Among the scarier revelations is the development of AACS, a new already approved security system designed to prevent piracy on HD DVDs, which subjects users to forced upgrades.
Cute. Hope that works out for you. Guess what system I won't be buying.
What exactly is the problem with all of these supposedly highly-intelligent but obviously completely brain-dead (not to say stupid) CEOs? If you put annoying copy protection stuff on your media or try to force people to do any other sort of crap like that, they will simply take their money to the black market. This is the lesson of online music. You will not have total control over the media, because the people with the money will not accept that. End of story.
The only CEO on the planet who seems to understand this is Steve Jobs. Yes, iTunes has various limits, but they are so wide that 95 per cent of the people don't give a damn because they never encounter them: If I want to share music with my kid sister, I can. So what if I can't share it with 200,000 other people on the Internet? This, not any clever usability stuff, is why iTunes has 80 per cent of the market. Just why is this so hard to understand? Is it something that happens to your perception of reality once you earn more than a million dollars a year?
Oh sorry, I meant a million dollars a month, of course. Though Gates at least gives billions to charity.
Anyway, this looks like another great idea from the people who brought you the talking paperclip and tried to force-feed us push technology. No wonder Apple is selling computers as fast as they can build them.
- an article about RPG should have so many abbreviations that it has everybody who doesn't following this stuff regularly reading the Slashdot blurb goes something like "WTF?"
As one of the Americans whose grandfather would have most certainly died on the shores of Kyushu during Operation Downfall, I would like to send the men and women of the Manhattan Project my heartfelt thanks. Like me, millions of Americans, and -- though they would like to pretend they oh-too-cool samurai to care -- even more millions of Japanese would not be here today if the bombs had not been developed and used. It saved friend and foe from at least two more years of war, in the course of which more Chinese would have died under Japanese occupation than perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together; it saved "us" and "them" from what would have been the most bloody landing attempt in history, probably including the use of chemical weapons. And tell me, why would gassing half of Kyushu and the Tokyo Plain have been better than nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
The aim of the atom bombs was to end World War II quickly and with relatively little bloodshed. In both points, it was a fantastic success. The decision to use the bombs was a tough one to make, but if we hadn't, and if the war had dragged on, the same people who are complaining about the bombs now would be asking us why on earth we didn't use them to stop the carnage early when we had the chance. Would Einstein really have felt better if he had watched the body bags of further 250.000 American soldiers come back? Watched two more years of B29 unleashing hell over every Japanese city, not just two?
No. Today, the very same people would be claiming that Japan would have surrendured immediately after the first bomb, and that we were criminal not to try to stop the dying quickly, and we would be wondering if doubling or even tripling our war dead couldn't have been avoided by one act of moral courage.
The moral, in fact, is a different one: If you start a war of aggression, you will reap what you sow. If you go ahead with it, don't come crying that people fight back any way they can.
While I love being able to text search in content, spotlight is so horribly beta I'm almost at the point of disabling it.
Little tip: Don't wait for it to finish building that list, move down to what you want immediately. Searching before you finish is a feature, not a bug, and it is brilliant. If they change it because of your post I'm going to have to find you and dunk you in onion juice or something.
Spotlight works so beautifully here that I have been telling people it is the single must-have feature with "Tiger" -- it is something that for the first time in years has actually changed the way I use the computer. For example, I don't usually even bother with the Applications folder anymore, I just hit Spotlight and type the name of the program. Works the same with any song I want to hear.
The Dashboard I could do without. Spotlight is a must-have, and I won't be using a operating system (or rather, desktop) again that doesn't have live searching.
Think how much cheaper and easier it would be if they just used an E-books with DRM.
Yeah, except that e-books are only used by a small and to my mind somewhat confused micro-minority, and for good reason -- you are not going to sell 500 trillion of them, or whatever the number is they are aiming for this Harry Potter (full disclosure: I have the whole series, too). E-books are a pain to read in the sun, are a risk to read in the bathtub, can't be dog-eared (my book, my rules), won't survive having your backpack thrown in your locker, writing a note on the second page when you give them to your kid sister is sort of hard, and you can't include them in your Delicious Library, just to name a few real-life problems. In other words: E-books are good for the publishing company, but not for the customer.
I would like to predict they are going to die like web push technology. But unfortunately, capitalism in the 21th Century is not about what the customer wants, it is about what big multinationals can get away with. When you buy an e-book, you are helping them screw you. If you want a tech toy to look cool, get a frigging iPod, that's what they are there for. But please don't support the attempt to kill something that has served the human mind for more than 2000 years.
GarageBand, and iMovie are arguably niche apps that are fun as toys for the average user, but unlikely to displace actual professional apps for actual professionals.
You don't have kids, do you? iMovie is absolutely brilliant when it is time to send the grandparents a quick DVD -- attach the camera via Firewire, press the play button, and in less than an hour, you have something that Grandma and Grandpa just love. For free. Profession features would just be in the way at this level.
