a big enough screen for me (my wife has an old 17" iMac I got her last year), and second is that I bought it at the Panther launch sale - I got a 10% discount on the iMac. That made the price much more palatable.
XServe is definitely a poor value right now. I'm kind of surprised that there hasn't been a G5 version announced yet.
It was inevitable that the iMac would get an upgrade. I had no doubt at all.
Because I just bought a 17" iMac less than a month ago. Apple always upgrades boxes a month after I buy them.
However, I don't feel too bad about this one. It's $400 more, they didn't upgrade any other features other than the screen, and they didn't slash the price of the old model. Usually at least one of those latter two criteria apply to me.
The dually 1.8 GHz model is looking pretty sweet, though. The only difference (other than clock speed, of course) between that and the 2 GHz model is the video card, and changing to the Radeon 9600 is only a $50 BTO option. So you get nearly the same Mac for $500 less. I think the dually 1.8 G5 will sell quite briskly. This also speaks well to IBM's ability to get chips out of the factory and into systems. Hopefully the inevitable speedbump in January will really kick some booty.
John spoke last night at my user group (BNUG meeting, on Open Source software in general and on Samba's development process and features. He was a quite informative and interesting speaker, and folks picked up a few copies of the book at the meeting.
Though the entire book is available online (minus a few chapters that will soon be put in), I think it's worthy to support authors and publishers who put information out there for free access. I've got my copy of the book on order (would have picked it up last night, but I was short on cash), and given the amount of use I've gotten out of Samba in my work over the years I consider it to be a worthy investment.
Lilo and Stitch wasn't a success becuse it was hand-drawn, it was a success because the story was interesting, the characters were fun, and the movie well-made. And Dinosaur wasn't a flop because it was a CG film, it was a flop because it sucked.
CG lets you do cool stuff that's not readily feasible by hand, but it's no substitute for a good story. The marketplace isn't pressuring Disney to abandon hand-drawing, it's pressuring Disney to make good films. They've just made a decision that they're better off producing them via CG instead of hand animation. Right now, though, Disney's good animated films are all coming from Pixar - who happen to be an all-CG shop.
That's the correct answer. Linux isn't ready for most home users, and most home users aren't ready for Linux, either. For better or worse, the average home user should either stick with the herd and use Windows, or they should run a stable, Unix-based OS for "The rest of us" - MacOS X. When the off-the shelf software support, ease of administration, and device support in Linux is on a par with either Mac or Windows, then it's time for Linux to hit the home desktop.
Meanwhile, Linux is a viable OS for many corporate environments, and it's there today. The server marketplace is only getting bigger that Linux can target, and a lot of corporate desktops are the kind of focused tasking, centrally managed boxes that are ideal opportunities for Linux to show a lower TCO. So it's natural for Linux vendors to target the corporate market - retail boxed copies of SuSE, RedHat, and Mandrake are not where these companies are going to make their money.
I'm something of an amateur photographer (by no means a pro), and here's my $.02:
High-end slide films (from Kodak and Fuji) do deliver, in my opinion, a higher-quality product under the same conditions than any digital I've seen or tinkered with (In my previous professional life I had a lot of time around medium-format digital cameras). In the right hands, a high-quality digital camera will deliver quality and color about as good as you'll get from consumer films. Sometimes maybe better.
That said, Kodak and Fuji both produce high-end films that offer slightly different characteristics. My personal opinion is that colors seem to have a little more "pop" (totally subjective) with Kodachrome than they do with Fujichrome Sensia. I used to work a lot with Ektachrome (more or less what is now Kodak Elite), and I found the colors to be a lottle "cooler" in appearance. Generally, I used Kodachrome for landscapes and Ektachrome (which was cheaper) for everyday and events. I never used print film in my SLR, but did use it in a point & shoot I had.
Well, nowadays I still have my "real camera" (a Nikon 6006 with a couple of lenses), but three years ago I bought my own digital, an Olympus 3000. Since then, I hardly shoot on film anymore. Can the Olympus do all the things my Nikon can? No way. And if I need to shoot in a situation where I have to worry about shutter lag, I stiill use film. But I carry the Olympus around regularly and I've probably shot about 4k worth of exposures (extrapolating up from what I've bothered to feed into iPhoto) compared to a couple of hundred on film in that time.
Because you're right - it is subjective. Digital is good enough for the average Joe. It's more expensive to get into, but the ongoing costs are lower and you can get instant results. There's a lot of digitals that are good enough for pro usage, but film still occupies a valuable niche, both for practical reasons and for subjective ones.
For any serious excursion, I have a great bag from Timbuk2. It's a jumbo messenger bag with an insert for my TiBook, and it rocks. Unfortunately, the exact model isn't around anymore because they stopped offering waxed canvas as a fabric. They make similar bags from heavy-duty nylon, though, which are almost as good.
Then for littler trips (just need gadgets, no laptop needed), I have a waist-strappable camera bag. It holds my Palm, cellphone, Leatherman, and when I was working (until recently), my Blackberry. I can also toss my Zaurus with all the network trimmings in it and have a useful Linux box wherever I go.
Finally, I have a small nylon bag that has a fixed strap on it. It's almost a man-purse, but simpler - it only has a light flap that velcros down. I think it was originally a tool holder for something, but I bought a couple of them for $2 at an MIT flea a few years ago. They're just big enough for a PDA and cell phone. Not very elegant, but effective.
I also use the "scattered pockets" method of distribution when I want to avoid the bat-belt. I just stick with the keychain Leatherman, put the cell in a pants pocket and the Palm in my jacket. It's OK. I have several pairs of Bill's Khakis, they're almost indestructable and made from WWII-style patterns. Which means they have real deep pockets and can haul all kinds of stuff without worrying about them falling out.
What a coincidence!. It looks like Dean Kamen's company was working on just such a thing!
