"the Powerbook G5 does not exist because IBM had no reason to develop a low power version after Apple's announcement of a switch to ix86."
So, basically, what you're saying is that as of mid-2005, IBM hadn't even pulled their thumb out of their butt and started *developing* a laptop G5? That would imply that a G5 powerbook would be at least 18 months out, maybe two years. IBM isn't going to pop out a laptop-capable G5 in a few months of 'development'.
If true, that would be pathetic, and Apple would be pathetic for remaining with IBM after such a failure to deliver.
However, the problem is actually that IBM was unable and unwilling to develop a low-power version in *2004*, not mid-2005. For IBM to start development in mid-05 would be a textbook case of too little, too late.
"Frankly I don't know why they would want the DTK's back. They're nothing special or secret hardware-wise."
By the same token, why would anyone want to keep the DTK, and not take the better iMac?
The DTK won't run the released version of OSX for Intel, so for most developers they'd be better off taking the iMac, which they could use for further development.
The only developers I can see wanting to keep a DTK would be those working on PCI-based products. Obviously, they couldn't work on PCI card drivers using an iMac.
"Go to business school, you'll get an earful of Micheal Dell because all of his innovations are in the production process, Just in Time manufacturing, mass customization, no inventory, started from a college dorm room."
Dell just copied the techniques of his roommate, the campus dope dealer.
"The transfer from glossy to newsprint style paper showed that they were needing to make cost cutbacks which implies to me that they were losing it in general"
Frankly, I prefer the matte-finish newsprint.
The gloss serves no purpose and often makes the text harder to read due to glare.
"like Dell have much more sway on the bottom line"
Perhaps, but Dell's customers can easily switch to AMD with their next round of hardware purchases, because they use Windows or Linux, whereas Apple's customers will keep buying Intel-based Apple machines. Every Mac customer is likely to be a long-term Intel customer.
" For the high end machines performance can't just be usable or about the same as current PPC, it has to be significantly better."
A G4 powerbook is by no means a "high-end machine". Anyone with real high-end performance requirements would be silly to use a powerbook in lieu of a G5, let alone a dual- or quad- G5. If they're using a powerbook, then they're already settling for significantly lower peformance in exchange for portability.
" While performance of many non-intensive apps in emulation will be fine for consumers, that's definately far from acceptable for power-users who really need a performance upgrade instead of a downgrade"
Nobody's forcing them to buy.
They're going to wait whether Apple ships Intel Powerbooks or not. Apple might as well ship Intel Powerbooks, and let people buy them.
In Connecticut, it's more like "Send in your money for these crappy boomer nostalgia shows, Yanni extravaganzas, quasi-infomercials, and other crap that is not remotely like the good things that are on public television."
It's either aging musicians from the 50s and 60s, or New Age pap music and lowbrow classical, or some old inspirational speaker guy with books to sell, or some hack snakeoil salesman from Connecticut selling his "Perricone Prescription" fountain of youth book and cosmetics, or this boring old movie of some guy building a log cabin in the wilderness by himself (which I imagine is supposed to represent how they show non-commercial things that don't show anywhere else on TV. Well, fine. But you only show *that* and never anything *else*. )
I frankly don't understand why they do that. On radio, they keep the lineup mostly the same, and you can make your donation during a given show that you particularly enjoy, as a way to at least feel you're supporting that show. (More likely your contribution just goes into a big pot and has no real influence on whether a show stays on or not. But anyway, it's more effective, because as regular shows you have more of a connection with them than you would with an alleged 'special'.)
I think public TV would do better if they ran fundraisers by, say, running a "Nova" marathon, rather than by showing "Woodstock" for the ten millionth time.
WNYC in Manhattan recently gave away a 17" powerbook and a nano. WBUR in Boston recently gave away a nano and an G4 iBook. This seems to be a trend among public radio stations during this season of fundraisers.
Chances are, they're essentially giving away a donated Apple laptop with a value in a certain range, with the specifics to be determined once the line is announced.