The original poster forgot to mention iChat AV, the replacement for the Microsoft Messenger and AIM. It is included with the OS, and is tightly integrated: When you start writing a mail in Mail, and your contact is online, it will place a little colored button next to his name. I have seen MSN and AIM, and am amazed that Windows users put up with ads on both -- no such thing with iChat AV. People who have the iSight camera says it kicks ass (at that price, it certainly should).
You forgot iDVD, by the way.
Just looking at the individual programs ignores how they cooperate: iMovie, for example, access iTunes and iPhoto and sends stuff to iDVD. Microsoft can't do that because a) they don't have anything comparable to the iLife suite included and b) they have been convicted for abusing their monopoly and are not allowed to combine stuff.
Their bad. Are you going to suffer for their mistake?
What is even more depressing: Look at all the stuff the ancient Greeks invented/discovered in a few hundred years with a few thousand people, and then compare this to the rest of history. Only the Renaissance comes close, but not very. In a short span, we got the scientific method, democracy, basic math...
Somebody who knows more about history will have to give it a stab at the "why". My 0.02 drachmas: Leisure, not work, was considered the most valuable time (think of all those MBAs turning themselves into corporate droids working twelve hours a day, their brains wasted while they figure out a better marketing strategy for toothpaste), and intellectual pursuits were valued higher than passive consumption. You could also say "less distractions" -- would Plato have ever formulated his stuff if he could have watched Baywatch reruns instead?
NeoOffice/J was the critical ingredient that let me choose an iBook over a ThinkPad that I would have installed Linux on: There was no way in hell I had $400 for Microsoft Office, and OpenOffice.org on the Mac sucks so bad that you might as well use AppleWorks. Well, maybe not that bad, but it is basically unusable.
I have said this before and I will keep saying it: Apple's greatest problem at the moment is the lack of an affordable full office suite ($400 is not affordable -- note you can almost buy a Mac Mini for that). People won't accept something as radically different as Pages. NeoOffice/J is the best hope they have. I can understand that Apple doesn't want to come out publicly in support of the project, because Microsoft could cut them off at the knees, and Apple is dependent on MS Office. But I hope to hell that Jobs has some people squirreled away in Infinity Drive somewhere working on this.
Office suites are big, complicated pieces of software, sort of like operating systems and browsers. Apple should do what they did with OS X (BSD/Darwin) and Safarai (Konqueror, KHTML) and use NeoOffice/J as the basis for their own suite. This Pages stuff can only be a stop-gap measure.
...let me point out that I don't give a rat's ass about how slick the interface is (though it doesn't hurt) or how pretty the icons are (though they are). I switched from KDE because it Just Works and that means that you Save Time. Fooling around with, say, USB drivers was nice enough when I was young, but now if my digital camera Just Works when I plug it in or I can do backups with one click on a burn folder, that is more time I can spend with my children. Try arguing with that.
I would strongly suggest that anybody who is currently involved with development of the Linux desktop take three weeks off to use OS X. There are things there that have become a must-have -- don't even talk to me about a desktop system that doesn't have a search function like Spotlight, for example, and no, "we're working on it" doesn't count. I have to be able to drag-and-drop anything to everywhere. Every single application needs the same keyboard shortcuts, because I don't want to have to remember every developer's personal whim anymore. I don't want to have to "mount" anything. The list is long and a lot of things are only small details, but they add up to the nice, big whole that is OS X. This is why people are switching, not because of pretty colors and cool graphics.
This is not to say that things are hopeless for Linux, especially in the long run. Apple is run by a pig-headed monomaniac who happens to have made a series of right choices for a while now. Sooner or later, however, Steve Jobs is going to screw up again, simply because he is human, but also because he is a control freak. There are lots of things about Apple that are a pain in the ass because of his ideology: Two-button mouse support is patchy at best -- for example, it is non-existant with iMovie -- and three-button mice are not supported at all. There are no virtual screens because Jobs thinks the poor stupid user would be confused. None of Apple's DVD drives seem to support DVD RAM, the best invention on the backup front since cuneiform writing. This, too, is a long list. When Jobs is good, he is very, very good, probably the best in the industry, but when he is bad, he is very, very bad, and things go downhill fast. It's going to happen again sometime.
So on the long run, Linux has the stronger development model. It will get there, and it will kick ass when it does. But that will take time. On the short run, Apple has a bunch of very good people willing to innovate and push the envelope hard with multi-million dollar backing. They cross their t's and dot their i's and spend time designing the interface so that it feels easy and natural. And it shows all over the place.
Those of us who just want to get the job done so they can get on with their real life with their real jobs and loving family and crazy kids and other fun hobbies will come back to the fold when Linux on the desktop Just Works. "Daddy will come out as soon as the device driver has recompiled" is just not an option for some of us.
