That's what Apple is apparently doing in the San Francisco Metreon mall, where there is also a Microsoft store (gads) and a Sony store. It will be a place to go and get educated a bit about Macs, as well as try them out. I don't know if they'll have much stock on hand, or whether it will be a front for the Web-based Apple store, and you just get your custom-built box delivered a few days later. They'll probably have stock configurations available to take with you, and custom ones come a few days later by UPS.
They definitely need to do something to counter the general ignorance that people have about Apple. They've changed a lot in the past few years, and with the release of Mac OS X, the remaking of the entire company will be complete. A 2001 Mac running Mac OS X is almost entirely a different machine than a 1997 Mac running Mac OS 8.1 or whatever it was. Different OS, different peripherals, support for all kinds of standards rather than not. They need to say "come in and meet the new Apple" with these stores. They have great brand identity. I heard that the new stores will just have big Apple logos on each side of the door, products in the windows, and no text.
I think the car dealer thing meant that you don't see a Volkswagon bug ad and go in to a dealer and ask for one and have them take you across the street and try and sell you a Ford minivan.
Apple has a pretty strong brand identity, and people go into CompUSA asking about Macs and they don't get answers to their questions or a demo of the features, they just get told "you don't want one of those, come over here and buy a Compaq". That's not good customer service. For the first-time buyer especially, this is damaging for them and for Apple.
At least Wired were grown-up enough to actually print "fucking" rather than the "f---ing" that was used in other stories. Gimme a break. If some people would just grow the fuck up, they would see this for what it is: a bunch of Apple partners were pissed off at this and that, and they wanted to know if Steve Jobs was also pissed off at this and that. Steve came in and said "yes, I am pissed off at that, too", which is exactly what they wanted to know.
Who cares if he spoke Swahili or did a jig in order to communicate more effectively with them? So what if he swears?
Sometimes I really worry about what our newfound abilities to record almost EVERYTHING will do to us when some of us don't like what they see in our new digital mirror. How free are we when a guy says fuck a few times and 50 other people on Slashdot condemn him for being "unprofessional" and "vulgar"? C'mon.
Re:PLEASE DON'T QUESTION THE ONE-BUTTON MOUSE!
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> That $15 mouse cost you $75, since you pitched
> the bundled $60 mouse that came with your
> computer. Go to the Apple store and check the price.
And how many copies of Windows have you paid for but never used? That kind of stuff is always a wash. Most PC's (including previous Mac models) come with atrocious mouses and/or keyboards and many, many people replace one or the other. Besides, Macs have such good resale value, he can sell that Pro Mouse on eBay and probably get $50 for it.
And what are you doing at the Apple Store, anyway? Are you one of those sad and lonely closeted Mac users who runs Wintel but drools over Macs and then says "if only they had a two button mouse"?
On one hand, your post infuriates me, because it's full of the same old MS-brand FUD I've seen a million times before, although you mixed in some Be-brand FUD as well, for spice. On the other hand, Mac OS X won't ship for another two months, so I can't blame you too much for not understanding where Apple is headed. Everything that they are doing revolves around Mac OS X. Even the Cube, which some like and some dislike, is a radically different proposition if it's running Mac OS X. A silent, 8-inch square computer with gigabit ethernet and AirPort, running a Unix-based super-GUI OS that never crashes and has Apache built-in is an attractive proposition. Reaching under the box to hit reset on Mac OS 9 is not worth $1600.
As far as being stuck in the 1980's and a control freak, I think you have aptly described Microsoft. Here in the 21st century, we don't have to be limited to one OS and one application platform just to have compatiblity. We don't have to be limited to one word processing program to share documents. We now have this thing called the Web, and you can have any OS you like, as long as it also speaks TCP/IP. If it speaks Unix as well, then that's better still. Given that, wouldn't we work towards more diversity, rather than less? Why would we want to throw all of our eggs into the Microsoft basket? Especially now?
As far as open software and hardware, the hardware developer notes for the new 2001 pro models were released today. They use standard stuff like AGP, PCI, gigabit ethernet, USB, FireWire, standard RAM, ATA hard disks, yada, yada, yada. What is so hard about this stuff? Even the "Mac BIOS" is open... in fact, it's called "Open Firmware". There are at least six Linux distros for Macs, as well as BSD. AND -- note this well and think about it for a minute -- the entire core of the new Mac OS is open source (it's called "Darwin"). Everything you need to boot and root the new Mac OS is out there in plain text. Surely, even if the hardware were somehow closed, a person could tell what's what by looking at the source to the Mac OS? Especially when Mac OS is based on such well-documented, open source, community projects like Mach and BSD.
I can't believe you want Apple to drop PowerPC CPU's in favor of Intel CPU's in the same post where you accuse them of being stuck in the 1980's. First, there would be no 1" thick, 5-hour battery life PowerBook G4 if Apple used Intel CPU's. Maybe you are happy running a slow Intel notebook on wall power all the time, but I really prefer not plugging in my notebook at all. Why do you think Apple took the lead in wireless networking? Because they have been shipping notebooks with 5+ hours of battery life for years... you don't need to plug them in to use them, and they don't automatically slow to half-speed when on batteries. The PowerBook G4 is the fastest notebook ever (even when running Mac OS 9), and it has the longest battery life. That is a fact. Go and compare benchmarks for desktop and "mobile" PIII's on Intel's site... it will be hard to do, because they use different benchmarks and conventions for each to hide the fact that the mobile ones are so crappy. 15 watts and they're still crappy. The CPU in the PowerBook G4 requires only 7 watts at full speed.