Okay, now to turn off the sarcasm (sorry, I couldn't resist) - Kamen was working on the just-approved product called iBot for quite some time. It was the "Fred" to Segway's "Ginger" (after legendary film dance pair Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers), and was in the FDA approval process for quite some time before being approved earlier this year as a medical device. iBot can maneuver disabled humans in an upright position, navigate stairs, and handle terrain that would stymie conventional wheelchairs. I believe they cost around $20k - they're being sold commercially through a Johnson & Johnson division.
It's known that Kamen is working on a Stirling Engine variant. There's been a lot of speculation that it's being developed as a power source for a Segway 2.0-type device. A Stirling power source could seriously improve the range of a Segway and make it a much more practical means of travel.
So in summery, the minor components (monitor, periphrial cards, RAM etc) are cross platform (meaning the choices are the same for either side, and most of the other components (CPU, Sound Card, graphics card) are limited to one or two choices by the nature of the system. I will grant the you have multiple options for motherboards, but that seems to be the only area with a major lead in choices
But that's where multiple choices are key, along with the BIOS. The RAM is insignificant, the sound card is pretty well insignificant (providing basic sound functionality isn't too hard), and if you don't worry about supporting all the advanced goodies (like which set of multimedia instructions to support or advanced power management options), then the processor isn't a huge deal. The monitor isn't even a factor - only the video card (which is significant).
But the reality is that Apple would have to support virtually all the processors out there at least as well as Microsoft does if they wanted any possibility of selling in volume. And the differences in motherboard chipsets are huge. So not only will Apple never switch to commodity PC hardware, there's virtually no chance they'll even support it. Bottom line: All the discussion we have here won't make any difference to us here. If you want Apple's OS, you buy a Mac. Period and evermore. If you want another Unix, then stick with x86. There's plenty to pick from.
Heck, there was once a time when the NT codebase ran on four completely different architectures - x86, PPC, MIPS, and Alpha. It wasn't worth Microsoft's time, money, or effort to keep that going, even though at the time they dropped all the others x86 was still the worst-performing of the four. And right now they have all they can do just keeping up with x86! Why should Apple dump a platform that they control completely for that?
You've got a whole lot more choice than that. Think for a second. You've got four+ processor companies (add Via to the mix at the low/low power end and Transmeta, too) You've got multiple BIOS vendors - Award, AMI, Phoenix as the biggies, multiple chipset vendors, several different processor families from each of the big players, a whole mess of graphics card vendors (ATI and Nvidia are just the current biggest), and support chips from a whole host of little vendors. You have to support all of those in the x86 world, going back generations.
Apple has things a lot simpler. You have three currently supported processor families - G3, G4, and G5. Two companies make them, and they designed it together. Apple makes their own chipsets to spec. They _only_ use ATI or Nvidia, and have been that way for years. They supply their own NIC and a single modem chipset for each V.standard.
Has Motorola held them back in recent years? Yep That's why the IBM PPC970 (G5) was so timely - it gets them right back in the game speed-wise. Apple's strength was really never in raw speed, though. It's been integration and providing a superior out-of-box experience for most non-tweaker users. They charge a little more for their product as a result, moke higher margins, and keep on putting money into R&D. Not being on Intel helps them stay there. Had IBM not built the PPC970, Apple might have turned to Intel in desperation eventually. But not it ain't gonna happen. Period. For years to come if not forever. Forget about Apple/x86. No chance.
As for me, I've got a sweet P4 system here in my home. It's 1.6GHz, with a slick video card, FireWire, USB 2.0, a 19" monitor, and lots of other goodies. I built it last summer, and I've upgraded the RAM and video since building it. It's a real nice system and I play games on it.
But I'm actually posting this from my clunky old PowerBook G4/667. Because it's a far nicer computer to use day-to-day for my liking.
I filled up my 10 Gb model pretty easily - re-ripping my collection to AAC helped free up some space, but not a lot. Right now I have about 6.25 days worth of music on it, and around 500 Mb free. There's still a lot of stuff I haven't ripped yet, though. And I'd say my CD collection is only average-size if that. I might have as many as 200 of them overall - accumulated over 16 years or so that's not too many.
I could certainly make do with more if I had it. 20 Gb would be fine, but the 40 would be sweet. I could do useful things with additional free space beyond just my music. The obvious is to use it as a backup device for critical stuff I otherwise have on my PowerBook.
PowerPoint was originally a Mac product, too. It was from the old Forethought, IIRC. Microsoft bought them back in 1987 and ported PowerPoint over to Windows. Aldus came out with Persuasion a short time later.
Forethought was also the original developer behind FileMaker as well, and sold it to Nashoba Systems. Then Apple bought FileMaker and assigned it to Claris.
And of course, as you already mentioned, Excel was originally a Mac-only product. The multiplatform spreadsheet they started with was Multiplan. I think Windows Word was a ground-up rewrite from the old DOS version of Word, though. In the same vein, I think Mac Word was originally a separate product, and then they tried to converge the two apps with disasterous results. That was one of the things that led to the MacBU being spun out and sent to California.
I love the quality of the sound the buds put out on my (2nd generation, 10GB) iPod. Unfortunately, most earbuds have a nasty habit of falling out of my ear at inopportune moments (basically, anytime I move), so I never use them.
The only earbuds that I've used that stick OK are a set of Koss ones I have (I forget the model) that use compressible foam to mold into the ear. They stick OK. Usually, I use a set of conventional walkman-style Sony headphones that fold up. Sound from both of those is worse than it is from the Apple earbuds, but at least they stay attached.
I mainly use my iPod in the car, though, where I plug in an iTrip to use it as a travel jukebox. To simplify switching channels, I have a playlist that only has about a dozen stations that I know should have a free frequency pretty much all throughout the Northeast, and then I plugged those presets into my car stereo.