I'd like to ad a link to back up my earlier claim here that it won't fly if it doesn't look like Microsoft Office. Check out these two quotes from
Apple Insider:
Still, Mac users aren't adopting iWork in large numbers; partly because it lacks components like a spreadsheet application, but more so because Microsoft Office has established itself as an industry standard for home and office productivity.
And remember, Pages doesn't look jack like MS Word. Which is what people want:
According to sources close to Apple's retail operations, the average Apple store only sells a handful of iWork copies each week, if that. Meanwhile, contacts at larger mail-order catalogs have used words such as "awful" and "horrible" to describe sales of the software suite. Instead, sources say the first question to roll off the tongue of most prospective Mac buyers is: "Will Microsoft Office run on my new Mac?"
Which was my point, thank you very much. The best chance for Apple to get out of the MS Office trap is OpenOffice (NeoOffice/J on the Mac). In fact, they way I see it, it is the only chance they have. Instead of fooling around with clever new ways to do things that people don't want, how about putting some oomph behind NeoOffice?
These programs are all very nice, but they won't help Apple unless they are a virtual clone of Microsoft Office. Anybody who has tried to get an MS Office user to switch to OpenOffice (or rather the very nice NeoOffice/J for the Mac) can testify that people tend to freak just because a button or a submenu is not in the "right" place. And here they want to change the whole way people write texts?
Nope. No way. You, me, and my mother might be able to adapt, but your PHB is going to doubt his army of corporate drones can be that flexible. If it doesn't look like MS Office and feel like MS Office, he isn't going to touch it.
What I hope Apple is doing, because otherwise they will never get away from Microsoft, is putting out a line of "sufficient" programs to hold the line without pissing off Gates while skunkworking OpenOffice like mad somewhere in, say, Far East Siberia. Creating and maintaining a full office suite is an enormous untertaking comparable to, say, writing and maintaining and operating system or a webbrowser. Apple would be better off hitching themselves to on open source project like they did with BSD/Darwin for OS X or KHTML for Safari than trying to go it alone.
Forget Dells, the laptop hardware I would have loved to run OS X on would have been an IBM ThinkPad -- you can use even the normal R-series to bash rocks, and the X41 is beyond cool. Combine this with a real operating system, and it would seriously kick rear.
Unfortunately, there is no way I am going to buy a ThinkPad even with OS X anytime soon: I'm still not convinced that the people at Lenovo (or whatever their name is) will keep the quality up.
You need to go online once for a couple of minutes to activate the game.
I stand corrected. The error had two sources: First, a friend of mine who told me so, and second, a misreading of the bold from the review at Ars Technica:
If Steam is having a bad day and you can't download a necessary update, you may not be able to play the game that's already installed in your computer.
...but I still won't be buying a game that depends on being online 24/7 to reach these people's servers. Computer games should come in a box and work out of a box, and everything else (with the obvious exception of multi-user online role games) is marketing crap that destroys the long-term value of the product.
Pity. The first episode of Half-Life rocked big time.
Maybe I'm straight and square and boring, but frankly, I like my surgeons with lots and lots of formal training. Oh, and the people who design airplanes, I feel better if they actually had some quality controlled education. Did I mention nuclear scientists?
Don't you just love these billionaires from the dawn of the computer age, pretending that these kind of revolutions come along all the time?
Don't they seem to notice that since the Gates & Jobs show, we haven't seen another generation get rich this way? Yes, they were the right people it the right places at the right time, and, yes, they worked their buts off. But they're wrong to assume that those chances are there for everybody, always. The dawn of the personal computer age was a once-in-a-century thing, not a regular phenomenon that every year's high-school drop-outs can hope to hitch on to.
Talk about a disservice to parents everywhere. Did anybody bother to check if his kids are going to college?
I have absolutely no idea how this ties in with cp, though - why does cp need to change?
Probably because I'm not thinking clearly. What the search part needs to know is when something is moved and where it is moved to, but you are right to say that this can be done on a kernel layer better than in the user space program. Sorry for the confusion.
There is no way that anybody can "kill" Linux on the desktop, because Linux can't go out of business like Microsoft and Apple can. What can happen, of course, is that KDE and Gnome can fall behind so far that nobody uses them.
Having said that: If Linux doesn't come up with a live search technology like Spotlight in OS X, the personal desktop aspect of it is dead in the water. "Tiger" comes with a lot of hype (I am completely underwhelmed by Automator, for example) but Spotlight is awesome. Together with the Neolight plugin for the OpenOffice format (thanks for the quick work, guys!), live search has changed the way I use my computer in a very basic way. Want to listen to a certain song? Just type in the name. Need somebody's telephone number? Just type in the name. It takes a while to get used to, but after a while it becomes the interface of choice. For those of us who don't like mice (regardless of how many buttons they have), it is bliss.
So, there is simply no way I will be using an operating system for my desktop anymore that doesn't have this function.