I don't know about you, but to me, big, fan-cooled boxes with monster CPU's and serial and parallel ports seem anachronistic... positively 1980's. The empty MHz of the 50 watt, 1.5GHz, paperback-book-sized P4 might make you feel like you have big balls, but it's not even close to twice as fast as a 10 watt, 2-inch square 733MHz PowerPC chip that now has two Altivec co-processors. Most of Apple's computers don't even have fans, and the ones that do are set to turn the fan off below a certain temperature. Apple gets tech support calls where people describe that their year-old PowerBook is making a funny noise and it turns out that the fan just went on for the first time ever. That is much, much, much more the future than the fan noise and dust bunnies of a typical PC.
As for a.NET initiative... Apple has WebObjects and iTools, both of which are out already and just waiting for Mac OS X to really get going. Mac OS X is two months away, and it's the first consumer Unix, the first consumer multi-user system. The average Joe will be doing remote desktops in no time, and running Java2 or other applications off the Web as well. Apps in Mac OS X are self-contained "bundles" that appear in the GUI to be just one file... everything the app needs is right there. Copy the app to another machine to install it, or run it over the network, it's all the same.
Apple is in great shape for the future. It's the present that they are having trouble with, as they lead up to Mac OS X's release. How many Windows users are going to rush out and buy new Windows 2000 machines two months before Whistler comes out? How many bought Windows 3.1 machines two months before Windows 95 came out? Not too many. Apple is in that situation right now. If they had been able to release Mac OS X on time, perhaps it would be a different story and they wouldn't have their first unprofitable quarter in three or four years and we wouldn't be condemned to hear Wintel know-it-alls pronounce Apple dead again. Like Compaq never had an unprofitable quarter! Ha.
I'm not sure what you're saying, here. Apple builds-in a feature that otherwise has to be added at the expense of $399 and one PCI slot, and the user should only consider it to be worth $30 because it's built-in? Are you saying that they should compare a $1570 10/100 PC with a $1600 10/100/1000 Mac and buy the best one regardless of ethernet and then add gigabit ethernet to the PC themselves for $30?
I mean... what's your point?
To me, being able to buy a 10/100/1000 machine with AirPort, FireWire, 2 USB busses, easy-access case, four empty PCI slots, and a good AGP graphics adapter with both analog and digital outputs for $1600 is a steal. It's got an amp built in as well that hooks up to some really nice Harmon-Kardon $59 speakers. It will also power and feed USB to an Apple display (LCD or CRT) through the video card, and has three empty hard drive bays and one empty removable bay. And a CD-RW built-in. And a nice keyboard and an optical mouse. And it will take 1.5 GB of RAM. Sweet. CPU's are also upgradeable. And it comes with iMovie, iTunes, and CD-RW writing software included. Probably a free Mac OS X upgrade, too.
Or, you could get a $1200 PC and add 10/100/1000 to it for $400 and forgoe the FireWire, AirPort, optical mouse, etc. Personally, I like it that all this shit just shows up, ready-to-use, in each new PowerMac I get.
> what's wrong with putting a few PCI slots in there?
Dumbass... we're talking about a 1" thick notebook computer here. Magma does make a six-slot PCI box that hooks up via a PC Card, though. But in general, FireWire peripherals are more common on the Mac than PCI... we've moved on.
By the way, the tower Macs have four empty PCI slots, an AGP slot for the graphics adapter, and a modem slot that comes with a 56k modem, but can also take specialty peripherals (like an old-style serial port). Gigabit ethernet, FireWire, 2 USB busses, 802.11 wireless networking, and sound (including an amp) are built-in and don't take up slots. The PCI slots are all 64MHz, 64-bit, and do over 200MBs. What is there to complain about here, really? For most people, that would be four empty slots that just stay that way. For audio or video people, it is plenty except in some special situations, and you can get a Magma expansion chassis to give you six more slots in that case. One of my PowerMacs has a SCSI card added, and one has a Pro Tools card... all the other slots are empty.
Yes, all fucking companies and their fucking CEO's ought to be taken to task for things the company did 8 years and three fucking CEO's ago.
It's worth noting that a PC from the same era as your Quadra probably won't have any kind of networking, or it may have Token Ring instead of Ethernet. Or it may have only the slow Ethernet.
Fact is, every Apple computer for the last year or so has had two built-in networking systems, Ethernet and AirPort. Both are standards. Before that, they had Ethernet alone for three or four years. They are very easy to network with each other and to get on the Internet.
I guess maybe Apple should have printed your page of instructions on how to make a crossover cable and included THAT with their new notebooks instead of just making the thing auto-sensing.
I mean... c'mon, buddy. We're talking about a notebook here... you take it places and connect it to things... if you have to carry both a regular and crossover Ethernet cable, that's a drag... if you go to someone else's office and they only have a regular Ethernet cable and you need a crossover, that's a drag. If you don't know about crossover cables, and you hook up two machines with an Ethernet cable and it doesn't work, that's a drag. I've heard all of these horror stories and more from friends. I have a friend who bought her first Mac after seeing a demonstration of two Mac notebooks hooking up to each other over AirPort with the click of one software button. This stuff counts.
