It's only a paradox to those who don't understand it.
The best product usually wins. The question is what constitutes "best" and the best in your mind isn't always best in the market. The world doesn't always want glitz.
"1% of Apple marketshare is probably worth more than 5% of Microsoft/Dell marketshare."
Huh? Good thing Apple is going for the small part of the pie then. All the most sucessful company strive to earn the fewer customers than their competitors.;)
Yes, it's true that Apple will be a software company, hardware company or both. Thanks for the insight.
I know, but the article is presenting it as a compliment. As far as backstabbing your business partners, Steve Jobs has nothing on Bill Gates and I'm not even sure that he used a good example. I would suspect that HP simply realized that reselling the iPod wasn't helpful to their business.
"Oh, hardly. A major reason people buy PC's is because they are cheap"
Hmmm, an yet so many here argue that Apple's don't cost more. People buy PC's for many reasons and you will never be able to support that claim that cost is the "major" one. PC's run vastly more apps that are essential to many purchasers.
"I used to support and installation for my university, and every year they would buy a new batch of Dells. And every year, there would be a serious problem with one of the components - bad video cards, bad hard drives, bad DVD drives, and so on."
I don't believe you. Companies like Dell that ship massive volumes on low margins can't afford the high support costs associated with problems like that. It's possible that such problems occur but they must be addressed or Dell goes out of business.
"My aunt is on her third Presario, as the first two would overhead so fast the machine would shut itself off before XP would finish booting - never saw that one on the front page of Slashdot. This is what you get when you buy from OEM's that get their parts from lowest-bidder-of-the-week suppliers."
Prove that HP does business that way. I would wager that they are a higher grade customer for parts than Apple is.
"Wheras if you're paying more money for a "premium" product, you're going to be considerably more annoyed when something goes wrong."
Yes, and mac users are annoyed. They keep more silent about it because they fear excommunication and embarassment for paying more money for a system that's utterly no different than a PC.
"Like the Slashdot story on bulging Macbook battries, whereas it takes a PC battery exploding and starting on fire to even get noticed."
Boy, you are bitter. When Dell has a battery recall it's/. news, too. Are you suggesting that Apple deserves to have their bulging batteries explode before they are called out?
"But anecdotes aside, Apple routinely rates well to excellent on Consumer Report's quality surveys. Nobody wrings their hands over the Q.C. control about the PC OEM's on the bottom of the list."
Funny then how Dell does relatively well in those same surveys. Of course, Consumer Reports is about as non-definitive as it gets. Kind of like suveying/. readers and expecting objective results.
"He said that Microsoft was ripping off Spotlight with Windows Search in Vista, which in fact, had been developed and publicly discussed long before Spotlight ever saw the light. (To be clear, Apple borrowed that one from Microsoft, but implemented it much more quickly.)"
Your question is valid and I don't know if he can justify his second claim. It is clear, though, that Microsoft was planning search functionality before Apple publicly disclosed Spotlight.
"Spotlight/Windows search is a perfect example, if they were talking about it in Jan 2004, why aren't we using it now or why isn't it shaping up to be better than Spotlight?"
Because developing Windows is much different than developing OS X?
I don't know if Windows Search is or isn't "shaping up to be better than Spotlight" but I do know that Windows concerns are much different than OS X ones. The application base is much larger and more diverse, there is compatibility baggage and the user expectations are different. It's also clear that MS's developers and methods are not the same as Apple's for better or worse. To attribute any differences to "close to the chest" is silly. MS soliticited customer feedback for future plans and now you're slagging them for it? Perhaps you're just upset that doing so provided proof that Search wasn't a ripoff of Spotlight.
The fact is that developing features takes time and companies often develop similar ideas and technologies side by side. Claiming that these two companies rip one another off is frequently overdone and global search is a classic example. Neither company stole the idea from the other.
"If so, this is breaking news, as no other 64-bit OS out there allows that."
and I say again "So what?" Why is it important, "breaking news", that OS X allows that? It would be breaking news if it didn't.
I suppose the argument being made is that it's amazing that Leopard won't require all drivers to be rewritten? Why is that a surprise?