Unfortunately, and this is where I wonder if Linux can cut it, because Spotlight seems to involve changing the code of very basic Unix commands like cp to work. How is Linux going to make that happen? The patch would seem to apply not only to the kernel, but also to user space programs that are outside of the kernel developer's control. And remember, Spotlight also works from the command line, too. This is a biggie.
I'm really wondering how this is going to get into Linux.
The simple & dumb way as OS X handles packages is just that: it can not handle dependencies, or anything, it just puts some files on your computer.
As someone who has switched his desktop machine from first SuSE Linux, then to Gentoo Linux and then on to OS X over the last couple of years, let me say this: Screw dependencies, screw dynamic linking, just install the damn files. Hard disk space is cheap, and for me as a user, it's hard to think of something that is easier than just dragging an icon from the source medium to my Applications folder. My time is more valuable than any other resource involved here.
Maybe it isn't elegant under the hood, maybe it is a waste of resources. But it works, and it's simple to use. Sometimes, brute force is better.
People -- well, sane people -- never bought a Mac because of the processor. They buy the complete package, a system that "Just Works", is easy to use, beautifully designed, and doesn't support maleware. The Mac is a computer that you can give your parents without lying awake at night, wondering if somebody has just stolen their credit card info because you haven't updated the anti-virus software for a week. It's the only computer out there at the moment that is suitable for normal people who don't want to fool around for hours setting it up or do maintance every blood week.
The only thing that has changed is that Apple has dropped another one of their outlandish pieces of hardware. Getting rid of all the proprietary and elite crap has been one of the best things that Jobs has done; I'm still pissed at Apple because they put their stupid "ADC" connector on my iBook instead of a standard mini-DVI port but won't provide a ADC-DVI converter. The way I see it, switching to Intel is just another step in this process. I'm hoping they'll go Opteron with the PowerMacs.
The question should be: What is this going to do to Linux development? Apple is the Unix that is on a roll at the moment. Not only the graphics, but also the stuff they have done under the hood (look at launchd) is way beyond what Linux has to offer for the desktop. How to you keep people who want Unix in the fold? As somebody else pointed out here, if you miss the command line, you just open the Terminal. Hell, it runs NetHack. What more could you wish for?
Anyway, I think this would be a very foolish time to switch. If anything, Windows developers might spend they next one or two (snicker) years until "Longhorn" comes out taking a look at what Apple has to offer, now that we know that learning.Net was a waste of time...
Or it might be: Look, my box has the exact same hardware, costs half as much, and has games and applications written for its OS. Why would I get a Mac?
Well, this is where it gets tricky. It won't be half as much anymore -- look at price on the Mac Mini, which proves that Steve Jobs is out for blood again. It won't have the same hardware -- Firewire 800, USB 2.0, DVI, etc, not any of that old stuff like serial ports, and of course no BIOS. The applications -- OS X is shipped with most applications you need, including video, music, etc, so you don't have to buy them; the big (and painful) exception of course is an office suite.
The problem, of course, is games. However, if Microsoft really gets the Xbox where it wants it, that won't be much of a problem: Buy a console. And let's face it, most of us adults don't get too much time to play games anyway, unless we're talking about legos with our children. I think Apple can go a long way before that becomes the limiting factor.
You right that this is tough for Apple. However, Intel has pretty deep pockets, good people and a strong motivation not to screw this up. If they can pull this off, Microsoft is going to be losing marking share again.
I don't think we'll have to wait until June 2006 for the first machines. In fact, I'll go out on a limb here (not that anyone here gives a damn, of course) and say: Mac Mini with Intel CPU around Christmas.
My reasoning: Apple and Intel have to prove that this will work and they have to do it fast. Apple doesn't want people in late 2005 going, well, it's only six months, we know it's going to be the low end, I won't buy my Mac Mini or iBook then...you need to surprise people just the way Scotty did it on the Enterprise: Give them a longer time frame and then astound them when you beat it. Intel has a thing or two to prove, and they already built that little Mac Mini clone thingy, which I bet was a proof of concept for something that had to do with Apple. You also want to have PowerPCs and Pentiums side by side in the Apple Stores as soon as possible so people get used to the idea -- just like Linux, where it is just assumed that it will sort of run on anything.
The main problem are going to be the portables. The G4 is at the end of its rope, and the iBooks and PowerBooks are way behind the pack, especially the 12" PowerBook. But you can't upgrade the iBook to a Pentium without pissing off the PowerBook people, and if they don't upgrade the PowerBooks soon (like, tomorrow), I don't think anyone is going to buy them for a very long time. That is going to be a critical step for Apple.
Oh well. I guess the reason why Steve Jobs is a billionaire and I'm not is because he has this stuff figured out...
Indeed, this will be a huge blow to Apple marketing.
