A mini also doesn't have 802.11n, so streaming/copying gigabytes of video to it wirelessly is going to be a pain in the rear. An AppleTV isn't a mini, and a mini isn't an AppleTV.
"... just go buy Linux... that this 'just good enough' subservience."
Having several flavors of Linux installed on my computer and running under a VM for testing, I'd say it's Linux that's king of the 'just good enough' camp, and barely, at that.
"Like anything good, it didn't take long for it to be discovered by others looking for a small and efficient scripting language."
Small and efficient? Sure, for now. But wait until the rest of the OSS community gets done with it. I give it two years tops before, like PHP, it's been "extended" with 1.67 million indecipherable functions.
The MBPs screen is 1680x1050, not exactly low-res, and has a 160GB internal drive (probably get a 300GB internal this summer), and the wireless net is 802.11n, not 11g. My DSL connection is 1.5mbs, and I can't saturate the net. The Canon scanner is USB 2.0 powered, as I said, so it has already has one cable, not two.
At any rate, much as I'd like to zap the bricks I'm against even more incompatible cables and ports. Perhaps if there was ONE powered USB standard and not three it would make more sense, but even still I doubt that you're going to power a 1TB SAN, or, say, an Epson 9600 printer off one.
Better, IMHO, to reduce power consumption so existing USB 2.0 systems work like the Canon scanner, and get more devices up to 11n standards so the only wire most devices need is a power cord, and they can be placed anywhere, and not tied down to a 6' radius around your desk.
"For the same reason there is are NO standards for external power bricks for laptops/printers/scanners/hubs etc. Because there is a high margin add-on market from manufacturers to replace proprietary power devices."
Not to be contrary... but don't you think manufacturers would prefer not to have to include those expensive (and heavy) bricks in the first place? Smaller packaging, lighter, which reduces shipping costs, fewer parts to order, manage, inventory, and build, less support, all translate into reduced costs and higher profits.
So, drop my costs on EVERY product I ship, or make a few bucks on the, say, 5% who need a replacement?
I know it goes against the grain of your obviously conspiracy-theory-addled brain, but which would you do in their place?
"Perhaps I would agree if it were only one cable, but it's not. It's often four or five cables. My desktop, for example, has two printers, a scanner, speakers and a monitor, plus the CPU, so that's six power cables and six data cables (including the network)"
So? Work smarter. I have a 17" Apple MacBook Pro on my desk and it has exactly ONE cable connected to it: the MagSafe power connector.
The mouse I use (when I use one) is Bluetooth. My printer and speakers are plugged into an AirPort Express across the room. A 500GB hard drive and the big HP color laser are plugged into an Extreme in the next room, which is where the DSL line comes in and besides, it's quieter that way. Backups to the HD, while slower, are scheduled and occur in the background, so who cares how fast they happen? The network is obviously wireless, and 802.11n due to the Extreme.
I have a USB-powered Canon scanner, and I plug it in when I need to scan something (rare).
The Apple AirPort Extreme and Express are great options, and work on Macs and PCs. I think Belkin also has a wireless USB hub for PCs.
In short, if you have too many wires, then get rid of them.
Actually, I'm with on of the comments to the article on your site: Increase power efficiency.
As an example, I have a USB-powered Canon color scanner (one of the things you mentioned that can't be powered as such) and it works great. We have global energy issues anyway, and I'd rather provide a constrained amount of power than a firehose through which every device can suck as much as they want.
Further, many of those devices connect to notebooks which have limited power budgets. More efficient use of power means more devices that can be used "on the road" with those systems. It also means we use less fossil fuel and produce less CO2. All-in-all, a win-win scenario.
"... the fact Firewire 800 was even released, and supported on non-Apple devices pretty much proves that."
A typo? I have a 17" MacBook Pro that supports FW800 just fine.
Recheck your numbers. That was $7 billion in ONE quarter. Your figures for HP and Dell were for the year. Apple did $19 billion in '06. (BTW, only about a quarter of HP's income comes from desktop/notebook computer sales.)