I'm on my fourth Palm since the early days, a Tungsten T (My previous ones were a Pilot 5000, a Palm III, and a Vx). My wife has an M100. I've also owned and used several other handhelds over the years - at various points I've had a Newton, an iPaq, a Jornada (but that one came free with an HP 4000 switch - I gave it away to one of my staff), and a Zaurus 5500. I still have and use the Zaurus, which stays in my briefcase with an Ethernet card and a wireless card. But I never really thought of the Zaurus as an organizer or even as a Palm competitor. The Zaurus is more like a laptop substitute.
Thinking of these different systems makes me speculate on what an organizer should have for a feature set. I basically see three good categories that handhelds can go after, with this for basic feature sets:
Basic/Economy - first off, a black & white (or at most, 4-bit) screen. It should also have a reasonably speedy processor, rugged design, small size, and it only needs minimal expansion, if any. It needs 8-16MB of RAM if it's a Palm (and Palms come closest to this), and ideally it should have user-replaceable batteries that could be charged when in the cradle, like if you used NiMh AAA batteries instead of alkaline. Standard Grafitti should be good enough for HWR. The battery life needs to be good enough that you could use it heavily for a few days on the road without draining it, and with light use it should last a month or more - like the original Palms did. The cost for one of these should be $150 or less - $199 at the very most.
The midrange handheld can be a little bigger in form factor. Add a color screen, faster processor, and some sort of internal expansion - probably an SD slot. A little less battery life is an acceptable trade-off here. It also should have 32-64MB of RAM - less if it's a Palm and more if it's running CE or Linux. The docking connector on one of these should be able to serve as a USB port to allow for some peripherals to be taken advantage of. At the higher end of this range, Bluetooth and/or 802.11 could make an appearance. Handhelds in this range could cost as much as $400. I think this is the logical ending point for the PalmOS as we currently know it.
Finally, at the high end you get handhelds that are more like little laptops. Slightly bigger screens, at least able to do a resolution like 600x400. A fold-out keyboard is a must, as is wireless networking. It needs at least two expansion slots - some combo of SD and/or CF. Processor power should be equivalent to a decent desktop from a few years ago. It'll run either CE or Linux, and be able to execute software from flash. Battery life should be at least 6 hours of heavy use, untethered - 8 would be better because it represents the mythical "full workday" charge. Size isn't that important, nor is weight. Heck, these could be the size of a Newton 2100 for all it matters. They'll never go in a pocket anyways. And the price for one of them is whatever the market will bear. Only a handful of wealthy geeks will buy them as individuals - most of them will go to big companies who use them as laptop substitutes.
The only problem with those three market models is that the low-end handhelds will sell to the point of market saturation and that's pretty much the end of it. There's not going to be much of a compelling reason to upgrade a nice, solid, cheap handheld that's rugged enough to not break every year. Ergo, no significant growth. Heck, look at what processor stagnation helped do to Apple in the desktop market! Without compellingly "mo-betta-fasta" Macs to go to, a lot of the upgrade/replacement market dried up for quite awhile. It really has cost them in the high-margin Pro desktop line. Palm would get hit much the same way playing in the entry level space. So I think they have to focus elsewhere - and the midrange is a better target for most of their energy.
That said, I love the KISS principle when it comes to a handheld - it's what first attracted me to Palm, and what's driven me to own several of them. I just don't think that alone is enough for Palm, but it is a key advantage they have against the other players and one they should exploit better.
There's not much left of the Computer Museum anymore - some of it moved over to the Museum of Science, but most of the good stuff was packed up and sent out to a new Computing History museum out in California. What's left of the Computer Museum at this point is pretty sad, as of the last time I was there a couple of years ago.
The facility itself closed in 1999, and the adjacent Children's Museum expanded into at least some of the space. It's pretty cool, too, however. And the Museum of Science is terrific.
Up here on the North Shore where I live, there's a pretty neat exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum up in Salem. A Chinese house from the provinces was dismantled and re-assembled inside the museum as an tourable exhibit. There's all kinds of stuff about construction techniques used, the design and the simple utility of the building that's documented as part of the whole exhibit. Not technology-related (except vaguely by 16th century standards), but tremendously geeky.
Gee, I just had to call TAC up and give them the serial number to get in (our router doesn't have a service contract). Within an hour, I had a callback from the engineer who was given my case and an e-mail in my inbox looking for the specific info needed (the version of IOS I was running and the exact name of the binary - all produced by "sh ver").
After I got him the info, it was only a few minutes before the patch link was sent to me for download. The whole thing was done before lunch today - and that's for a little piss-ant customer with no service contract and a single router.
I think that's about as simple as it needs to be, personally. There's different versions of IOS for different devices, and all sorts of supported code revisions to deal with - it's not like Windows where you have a core version and service packs/hotfixes you may or may not have applied in random combination. Typically, if you have a Cisco router and it's working you'll only want to apply the minimum possible fix to the specific version you're running. So it's a pretty darned complex upgrade matrix. I, for one, am perfectly happy to let TAC guide me through it.
I've had an AirPort since shortly after it came out, and it's been running nearly continuously since then. I had the capacitor failure that a lot of the early ones had, and swapped them out myself. I also added a Lucent range extender antenna to boost the signal around the house. but it's been running virtually trouble-free since.
I don't know about the newer versions, but the original Graphite base station has worked great for me. There are Windows and Java-based configurators available for the older Graphite and Snow 802.11b models. I'm not sure about the Extreme (802.11g) version, though.
A base station of any brand shouldn't fail as quickly as you are experiencing, I think. If they die quickly, they may be getting too hot or perhaps they're getting really crappy power that stresses the power supply beyond what they're spec'd for.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he quotes a good source - given that it's Warren Buffett's writing he linked.