"To the developers who want or need to code 64-bit applications, it's a big deal indeed."
Are we talking drivers or applications? Application developers would expect the Apple tools to "deal with that" while driver developers will have to concern themselves with the details of the implementation. You seem to be mixing the two rather freely.
Users won't care if drivers are 64 bit or 32 bit. They will care that they work and that they're available. Application developers, meanwhile, aren't involved. "A big deal indeed"? I don't think so.
The original post was just searching for something new to crow about. Sorry, but it's nothing new or even surprising. Perhaps the problem is that I've actually written drivers for mixed environments before...
Supporting mixed models is not a new concept even if 64 bit itself hasn't been done. OS/2 did it, Win95 did it. Ultimately there is no reason for the end user to care.
funny how the article didn't read like a shill piece but seemed rather objective. Every fallacy known to man? Perhaps you should lay off the hyperbole.
"A MacBook Pro with a 64 bit CPU, a larger display and a proper GPU would justify the higher price and be more appealing to those doing graphic and/or video work."
You mean as opposed to a MacBook Pro with a larger display and a proper GPU? Yeah that 64-bit is really gonna make the difference, especially to the zero apps that support and benefit it. Just what graphics or video work will see the difference?
Face it, Merom is faster than Yonah. 64-bit is of unproven relevance.
"To start off with the X86 architecture really does suck. It is register starved and the instruction set is miserable. It is a pig but because Intel and AMD have such a huge potential market they have thrown enough time , talent, and money to make it a very fast and cheap pig."
Depends on your point of view. Whatever the instruction set, the proof is in the performance. x86's instruction set wasn't designed by the braindead, it was simply optimized to conserve memory. I wouldn't say it's a "cheap" pig either.
"When AMD created the Athlon 64 it fixed one of the X86s worst problems. AMD doubled the number of registers. Even if a program doesn't do 64 bit math or doesn't need more than four gigabytes of memory that will run 30% to 60% faster when compiled for 64 bit than 32 bit."
Not at ALL true. Where are your sources for this? Some applications benefit and others don't but 30% to 60% is grossly inaccurate. Some apps slow down due to the larger memory footprint.
"I agree, but the critisism shouldn't be greater than that heaped on the random PC peddler of choice."
and I agree with you, but I'm not sure that it isn't. My mac purchases have all been OS X.3 and above and I've been quite disappointed with my personal quality issues. It's hard to judge whether one company is unfairly singled out.
Dell machines are recently referred to as flamethrowers. A fair description? They are repeatedly criticized here for using substandard parts when that it unlikely. They are accused of never innovating when they are among the world's most copied and successful companies. Is Apple really more unfairly criticised than Dell? People like to attack success and Dell and Apple have each achieved a great deal.
But Phoenix was not the only one. There were many clones appearing that didn't use Phoenix.
Compaq and Phoenix made a big deal over their clean-room implementations but others did BIOS'es as well.
I would agree that Compaq did far more to develop the clone market than Phoenix. They defined it, they proved the concept and they offered a compelling machine right out of the gate. The first Compaq clone was more than just a cheap alternative, people desired it. It also produced one of Compaq's most powerful pioneering patents.
perhaps, but only after committing to the 8088. At the time, IBM had 3 year internal development cycles. The PC was a rogue project within the company but the development cycle of that project was longer than people might imagine. It was well known that IBM preferred the use of the 68K processor but considered it unavailable.
"Of course the main reason the 68000 became a dead end, is that it was not used in the PC and no development money went into it. The 68000 could have been re-designed the same way the x86 was, but there was no money to be made so no reason to do it."...and Moto was uncompetitive. The 68K family lived on in renamed form and was retargeted. Moto developed the 88K which was a market failure, then retired it when IBM gave them the PowerPC. Moto proceeded to fail with the PPC as well. Fact is that Moto bears some responsibility for the failures of their desktop processor lines.
They choice of the 8088 came from IBM's experience with the part from a previous project not for any other reason. They preferred to use the 68K and had Moto been able to commit to volumes IBM would hvae used them instead.