Further, in '06 both HP and Dell combined only had $8 billion in net income. Dell sold $57B, but only made $2.6B. Apple made $2 billion on that twenty, or a full one quarter of the net income of both. Like I said, Apple's sales come from the high margin end of the market, and everyone else is working a lot harder.
You can do that comparision, but it's actually unfair to HP and Dell. As RD likes to point out, Apple's revenues come from the higher end of the market, which is actually the most profitable segment. How many low-margin POS $500 PCs does Dell or HP need to sell to equal the same margins from an iMac? How many cheap notebooks to equal one 17" Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro?
From that perspective, I'd say it's HP and Dell who're working harder for their money, not Apple.
The market may be "mature", but it's also constantly evolving and churning. Industry numbers indicate that the average person gets a new phone every 18 months due to changing providers, lost phones, damaged phones, and so on.
Translated, that means that a full one-third of the people will be in the market for a new phone the first year Apple is selling the iPhone. That's a lot of opportunity.
And most "smart" phones are far from free. Either up front or contractually, they're expensive propositions.
While a 2% share of the entire world's PCs wouldn't suggest much of a reason to target Macs for software development, having 8% of the active US installed base certainly does.
Since more than half of all PCs are used in business, Apple owns an even larger portion of the consumer market's installed base, where Apple choses to compete. Pulling out business PCs, Apple's share of the consumer PC installed base is above 15%, which correlates with the software available for the Mac.
In education, Apple has a 23% share of all new sales in the US, and around 15% in Europe. (Walk around a college campus and tell me how many Macs you see. Now realize that Macs are probably going to be their platform of choice going forward.)
NPD just reported figures that report Apple took 10% of January's billion dollar laptop sales in the retail channels it monitors; recall that NPD only reports on big box retailers, not Apple Stores or any online sales.
In the final quarter of 2007, Apple earned $7.1 billion in revenue, compared to Microsoft's $12.5 billion in total revenue. Yes, that's right, Apple brought in more than half as much money as Microsoft, despite Windows owning 98% of the PC market.
Even stripping Apple of its iPod revenues, which PC pundits love to do, the company still earned $4.4 billion on its Macintosh business, over a third as much Microsoft brought in from its entire Windows, Office, and server operations combined. Apple's 2% of the PC market doesn't seem so small anymore.
Of course, Microsoft actually lost a lot of money on all of its consumer electronics products, so looking at profits, Apple earned $1 billion compared to Microsoft's total $3.4 billion in profit.
My point exactly. "He claims." No photos. No videos. No demos. You'd think, as many times as it's been "featured" on shows like 20/20 and FutureCar, that "somebody" would have gotten a demo.
Nope, it's probably as functional as the clay model concept car I saw at a local auto show...
"As long as that's a requirement, the plane will never be ready."
Never be ready? I've been following the thing with interest for years, and as far as I know no one's ever seen the thing fly at all. Computerized or not.
Organizations with mostly Windows desktops tend to migrate towards Windows-based solutions, since the people there are already familiar with at leat part of the puzzle, and the server environment doesn't have to be relearned from the ground up. IOW, you already know how to setup IP addresses, accounts, manage drives, install updates, etc..
So I can see how a shop that's primarily Mac-based would tend to want OS X-based servers as well, for a lot of the same reasons. Even if a systems consultant sets it up, a familiar environment is going to be easier for the existing staff to manage and maintain.
And as you point out, hiring the right consultant is key. Not only does he need to know the system he's consulting on, but you all need to hire the guy who can make the right choices for YOUR company. Too many only know one system, and as such suffer from the "if the only tool you have is a hammer..." mindset.
Notice how the Linux geeks here always start out the conversation with how they'd setup a Linux system to do X, Y, and Z? Regardless of whether or not it's the best choice for that company or individual? It's what they know.