Which is pretty cool, actually. Between the time the WNYC giveaway was announced, and the time the drawing happened, the new-screen G4 powerbooks came out. It was unclear whether the prize would be an old one or a new one.
" Clearly Apple is more successful (in terms of public perception) than NeXT. Fine, but the question is why?"
The issue is not really success, but quality of work. NeXT did excellent work. They weren't as "successful" as Apple, but then they were in an entirely different situation. Arguably, Apple's current success is to some extent the result of giving NeXT the much larger resources and market position of Apple.
Pixar has long done excellent work. Pixar didn't take off until they started making feature films with distribution by Disney, but it's clear from their early short work that the ethos of high standards has always been there.
The question is, who is the gatekeeper at Apple and Pixar. Who steers the company, who sets quality standards, who has final go/no-go authority on products, who has the authority to decide that a product is not good enough? Who do the engineers and designers and creative types ultimately have to impress? That's Steve Jobs.
He's not necessarily the engineer or designer coming up with the ideas, but the problem is never coming up with ideas. Ideas are a dime a dozen. The trick is squelching the bad ideas and designs and helping bring the good ones to market without letting them become sucky on the way.
There are old stories of Jobs walking around Apple back in his first stint, popping into an engineer's cubicle looking at the work in progress and declaring his disapproval by saying "This is shit." He is rather notorious as being difficult to work for and hard to please, though perhaps he has mellowed in recent years.
"Do you think that if you were an engineer you'd go from creating something like the Rio to something like the iPod just because Steve was now your boss's boss's boss's boss?"
Well, yes, because Steve Jobs wouldn't sign off on a Rio, which would pretty much put an end to funding the work.
For example, Pixar didn't become a Hollywood and pop culture darling until after 10 years of laboring in obscurity. The hard work and vision of the 1980s started when it was not en vogue, as you put it.
"What I'm getting at is not that Stever lacks either talent, hard work, or vision, but that we attribute these things to him more because of where he is than because of who he is."
No, we attribute these things to him because he's had major business and/or technical successes several times. And those successes have never been due to market dominance ala Microsoft, where a crappy product can be a financial success just by virtue of the size of the installed base. NeXT was tiny. Pixar had no leverage to *force* the audience to like their films.
Your argument would be more applicable to someone like Mark Andreesen.
Zen likes to talk about people being enlightened by the sight of a flower, or the sound of a pebble, but if true those are exceptions. But that's Zen, which arguably suffered the most distortion and romanticization in the West, thanks to hippies and beatniks.
Zen does discount the utility of poring over doctrine and texts, but there are limits. A minimal instruction on the eightfold path takes more than two sentences.
Enlightenment may well strike suddenly, but realistically that only happens after years and years of meditation practice, and it's going to take more than two sentences to persuade anybody to spend years of their life sitting on a cushion.
" I do indeed believe that once someone has set out to debunk something, that is, state in certainty that it is false, of course they have the burden of proof."
After all, the Philadelphia Experiment was a movie!
How many anti-Philadelphia Experiment movies have been made? See? It must be true!
"The thinking apparently is that business software vendors need more time to port their stuff to Apple X86, but that Apple's own X86 consumer Mac software is ready to go."
Because, you know, nobody uses a Powerbook as a "consumer product", everybody who owns a Powerbook is all about the business software.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple kept selling PowerPC machines for a while, like they kept selling MacOS 9-booting Macs. The selection would likely be very limited, and they may not promote it very heavily, and you might have to call in your order and ask specifically about it, as I think has been the case before with an otherwise end-of-life'd product.
I don't think there'd be much of a point in carrying this on beyond the end of 2006. We know the PPC line isn't going to be getting any updates.
Apple wouldn't need to keep much inventory: At this point, people would only be buying under duress, replacing machines lost unexpectedly. 500 machines would probably be sufficient.
