Over its thirty year history, Apple has survived and even thrived despite boneheaded business decisions. From pricing the Macintosh out of most consumers' reach to creating some really ugly computers, Apple has made a lot of bad decisions.
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Member since:2005-07-30
Member since:2005-08-27
Member since:2006-03-10
The indistry will do just fine without Apple. They are not unique, they don't drive technology, they don't really do anything other than marketing and design. The real people who make the computer industry work are Intel, AMD, Ati, Nvidia et al...
I didn't say that apple drives anything.
apple is the kind of agent that sits on the sidelines merrily doing it's own thing...forcing everybody else to keep one eye on them, thereby keeping the industry in 'check'.
To say that apple does nothing other than marketing and design (some will say those two are the hardest parts of business, btw), is ignorant.
OSX, as one example, is a great take on how to build a marvelous operating system *experience*.
And that's what apple does best...create experiences. And that's one of the hardest things to do.
Take your blinders off...don't hate the apple.
Member since:2005-06-29
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Member since:2006-10-03
Apple has driven the market since it's inception with the brief period from 1995 till 2000. Windows arguably caught a then stagnating Apple in 1995 with Windows 95. But even during this time the "innovations" were often simply improvements on earlier ideas. ie. MS copies "Publish and Subscribe" on the Mac as OLE and then extends it to become Active-X. NeXT was innovating but not many people noticed.
The return of Jobs to Apple marked a return to Apple's position as the primary innovator as it assimilated NeXT and Introduced the world to OpenStep with a Mac UI wrapper - OS X. Now once again the new ideas are coming out of Cupertino!
Apple's influence? We all use Macs - either the cheap imitation that is windows, X11 (a better imitation) or the real thing - OS X (technically it is an imitator but because it has the Apple name you can't call it that).
The roots go back to Palo Alto and AT&T, but the modern computer all follow the look and feel of the first computer to put them together - the Mac.
Member since:2006-01-12
CoreImage, CoreGraphics, CoreVideo, CoreData, Applescript (no, AS is far more than an automation that sends keystrokes and mouse clicks), Firewire and MPEG4 (uses QT container) are just a few examples how Apple has helped to drive innovation in the computing industry.
While I highly doubt that Apple came up with many of those ideas itself (maybe some of them), they recognized the value of the ideas and made them accessible to developers and consumers.
Also, the user experience is more than the look of the product. Apple did not just design something that worked. They designed something that's convenient to use by packing useful programs, designing GUIs that require less clicking and navigation, adding the ability to automate programs and transfer data between one and another (Applescript), making the OS unobtrusive, providing dictionary popup tips etc. While anyone of these changes would be insignificant, hundreds of such changes will add up and create a positive user experience.
Member since:2006-09-01
Member since:2006-01-24
Member since:2005-07-06
Have you looked at the new Macs? The closest Dell to a Mac Pro comes in at $1k more, and it doesn't look anywhere near as nice. The closest Dell to the 24" iMac is about 10% cheaper, which is about right considering the iMac uses laptop parts to achieve a slim/quiet design. If you've priced SFF PCs, you'll know that a 10% premium for a space-efficient design as an absolute bargain. And then there's the mini. For half the price of a mini, you can get some VIA mini-ITX piece of shit that'll be a fraction of the speed and bigger to boot.
The only machines Apple has right now that aren't price-competitive with Dell are the Macbooks and the Macbook Pros, which haven't been updated to Core 2 yet (which is just a matter of Dell's faster product cycle). If you look at the Core 1 models from a month or two ago, the Macbook was fully price-competitive, within a $100 or so with more features (Bluetooth, webcam, remote).
Member since:2006-05-29
Member since:
2006-03-10
...it is necessary for the betterment of the industry that apple thrive.
The world would be a sea of cheap beige were it not for the likes of apple.