IBM DESIGNED the 80286 for Intel so it's not surprising that they used it. Intel at the time was developing the 960 as their followon architecture. The success of the PC caused Intel to retarget the 960 and develop the 386 instead.
Moto couldn't promise the volumes IBM demanded for the PC so they went with the 8088 which they had used already in another successful project. The 68K was a new processor and not yet released when IBM had to make their design decisions.
While that is true, Compaq foiled the MCA effort by developing a backward compatible technology (EISA), giving development and manufacturing rights to Intel, and announcing it as a coalition of 8 members when it was only Compaq that actually did it. The combination of marketing, open availability of parts, and support for ISA infrastructure was a compelling advantage for EISA.
At the time of the EISA announcement, there were imminent announcements of MCA clones and, because of that, Dell was conspicuously missing from the EISA coalition. Compaq could have been earlier in its recruiting efforts and gotten even broader support, and the lesson learned there influenced later architectural developments. PCI and VL-bus were developed in open forums and such industry-wide efforts were indicative of why the PC succeeded and the Mac (relatively) did not.
While I agree with all your points, if Phoenix hadn't cloned the BIOS someone else would have. In fact, the first "clone" (Compaq) did not use Phoenix and other, later, clones (Dell, etc) did not either. Furthermore, AMI offered a competing BIOS eventually. Vendors like Dell switched to Phoenix to obtain the marketing benefit much like they take the kickback for having the Windows and Intel stickers on their boxes.
Phoenix desired 100% penetration and was willing to give their product away to get it since they were nearly backrupt at one time. Dell used the Phoenix name because they were offered a buyout on the license, but they continued to adapt BIOS'es themselves for their important lines. Dell contracted Phoenix to do BIOSes for Dimension machines for a period of time and those systems were the worst products Dell offered.
I would agree that the existence of a cloned BIOS was an important matter but Phoenix was simply one of several that did it and I totally disagree that Phoenix was responsible for any marketshare differences in the platform. Phoenix was a player in the PC market but it is my opinion that the market would be little different today without them.
obviously the key was added for a reason. I simply dispute the "big pain to use" comment. I suspect there are a lot of users not especially dependent on the existance of that key. I don't use it.
For example, as a PC user I've fully integrated the right mouse button into how I use the machine, yet I don't have one on the mac. Would I call the mac a "big pain to use"? I criticise it's lack of an obviously beneficial control but I don't go that far. Macs are a big pain to use until you learn them just as PC's are. You don't need a Windows key to be productive....and don't bother educating me on multi-button mouse support. The talk is about notebooks and the MBP doesn't have a right mouse button.
"I think you are the first I ever heard say the compatibility in the PC/Windows environment was superior to the Mac world..."
It absolutely is. Compatibility is the beginning and the end when it comes to PC's. It's just hard because there is so much out there.
Apple on the other hand doesn't even play the compatibility game. What it is compatible with it does reasonably well. Apple is a closed, vertical platform and cannot be compared to PC's in that way.
"So the only way I could understand your post is that you mean Microsoft drivers are compatible with the system, the hardware and the service-pack they were written for. And of course they are MS-Office compatible;-) Lets call them self-compatible... no standards."
I'm not speaking of anything like that.
PC's are a large market serving many different types of users, yet they are first and foremost business machines. Customers of those systems demand and certify compatability. Apple systems aren't subjected to that kind of scrutiny.
Steve Jobs himself stated that he wasn't interested in that market. I wonder why?
Slashdot Mirror
It's only a paradox to those who don't understand it.
The best product usually wins. The question is what constitutes "best" and the best in your mind isn't always best in the market. The world doesn't always want glitz.
"the user created in setup is an admin just like in XP"
An admin account does need to be set up after all so you should expect that to continue. OS X does it too.
"1% of Apple marketshare is probably worth more than 5% of Microsoft/Dell marketshare."
;)
Huh? Good thing Apple is going for the small part of the pie then. All the most sucessful company strive to earn the fewer customers than their competitors.
Yes, it's true that Apple will be a software company, hardware company or both. Thanks for the insight.