As an employee of an insurer (IT, not the business side), I can safely say that insurance is a strange business. Typically the goal of an insurer is to finish a given year with a combined ratio around 100% - if that's the case, than you're almost certain to make a profit since you'll return money on the float (unearned premium). You'll also make some money on the surplus - a typical surplus level for a smaller company like the one I'm at is about 40-60% of total premium dollars. So a $100 million dollar company (not as big as it sounds - actually that company would only have between 150-200 employees depending on other factors) would carry from $40m-$60m in surplus to be considered healthy. That surplus is the cushion against bad years and catastrophic losses - beyond that there's reinsurance for the really bad stuff. Reinsurance is another one of Berkshire Hathaway's businesses.
One thing that's important to consider in calculating returns is this, though: insurers tend to invest far more conservatively than most other financial services firms would. That drags the return down. Also, mutual insurers (who are technically only beholden to the policyholders to be healthy and stable) are more conservative with their money than stock companies are (stock companies have to play the Wall Street quarterly earnings game).
Since investment returns are so poor in general right now, the target combined ratio for breakeven operation (at least for a smaller P&C company) would probably be around 105% or less. A 110% wouldn't be too good in a bearish market like we've got today.
Given the current state of the PC industry, I'd say any profit right now is indicative of a well-run company.
Dell and HP are about the only two players selling personal computers that are consistently profitable today - and HP's profits derive mainly from their high-margin servers and printer supplies - not from desktop computers. On the other hand, Apple's server business is a drop in the bucket, they only sell two real peripherals (one peripheral until this past Monday - the iPod), and have a minimal business selling boxed software. They make their profit based almost entirely on their ability to sell desktop and laptop computers.
To take one more benchmark, Gateway is the only other major manufacturer to run company stores. They've lost a bundle, locating in strip malls and out-of-the-way locations. Apple has opened over fifty stores, mainly in very high-rent locations, and is on the verge of break-even after less than two years in retail. So that's a pretty well-run business as well.
Intel/AMD? Not going to happen. Period. Same with becoming a software-only company. I posted a comment a while back explaining why that would be idiotic, and I'm sticking to it. I won't recap here in the interest of brevity, but look it up if you want to see my argument.
After seeing that they "can't compete with Apple":
Pot. Kettle. Black.
I'd say "How do you like them apples", but it's too obvious a pun.
To be half serious, it was obvious this was coming - they've been in maintenance mode on IE/Mac since MacOS X 10.1 (fall 2001) - the only updates they've done since then have been for security/critical bugfixes. Until Safari, Mozilla/Camino was the only real option for a forward-looking browser.
Also, apparently there's a IE release coming out Monday, after which it's over except for the aforementioned security/critical bugfix patches. If IE breaks on 10.3, for instance, it's a pretty good bet that a fixed IE will ensue - elsewise their browser share in the Mac market goes to 0% real quickly.
My home server is a Mini-ITX box that I bought from iDot Computers - it's a C3-533 processor in a case using an external PSU (feeding direct DC into the case and avoiding one fan that way). The lower-speed C3 is fanless, and I put a 30GB laptop 2.5" HD in it to lower heat even further, letting me disconnect the internal fan as well. The server's got 512MB of RAM, and it runs e-Smith server (based loosely on RedHat) with a plug-in package for Spamassassin added in.
I use it for file storage, web and mail services, and MP3 serving - it has a built-in 10/100 Ethernet connection and I have a cheap Linksys 10/100 switch. I support 4 client computers in the house typically - both Mac and Windows with no problem, and the web server doesn't have any trouble keeping up with a light load over my 1.5/768 DSL connection.
The box itself is utterly silent - there are occasional noises from the HDD, but it's a lot quieter than the typical desktop-class drive is. I keep it in a spare bedroom today, but when we move in a couple of months I have a small rack area planned in the basement of the new house and I'll be moving it downstairs at that point.
I'm buying a new house in a couple of months - if they want to help subsidize that for me, it'll be a pleasure for me to switch one of my PC's over from Linux to XP. Bill can even pick the one for me - the Mandrake box, the RedHat box, or the Slackware box. Any one of 'em is fine by me!
Of course, I'll leave Linux on all the rest of my systems, I won't let him touch my e-Smith server, and I'll keep my Macs, but he'll get one PC's additional market share and I'll get a free house out of the deal (heck, I'll even pay $50 for the house). That is what I call a win-win scenario!
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Let's see. iTunes has been a hit on the Macintosh. Folks were clamoring for awhile to see it on Windows, too. Now that it's on Windows, even more folks are using it. So far, so good. 25 million songs (I'm probably responsible for around 40 of them) is a lot of songs, no doubt. But we tend to forget what Steve Jobs clearly says in light of all this hype:
The iTunes Music Store makes little if no profit. At all.
Why, pray tell, is this not a problem for Apple? Because Apple uses the iTMS as a Trojan Horse to sell more iPods. And they make a bundle on every iPod. Between the iTMS and iTunes for Windows, there's a lot more iPods being sold nowadays than there were when the iPod was just a Mac novelty (OK, a Windows version came out with the first refresh, but it was Firewire-only and used MusicMatch).
Sure, iTunes locks you into buying songs in AAC format. At least it's an open spec. Most of the Windows jukeboxes lock you into buying Windows Media songs, 'nuff said. And nobody of any significance offers downloadable unencumbered MP3 files. If you buy, you get DRM. Apple's is at least fairly transparent.
What iTMS does prove is that there is a demand for buying one-off songs and permanent downloads. It proves that the subscription model the publishers wanted to force down the buyers' throats was a stillborn idea. It also proves that most of the other music stores that are springing up right now are doomed - because unless there's a secret cabal lined up to screw Apple out of extra money, the only way any of these companies can compete is if they use their stores to help sell high-margin peripherals. Like their own MP3 players.
