Apple Computer has kept itself busy of late creating new recipes for marketing and sales. The company recently cooked up a public preview of QuickTime 6. To get a taste of Apple’s future, CNET News.com sits down with Steve Jobs and bites into the issues. The interview is about the MPEG-4 issues, the iMac, while you will also find an article about eMac, now being sold to everyone, and not just to educational institutes and students.
One-on-one with Steve Jobs
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2869227,00.ht…
It says the eMac has a CRT screen !!!
eMac HAS a CRT screen. It is a 17″ CRT screen, capable for 1280×1024@72Hz (preferably run though on 1152×864@80Hz). Only the new iMac is the one that has an LCD.
OK.. I’ll shoot myself later..
I was sure the damn thing was LCD
“Is Apple planning on an x86 compatible version of OSX?”
This is the hot topic on many geek sites, as well in many professional publications, and CNET doesn’t even address it in their interview questions.
Sigh… I guess what do I expect from a big corporate ass-kissing company as CNET.
I’ll bet if they interviewed Bill gates, they’d skip completely over the anti-trust lawsuits, and MS”s security problems.
A waste of time reading the linked article if you ask me.
> and CNET doesn’t even address it in their interview questions.
Do you think they can ask whatever they want? Well, my friend, welcome to PR, the real rulers of freedom of speech inside of every company. When I tried to interview some people at Apple and Microsoft and even other “smaller” OS companies that are better not to be named, they dictated what questions are to be answered and which are not to be. And on top of that, they “filter” the answers as well, and even changing sentences or cut down whole paragraphs.
This is the PR reality. It is not like C|Net guys are idiots.
They way you described it, an interview sounds more like free marketing for the folks being interviewed if they have control over the questions like that.
I don’t know who to trust anymore. Can’t believe everything I read.
> an interview sounds more like free marketing for the folks being interviewed
But, this is exactly what it is!! For them that is!
If you want to read news, you need to only read their press releases. If you need to read explanations, you need to read their SEC and other official reports. All the rest, interviews and articles, are only serve as marketing/PR tools for them! They do not always “lie” about things, but they definately add many marketing touches in their answers.
> I don’t know who to trust anymore. Can’t believe everything I read.
When a company is public, believe its press releases and SEC reports only. If a company is not public, do not always believe their press releases (because they do not afraid of the SEC, *sometimes* they write bullsh*t, like Be did before they become public), but look forward for their interviews.
When an interview is about an individual developer or open source project, 99% of the time, everything is said is valid.
This will give you a good idea what is going on today in this business.
Public or not, they are just as likely to be BS as any rumour. The safe harbor statement allows this (“these are forward-looking statements and may therefore be full of crap if we decide to change things – in that event, we will erase such announcements and act as though they never existed and/or refer you to the safe harbor act”).
I’m particularly sick to death of press releases. I do NOT put ANY amount of expectation to them whatsoever.
That’s because it’s not a question.
Apple isn’t going to release an x86 version of OS X. Apple itself has stated it’s not going to, and as far as sound business logic, there’s no reason they would. It doesn’t have anything to do with CNET being “a big corporate ass-kissing company.” Hell, if I were conducting an interview, I wouldn’t waste a question-slot or my time, because the answer is already known.
What’s all this fuss about OSX on x86 when there’s another CPU more worthy of fussing about that CNet didn’t ask Jobs about. The G5!!
>>”Is Apple planning on an x86 compatible version of OSX?”
This is the hot topic on many geek sites, as well in many professional publications, and CNET doesn’t even address it in their interview questions.<<
This question was brought up at Apple’s last shareholders meeting and Steve Jobs said it wasn’t going to happen.
So Apple invented digital video? Yeah right. I was using products of the Moving Picture Experts Group for years before QuickTime existed! Same thing for PDF, OpenGL, LDAP and FreeBSD. Steve Jobs, the compulsive liar, just like his odious little minions here.
As for MPEG-4, while it’s technically compelling, the draconian licensing scheme will ultimately kill it, in much the same way that FireWire blew its big chance. A shame, really. And highly ironic.
So you are claiming that you invented digital video? So tell us about your bible of digital video and PDF, OpenGL, LDAP, FreeBSD and I suppose you did this all on your Windoz @@@. I suppose you believe that you saw the beginning of time and made the first personal computer too. How stupid can you get?
So just tell us the date you thought you would give digital video a whirl?