I know, but the article is presenting it as a compliment. As far as backstabbing your business partners, Steve Jobs has nothing on Bill Gates and I'm not even sure that he used a good example. I would suspect that HP simply realized that reselling the iPod wasn't helpful to their business.
An ad where Steve Jobs is a snake and PC users are tempted by the devil? How is that different than any of their other ads? ;-)
How does flip4mac handle WMV10 files? DRM'ed WMV files?
At least it's a UB now. How long did that take?
Yes, both products can expand what the mac can play, but currently the mac can't play everything that windows can. MS intends for it to be that way.
What a lie. Sure, the quicktime wrapper is understood, now how about opening the codecs?
Quicktime is absolutely as proprietary as it's MS competition. When you can play any QT file on Linux then get back to us about how open Apple is.
"Oh, hardly. A major reason people buy PC's is because they are cheap"
/. news, too. Are you suggesting that Apple deserves to have their bulging batteries explode before they are called out?
/. readers and expecting objective results.
Hmmm, an yet so many here argue that Apple's don't cost more. People buy PC's for many reasons and you will never be able to support that claim that cost is the "major" one. PC's run vastly more apps that are essential to many purchasers.
"I used to support and installation for my university, and every year they would buy a new batch of Dells. And every year, there would be a serious problem with one of the components - bad video cards, bad hard drives, bad DVD drives, and so on."
I don't believe you. Companies like Dell that ship massive volumes on low margins can't afford the high support costs associated with problems like that. It's possible that such problems occur but they must be addressed or Dell goes out of business.
"My aunt is on her third Presario, as the first two would overhead so fast the machine would shut itself off before XP would finish booting - never saw that one on the front page of Slashdot. This is what you get when you buy from OEM's that get their parts from lowest-bidder-of-the-week suppliers."
Prove that HP does business that way. I would wager that they are a higher grade customer for parts than Apple is.
"Wheras if you're paying more money for a "premium" product, you're going to be considerably more annoyed when something goes wrong."
Yes, and mac users are annoyed. They keep more silent about it because they fear excommunication and embarassment for paying more money for a system that's utterly no different than a PC.
"Like the Slashdot story on bulging Macbook battries, whereas it takes a PC battery exploding and starting on fire to even get noticed."
Boy, you are bitter. When Dell has a battery recall it's
"But anecdotes aside, Apple routinely rates well to excellent on Consumer Report's quality surveys. Nobody wrings their hands over the Q.C. control about the PC OEM's on the bottom of the list."
Funny then how Dell does relatively well in those same surveys. Of course, Consumer Reports is about as non-definitive as it gets. Kind of like suveying
"Bam, proven"
The Emiril Lagasse of IT professionals. Figures.
"you'd think someone who actually owns an MBP would know better"
I guess not. I use the two finger drag all the time and like it but I never tap to click. I simply use the Ctrl key and mutter under my breath.
Since you can enter numbers on the keyboard I suppose the MBP has a "numeric keypad" as well?
This myth, as you call it, is a fact. No right mouse button, no scroll wheel, no numeric keypad. Live with it.
This is the relevant quote in the article:
"He said that Microsoft was ripping off Spotlight with Windows Search in Vista, which in fact, had been developed and publicly discussed long before Spotlight ever saw the light. (To be clear, Apple borrowed that one from Microsoft, but implemented it much more quickly.)"
Your question is valid and I don't know if he can justify his second claim. It is clear, though, that Microsoft was planning search functionality before Apple publicly disclosed Spotlight.
"Spotlight/Windows search is a perfect example, if they were talking about it in Jan 2004, why aren't we using it now or why isn't it shaping up to be better than Spotlight?"
Because developing Windows is much different than developing OS X?
I don't know if Windows Search is or isn't "shaping up to be better than Spotlight" but I do know that Windows concerns are much different than OS X ones. The application base is much larger and more diverse, there is compatibility baggage and the user expectations are different. It's also clear that MS's developers and methods are not the same as Apple's for better or worse. To attribute any differences to "close to the chest" is silly. MS soliticited customer feedback for future plans and now you're slagging them for it? Perhaps you're just upset that doing so provided proof that Search wasn't a ripoff of Spotlight.