I don't think so. I think they'll be pointing at IBM and saying, yeah, it was a really good platform up till now, but those guys in the suits dropped the ball on us, are too stupid to get the G5 right (a well-publicized problem), and Intel took the lead with the new Pentium portables. Fuck this -- we have always gone with the best chip out there, starting with the 6502, and we always will. Heck, with all of the Intel ads out there, your average consumer probably saw the PowerPC as more of a problem. Like, why aren't these guys using "the Centrino" like everybody else?
In fact, after a bit of quick footwork, this will be a beautiful position for Apple to be in. Look, they can say, this is what you can do with a Pentium -- if you have OS X. Look, kids, same hardware has your Windows box, but not one single virus, no crashes, no maleware...
Having Intel and Apple dovetail their marketing efforts -- scary, actually. But not bad.
And one more thought: Once the dust has settled, the customer is going to be looking at a Pentium running Windows and a Pentium running OS X -- no way of hiding behind different hardware anymore. For your average computer buyer, it will be a direct comparison, and Windows will get slaughtered. The real "Tiger" kicks "Longhorn's" ass even when it is still vaporware, and even if Microsoft can deliver by 2006 (which looks iffy), they will be facing the "Leopard", a whole new cat. I just hope Apple can keep the excitement up till then.
Yes, this a bold move, but if Apple can pull it off, Microsoft might actually have to work for their money for once on the desktop.
Frankly, after getting over the intial shock, I think this is a good thing. Maybe it is my Linux background, but com'on, as a friend once said, hardware is just some stuff that the kernel runs on. The Linux people don't really give that much of a fsck what their OS runs on, and if the people behind Darwin and OS X are even half as good as they claim, they shouldn't have to care, either. PowerPC, Intel, AMD, ARM, Sparc, who cares. It's the OS that counts.
I realize that there is a class of Talibanesque fanatics who actually believe the "Cut of Mac" crap and who are going to feel this is a switch to the Dark Side, and who are going to rant and rave for the next two years. As one of the people who is new to the platform, let me tell you that you are part of the problem, not part of the solution; the only good thing about you is that you make Linux fans look tame. If you are really on Apple's side as you claim to be: There are times when your platform needs your support, and this is one of them. Lead, follow or get of our way when we do this.
And, to be blunt about it, this is the bottom line: If this gets me a PowerBook that runs longer, cooler, and faster for less money, it is good. This also gives me a chance to have AMDs in a future PowerMac -- and that would be beyond cool. The Opteron runs circles around the G5, especially with IBM not doing their job.
Good move, Steve. Glad to see you (once again) have the guts to do the right thing. Roll them out, I'll be in line with my money waiting.
Slashdot Mirror
Cute. Hope that works out for you. Guess what system I won't be buying.
What exactly is the problem with all of these supposedly highly-intelligent but obviously completely brain-dead (not to say stupid) CEOs? If you put annoying copy protection stuff on your media or try to force people to do any other sort of crap like that, they will simply take their money to the black market. This is the lesson of online music. You will not have total control over the media, because the people with the money will not accept that. End of story.
The only CEO on the planet who seems to understand this is Steve Jobs. Yes, iTunes has various limits, but they are so wide that 95 per cent of the people don't give a damn because they never encounter them: If I want to share music with my kid sister, I can. So what if I can't share it with 200,000 other people on the Internet? This, not any clever usability stuff, is why iTunes has 80 per cent of the market. Just why is this so hard to understand? Is it something that happens to your perception of reality once you earn more than a million dollars a year?
Oh sorry, I meant a million dollars a month, of course. Though Gates at least gives billions to charity.
Anyway, this looks like another great idea from the people who brought you the talking paperclip and tried to force-feed us push technology. No wonder Apple is selling computers as fast as they can build them.
- an article about RPG should have so many abbreviations that it has everybody who doesn't following this stuff regularly reading the Slashdot blurb goes something like "WTF?"
The aim of the atom bombs was to end World War II quickly and with relatively little bloodshed. In both points, it was a fantastic success. The decision to use the bombs was a tough one to make, but if we hadn't, and if the war had dragged on, the same people who are complaining about the bombs now would be asking us why on earth we didn't use them to stop the carnage early when we had the chance. Would Einstein really have felt better if he had watched the body bags of further 250.000 American soldiers come back? Watched two more years of B29 unleashing hell over every Japanese city, not just two?
No. Today, the very same people would be claiming that Japan would have surrendured immediately after the first bomb, and that we were criminal not to try to stop the dying quickly, and we would be wondering if doubling or even tripling our war dead couldn't have been avoided by one act of moral courage.
The moral, in fact, is a different one: If you start a war of aggression, you will reap what you sow. If you go ahead with it, don't come crying that people fight back any way they can.
Little tip: Don't wait for it to finish building that list, move down to what you want immediately. Searching before you finish is a feature, not a bug, and it is brilliant. If they change it because of your post I'm going to have to find you and dunk you in onion juice or something.
Spotlight works so beautifully here that I have been telling people it is the single must-have feature with "Tiger" -- it is something that for the first time in years has actually changed the way I use the computer. For example, I don't usually even bother with the Applications folder anymore, I just hit Spotlight and type the name of the program. Works the same with any song I want to hear.