Also, Apple's towers all come with gigabit ethernet (for the past six or eight months), and gigabit ethernet is auto-sensing. Even though they haven't fit gigabit ethernet into the 1" thick notebook, it's nice to see the auto-sensing feature make things simpler for the future.
Re:"Frank" is not the F word he used most...
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Geez, that's a stupid fucking remark. What the fuck does how much profanity a person uses have to do with whether they have good fucking morals? I have known people who never let a four-letter word pass their lips who were anti-social bigots, and others who can't say two words without swearing, who are down-to-earth, peaceful people.
Besides, how much you can swear without offending anyone is very country-dependent. Brits swear like it helps them to breathe, while in the US, one swear word raises every eyebrow (then the killing starts... ha ha).
Jobs was speaking in a situation where the people he was talking to just wanted honest, direct, from the heart opinions to help guide them through a time when sales are lagging at Apple (no Mac OS X yet is the big thing, I believe) and throughout the industry (also Windows Me malaise while people wait for Whistler). It's quite likely that his willingness to open up and talk frankly impressed them as much as the content.
Change "Apple" in your post to "Sun", and change "multimedia" to "enterprise management". Now, see how much sense it really makes.
Mac OS X comes out in three months, and the new version of Mac OS 9 that came out today (9.0 became 9.1) is so unexciting to everybody in the Mac community that it didn't even merit a mention in the Steve Jobs keynote. Don't you think that represents a factor that might mitigate against positive sales performance? It's not that people aren't willing to pay what Apple's asking, it's just that everybody and their brother is hanging on as long as they can for the start of this new era for the Mac.
I mean, did you rush out and buy a Windows NT 4 Service Pack 5 machine just three months before Windows 2000 shipped? Did you grab a new Windows 3.1 machine in April of 1995? Nobody wants to buy a machine and then upgrade the OS to a dramatically different version only a few months later.
> when they should be focusing on speed
> and reliability.
Speed... OS 9 is not getting any faster when it has only three months of service left as the current OS... OS X Public Beta is not performance-tuned... it's a beta.
Reliabilitiy... OS 9 is not getting any more reliable when it has only three months of service left as the current OS... OS X Public Beta is obscenely reliable already.
Yes, Mac OS 9 is stretched to the breaking point. So, what? Mac OS X is 10 weeks away and runs more Mac OS 9 apps than Windows 2000 runs Windows 98 apps. Plus, there are lots of updated apps coming.
Also, to say that Apple's only innovation is candy colors is really ignorant. All of their computers have AirPort and built-in antennae, optical mouses, no fans except in the tower (which has one little one that turns off when cool), more than twice the notebook battery life of their nearest competitor, the biggest shipping LCD display, numerous industrial design awards... not just for the looks, but also for things like the fact that all Macs have easy-open doors for users to install RAM, even the notebooks (the keyboard pops-up).
Geez, they also invented pull-down menus, drag and drop, overlapping windows... introduced the first CD-ROM, first CD-R/DVD-R combo, first consumer UNIX, invented FireWire, open sourced the core of their commercial OS (where is Windows, where is OS/2?).
AND, what if their only innovation was candy colors? I read an article from the head of some plastics association who said that Apple had driven the plastics industry forward by creating translucent, transparent, textured, colored, and intricately-shaped plastics. That's a great innovation... these devices that surround us are getting better-looking.
PowerBooks are very popular with business users, which is why they never got colors and all the other lines did, at least temporarily. The 5 hour battery, true desktop speed, and the nice styling are very attractive. I don't know how PC notebook users get all their work done on two hours of battery life... it sounds like a drag.
The IBM runs half speed on batteries, too, doesn't it? Is the 4.5 a typo? On an Intel notebook? I think you mean 2.5. Is the IBM really only an inch thick? The VAIO is thicker than that.
Apple's notebook prices are usually fantastic. The battery life is way up there, the CPU's are the same as the desktop models and run full speed, and they can always take a large amount of RAM. Also, AirPort is fantastic, and having the antennae inside the box is the only way to go.
Isn't that a hardware solution that you're talking about, though? The point he made in the keynote was that running this stuff in software can take many more hours. Keep in mind that this is a consumer-level software product. He's not talking about their pro level product, there.
> (Oh, btw... I am an Apple owner and user, so
> please keep the flaming down...)
I never flame people, but you are an idiot. Go and find me the competition for the high-end Power Mac. There isn't any. Nobody else is offering a $3500 all-in-one solution for making DVD's, let alone one that also makes CD's in the same drive. Nobody else is offering to bump you up to pro DVD making software for only $995. People have been spending $5,000-$10,000 per seat for DVD-authoring workstations.
Even without the SuperDrive, there is so much extra shit in one of these PowerMacs that you just don't get on the PC... built-in antennae and AirPort, FireWire, booting from USB and FireWire drives, faster PCI bus, mobo on the door, 1.5 GB RAM capacity, one little fan.
Just because you think the PowerMac is too expensive for you to do email with doesn't mean it's too expensive. Apple has iMacs and iBooks for Web and email and such. iBooks are a steal... 6 hour battery life, wireless, etc. Go get one if that has the right combination of features and economy for you. Or spend $1500 on a beige box with three fans that crashes Windows spectacularly.