The fact is that developing features takes time and companies often develop similar ideas and technologies side by side. Claiming that these two companies rip one another off is frequently overdone and global search is a classic example. Neither company stole the idea from the other.
"If so, this is breaking news, as no other 64-bit OS out there allows that."
and I say again "So what?" Why is it important, "breaking news", that OS X allows that? It would be breaking news if it didn't.
I suppose the argument being made is that it's amazing that Leopard won't require all drivers to be rewritten? Why is that a surprise?
"To the developers who want or need to code 64-bit applications, it's a big deal indeed."
Are we talking drivers or applications? Application developers would expect the Apple tools to "deal with that" while driver developers will have to concern themselves with the details of the implementation. You seem to be mixing the two rather freely.
Users won't care if drivers are 64 bit or 32 bit. They will care that they work and that they're available. Application developers, meanwhile, aren't involved. "A big deal indeed"? I don't think so.
The original post was just searching for something new to crow about. Sorry, but it's nothing new or even surprising. Perhaps the problem is that I've actually written drivers for mixed environments before...
If true, why is that important?
Supporting mixed models is not a new concept even if 64 bit itself hasn't been done. OS/2 did it, Win95 did it. Ultimately there is no reason for the end user to care.
funny how the article didn't read like a shill piece but seemed rather objective. Every fallacy known to man? Perhaps you should lay off the hyperbole.
1 12_gh1.html
Regarding windows search, it took me all of a few seconds to find a column dated January 2004 that discusses it. Didn't read it but maybe you should: http://www.searchengineguide.com/hotchkiss/2004/0
Who's the shill here?
"A MacBook Pro with a 64 bit CPU, a larger display and a proper GPU would justify the higher price and be more appealing to those doing graphic and/or video work."
You mean as opposed to a MacBook Pro with a larger display and a proper GPU? Yeah that 64-bit is really gonna make the difference, especially to the zero apps that support and benefit it. Just what graphics or video work will see the difference?
Face it, Merom is faster than Yonah. 64-bit is of unproven relevance.
"To start off with the X86 architecture really does suck. It is register starved and the instruction set is miserable. It is a pig but because Intel and AMD have such a huge potential market they have thrown enough time , talent, and money to make it a very fast and cheap pig."
Depends on your point of view. Whatever the instruction set, the proof is in the performance. x86's instruction set wasn't designed by the braindead, it was simply optimized to conserve memory. I wouldn't say it's a "cheap" pig either.
"When AMD created the Athlon 64 it fixed one of the X86s worst problems. AMD doubled the number of registers. Even if a program doesn't do 64 bit math or doesn't need more than four gigabytes of memory that will run 30% to 60% faster when compiled for 64 bit than 32 bit."
Not at ALL true. Where are your sources for this? Some applications benefit and others don't but 30% to 60% is grossly inaccurate. Some apps slow down due to the larger memory footprint.
"I agree, but the critisism shouldn't be greater than that heaped on the random PC peddler of choice."
and I agree with you, but I'm not sure that it isn't. My mac purchases have all been OS X.3 and above and I've been quite disappointed with my personal quality issues. It's hard to judge whether one company is unfairly singled out.
Dell machines are recently referred to as flamethrowers. A fair description? They are repeatedly criticized here for using substandard parts when that it unlikely. They are accused of never innovating when they are among the world's most copied and successful companies. Is Apple really more unfairly criticised than Dell? People like to attack success and Dell and Apple have each achieved a great deal.
But Phoenix was not the only one. There were many clones appearing that didn't use Phoenix.
Compaq and Phoenix made a big deal over their clean-room implementations but others did BIOS'es as well.
I would agree that Compaq did far more to develop the clone market than Phoenix. They defined it, they proved the concept and they offered a compelling machine right out of the gate. The first Compaq clone was more than just a cheap alternative, people desired it. It also produced one of Compaq's most powerful pioneering patents.
perhaps, but only after committing to the 8088. At the time, IBM had 3 year internal development cycles. The PC was a rogue project within the company but the development cycle of that project was longer than people might imagine. It was well known that IBM preferred the use of the 68K processor but considered it unavailable.