Now, if some other company comes up with a player that's a far better unit than the iPod, attaches it to a store, and manages to wrestle the lead from Apple, then Apple might have problems justifying staying in the music biz at zero profit. But this kind of thing is right up Steve's alley, and I doubt he'll let this lead slip away without a fight. You know, it wouldn't be the first time Dell walked away from a market with a bloody nose. It doesn't happen often, though.
Plus, as formats go, once you buy into a DRM format they've got you for good. Every iTunes for Windows user is one that'll probably never go to Windows Media.
Way back at the beginning of the last decade, I worked for an Apple reseller. The Iomega rep gave me a couple of the then-new Bernoulli 90MB drives, and I wound up using them to shuttle data between home and work. The drives were pretty rugged, but the disks were awesome.
I used to leave them in my car for days on end in mid-winter (and this is New England - it gets pretty danged cold here) and use them with no problem. But one time, I had no better alternative to use as an ice scraper, so I used a Bernoulli 90 disk, figuring the disk would be toast afterwards (but hey, it was free, so why not sacrifice it?). So I chipped the ice off my car with it and didn't think twice about it.
The disk worked with no problems at all for years afterwards.
Needless to say, the later Zip and Jaz drives were nowhere near as rugged, but Zip was the most rugged small media format (the drives were fragile, but the disks were pretty tough) you could get easily until flash drives took off the last couple of years. SyQuest disks, OTOH, would die if you looked at them funny.
I, for one, welcome our new grandmaster-level chess machine overlords.
I read MacRumors faithfully already. However, I feel OK about the current 17" iMac I have for two reasons: first off, the 17" is a big enough screen for me (my wife has an old 17" iMac I got her last year), and second is that I bought it at the Panther launch sale - I got a 10% discount on the iMac. That made the price much more palatable.
XServe is definitely a poor value right now. I'm kind of surprised that there hasn't been a G5 version announced yet.
It was inevitable that the iMac would get an upgrade. I had no doubt at all.
Because I just bought a 17" iMac less than a month ago. Apple always upgrades boxes a month after I buy them.
However, I don't feel too bad about this one. It's $400 more, they didn't upgrade any other features other than the screen, and they didn't slash the price of the old model. Usually at least one of those latter two criteria apply to me.
The dually 1.8 GHz model is looking pretty sweet, though. The only difference (other than clock speed, of course) between that and the 2 GHz model is the video card, and changing to the Radeon 9600 is only a $50 BTO option. So you get nearly the same Mac for $500 less. I think the dually 1.8 G5 will sell quite briskly. This also speaks well to IBM's ability to get chips out of the factory and into systems. Hopefully the inevitable speedbump in January will really kick some booty.
John spoke last night at my user group (BNUG meeting, on Open Source software in general and on Samba's development process and features. He was a quite informative and interesting speaker, and folks picked up a few copies of the book at the meeting.
Though the entire book is available online (minus a few chapters that will soon be put in), I think it's worthy to support authors and publishers who put information out there for free access. I've got my copy of the book on order (would have picked it up last night, but I was short on cash), and given the amount of use I've gotten out of Samba in my work over the years I consider it to be a worthy investment.
Lilo and Stitch wasn't a success becuse it was hand-drawn, it was a success because the story was interesting, the characters were fun, and the movie well-made. And Dinosaur wasn't a flop because it was a CG film, it was a flop because it sucked.
CG lets you do cool stuff that's not readily feasible by hand, but it's no substitute for a good story. The marketplace isn't pressuring Disney to abandon hand-drawing, it's pressuring Disney to make good films. They've just made a decision that they're better off producing them via CG instead of hand animation. Right now, though, Disney's good animated films are all coming from Pixar - who happen to be an all-CG shop.
That's the correct answer. Linux isn't ready for most home users, and most home users aren't ready for Linux, either. For better or worse, the average home user should either stick with the herd and use Windows, or they should run a stable, Unix-based OS for "The rest of us" - MacOS X. When the off-the shelf software support, ease of administration, and device support in Linux is on a par with either Mac or Windows, then it's time for Linux to hit the home desktop.
Meanwhile, Linux is a viable OS for many corporate environments, and it's there today. The server marketplace is only getting bigger that Linux can target, and a lot of corporate desktops are the kind of focused tasking, centrally managed boxes that are ideal opportunities for Linux to show a lower TCO. So it's natural for Linux vendors to target the corporate market - retail boxed copies of SuSE, RedHat, and Mandrake are not where these companies are going to make their money.
I'm something of an amateur photographer (by no means a pro), and here's my $.02:
High-end slide films (from Kodak and Fuji) do deliver, in my opinion, a higher-quality product under the same conditions than any digital I've seen or tinkered with (In my previous professional life I had a lot of time around medium-format digital cameras). In the right hands, a high-quality digital camera will deliver quality and color about as good as you'll get from consumer films. Sometimes maybe better.
That said, Kodak and Fuji both produce high-end films that offer slightly different characteristics. My personal opinion is that colors seem to have a little more "pop" (totally subjective) with Kodachrome than they do with Fujichrome Sensia. I used to work a lot with Ektachrome (more or less what is now Kodak Elite), and I found the colors to be a lottle "cooler" in appearance. Generally, I used Kodachrome for landscapes and Ektachrome (which was cheaper) for everyday and events. I never used print film in my SLR, but did use it in a point & shoot I had.
Well, nowadays I still have my "real camera" (a Nikon 6006 with a couple of lenses), but three years ago I bought my own digital, an Olympus 3000. Since then, I hardly shoot on film anymore. Can the Olympus do all the things my Nikon can? No way. And if I need to shoot in a situation where I have to worry about shutter lag, I stiill use film. But I carry the Olympus around regularly and I've probably shot about 4k worth of exposures (extrapolating up from what I've bothered to feed into iPhoto) compared to a couple of hundred on film in that time.