Then again, it has occurred to me that one way Apple could have quickly come up with an Intel Powerbook would be if they kept the same chassis and screen as used in the recent update. They could just hand the G4 Powerbook motherboard layout to Intel and ask for a Yonah configuration with the same general layout (they'd probably have to specify some thermal characteristics too). Then, they could just swap dual-core Yonah motherboards for the G4 motherboards on the production line.
This would also mean that it would be pretty easy to swap in a G4 motherboard at the factory, on demand.
Re:Who cares about the pro users?
on
The Odds at Macworld
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"How many teens are buying 30" apple displays and $1500 video cards to play Quake? Few. Quite a few professional graphic designers and videographers are!"
And (Mac, Unix, Java) developers, scientists and, well, people who like good technology and can afford to splurge.
It's been widely noted how common OS X laptops have become at technical conferences and get-togethers. Those people are all potential happy purchasers of Intel Powerbooks, who would probably not be satisfied with an iBook (for one thing, iBooks don't have DVI out.)
The Mac user world is not divided up between graphic/sound pros and teenagers. Graphics, video, and sound pros are not the only customers buying Powerbooks, with everyone else buying iBooks.
I work for a huge global consulting company, which is Windows-oriented, but I spotted one manager-level employee at the Philly office who preferred to use a 17" Powerbook, even though he also had to lug around a Windows laptop for occasional use.
This seems to be news to a lot of people: Powerbooks are not the exclusive territory of graphics/video/sound pros.
Slashdot Mirror
"the Powerbook G5 does not exist because IBM had no reason to develop a low power version after Apple's announcement of a switch to ix86."
So, basically, what you're saying is that as of mid-2005, IBM hadn't even pulled their thumb out of their butt and started *developing* a laptop G5? That would imply that a G5 powerbook would be at least 18 months out, maybe two years. IBM isn't going to pop out a laptop-capable G5 in a few months of 'development'.
If true, that would be pathetic, and Apple would be pathetic for remaining with IBM after such a failure to deliver.
However, the problem is actually that IBM was unable and unwilling to develop a low-power version in *2004*, not mid-2005. For IBM to start development in mid-05 would be a textbook case of too little, too late.
"Frankly I don't know why they would want the DTK's back. They're nothing special or secret hardware-wise."
By the same token, why would anyone want to keep the DTK, and not take the better iMac?
The DTK won't run the released version of OSX for Intel, so for most developers they'd be better off taking the iMac, which they could use for further development.
The only developers I can see wanting to keep a DTK would be those working on PCI-based products. Obviously, they couldn't work on PCI card drivers using an iMac.
"Go to business school, you'll get an earful of Micheal Dell because all of his innovations are in the production process, Just in Time manufacturing, mass customization, no inventory, started from a college dorm room."
Dell just copied the techniques of his roommate, the campus dope dealer.
"The transfer from glossy to newsprint style paper showed that they were needing to make cost cutbacks which implies to me that they were losing it in general"
Frankly, I prefer the matte-finish newsprint.
The gloss serves no purpose and often makes the text harder to read due to glare.
"though I still suspect that when it is actually time to ship it back they'll go - Naw, just keep it"
No, they're offering developers the chance to return the DTK and get an Intel iMac in exchange - to keep.
That's a good deal, since the iMac's price is $300 higher than the DTK. And Apple pays shipping, both ways.
But developers with a DTK have to act before march 31st in order to take advantage of the deal.
" Both CEOs have known Reality Distortion Fields."
True, however, whereas Jobs' RDF works on customers, McNealy's RDF only works on himself.
"like Dell have much more sway on the bottom line"
Perhaps, but Dell's customers can easily switch to AMD with their next round of hardware purchases, because they use Windows or Linux, whereas Apple's customers will keep buying Intel-based Apple machines. Every Mac customer is likely to be a long-term Intel customer.
Oh, and...
" For the high end machines performance can't just be usable or about the same as current PPC, it has to be significantly better."