Check out the prices on Suns, SGI's, and HP and IBM's workstations. I'm not comparing Macs to those, just asking whether things like the SuperDrive and Mac OS X might merit a place somewhere between those and a generic PC.
You want to replace a 7 watt 733MHz G4 chip that you could hide in your hand, with a 50 watt 1.2GHz monster that is a little faster for some tasks and a lot slower for others? You understand that Apple's towers have one little fan that turns itself off when it's not needed, right?
> until Adobe releases this carbon port of Photoshop
> (which was supposedly done in two weeks by an
> intern two years ago - where is it now?)
Photoshop will probably ship the same day as OS X... kind of like the way the Cincinnati Reds used to always open the baseball season. It will be the first big product release, and it will give all those Photoshop-all-day-long Macs out there a good reason to want to run OS X right away.
The two-week update of Photoshop was what was required to get a demo up and running on Mac OS X... that's pretty good, considering how incomplete Carbon was at that time, and how different the two operating systems are.
The gigabit ethernet is plenty useful now, if you move huge files around, like a lot of Apple's customers. Apple has had gigabit ethernet standard for quite a while because people asked for it.
The Mac can also take 1.5 GB of RAM and boot from any fixed or removable disk attached to the system through SCSI, ATA, FireWire, or USB. The PCI bus is over 200Mbs, suitable for high-bandwidth video-editing cards. It has 2 FireWire ports, comes with iMovie, iTunes, an optical mouse, and analog and digital display connectors. The fan inside the box turns itself off when the box gets cool enough, like during sleep. It wakes up completely in one second when running Mac OS X. The CPU daughtercard is upgradable (for real). The motherboard is on the drop-down door, so it's easy to get at it and put in RAM or an AirPort card. Oh yeah, it has antennae inside the box and a slot for a $99 AirPort card that turns the box into a wireless client or a base station for other machines. Pretty good-looking boxes, too.
Multiprocessing enabled: Premiere, Cubase, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Media Cleaner Pro, QuickTime, Unity DS-1, Lightwave, SoundJam... there are more, including one or two more just from Adobe. These are all very powerful, very popular apps. There are lots of smaller and shareware apps that do, too... supporting multiprocessing has been recommended for years on Mac OS, and some developers have just done so quietly.
And geez... Mac OS X is 10 weeks away, and a beta is available right now.
There's absolutely nothing about iDVD that couldn't have been done by Compaq on Windows. Compaq is supposed to be offering the SuperDrive as a $995 option in a few months. Compare their solution to Apple's... I can almost see what the software will look like right now... like something from Creative Labs, no doubt, with a too-busy interface.
Apple is first in this because they took steps to create the software and offer the drive first. Nobody else even knew what "home DVD's" would look like. Apple are not even taking advantage of Mac OS X, yet. All this stuff runs on Mac OS 9, for now. Sometimes you just have to say "he shoots... he scores".
The PowerBook outclasses the VAIO badly. It's thinner, can take many times more RAM, has AirPort, Ethernet, FireWire, slot-load DVD, more cache, 3 hours more battery life, and the full-speed 500MHz G4 chip easily kills a 650MHz "mobile" (stripped and slowed down) PII. Also, the design is much better, construction looks better, and you get pure titanium instead of a magnesium alloy. The only thing the VAIO has is that it's $50 cheaper, and 2 pounds lighter. Once you add an external modem/ethernet PC card and external CD/DVD drive to the VAIO, you lose the price and pounds advantage completely.
Now, after looking at the above, how can a reasonable person say "if only it had...". I wouldn't mind if he said "too bad I use x86 Linux and don't want to switch to LinuxPPC or Mac OS X"... or "too bad nobody is making x86 notebooks with these kinds of features". Too bad it doesn't have 3 mouse buttons. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Played with one at Macworld today... the wide screen is really nice, and it makes it very small front-to-back... much easier to fit into a bag or carry under your arm. Nice. Runs cool and quiet, too, and you can pop-up the keyboard to put in more RAM... takes only a few seconds. Beautiful technology in every respect. It is solid like a brick... not flimsy or cheap in any way.
Mac OS X is all that's missing, and it's only about 10 weeks away (March 24).
It'd be nice if it was so simple, but how do you explain taxpayers building the Ballpark at Arlington and Prince George W. Bush selling it to private investors and keeping the money? This is how he made his fortune, this is how he achieved enough "business success" to claim he is ready to take his place as our next King.
Of course, he still has to convince us that he's a better man for the job than Prince Al Gore.
All these welfare-going-away worries sure make me glad that the President and the Federal gov't have exactly nothing to do with welfare. When we hear from a state Gubernatorial candidate that he wants to get rid of income tax, then maybe it will be relevant to talk about welfare. Welfare is just not violent or glamorous enough for the Federal gov't to involve itself.
Also, it is interesting to note that welfare costs less than the Drug War, so even if welfare were Federal, it would hardly be the first thing to go under a Libertarian President. We will need lots of welfare programs to help the one million freed political prisoners and their families rebuild their lives.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what Apple is apparently doing in the San Francisco Metreon mall, where there is also a Microsoft store (gads) and a Sony store. It will be a place to go and get educated a bit about Macs, as well as try them out. I don't know if they'll have much stock on hand, or whether it will be a front for the Web-based Apple store, and you just get your custom-built box delivered a few days later. They'll probably have stock configurations available to take with you, and custom ones come a few days later by UPS.