Because you're right - it is subjective. Digital is good enough for the average Joe. It's more expensive to get into, but the ongoing costs are lower and you can get instant results. There's a lot of digitals that are good enough for pro usage, but film still occupies a valuable niche, both for practical reasons and for subjective ones.
For any serious excursion, I have a great bag from Timbuk2. It's a jumbo messenger bag with an insert for my TiBook, and it rocks. Unfortunately, the exact model isn't around anymore because they stopped offering waxed canvas as a fabric. They make similar bags from heavy-duty nylon, though, which are almost as good.
Then for littler trips (just need gadgets, no laptop needed), I have a waist-strappable camera bag. It holds my Palm, cellphone, Leatherman, and when I was working (until recently), my Blackberry. I can also toss my Zaurus with all the network trimmings in it and have a useful Linux box wherever I go.
Finally, I have a small nylon bag that has a fixed strap on it. It's almost a man-purse, but simpler - it only has a light flap that velcros down. I think it was originally a tool holder for something, but I bought a couple of them for $2 at an MIT flea a few years ago. They're just big enough for a PDA and cell phone. Not very elegant, but effective.
I also use the "scattered pockets" method of distribution when I want to avoid the bat-belt. I just stick with the keychain Leatherman, put the cell in a pants pocket and the Palm in my jacket. It's OK. I have several pairs of Bill's Khakis, they're almost indestructable and made from WWII-style patterns. Which means they have real deep pockets and can haul all kinds of stuff without worrying about them falling out.
What a coincidence!. It looks like Dean Kamen's company was working on just such a thing!
Okay, now to turn off the sarcasm (sorry, I couldn't resist) - Kamen was working on the just-approved product called iBot for quite some time. It was the "Fred" to Segway's "Ginger" (after legendary film dance pair Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers), and was in the FDA approval process for quite some time before being approved earlier this year as a medical device. iBot can maneuver disabled humans in an upright position, navigate stairs, and handle terrain that would stymie conventional wheelchairs. I believe they cost around $20k - they're being sold commercially through a Johnson & Johnson division.
It's known that Kamen is working on a Stirling Engine variant. There's been a lot of speculation that it's being developed as a power source for a Segway 2.0-type device. A Stirling power source could seriously improve the range of a Segway and make it a much more practical means of travel.
But that's where multiple choices are key, along with the BIOS. The RAM is insignificant, the sound card is pretty well insignificant (providing basic sound functionality isn't too hard), and if you don't worry about supporting all the advanced goodies (like which set of multimedia instructions to support or advanced power management options), then the processor isn't a huge deal. The monitor isn't even a factor - only the video card (which is significant).
But the reality is that Apple would have to support virtually all the processors out there at least as well as Microsoft does if they wanted any possibility of selling in volume. And the differences in motherboard chipsets are huge. So not only will Apple never switch to commodity PC hardware, there's virtually no chance they'll even support it. Bottom line: All the discussion we have here won't make any difference to us here. If you want Apple's OS, you buy a Mac. Period and evermore. If you want another Unix, then stick with x86. There's plenty to pick from.
Heck, there was once a time when the NT codebase ran on four completely different architectures - x86, PPC, MIPS, and Alpha. It wasn't worth Microsoft's time, money, or effort to keep that going, even though at the time they dropped all the others x86 was still the worst-performing of the four. And right now they have all they can do just keeping up with x86! Why should Apple dump a platform that they control completely for that?
You've got a whole lot more choice than that. Think for a second. You've got four+ processor companies (add Via to the mix at the low/low power end and Transmeta, too) You've got multiple BIOS vendors - Award, AMI, Phoenix as the biggies, multiple chipset vendors, several different processor families from each of the big players, a whole mess of graphics card vendors (ATI and Nvidia are just the current biggest), and support chips from a whole host of little vendors. You have to support all of those in the x86 world, going back generations.
Apple has things a lot simpler. You have three currently supported processor families - G3, G4, and G5. Two companies make them, and they designed it together. Apple makes their own chipsets to spec. They _only_ use ATI or Nvidia, and have been that way for years. They supply their own NIC and a single modem chipset for each V.standard.
Has Motorola held them back in recent years? Yep That's why the IBM PPC970 (G5) was so timely - it gets them right back in the game speed-wise. Apple's strength was really never in raw speed, though. It's been integration and providing a superior out-of-box experience for most non-tweaker users. They charge a little more for their product as a result, moke higher margins, and keep on putting money into R&D. Not being on Intel helps them stay there. Had IBM not built the PPC970, Apple might have turned to Intel in desperation eventually. But not it ain't gonna happen. Period. For years to come if not forever. Forget about Apple/x86. No chance.
As for me, I've got a sweet P4 system here in my home. It's 1.6GHz, with a slick video card, FireWire, USB 2.0, a 19" monitor, and lots of other goodies. I built it last summer, and I've upgraded the RAM and video since building it. It's a real nice system and I play games on it.
But I'm actually posting this from my clunky old PowerBook G4/667. Because it's a far nicer computer to use day-to-day for my liking.
I filled up my 10 Gb model pretty easily - re-ripping my collection to AAC helped free up some space, but not a lot. Right now I have about 6.25 days worth of music on it, and around 500 Mb free. There's still a lot of stuff I haven't ripped yet, though. And I'd say my CD collection is only average-size if that. I might have as many as 200 of them overall - accumulated over 16 years or so that's not too many.
I could certainly make do with more if I had it. 20 Gb would be fine, but the 40 would be sweet. I could do useful things with additional free space beyond just my music. The obvious is to use it as a backup device for critical stuff I otherwise have on my PowerBook.