The Dashboard I could do without. Spotlight is a must-have, and I won't be using a operating system (or rather, desktop) again that doesn't have live searching.
Yeah, except that e-books are only used by a small and to my mind somewhat confused micro-minority, and for good reason -- you are not going to sell 500 trillion of them, or whatever the number is they are aiming for this Harry Potter (full disclosure: I have the whole series, too). E-books are a pain to read in the sun, are a risk to read in the bathtub, can't be dog-eared (my book, my rules), won't survive having your backpack thrown in your locker, writing a note on the second page when you give them to your kid sister is sort of hard, and you can't include them in your Delicious Library, just to name a few real-life problems. In other words: E-books are good for the publishing company, but not for the customer.
I would like to predict they are going to die like web push technology. But unfortunately, capitalism in the 21th Century is not about what the customer wants, it is about what big multinationals can get away with. When you buy an e-book, you are helping them screw you. If you want a tech toy to look cool, get a frigging iPod, that's what they are there for. But please don't support the attempt to kill something that has served the human mind for more than 2000 years.
You don't have kids, do you? iMovie is absolutely brilliant when it is time to send the grandparents a quick DVD -- attach the camera via Firewire, press the play button, and in less than an hour, you have something that Grandma and Grandpa just love. For free. Profession features would just be in the way at this level.
The original poster forgot to mention iChat AV, the replacement for the Microsoft Messenger and AIM. It is included with the OS, and is tightly integrated: When you start writing a mail in Mail, and your contact is online, it will place a little colored button next to his name. I have seen MSN and AIM, and am amazed that Windows users put up with ads on both -- no such thing with iChat AV. People who have the iSight camera says it kicks ass (at that price, it certainly should).
You forgot iDVD, by the way.
Just looking at the individual programs ignores how they cooperate: iMovie, for example, access iTunes and iPhoto and sends stuff to iDVD. Microsoft can't do that because a) they don't have anything comparable to the iLife suite included and b) they have been convicted for abusing their monopoly and are not allowed to combine stuff.
Their bad. Are you going to suffer for their mistake?
Somebody who knows more about history will have to give it a stab at the "why". My 0.02 drachmas: Leisure, not work, was considered the most valuable time (think of all those MBAs turning themselves into corporate droids working twelve hours a day, their brains wasted while they figure out a better marketing strategy for toothpaste), and intellectual pursuits were valued higher than passive consumption. You could also say "less distractions" -- would Plato have ever formulated his stuff if he could have watched Baywatch reruns instead?
I have said this before and I will keep saying it: Apple's greatest problem at the moment is the lack of an affordable full office suite ($400 is not affordable -- note you can almost buy a Mac Mini for that). People won't accept something as radically different as Pages. NeoOffice/J is the best hope they have. I can understand that Apple doesn't want to come out publicly in support of the project, because Microsoft could cut them off at the knees, and Apple is dependent on MS Office. But I hope to hell that Jobs has some people squirreled away in Infinity Drive somewhere working on this.
Office suites are big, complicated pieces of software, sort of like operating systems and browsers. Apple should do what they did with OS X (BSD/Darwin) and Safarai (Konqueror, KHTML) and use NeoOffice/J as the basis for their own suite. This Pages stuff can only be a stop-gap measure.
I would strongly suggest that anybody who is currently involved with development of the Linux desktop take three weeks off to use OS X. There are things there that have become a must-have -- don't even talk to me about a desktop system that doesn't have a search function like Spotlight, for example, and no, "we're working on it" doesn't count. I have to be able to drag-and-drop anything to everywhere. Every single application needs the same keyboard shortcuts, because I don't want to have to remember every developer's personal whim anymore. I don't want to have to "mount" anything. The list is long and a lot of things are only small details, but they add up to the nice, big whole that is OS X. This is why people are switching, not because of pretty colors and cool graphics.
This is not to say that things are hopeless for Linux, especially in the long run. Apple is run by a pig-headed monomaniac who happens to have made a series of right choices for a while now. Sooner or later, however, Steve Jobs is going to screw up again, simply because he is human, but also because he is a control freak. There are lots of things about Apple that are a pain in the ass because of his ideology: Two-button mouse support is patchy at best -- for example, it is non-existant with iMovie -- and three-button mice are not supported at all. There are no virtual screens because Jobs thinks the poor stupid user would be confused. None of Apple's DVD drives seem to support DVD RAM, the best invention on the backup front since cuneiform writing. This, too, is a long list. When Jobs is good, he is very, very good, probably the best in the industry, but when he is bad, he is very, very bad, and things go downhill fast. It's going to happen again sometime.