They definitely need to do something to counter the general ignorance that people have about Apple. They've changed a lot in the past few years, and with the release of Mac OS X, the remaking of the entire company will be complete. A 2001 Mac running Mac OS X is almost entirely a different machine than a 1997 Mac running Mac OS 8.1 or whatever it was. Different OS, different peripherals, support for all kinds of standards rather than not. They need to say "come in and meet the new Apple" with these stores. They have great brand identity. I heard that the new stores will just have big Apple logos on each side of the door, products in the windows, and no text.
I think the car dealer thing meant that you don't see a Volkswagon bug ad and go in to a dealer and ask for one and have them take you across the street and try and sell you a Ford minivan.
Apple has a pretty strong brand identity, and people go into CompUSA asking about Macs and they don't get answers to their questions or a demo of the features, they just get told "you don't want one of those, come over here and buy a Compaq". That's not good customer service. For the first-time buyer especially, this is damaging for them and for Apple.
At least Wired were grown-up enough to actually print "fucking" rather than the "f---ing" that was used in other stories. Gimme a break. If some people would just grow the fuck up, they would see this for what it is: a bunch of Apple partners were pissed off at this and that, and they wanted to know if Steve Jobs was also pissed off at this and that. Steve came in and said "yes, I am pissed off at that, too", which is exactly what they wanted to know.
Who cares if he spoke Swahili or did a jig in order to communicate more effectively with them? So what if he swears?
Sometimes I really worry about what our newfound abilities to record almost EVERYTHING will do to us when some of us don't like what they see in our new digital mirror. How free are we when a guy says fuck a few times and 50 other people on Slashdot condemn him for being "unprofessional" and "vulgar"? C'mon.
> That $15 mouse cost you $75, since you pitched
> the bundled $60 mouse that came with your
> computer. Go to the Apple store and check the price.
And how many copies of Windows have you paid for but never used? That kind of stuff is always a wash. Most PC's (including previous Mac models) come with atrocious mouses and/or keyboards and many, many people replace one or the other. Besides, Macs have such good resale value, he can sell that Pro Mouse on eBay and probably get $50 for it.
And what are you doing at the Apple Store, anyway? Are you one of those sad and lonely closeted Mac users who runs Wintel but drools over Macs and then says "if only they had a two button mouse"?
On one hand, your post infuriates me, because it's full of the same old MS-brand FUD I've seen a million times before, although you mixed in some Be-brand FUD as well, for spice. On the other hand, Mac OS X won't ship for another two months, so I can't blame you too much for not understanding where Apple is headed. Everything that they are doing revolves around Mac OS X. Even the Cube, which some like and some dislike, is a radically different proposition if it's running Mac OS X. A silent, 8-inch square computer with gigabit ethernet and AirPort, running a Unix-based super-GUI OS that never crashes and has Apache built-in is an attractive proposition. Reaching under the box to hit reset on Mac OS 9 is not worth $1600.
... in fact, it's called "Open Firmware". There are at least six Linux distros for Macs, as well as BSD. AND -- note this well and think about it for a minute -- the entire core of the new Mac OS is open source (it's called "Darwin"). Everything you need to boot and root the new Mac OS is out there in plain text. Surely, even if the hardware were somehow closed, a person could tell what's what by looking at the source to the Mac OS? Especially when Mac OS is based on such well-documented, open source, community projects like Mach and BSD.
... you don't need to plug them in to use them, and they don't automatically slow to half-speed when on batteries. The PowerBook G4 is the fastest notebook ever (even when running Mac OS 9), and it has the longest battery life. That is a fact. Go and compare benchmarks for desktop and "mobile" PIII's on Intel's site ... it will be hard to do, because they use different benchmarks and conventions for each to hide the fact that the mobile ones are so crappy. 15 watts and they're still crappy. The CPU in the PowerBook G4 requires only 7 watts at full speed.
... positively 1980's. The empty MHz of the 50 watt, 1.5GHz, paperback-book-sized P4 might make you feel like you have big balls, but it's not even close to twice as fast as a 10 watt, 2-inch square 733MHz PowerPC chip that now has two Altivec co-processors. Most of Apple's computers don't even have fans, and the ones that do are set to turn the fan off below a certain temperature. Apple gets tech support calls where people describe that their year-old PowerBook is making a funny noise and it turns out that the fan just went on for the first time ever. That is much, much, much more the future than the fan noise and dust bunnies of a typical PC.
.NET initiative ... Apple has WebObjects and iTools, both of which are out already and just waiting for Mac OS X to really get going. Mac OS X is two months away, and it's the first consumer Unix, the first consumer multi-user system. The average Joe will be doing remote desktops in no time, and running Java2 or other applications off the Web as well. Apps in Mac OS X are self-contained "bundles" that appear in the GUI to be just one file ... everything the app needs is right there. Copy the app to another machine to install it, or run it over the network, it's all the same.