As for Firewire it is holding its own. It certainly still is mainstream comparted to USB2 and is substaintially better than than USB. Come give us the facts not compulsive lies speed.
>>So Apple invented digital video? Yeah right. I was using products of the Moving Picture Experts Group for years before QuickTime existed! Same thing for PDF, OpenGL, LDAP and FreeBSD. Steve Jobs, the compulsive liar, just like his odious little minions here.<<
Well the Quicktime thing was a little pushing the reality spectrum, but the PDF, OpenGL, LDAP and FreeBSD is something Apple is just supporting (which Open Standards, like you said in another post is the way to go and I agree). Though I don’t think their PDF implementation is the greatest in their Preview application. I sometimes have to revert to Acrobat to properly view PDF files at work.
>>As for MPEG-4, while it’s technically compelling, the draconian licensing scheme will ultimately kill it, in much the same way that FireWire blew its big chance. A shame, really. And highly ironic.<<
Of course I’m not sweating MPEG-4, but as for FireWire, the journey has just begun. I think Intel will not be able to keep USB up to FireWire’s potential in performance. Hopefully with this whole new licensing and adoption with the FireWire name will do away with the whole confusion that has kept consumers baffled of what FireWire actually is. I doubt Apple will adopt USB 2.0, it wouldn’t make sense to!
Why would apple take one of the major draws to get people to buy their hardware and make it work on everything else?
Some information:
MPEG initially was an audio/video format. The MPEG consortium had its first meeting in 1989 [1]. Back then, you couldn’t view MPEG content using only a computer. You needed to get additional hardware components.
QuickTime is “a software only digital media solution” [2]. QuickTime 1.0 was released in January 1992. It was revolutionary because it enabled the Macintosh computers to play back video without getting specialized hardware. Nobody else had done that before.
“QuickTime redefined multimedia from a complex landscape of laser discs and video playback boards to a simple, elegant, universally available software-only digital media solution.”
QuickTime has evolved to a complete digital media solution. The same is true for MPEG. MPEG 4 combines several technologies (it borrows from QuickTime, RealPlayer and others) to provide a full solution.
[1] http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is224/s99/GroupG/report1.html
[2] http://www.friendsoftime.org
Quoting from Robert X. Cringely’s column http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20011122.html
The amazing thing about Quicktime is that there was nothing like it before, and everything has been like it since. Look at the guts of Real Player or Windows Media Player, and you’ll see structural copies of QuickTime. It is very hard to be an original, to be the first, and to still survive a decade later, but Quicktime does all that. And it might even get the last laugh. Apple is rumored to be preparing an MPEG-4 player for Quicktime (the Quicktime file format is already used by MPEG-4), which ought to give the system perpetual legs and a real advantage against more proprietary solutions from Real and Microsoft.
Back in 1990 when Apple first conceived of QuickTime, the world of “multimedia” was one of laserdiscs. A multimedia application was a Hypercard stack connected bya serial cable to a Macintosh. The stack let you navigate to a particular clip. The video was then played on a TV screen. In 1991, the big step forward was to display that video on the computer screen… but you still needed the laserdisc. And when Apple management announced QuickTime in 1990, the idea was very much about perpetuating and supporting that model. The QuickTime team subverted that whole system by saying that every PC (Mac!) should be able to play video on its own… no special hardware. So they developed software only video and audio that scaled itself to match the users machine. Constrast this to the PC industry which in 1992 was obsessed with multimedia PC, which was basically just a sound card plugged into a stock PC. Miles apart. The QuickTime work put in the foundation for ground breaking titles like MYST and Peter Gabriel’s XPLORA 1, and set the model that was later followed for MPEG-4 and DVD.
I don’t have any problem with Apple using open standards, but claiming that they’re pushing those standards is patently false. PDF came from Adobe. OpoenGL was integrated into Windows NT, and later Windows 95, long before Apple ever used it. LDAP came from X.500, as did Novell’s NetWare NDS. True LDAP implementations preceded OSX by a wide margin, and Sun is switching from their trademark NIS+ directory to LDAP. Give credit where credit is due.
Apple aside, I’m not a big fan of PDF. It’s a relic of the paper-based past, that is unfortunately pulling tons of paper into the present. It’s like sticking wings onto a car to make an airplane — it can work, but not very well. All of those hidden PDF documents really slow down my web browsing! I figured that Apple must know what they were doing with OSX, but all the reports of sluggish performance give me cause to wonder.