Under what circumstances? What kind of guns? It could be that if you lined up both sides a couple of hundred yards apart in Civil War open-field style you'd be right.
But how about 100 guys with guns spread out through an entire city in groups of two or three or four? (A much more likely scenario, btw.)
Then again, take a hundred guys with say, a M16 with a standard thirty-round clip. First volley, best case, takes down 3,000, next, another 3,000, next, the same. But the remain 91,000 people are getting REAL close, and BOY do they look pissed.
In particular, outware facing software like mail clients and web browsers and feed-readers should automatically run with minimum rights (no matter what the user's rights) AND be sandboxed or virtualized such that malicious entities and hacks have no where to go.
In addition, any files saved across the boundary are automatically scanned and, if possible, validated. You may not know what some unknown virus signature looks like, but you sure as heck ought to know if an Excel document's format is valid or not. Develop a set of trusted validators for common formats (text, jpg, etc.) and require vendors to create them for their document types.
And layer the OS. Cycle-counters might not like it, but on a desktop system (heck, even on servers) putting rings around core kernel functions makes a lot of sense. Today's systems are fast enough that we can well afford to trade off a percentage point or two for security and stability. Be honest. If out of the box your new 4GHz quad-core computer was 1-2% slower, how would you even know? It would still seem light years faster that the 2Ghz single-core it was replacing.
As far as that goes, run the ENTIRE OS in a virtual layer. We seem to be heading there anyway...
Re:So is it ran by Harry Broderick?
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"I'm confused as to where the sci-fi was in the movie?"
How about what happens when an oppressive government secretly uses drugs in an attempt to make its citizens docile, peaceful and obedient?
The "syntax" for PHP isn't that hard either. But that's not where the problem is...
A mini also doesn't have 802.11n, so streaming/copying gigabytes of video to it wirelessly is going to be a pain in the rear. An AppleTV isn't a mini, and a mini isn't an AppleTV.
"... just go buy Linux... that this 'just good enough' subservience."
Having several flavors of Linux installed on my computer and running under a VM for testing, I'd say it's Linux that's king of the 'just good enough' camp, and barely, at that.
"Like anything good, it didn't take long for it to be discovered by others looking for a small and efficient scripting language."
Small and efficient? Sure, for now. But wait until the rest of the OSS community gets done with it. I give it two years tops before, like PHP, it's been "extended" with 1.67 million indecipherable functions.
Aren't the files roughly twice the size? Doesn't that mean twice the overhead in bandwidth, servers, etc..?
And no, DRM'ed files aren't cheaper to produce, as the DRM is applied by your local copy of iTunes as it's downloading the file.
That said, I guess I don't actually care which wire you get rid of.
How about removing both of them? Death of the cell phone charger.
Not perfect, but we're getting there.
Precisely. Note, for example, how the title of the article wasn't "Over 50% of all Americans believe in evolution."
The MBPs screen is 1680x1050, not exactly low-res, and has a 160GB internal drive (probably get a 300GB internal this summer), and the wireless net is 802.11n, not 11g. My DSL connection is 1.5mbs, and I can't saturate the net. The Canon scanner is USB 2.0 powered, as I said, so it has already has one cable, not two.
At any rate, much as I'd like to zap the bricks I'm against even more incompatible cables and ports. Perhaps if there was ONE powered USB standard and not three it would make more sense, but even still I doubt that you're going to power a 1TB SAN, or, say, an Epson 9600 printer off one.
Better, IMHO, to reduce power consumption so existing USB 2.0 systems work like the Canon scanner, and get more devices up to 11n standards so the only wire most devices need is a power cord, and they can be placed anywhere, and not tied down to a 6' radius around your desk.
"For the same reason there is are NO standards for external power bricks for laptops/printers/scanners/hubs etc. Because there is a high margin add-on market from manufacturers to replace proprietary power devices."
Not to be contrary... but don't you think manufacturers would prefer not to have to include those expensive (and heavy) bricks in the first place? Smaller packaging, lighter, which reduces shipping costs, fewer parts to order, manage, inventory, and build, less support, all translate into reduced costs and higher profits.