As far as being stuck in the 1980's and a control freak, I think you have aptly described Microsoft. Here in the 21st century, we don't have to be limited to one OS and one application platform just to have compatiblity. We don't have to be limited to one word processing program to share documents. We now have this thing called the Web, and you can have any OS you like, as long as it also speaks TCP/IP. If it speaks Unix as well, then that's better still. Given that, wouldn't we work towards more diversity, rather than less? Why would we want to throw all of our eggs into the Microsoft basket? Especially now?
As far as open software and hardware, the hardware developer notes for the new 2001 pro models were released today. They use standard stuff like AGP, PCI, gigabit ethernet, USB, FireWire, standard RAM, ATA hard disks, yada, yada, yada. What is so hard about this stuff? Even the "Mac BIOS" is open
I can't believe you want Apple to drop PowerPC CPU's in favor of Intel CPU's in the same post where you accuse them of being stuck in the 1980's. First, there would be no 1" thick, 5-hour battery life PowerBook G4 if Apple used Intel CPU's. Maybe you are happy running a slow Intel notebook on wall power all the time, but I really prefer not plugging in my notebook at all. Why do you think Apple took the lead in wireless networking? Because they have been shipping notebooks with 5+ hours of battery life for years
I don't know about you, but to me, big, fan-cooled boxes with monster CPU's and serial and parallel ports seem anachronistic
As for a
Apple is in great shape for the future. It's the present that they are having trouble with, as they lead up to Mac OS X's release. How many Windows users are going to rush out and buy new Windows 2000 machines two months before Whistler comes out? How many bought Windows 3.1 machines two months before Windows 95 came out? Not too many. Apple is in that situation right now. If they had been able to release Mac OS X on time, perhaps it would be a different story and they wouldn't have their first unprofitable quarter in three or four years and we wouldn't be condemned to hear Wintel know-it-alls pronounce Apple dead again. Like Compaq never had an unprofitable quarter! Ha.
I'm not sure what you're saying, here. Apple builds-in a feature that otherwise has to be added at the expense of $399 and one PCI slot, and the user should only consider it to be worth $30 because it's built-in? Are you saying that they should compare a $1570 10/100 PC with a $1600 10/100/1000 Mac and buy the best one regardless of ethernet and then add gigabit ethernet to the PC themselves for $30?
... what's your point?
I mean
To me, being able to buy a 10/100/1000 machine with AirPort, FireWire, 2 USB busses, easy-access case, four empty PCI slots, and a good AGP graphics adapter with both analog and digital outputs for $1600 is a steal. It's got an amp built in as well that hooks up to some really nice Harmon-Kardon $59 speakers. It will also power and feed USB to an Apple display (LCD or CRT) through the video card, and has three empty hard drive bays and one empty removable bay. And a CD-RW built-in. And a nice keyboard and an optical mouse. And it will take 1.5 GB of RAM. Sweet. CPU's are also upgradeable. And it comes with iMovie, iTunes, and CD-RW writing software included. Probably a free Mac OS X upgrade, too.
Or, you could get a $1200 PC and add 10/100/1000 to it for $400 and forgoe the FireWire, AirPort, optical mouse, etc. Personally, I like it that all this shit just shows up, ready-to-use, in each new PowerMac I get.
> what's wrong with putting a few PCI slots in there?
... we're talking about a 1" thick notebook computer here. Magma does make a six-slot PCI box that hooks up via a PC Card, though. But in general, FireWire peripherals are more common on the Mac than PCI ... we've moved on.
... all the other slots are empty.
Dumbass
By the way, the tower Macs have four empty PCI slots, an AGP slot for the graphics adapter, and a modem slot that comes with a 56k modem, but can also take specialty peripherals (like an old-style serial port). Gigabit ethernet, FireWire, 2 USB busses, 802.11 wireless networking, and sound (including an amp) are built-in and don't take up slots. The PCI slots are all 64MHz, 64-bit, and do over 200MBs. What is there to complain about here, really? For most people, that would be four empty slots that just stay that way. For audio or video people, it is plenty except in some special situations, and you can get a Magma expansion chassis to give you six more slots in that case. One of my PowerMacs has a SCSI card added, and one has a Pro Tools card
Yes, all fucking companies and their fucking CEO's ought to be taken to task for things the company did 8 years and three fucking CEO's ago.
It's worth noting that a PC from the same era as your Quadra probably won't have any kind of networking, or it may have Token Ring instead of Ethernet. Or it may have only the slow Ethernet.
Fact is, every Apple computer for the last year or so has had two built-in networking systems, Ethernet and AirPort. Both are standards. Before that, they had Ethernet alone for three or four years. They are very easy to network with each other and to get on the Internet.
I guess maybe Apple should have printed your page of instructions on how to make a crossover cable and included THAT with their new notebooks instead of just making the thing auto-sensing.
... c'mon, buddy. We're talking about a notebook here ... you take it places and connect it to things ... if you have to carry both a regular and crossover Ethernet cable, that's a drag ... if you go to someone else's office and they only have a regular Ethernet cable and you need a crossover, that's a drag. If you don't know about crossover cables, and you hook up two machines with an Ethernet cable and it doesn't work, that's a drag. I've heard all of these horror stories and more from friends. I have a friend who bought her first Mac after seeing a demonstration of two Mac notebooks hooking up to each other over AirPort with the click of one software button. This stuff counts.