So on the long run, Linux has the stronger development model. It will get there, and it will kick ass when it does. But that will take time. On the short run, Apple has a bunch of very good people willing to innovate and push the envelope hard with multi-million dollar backing. They cross their t's and dot their i's and spend time designing the interface so that it feels easy and natural. And it shows all over the place.
Those of us who just want to get the job done so they can get on with their real life with their real jobs and loving family and crazy kids and other fun hobbies will come back to the fold when Linux on the desktop Just Works. "Daddy will come out as soon as the device driver has recompiled" is just not an option for some of us.
Still, Mac users aren't adopting iWork in large numbers; partly because it lacks components like a spreadsheet application, but more so because Microsoft Office has established itself as an industry standard for home and office productivity.
And remember, Pages doesn't look jack like MS Word. Which is what people want:
According to sources close to Apple's retail operations, the average Apple store only sells a handful of iWork copies each week, if that. Meanwhile, contacts at larger mail-order catalogs have used words such as "awful" and "horrible" to describe sales of the software suite. Instead, sources say the first question to roll off the tongue of most prospective Mac buyers is: "Will Microsoft Office run on my new Mac?"
Which was my point, thank you very much. The best chance for Apple to get out of the MS Office trap is OpenOffice (NeoOffice/J on the Mac). In fact, they way I see it, it is the only chance they have. Instead of fooling around with clever new ways to do things that people don't want, how about putting some oomph behind NeoOffice?
Nope. No way. You, me, and my mother might be able to adapt, but your PHB is going to doubt his army of corporate drones can be that flexible. If it doesn't look like MS Office and feel like MS Office, he isn't going to touch it.
What I hope Apple is doing, because otherwise they will never get away from Microsoft, is putting out a line of "sufficient" programs to hold the line without pissing off Gates while skunkworking OpenOffice like mad somewhere in, say, Far East Siberia. Creating and maintaining a full office suite is an enormous untertaking comparable to, say, writing and maintaining and operating system or a webbrowser. Apple would be better off hitching themselves to on open source project like they did with BSD/Darwin for OS X or KHTML for Safari than trying to go it alone.
Unfortunately, there is no way I am going to buy a ThinkPad even with OS X anytime soon: I'm still not convinced that the people at Lenovo (or whatever their name is) will keep the quality up.
So, PowerBooks it stays...
I stand corrected. The error had two sources: First, a friend of mine who told me so, and second, a misreading of the bold from the review at Ars Technica:
If Steam is having a bad day and you can't download a necessary update, you may not be able to play the game that's already installed in your computer.
My bold, my bad. Thanks for the correction.
Pity. The first episode of Half-Life rocked big time.
Maybe I'm straight and square and boring, but frankly, I like my surgeons with lots and lots of formal training. Oh, and the people who design airplanes, I feel better if they actually had some quality controlled education. Did I mention nuclear scientists?
Don't you just love these billionaires from the dawn of the computer age, pretending that these kind of revolutions come along all the time? Don't they seem to notice that since the Gates & Jobs show, we haven't seen another generation get rich this way? Yes, they were the right people it the right places at the right time, and, yes, they worked their buts off. But they're wrong to assume that those chances are there for everybody, always. The dawn of the personal computer age was a once-in-a-century thing, not a regular phenomenon that every year's high-school drop-outs can hope to hitch on to.
Talk about a disservice to parents everywhere. Did anybody bother to check if his kids are going to college?
Probably because I'm not thinking clearly. What the search part needs to know is when something is moved and where it is moved to, but you are right to say that this can be done on a kernel layer better than in the user space program. Sorry for the confusion.
Having said that: If Linux doesn't come up with a live search technology like Spotlight in OS X, the personal desktop aspect of it is dead in the water. "Tiger" comes with a lot of hype (I am completely underwhelmed by Automator, for example) but Spotlight is awesome. Together with the Neolight plugin for the OpenOffice format (thanks for the quick work, guys!), live search has changed the way I use my computer in a very basic way. Want to listen to a certain song? Just type in the name. Need somebody's telephone number? Just type in the name. It takes a while to get used to, but after a while it becomes the interface of choice. For those of us who don't like mice (regardless of how many buttons they have), it is bliss.
So, there is simply no way I will be using an operating system for my desktop anymore that doesn't have this function. Unfortunately, and this is where I wonder if Linux can cut it, because Spotlight seems to involve changing the code of very basic Unix commands like cp to work. How is Linux going to make that happen? The patch would seem to apply not only to the kernel, but also to user space programs that are outside of the kernel developer's control. And remember, Spotlight also works from the command line, too. This is a biggie.
I'm really wondering how this is going to get into Linux.
As someone who has switched his desktop machine from first SuSE Linux, then to Gentoo Linux and then on to OS X over the last couple of years, let me say this: Screw dependencies, screw dynamic linking, just install the damn files. Hard disk space is cheap, and for me as a user, it's hard to think of something that is easier than just dragging an icon from the source medium to my Applications folder. My time is more valuable than any other resource involved here.