A G4 powerbook is by no means a "high-end machine". Anyone with real high-end performance requirements would be silly to use a powerbook in lieu of a G5, let alone a dual- or quad- G5. If they're using a powerbook, then they're already settling for significantly lower peformance in exchange for portability.
" While performance of many non-intensive apps in emulation will be fine for consumers, that's definately far from acceptable for power-users who really need a performance upgrade instead of a downgrade"
Nobody's forcing them to buy.
They're going to wait whether Apple ships Intel Powerbooks or not. Apple might as well ship Intel Powerbooks, and let people buy them.
Lots of "consumers" buy powerbooks.
In Connecticut, it's more like "Send in your money for these crappy boomer nostalgia shows, Yanni extravaganzas, quasi-infomercials, and other crap that is not remotely like the good things that are on public television."
It's either aging musicians from the 50s and 60s, or New Age pap music and lowbrow classical, or some old inspirational speaker guy with books to sell, or some hack snakeoil salesman from Connecticut selling his "Perricone Prescription" fountain of youth book and cosmetics, or this boring old movie of some guy building a log cabin in the wilderness by himself (which I imagine is supposed to represent how they show non-commercial things that don't show anywhere else on TV. Well, fine. But you only show *that* and never anything *else*. )
I frankly don't understand why they do that. On radio, they keep the lineup mostly the same, and you can make your donation during a given show that you particularly enjoy, as a way to at least feel you're supporting that show. (More likely your contribution just goes into a big pot and has no real influence on whether a show stays on or not. But anyway, it's more effective, because as regular shows you have more of a connection with them than you would with an alleged 'special'.)
I think public TV would do better if they ran fundraisers by, say, running a "Nova" marathon, rather than by showing "Woodstock" for the ten millionth time.
WNYC in Manhattan recently gave away a 17" powerbook and a nano. WBUR in Boston recently gave away a nano and an G4 iBook. This seems to be a trend among public radio stations during this season of fundraisers.
Chances are, they're essentially giving away a donated Apple laptop with a value in a certain range, with the specifics to be determined once the line is announced.
Which is pretty cool, actually. Between the time the WNYC giveaway was announced, and the time the drawing happened, the new-screen G4 powerbooks came out. It was unclear whether the prize would be an old one or a new one.
If she wasn't rich, nobody'd think she was anything but an average-looking skinny chick.
" Clearly Apple is more successful (in terms of public perception) than NeXT. Fine, but the question is why?"
The issue is not really success, but quality of work. NeXT did excellent work. They weren't as "successful" as Apple, but then they were in an entirely different situation. Arguably, Apple's current success is to some extent the result of giving NeXT the much larger resources and market position of Apple.
Pixar has long done excellent work. Pixar didn't take off until they started making feature films with distribution by Disney, but it's clear from their early short work that the ethos of high standards has always been there.
The question is, who is the gatekeeper at Apple and Pixar. Who steers the company, who sets quality standards, who has final go/no-go authority on products, who has the authority to decide that a product is not good enough? Who do the engineers and designers and creative types ultimately have to impress? That's Steve Jobs.
He's not necessarily the engineer or designer coming up with the ideas, but the problem is never coming up with ideas. Ideas are a dime a dozen. The trick is squelching the bad ideas and designs and helping bring the good ones to market without letting them become sucky on the way.
There are old stories of Jobs walking around Apple back in his first stint, popping into an engineer's cubicle looking at the work in progress and declaring his disapproval by saying "This is shit." He is rather notorious as being difficult to work for and hard to please, though perhaps he has mellowed in recent years.
"Do you think that if you were an engineer you'd go from creating something like the Rio to something like the iPod just because Steve was now your boss's boss's boss's boss?"
Well, yes, because Steve Jobs wouldn't sign off on a Rio, which would pretty much put an end to funding the work.
Frankly, I don't get your point.
For example, Pixar didn't become a Hollywood and pop culture darling until after 10 years of laboring in obscurity. The hard work and vision of the 1980s started when it was not en vogue, as you put it.