So, drop my costs on EVERY product I ship, or make a few bucks on the, say, 5% who need a replacement?
I know it goes against the grain of your obviously conspiracy-theory-addled brain, but which would you do in their place?
"Perhaps I would agree if it were only one cable, but it's not. It's often four or five cables. My desktop, for example, has two printers, a scanner, speakers and a monitor, plus the CPU, so that's six power cables and six data cables (including the network)"
So? Work smarter. I have a 17" Apple MacBook Pro on my desk and it has exactly ONE cable connected to it: the MagSafe power connector.
The mouse I use (when I use one) is Bluetooth. My printer and speakers are plugged into an AirPort Express across the room. A 500GB hard drive and the big HP color laser are plugged into an Extreme in the next room, which is where the DSL line comes in and besides, it's quieter that way. Backups to the HD, while slower, are scheduled and occur in the background, so who cares how fast they happen? The network is obviously wireless, and 802.11n due to the Extreme.
I have a USB-powered Canon scanner, and I plug it in when I need to scan something (rare).
The Apple AirPort Extreme and Express are great options, and work on Macs and PCs. I think Belkin also has a wireless USB hub for PCs.
In short, if you have too many wires, then get rid of them.
Actually, I'm with on of the comments to the article on your site: Increase power efficiency.
As an example, I have a USB-powered Canon color scanner (one of the things you mentioned that can't be powered as such) and it works great. We have global energy issues anyway, and I'd rather provide a constrained amount of power than a firehose through which every device can suck as much as they want.
Further, many of those devices connect to notebooks which have limited power budgets. More efficient use of power means more devices that can be used "on the road" with those systems. It also means we use less fossil fuel and produce less CO2. All-in-all, a win-win scenario.
"... the fact Firewire 800 was even released, and supported on non-Apple devices pretty much proves that."
A typo? I have a 17" MacBook Pro that supports FW800 just fine.
And sell more AppleTVs to play them back with...
Recheck your numbers. That was $7 billion in ONE quarter. Your figures for HP and Dell were for the year. Apple did $19 billion in '06. (BTW, only about a quarter of HP's income comes from desktop/notebook computer sales.)
Further, in '06 both HP and Dell combined only had $8 billion in net income. Dell sold $57B, but only made $2.6B. Apple made $2 billion on that twenty, or a full one quarter of the net income of both. Like I said, Apple's sales come from the high margin end of the market, and everyone else is working a lot harder.
You can do that comparision, but it's actually unfair to HP and Dell. As RD likes to point out, Apple's revenues come from the higher end of the market, which is actually the most profitable segment. How many low-margin POS $500 PCs does Dell or HP need to sell to equal the same margins from an iMac? How many cheap notebooks to equal one 17" Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro?
From that perspective, I'd say it's HP and Dell who're working harder for their money, not Apple.
"Sure the iPhone isn't going to break any records out of the gate..."
How about the record for the number of people lined up waiting to get into their local Apple stores? (grin)
The market may be "mature", but it's also constantly evolving and churning. Industry numbers indicate that the average person gets a new phone every 18 months due to changing providers, lost phones, damaged phones, and so on.
Translated, that means that a full one-third of the people will be in the market for a new phone the first year Apple is selling the iPhone. That's a lot of opportunity.
And most "smart" phones are far from free. Either up front or contractually, they're expensive propositions.
Excerpts:
While a 2% share of the entire world's PCs wouldn't suggest much of a reason to target Macs for software development, having 8% of the active US installed base certainly does.
Since more than half of all PCs are used in business, Apple owns an even larger portion of the consumer market's installed base, where Apple choses to compete. Pulling out business PCs, Apple's share of the consumer PC installed base is above 15%, which correlates with the software available for the Mac.
In education, Apple has a 23% share of all new sales in the US, and around 15% in Europe. (Walk around a college campus and tell me how many Macs you see. Now realize that Macs are probably going to be their platform of choice going forward.)