I mean
Also, Apple's towers all come with gigabit ethernet (for the past six or eight months), and gigabit ethernet is auto-sensing. Even though they haven't fit gigabit ethernet into the 1" thick notebook, it's nice to see the auto-sensing feature make things simpler for the future.
Geez, that's a stupid fucking remark. What the fuck does how much profanity a person uses have to do with whether they have good fucking morals? I have known people who never let a four-letter word pass their lips who were anti-social bigots, and others who can't say two words without swearing, who are down-to-earth, peaceful people.
... ha ha).
Besides, how much you can swear without offending anyone is very country-dependent. Brits swear like it helps them to breathe, while in the US, one swear word raises every eyebrow (then the killing starts
Jobs was speaking in a situation where the people he was talking to just wanted honest, direct, from the heart opinions to help guide them through a time when sales are lagging at Apple (no Mac OS X yet is the big thing, I believe) and throughout the industry (also Windows Me malaise while people wait for Whistler). It's quite likely that his willingness to open up and talk frankly impressed them as much as the content.
Change "Apple" in your post to "Sun", and change "multimedia" to "enterprise management". Now, see how much sense it really makes.
Mac OS X comes out in three months, and the new version of Mac OS 9 that came out today (9.0 became 9.1) is so unexciting to everybody in the Mac community that it didn't even merit a mention in the Steve Jobs keynote. Don't you think that represents a factor that might mitigate against positive sales performance? It's not that people aren't willing to pay what Apple's asking, it's just that everybody and their brother is hanging on as long as they can for the start of this new era for the Mac.
I mean, did you rush out and buy a Windows NT 4 Service Pack 5 machine just three months before Windows 2000 shipped? Did you grab a new Windows 3.1 machine in April of 1995? Nobody wants to buy a machine and then upgrade the OS to a dramatically different version only a few months later.
> when they should be focusing on speed
... OS 9 is not getting any faster when it has only three months of service left as the current OS ... OS X Public Beta is not performance-tuned ... it's a beta.
... OS 9 is not getting any more reliable when it has only three months of service left as the current OS ... OS X Public Beta is obscenely reliable already.
... not just for the looks, but also for things like the fact that all Macs have easy-open doors for users to install RAM, even the notebooks (the keyboard pops-up).
... introduced the first CD-ROM, first CD-R/DVD-R combo, first consumer UNIX, invented FireWire, open sourced the core of their commercial OS (where is Windows, where is OS/2?).
... these devices that surround us are getting better-looking.
...
> and reliability.
Speed
Reliabilitiy
Yes, Mac OS 9 is stretched to the breaking point. So, what? Mac OS X is 10 weeks away and runs more Mac OS 9 apps than Windows 2000 runs Windows 98 apps. Plus, there are lots of updated apps coming.
Also, to say that Apple's only innovation is candy colors is really ignorant. All of their computers have AirPort and built-in antennae, optical mouses, no fans except in the tower (which has one little one that turns off when cool), more than twice the notebook battery life of their nearest competitor, the biggest shipping LCD display, numerous industrial design awards
Geez, they also invented pull-down menus, drag and drop, overlapping windows
AND, what if their only innovation was candy colors? I read an article from the head of some plastics association who said that Apple had driven the plastics industry forward by creating translucent, transparent, textured, colored, and intricately-shaped plastics. That's a great innovation
Give them a break already
PowerBooks are very popular with business users, which is why they never got colors and all the other lines did, at least temporarily. The 5 hour battery, true desktop speed, and the nice styling are very attractive. I don't know how PC notebook users get all their work done on two hours of battery life ... it sounds like a drag.
The IBM runs half speed on batteries, too, doesn't it? Is the 4.5 a typo? On an Intel notebook? I think you mean 2.5. Is the IBM really only an inch thick? The VAIO is thicker than that.
Apple's notebook prices are usually fantastic. The battery life is way up there, the CPU's are the same as the desktop models and run full speed, and they can always take a large amount of RAM. Also, AirPort is fantastic, and having the antennae inside the box is the only way to go.
Isn't that a hardware solution that you're talking about, though? The point he made in the keynote was that running this stuff in software can take many more hours. Keep in mind that this is a consumer-level software product. He's not talking about their pro level product, there.
> (Oh, btw... I am an Apple owner and user, so
... built-in antennae and AirPort, FireWire, booting from USB and FireWire drives, faster PCI bus, mobo on the door, 1.5 GB RAM capacity, one little fan.
... 6 hour battery life, wireless, etc. Go get one if that has the right combination of features and economy for you. Or spend $1500 on a beige box with three fans that crashes Windows spectacularly.
> please keep the flaming down...)
I never flame people, but you are an idiot. Go and find me the competition for the high-end Power Mac. There isn't any. Nobody else is offering a $3500 all-in-one solution for making DVD's, let alone one that also makes CD's in the same drive. Nobody else is offering to bump you up to pro DVD making software for only $995. People have been spending $5,000-$10,000 per seat for DVD-authoring workstations.
Even without the SuperDrive, there is so much extra shit in one of these PowerMacs that you just don't get on the PC
Just because you think the PowerMac is too expensive for you to do email with doesn't mean it's too expensive. Apple has iMacs and iBooks for Web and email and such. iBooks are a steal
Check out the prices on Suns, SGI's, and HP and IBM's workstations. I'm not comparing Macs to those, just asking whether things like the SuperDrive and Mac OS X might merit a place somewhere between those and a generic PC.