PowerPoint was originally a Mac product, too. It was from the old Forethought, IIRC. Microsoft bought them back in 1987 and ported PowerPoint over to Windows. Aldus came out with Persuasion a short time later.
Forethought was also the original developer behind FileMaker as well, and sold it to Nashoba Systems. Then Apple bought FileMaker and assigned it to Claris.
And of course, as you already mentioned, Excel was originally a Mac-only product. The multiplatform spreadsheet they started with was Multiplan. I think Windows Word was a ground-up rewrite from the old DOS version of Word, though. In the same vein, I think Mac Word was originally a separate product, and then they tried to converge the two apps with disasterous results. That was one of the things that led to the MacBU being spun out and sent to California.
I love the quality of the sound the buds put out on my (2nd generation, 10GB) iPod. Unfortunately, most earbuds have a nasty habit of falling out of my ear at inopportune moments (basically, anytime I move), so I never use them.
:-)
The only earbuds that I've used that stick OK are a set of Koss ones I have (I forget the model) that use compressible foam to mold into the ear. They stick OK. Usually, I use a set of conventional walkman-style Sony headphones that fold up. Sound from both of those is worse than it is from the Apple earbuds, but at least they stay attached.
I mainly use my iPod in the car, though, where I plug in an iTrip to use it as a travel jukebox. To simplify switching channels, I have a playlist that only has about a dozen stations that I know should have a free frequency pretty much all throughout the Northeast, and then I plugged those presets into my car stereo.
Earbuds aren't quite as good for car usage
I'm on my fourth Palm since the early days, a Tungsten T (My previous ones were a Pilot 5000, a Palm III, and a Vx). My wife has an M100. I've also owned and used several other handhelds over the years - at various points I've had a Newton, an iPaq, a Jornada (but that one came free with an HP 4000 switch - I gave it away to one of my staff), and a Zaurus 5500. I still have and use the Zaurus, which stays in my briefcase with an Ethernet card and a wireless card. But I never really thought of the Zaurus as an organizer or even as a Palm competitor. The Zaurus is more like a laptop substitute.
Thinking of these different systems makes me speculate on what an organizer should have for a feature set. I basically see three good categories that handhelds can go after, with this for basic feature sets:
Basic/Economy - first off, a black & white (or at most, 4-bit) screen. It should also have a reasonably speedy processor, rugged design, small size, and it only needs minimal expansion, if any. It needs 8-16MB of RAM if it's a Palm (and Palms come closest to this), and ideally it should have user-replaceable batteries that could be charged when in the cradle, like if you used NiMh AAA batteries instead of alkaline. Standard Grafitti should be good enough for HWR. The battery life needs to be good enough that you could use it heavily for a few days on the road without draining it, and with light use it should last a month or more - like the original Palms did. The cost for one of these should be $150 or less - $199 at the very most.
The midrange handheld can be a little bigger in form factor. Add a color screen, faster processor, and some sort of internal expansion - probably an SD slot. A little less battery life is an acceptable trade-off here. It also should have 32-64MB of RAM - less if it's a Palm and more if it's running CE or Linux. The docking connector on one of these should be able to serve as a USB port to allow for some peripherals to be taken advantage of. At the higher end of this range, Bluetooth and/or 802.11 could make an appearance. Handhelds in this range could cost as much as $400. I think this is the logical ending point for the PalmOS as we currently know it.
Finally, at the high end you get handhelds that are more like little laptops. Slightly bigger screens, at least able to do a resolution like 600x400. A fold-out keyboard is a must, as is wireless networking. It needs at least two expansion slots - some combo of SD and/or CF. Processor power should be equivalent to a decent desktop from a few years ago. It'll run either CE or Linux, and be able to execute software from flash. Battery life should be at least 6 hours of heavy use, untethered - 8 would be better because it represents the mythical "full workday" charge. Size isn't that important, nor is weight. Heck, these could be the size of a Newton 2100 for all it matters. They'll never go in a pocket anyways. And the price for one of them is whatever the market will bear. Only a handful of wealthy geeks will buy them as individuals - most of them will go to big companies who use them as laptop substitutes.
The only problem with those three market models is that the low-end handhelds will sell to the point of market saturation and that's pretty much the end of it. There's not going to be much of a compelling reason to upgrade a nice, solid, cheap handheld that's rugged enough to not break every year. Ergo, no significant growth. Heck, look at what processor stagnation helped do to Apple in the desktop market! Without compellingly "mo-betta-fasta" Macs to go to, a lot of the upgrade/replacement market dried up for quite awhile. It really has cost them in the high-margin Pro desktop line. Palm would get hit much the same way playing in the entry level space. So I think they have to focus elsewhere - and the midrange is a better target for most of their energy.
That said, I love the KISS principle when it comes to a handheld - it's what first attracted me to Palm, and what's driven me to own several of them. I just don't think that alone is enough for Palm, but it is a key advantage they have against the other players and one they should exploit better.
There's not much left of the Computer Museum anymore - some of it moved over to the Museum of Science, but most of the good stuff was packed up and sent out to a new Computing History museum out in California. What's left of the Computer Museum at this point is pretty sad, as of the last time I was there a couple of years ago.
The facility itself closed in 1999, and the adjacent Children's Museum expanded into at least some of the space. It's pretty cool, too, however. And the Museum of Science is terrific.
Up here on the North Shore where I live, there's a pretty neat exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum up in Salem. A Chinese house from the provinces was dismantled and re-assembled inside the museum as an tourable exhibit. There's all kinds of stuff about construction techniques used, the design and the simple utility of the building that's documented as part of the whole exhibit. Not technology-related (except vaguely by 16th century standards), but tremendously geeky.
Gee, I just had to call TAC up and give them the serial number to get in (our router doesn't have a service contract). Within an hour, I had a callback from the engineer who was given my case and an e-mail in my inbox looking for the specific info needed (the version of IOS I was running and the exact name of the binary - all produced by "sh ver").