"What I'm getting at is not that Stever lacks either talent, hard work, or vision, but that we attribute these things to him more because of where he is than because of who he is."
No, we attribute these things to him because he's had major business and/or technical successes several times. And those successes have never been due to market dominance ala Microsoft, where a crappy product can be a financial success just by virtue of the size of the installed base. NeXT was tiny. Pixar had no leverage to *force* the audience to like their films.
Your argument would be more applicable to someone like Mark Andreesen.
The really stupid people are the ones who will inevitably buy these and put them in PCs in which the drive will not be visible.
Probably not, actually.
Zen likes to talk about people being enlightened by the sight of a flower, or the sound of a pebble, but if true those are exceptions. But that's Zen, which arguably suffered the most distortion and romanticization in the West, thanks to hippies and beatniks.
Zen does discount the utility of poring over doctrine and texts, but there are limits. A minimal instruction on the eightfold path takes more than two sentences.
Enlightenment may well strike suddenly, but realistically that only happens after years and years of meditation practice, and it's going to take more than two sentences to persuade anybody to spend years of their life sitting on a cushion.
"Actually, I do believe that they have the money put aside, as I have not seen any reason why they wouldn't."
No reason? How about, they'd rather spend it on women and drugs and fast cars, and there's no legal reason why they shouldn't?
You seem to be incredibly naive about human nature.
" I do indeed believe that once someone has set out to debunk something, that is, state in certainty that it is false, of course they have the burden of proof."
After all, the Philadelphia Experiment was a movie!
How many anti-Philadelphia Experiment movies have been made? See? It must be true!
How about you find a reference other than Wikipedia and do a little reading about organized crime in modern Russia.
"The thinking apparently is that business software vendors need more time to port their stuff to Apple X86, but that Apple's own X86 consumer Mac software is ready to go."
Because, you know, nobody uses a Powerbook as a "consumer product", everybody who owns a Powerbook is all about the business software.
Riiiiight.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple kept selling PowerPC machines for a while, like they kept selling MacOS 9-booting Macs. The selection would likely be very limited, and they may not promote it very heavily, and you might have to call in your order and ask specifically about it, as I think has been the case before with an otherwise end-of-life'd product.
I don't think there'd be much of a point in carrying this on beyond the end of 2006. We know the PPC line isn't going to be getting any updates.
Apple wouldn't need to keep much inventory: At this point, people would only be buying under duress, replacing machines lost unexpectedly. 500 machines would probably be sufficient.
Then again, it has occurred to me that one way Apple could have quickly come up with an Intel Powerbook would be if they kept the same chassis and screen as used in the recent update. They could just hand the G4 Powerbook motherboard layout to Intel and ask for a Yonah configuration with the same general layout (they'd probably have to specify some thermal characteristics too). Then, they could just swap dual-core Yonah motherboards for the G4 motherboards on the production line.
This would also mean that it would be pretty easy to swap in a G4 motherboard at the factory, on demand.
"How many teens are buying 30" apple displays and $1500 video cards to play Quake? Few. Quite a few professional graphic designers and videographers are!"
And (Mac, Unix, Java) developers, scientists and, well, people who like good technology and can afford to splurge.
It's been widely noted how common OS X laptops have become at technical conferences and get-togethers. Those people are all potential happy purchasers of Intel Powerbooks, who would probably not be satisfied with an iBook (for one thing, iBooks don't have DVI out.)
The Mac user world is not divided up between graphic/sound pros and teenagers. Graphics, video, and sound pros are not the only customers buying Powerbooks, with everyone else buying iBooks.
I work for a huge global consulting company, which is Windows-oriented, but I spotted one manager-level employee at the Philly office who preferred to use a 17" Powerbook, even though he also had to lug around a Windows laptop for occasional use.
This seems to be news to a lot of people: Powerbooks are not the exclusive territory of graphics/video/sound pros.
The Powerbook name predates the PowerPC. Apple was selling Powerbooks back in the Motorola 68k days.