"Of course the main reason the 68000 became a dead end, is that it was not used in the PC and no development money went into it. ...and Moto was uncompetitive. The 68K family lived on in renamed form and was retargeted. Moto developed the 88K which was a market failure, then retired it when IBM gave them the PowerPC. Moto proceeded to fail with the PPC as well. Fact is that Moto bears some responsibility for the failures of their desktop processor lines.
The 68000 could have been re-designed the same way the x86 was, but there was no money to be made so no reason to do it."
They choice of the 8088 came from IBM's experience with the part from a previous project not for any other reason. They preferred to use the 68K and had Moto been able to commit to volumes IBM would hvae used them instead.
IBM DESIGNED the 80286 for Intel so it's not surprising that they used it. Intel at the time was developing the 960 as their followon architecture. The success of the PC caused Intel to retarget the 960 and develop the 386 instead.
Moto couldn't promise the volumes IBM demanded for the PC so they went with the 8088 which they had used already in another successful project. The 68K was a new processor and not yet released when IBM had to make their design decisions.
While that is true, Compaq foiled the MCA effort by developing a backward compatible technology (EISA), giving development and manufacturing rights to Intel, and announcing it as a coalition of 8 members when it was only Compaq that actually did it. The combination of marketing, open availability of parts, and support for ISA infrastructure was a compelling advantage for EISA.
At the time of the EISA announcement, there were imminent announcements of MCA clones and, because of that, Dell was conspicuously missing from the EISA coalition. Compaq could have been earlier in its recruiting efforts and gotten even broader support, and the lesson learned there influenced later architectural developments. PCI and VL-bus were developed in open forums and such industry-wide efforts were indicative of why the PC succeeded and the Mac (relatively) did not.
While I agree with all your points, if Phoenix hadn't cloned the BIOS someone else would have. In fact, the first "clone" (Compaq) did not use Phoenix and other, later, clones (Dell, etc) did not either. Furthermore, AMI offered a competing BIOS eventually. Vendors like Dell switched to Phoenix to obtain the marketing benefit much like they take the kickback for having the Windows and Intel stickers on their boxes.
Phoenix desired 100% penetration and was willing to give their product away to get it since they were nearly backrupt at one time. Dell used the Phoenix name because they were offered a buyout on the license, but they continued to adapt BIOS'es themselves for their important lines. Dell contracted Phoenix to do BIOSes for Dimension machines for a period of time and those systems were the worst products Dell offered.
I would agree that the existence of a cloned BIOS was an important matter but Phoenix was simply one of several that did it and I totally disagree that Phoenix was responsible for any marketshare differences in the platform. Phoenix was a player in the PC market but it is my opinion that the market would be little different today without them.
obviously the key was added for a reason. I simply dispute the "big pain to use" comment. I suspect there are a lot of users not especially dependent on the existance of that key. I don't use it.
...and don't bother educating me on multi-button mouse support. The talk is about notebooks and the MBP doesn't have a right mouse button.
For example, as a PC user I've fully integrated the right mouse button into how I use the machine, yet I don't have one on the mac. Would I call the mac a "big pain to use"? I criticise it's lack of an obviously beneficial control but I don't go that far. Macs are a big pain to use until you learn them just as PC's are. You don't need a Windows key to be productive.
"I think you are the first I ever heard say the compatibility in the PC/Windows environment was superior to the Mac world..."
;-) Lets call them self-compatible... no standards."
It absolutely is. Compatibility is the beginning and the end when it comes to PC's. It's just hard because there is so much out there.
Apple on the other hand doesn't even play the compatibility game. What it is compatible with it does reasonably well. Apple is a closed, vertical platform and cannot be compared to PC's in that way.
"So the only way I could understand your post is that you mean Microsoft drivers are compatible with the system, the hardware and the service-pack they were written for. And of course they are MS-Office compatible
I'm not speaking of anything like that.
PC's are a large market serving many different types of users, yet they are first and foremost business machines. Customers of those systems demand and certify compatability. Apple systems aren't subjected to that kind of scrutiny.
Steve Jobs himself stated that he wasn't interested in that market. I wonder why?