After I got him the info, it was only a few minutes before the patch link was sent to me for download. The whole thing was done before lunch today - and that's for a little piss-ant customer with no service contract and a single router.
I think that's about as simple as it needs to be, personally. There's different versions of IOS for different devices, and all sorts of supported code revisions to deal with - it's not like Windows where you have a core version and service packs/hotfixes you may or may not have applied in random combination. Typically, if you have a Cisco router and it's working you'll only want to apply the minimum possible fix to the specific version you're running. So it's a pretty darned complex upgrade matrix. I, for one, am perfectly happy to let TAC guide me through it.
I've had an AirPort since shortly after it came out, and it's been running nearly continuously since then. I had the capacitor failure that a lot of the early ones had, and swapped them out myself. I also added a Lucent range extender antenna to boost the signal around the house. but it's been running virtually trouble-free since.
I don't know about the newer versions, but the original Graphite base station has worked great for me. There are Windows and Java-based configurators available for the older Graphite and Snow 802.11b models. I'm not sure about the Extreme (802.11g) version, though.
A base station of any brand shouldn't fail as quickly as you are experiencing, I think. If they die quickly, they may be getting too hot or perhaps they're getting really crappy power that stresses the power supply beyond what they're spec'd for.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he quotes a good source - given that it's Warren Buffett's writing he linked.
As an employee of an insurer (IT, not the business side), I can safely say that insurance is a strange business. Typically the goal of an insurer is to finish a given year with a combined ratio around 100% - if that's the case, than you're almost certain to make a profit since you'll return money on the float (unearned premium). You'll also make some money on the surplus - a typical surplus level for a smaller company like the one I'm at is about 40-60% of total premium dollars. So a $100 million dollar company (not as big as it sounds - actually that company would only have between 150-200 employees depending on other factors) would carry from $40m-$60m in surplus to be considered healthy. That surplus is the cushion against bad years and catastrophic losses - beyond that there's reinsurance for the really bad stuff. Reinsurance is another one of Berkshire Hathaway's businesses.
One thing that's important to consider in calculating returns is this, though: insurers tend to invest far more conservatively than most other financial services firms would. That drags the return down. Also, mutual insurers (who are technically only beholden to the policyholders to be healthy and stable) are more conservative with their money than stock companies are (stock companies have to play the Wall Street quarterly earnings game).
Since investment returns are so poor in general right now, the target combined ratio for breakeven operation (at least for a smaller P&C company) would probably be around 105% or less. A 110% wouldn't be too good in a bearish market like we've got today.
Given the current state of the PC industry, I'd say any profit right now is indicative of a well-run company.
Dell and HP are about the only two players selling personal computers that are consistently profitable today - and HP's profits derive mainly from their high-margin servers and printer supplies - not from desktop computers. On the other hand, Apple's server business is a drop in the bucket, they only sell two real peripherals (one peripheral until this past Monday - the iPod), and have a minimal business selling boxed software. They make their profit based almost entirely on their ability to sell desktop and laptop computers.
To take one more benchmark, Gateway is the only other major manufacturer to run company stores. They've lost a bundle, locating in strip malls and out-of-the-way locations. Apple has opened over fifty stores, mainly in very high-rent locations, and is on the verge of break-even after less than two years in retail. So that's a pretty well-run business as well.
Intel/AMD? Not going to happen. Period. Same with becoming a software-only company. I posted a comment a while back explaining why that would be idiotic, and I'm sticking to it. I won't recap here in the interest of brevity, but look it up if you want to see my argument.
After seeing that they "can't compete with Apple":
Pot. Kettle. Black.
I'd say "How do you like them apples", but it's too obvious a pun.
To be half serious, it was obvious this was coming - they've been in maintenance mode on IE/Mac since MacOS X 10.1 (fall 2001) - the only updates they've done since then have been for security/critical bugfixes. Until Safari, Mozilla/Camino was the only real option for a forward-looking browser.
Also, apparently there's a IE release coming out Monday, after which it's over except for the aforementioned security/critical bugfix patches. If IE breaks on 10.3, for instance, it's a pretty good bet that a fixed IE will ensue - elsewise their browser share in the Mac market goes to 0% real quickly.
My home server is a Mini-ITX box that I bought from iDot Computers - it's a C3-533 processor in a case using an external PSU (feeding direct DC into the case and avoiding one fan that way). The lower-speed C3 is fanless, and I put a 30GB laptop 2.5" HD in it to lower heat even further, letting me disconnect the internal fan as well. The server's got 512MB of RAM, and it runs e-Smith server (based loosely on RedHat) with a plug-in package for Spamassassin added in.
I use it for file storage, web and mail services, and MP3 serving - it has a built-in 10/100 Ethernet connection and I have a cheap Linksys 10/100 switch. I support 4 client computers in the house typically - both Mac and Windows with no problem, and the web server doesn't have any trouble keeping up with a light load over my 1.5/768 DSL connection.
The box itself is utterly silent - there are occasional noises from the HDD, but it's a lot quieter than the typical desktop-class drive is. I keep it in a spare bedroom today, but when we move in a couple of months I have a small rack area planned in the basement of the new house and I'll be moving it downstairs at that point.
I'm buying a new house in a couple of months - if they want to help subsidize that for me, it'll be a pleasure for me to switch one of my PC's over from Linux to XP. Bill can even pick the one for me - the Mandrake box, the RedHat box, or the Slackware box. Any one of 'em is fine by me!
Of course, I'll leave Linux on all the rest of my systems, I won't let him touch my e-Smith server, and I'll keep my Macs, but he'll get one PC's additional market share and I'll get a free house out of the deal (heck, I'll even pay $50 for the house). That is what I call a win-win scenario!