You want to replace a 7 watt 733MHz G4 chip that you could hide in your hand, with a 50 watt 1.2GHz monster that is a little faster for some tasks and a lot slower for others? You understand that Apple's towers have one little fan that turns itself off when it's not needed, right?
The Darwin kernel is a modified Mach 3.0 kernel, with SMP.
> until Adobe releases this carbon port of Photoshop
... kind of like the way the Cincinnati Reds used to always open the baseball season. It will be the first big product release, and it will give all those Photoshop-all-day-long Macs out there a good reason to want to run OS X right away.
... that's pretty good, considering how incomplete Carbon was at that time, and how different the two operating systems are.
> (which was supposedly done in two weeks by an
> intern two years ago - where is it now?)
Photoshop will probably ship the same day as OS X
The two-week update of Photoshop was what was required to get a demo up and running on Mac OS X
The gigabit ethernet is plenty useful now, if you move huge files around, like a lot of Apple's customers. Apple has had gigabit ethernet standard for quite a while because people asked for it.
The Mac can also take 1.5 GB of RAM and boot from any fixed or removable disk attached to the system through SCSI, ATA, FireWire, or USB. The PCI bus is over 200Mbs, suitable for high-bandwidth video-editing cards. It has 2 FireWire ports, comes with iMovie, iTunes, an optical mouse, and analog and digital display connectors. The fan inside the box turns itself off when the box gets cool enough, like during sleep. It wakes up completely in one second when running Mac OS X. The CPU daughtercard is upgradable (for real). The motherboard is on the drop-down door, so it's easy to get at it and put in RAM or an AirPort card. Oh yeah, it has antennae inside the box and a slot for a $99 AirPort card that turns the box into a wireless client or a base station for other machines. Pretty good-looking boxes, too.
Multiprocessing enabled: Premiere, Cubase, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Media Cleaner Pro, QuickTime, Unity DS-1, Lightwave, SoundJam ... there are more, including one or two more just from Adobe. These are all very powerful, very popular apps. There are lots of smaller and shareware apps that do, too ... supporting multiprocessing has been recommended for years on Mac OS, and some developers have just done so quietly.
... Mac OS X is 10 weeks away, and a beta is available right now.
And geez
There's absolutely nothing about iDVD that couldn't have been done by Compaq on Windows. Compaq is supposed to be offering the SuperDrive as a $995 option in a few months. Compare their solution to Apple's ... I can almost see what the software will look like right now ... like something from Creative Labs, no doubt, with a too-busy interface.
... he scores".
Apple is first in this because they took steps to create the software and offer the drive first. Nobody else even knew what "home DVD's" would look like. Apple are not even taking advantage of Mac OS X, yet. All this stuff runs on Mac OS 9, for now. Sometimes you just have to say "he shoots
If only it had 3 mouse buttons.
Compare the PowerBook G4 and the Sony VAIO, here:
PowerBook G4 Specifications
The PowerBook outclasses the VAIO badly. It's thinner, can take many times more RAM, has AirPort, Ethernet, FireWire, slot-load DVD, more cache, 3 hours more battery life, and the full-speed 500MHz G4 chip easily kills a 650MHz "mobile" (stripped and slowed down) PII. Also, the design is much better, construction looks better, and you get pure titanium instead of a magnesium alloy. The only thing the VAIO has is that it's $50 cheaper, and 2 pounds lighter. Once you add an external modem/ethernet PC card and external CD/DVD drive to the VAIO, you lose the price and pounds advantage completely.
Now, after looking at the above, how can a reasonable person say "if only it had ...". I wouldn't mind if he said "too bad I use x86 Linux and don't want to switch to LinuxPPC or Mac OS X" ... or "too bad nobody is making x86 notebooks with these kinds of features". Too bad it doesn't have 3 mouse buttons. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Played with one at Macworld today ... the wide screen is really nice, and it makes it very small front-to-back ... much easier to fit into a bag or carry under your arm. Nice. Runs cool and quiet, too, and you can pop-up the keyboard to put in more RAM ... takes only a few seconds. Beautiful technology in every respect. It is solid like a brick ... not flimsy or cheap in any way.
Mac OS X is all that's missing, and it's only about 10 weeks away (March 24).
It'd be nice if it was so simple, but how do you explain taxpayers building the Ballpark at Arlington and Prince George W. Bush selling it to private investors and keeping the money? This is how he made his fortune, this is how he achieved enough "business success" to claim he is ready to take his place as our next King.
Of course, he still has to convince us that he's a better man for the job than Prince Al Gore.
All these welfare-going-away worries sure make me glad that the President and the Federal gov't have exactly nothing to do with welfare. When we hear from a state Gubernatorial candidate that he wants to get rid of income tax, then maybe it will be relevant to talk about welfare. Welfare is just not violent or glamorous enough for the Federal gov't to involve itself.
Also, it is interesting to note that welfare costs less than the Drug War, so even if welfare were Federal, it would hardly be the first thing to go under a Libertarian President. We will need lots of welfare programs to help the one million freed political prisoners and their families rebuild their lives.