Maybe it isn't elegant under the hood, maybe it is a waste of resources. But it works, and it's simple to use. Sometimes, brute force is better.
The only thing that has changed is that Apple has dropped another one of their outlandish pieces of hardware. Getting rid of all the proprietary and elite crap has been one of the best things that Jobs has done; I'm still pissed at Apple because they put their stupid "ADC" connector on my iBook instead of a standard mini-DVI port but won't provide a ADC-DVI converter. The way I see it, switching to Intel is just another step in this process. I'm hoping they'll go Opteron with the PowerMacs.
The question should be: What is this going to do to Linux development? Apple is the Unix that is on a roll at the moment. Not only the graphics, but also the stuff they have done under the hood (look at launchd) is way beyond what Linux has to offer for the desktop. How to you keep people who want Unix in the fold? As somebody else pointed out here, if you miss the command line, you just open the Terminal. Hell, it runs NetHack. What more could you wish for?
Anyway, I think this would be a very foolish time to switch. If anything, Windows developers might spend they next one or two (snicker) years until "Longhorn" comes out taking a look at what Apple has to offer, now that we know that learning .Net was a waste of time...
Well, this is where it gets tricky. It won't be half as much anymore -- look at price on the Mac Mini, which proves that Steve Jobs is out for blood again. It won't have the same hardware -- Firewire 800, USB 2.0, DVI, etc, not any of that old stuff like serial ports, and of course no BIOS. The applications -- OS X is shipped with most applications you need, including video, music, etc, so you don't have to buy them; the big (and painful) exception of course is an office suite.
The problem, of course, is games. However, if Microsoft really gets the Xbox where it wants it, that won't be much of a problem: Buy a console. And let's face it, most of us adults don't get too much time to play games anyway, unless we're talking about legos with our children. I think Apple can go a long way before that becomes the limiting factor.
You right that this is tough for Apple. However, Intel has pretty deep pockets, good people and a strong motivation not to screw this up. If they can pull this off, Microsoft is going to be losing marking share again.
My reasoning: Apple and Intel have to prove that this will work and they have to do it fast. Apple doesn't want people in late 2005 going, well, it's only six months, we know it's going to be the low end, I won't buy my Mac Mini or iBook then...you need to surprise people just the way Scotty did it on the Enterprise: Give them a longer time frame and then astound them when you beat it. Intel has a thing or two to prove, and they already built that little Mac Mini clone thingy, which I bet was a proof of concept for something that had to do with Apple. You also want to have PowerPCs and Pentiums side by side in the Apple Stores as soon as possible so people get used to the idea -- just like Linux, where it is just assumed that it will sort of run on anything.
The main problem are going to be the portables. The G4 is at the end of its rope, and the iBooks and PowerBooks are way behind the pack, especially the 12" PowerBook. But you can't upgrade the iBook to a Pentium without pissing off the PowerBook people, and if they don't upgrade the PowerBooks soon (like, tomorrow), I don't think anyone is going to buy them for a very long time. That is going to be a critical step for Apple.
Oh well. I guess the reason why Steve Jobs is a billionaire and I'm not is because he has this stuff figured out...
I don't think so. I think they'll be pointing at IBM and saying, yeah, it was a really good platform up till now, but those guys in the suits dropped the ball on us, are too stupid to get the G5 right (a well-publicized problem), and Intel took the lead with the new Pentium portables. Fuck this -- we have always gone with the best chip out there, starting with the 6502, and we always will. Heck, with all of the Intel ads out there, your average consumer probably saw the PowerPC as more of a problem. Like, why aren't these guys using "the Centrino" like everybody else?
In fact, after a bit of quick footwork, this will be a beautiful position for Apple to be in. Look, they can say, this is what you can do with a Pentium -- if you have OS X. Look, kids, same hardware has your Windows box, but not one single virus, no crashes, no maleware...
Having Intel and Apple dovetail their marketing efforts -- scary, actually. But not bad.
Yes, this a bold move, but if Apple can pull it off, Microsoft might actually have to work for their money for once on the desktop.
I realize that there is a class of Talibanesque fanatics who actually believe the "Cut of Mac" crap and who are going to feel this is a switch to the Dark Side, and who are going to rant and rave for the next two years. As one of the people who is new to the platform, let me tell you that you are part of the problem, not part of the solution; the only good thing about you is that you make Linux fans look tame. If you are really on Apple's side as you claim to be: There are times when your platform needs your support, and this is one of them. Lead, follow or get of our way when we do this.
And, to be blunt about it, this is the bottom line: If this gets me a PowerBook that runs longer, cooler, and faster for less money, it is good. This also gives me a chance to have AMDs in a future PowerMac -- and that would be beyond cool. The Opteron runs circles around the G5, especially with IBM not doing their job.
Good move, Steve. Glad to see you (once again) have the guts to do the right thing. Roll them out, I'll be in line with my money waiting.
...did he say anything about a two-button mouse?