NPD just reported figures that report Apple took 10% of January's billion dollar laptop sales in the retail channels it monitors; recall that NPD only reports on big box retailers, not Apple Stores or any online sales.
In the final quarter of 2007, Apple earned $7.1 billion in revenue, compared to Microsoft's $12.5 billion in total revenue. Yes, that's right, Apple brought in more than half as much money as Microsoft, despite Windows owning 98% of the PC market.
Even stripping Apple of its iPod revenues, which PC pundits love to do, the company still earned $4.4 billion on its Macintosh business, over a third as much Microsoft brought in from its entire Windows, Office, and server operations combined. Apple's 2% of the PC market doesn't seem so small anymore.
Of course, Microsoft actually lost a lot of money on all of its consumer electronics products, so looking at profits, Apple earned $1 billion compared to Microsoft's total $3.4 billion in profit.
Yeah, Apple's a non-payer alright...
My point exactly. "He claims." No photos. No videos. No demos. You'd think, as many times as it's been "featured" on shows like 20/20 and FutureCar, that "somebody" would have gotten a demo.
Nope, it's probably as functional as the clay model concept car I saw at a local auto show...
"As long as that's a requirement, the plane will never be ready."
Never be ready? I've been following the thing with interest for years, and as far as I know no one's ever seen the thing fly at all. Computerized or not.
To me the question is what kind of shop is it?
Organizations with mostly Windows desktops tend to migrate towards Windows-based solutions, since the people there are already familiar with at leat part of the puzzle, and the server environment doesn't have to be relearned from the ground up. IOW, you already know how to setup IP addresses, accounts, manage drives, install updates, etc..
So I can see how a shop that's primarily Mac-based would tend to want OS X-based servers as well, for a lot of the same reasons. Even if a systems consultant sets it up, a familiar environment is going to be easier for the existing staff to manage and maintain.
And as you point out, hiring the right consultant is key. Not only does he need to know the system he's consulting on, but you all need to hire the guy who can make the right choices for YOUR company. Too many only know one system, and as such suffer from the "if the only tool you have is a hammer..." mindset.
Notice how the Linux geeks here always start out the conversation with how they'd setup a Linux system to do X, Y, and Z? Regardless of whether or not it's the best choice for that company or individual? It's what they know.
Under what circumstances? What kind of guns? It could be that if you lined up both sides a couple of hundred yards apart in Civil War open-field style you'd be right.
But how about 100 guys with guns spread out through an entire city in groups of two or three or four? (A much more likely scenario, btw.)
Then again, take a hundred guys with say, a M16 with a standard thirty-round clip. First volley, best case, takes down 3,000, next, another 3,000, next, the same. But the remain 91,000 people are getting REAL close, and BOY do they look pissed.
On second thought, I'll take those odds...
You forgot #4. Develop smarter systems.
In particular, outware facing software like mail clients and web browsers and feed-readers should automatically run with minimum rights (no matter what the user's rights) AND be sandboxed or virtualized such that malicious entities and hacks have no where to go.
In addition, any files saved across the boundary are automatically scanned and, if possible, validated. You may not know what some unknown virus signature looks like, but you sure as heck ought to know if an Excel document's format is valid or not. Develop a set of trusted validators for common formats (text, jpg, etc.) and require vendors to create them for their document types.
And layer the OS. Cycle-counters might not like it, but on a desktop system (heck, even on servers) putting rings around core kernel functions makes a lot of sense. Today's systems are fast enough that we can well afford to trade off a percentage point or two for security and stability. Be honest. If out of the box your new 4GHz quad-core computer was 1-2% slower, how would you even know? It would still seem light years faster that the 2Ghz single-core it was replacing.
As far as that goes, run the ENTIRE OS in a virtual layer. We seem to be heading there anyway...
No, it's a Farmer's Market.
Is this the place where all of the Farmer's go to buy their parts?