Whether FireWire can keep up remains to be seen. I just keep on hearing some pretty reasonable explanations about why the battle is already lost. I’m a bit miffed that Apple did what they did, after a number of companies like Adaptec and Compaq pitched in to turn the long-nascent technology into a marketable product. When Apple’s greed backfires, everybody loses.
USB was conceived to handle low-speed peripherals like HIDs and the next generation floppy drives. USB 2.0 wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for the royalties. But now that it is here, it’s not going away. Vendors who have committed to USB will fight to protect their investment. Apple’s concession may well be too little, too late. Retail buyers really don’t care about the finer technical points. All they want is what’s available now, and for a good price.
I don’t know what spj is talking about. I was watching video on my Amiga in 1989.
You are mixing ‘pushing’ with ‘inventing’. I think
Jobs wanted to say that they are USING standart-formats and not inventing some propietary stuff like MS !!
And OpenGL on windows, yes its there, but they are pushing DirectX and all the other MS-formats.
So what is false when he say he is pushing the formats ? Isn’t it pushing when you use it on every Computer ?
The more they get used the more they get popular, so at the end they get pushed. Or what do you understand with ‘pushing’ ?
Thoems
Thöms, you’re nitpicking. But if you read my post, you will see that I addressed the invention claim and the “pushing” claim separately.
If Jobs wanted to say that they used a technology, he should have said they used the technology, just like that! Using dofferent words with different connotations reduces truth to falsehood. I’m tired of the Apple flim-flam, be it weasel words or outright lies, that has Apple taking credit for other people’s work.
I mean I don’t say everything which Apple is doing is good. Every company wants to make money, and as long as there is no monopoly of one, all is alright. What I want to say is, if Apple would be the big player and MS the little one, everybody would hate Apple (as it was when IBM was the king) 😉
If you want to ride on every word than please read it right.
When you read the interview than the word ‘pushing open standarts’ was in the question and Jobs used ‘support open standarts’.
And ‘invent’ or ‘sort of invent’ is also very different 😉
Instead of be happy that a company use open standarts so that every OS have the same chance to implement the stuff some people just start to complain, maybe because they like to complain 😉
Thoems
Now that you are recanting everything that you claimed before maybe we should account for your deceptive lies.
By the way OpenGL as I recall was not developed by Microsoft and LDAP was developed, oh yes both of them technologies were developed in one of the ranks of Unix. Get the hint? Now PD, that is a technology that was mainly held by Adobe not Apple. Other than Apple adopting a standard why are you dragging that into this forum? As for Firewire that is a standard that was developed by many people including Apple. Then question is can USB2 catch up? sure it is faster at this time but as the next standard in FireWire emerges will USB 2 do enough fast enough? And nobody claimed that USB was leaving. Hell Apple has also adopted it as the only way to connect keyboards and mouse for a few years already. Can any other PC manufactor make that claim? Secondly if Firewire is so bad then why is Microsoft endorsing it?
Speed?
This is the hot topic on many geek sites, as well in many professional publications, and CNET doesn’t even address it in their interview questions.
The obvious answer: no. If it is yes, it would only run on Apple’s hardware that uses x86. If Apple killed clones, and refused to allow it back, I can’t imagine them venturing into a market that almost requires them to allow clones.
So Apple invented digital video? Yeah right. I was using products of the Moving Picture Experts Group for years before QuickTime existed! Same thing for PDF, OpenGL, LDAP and FreeBSD. Steve Jobs, the compulsive liar, just like his odious little minions here.
Please post use URLs where Steve Jobs had claimed it had invented digital video, or PDF, OpenGL, LDAP and FreeBSD?
In other words, Speed, the compulsive liar, have no proof to back up the claims.
As for MPEG-4, while it’s technically compelling, the draconian licensing scheme will ultimately kill it, in much the same way that FireWire blew its big chance. A shame, really. And highly ironic.
MPEG-LA and Apple are in the process of fixing the royalty issue (BTW, MP3 became the most used audio format – and it requires royalties…. same with GIF).
What Apple is advocating for is 0 royalties for content makers.
As for Firewire, it is more adopted than USB 2.0, two competiting standards for high speed transfers. And while Intel and TI are trying to get people to use USB 2.0, IEEE 1394b would have much faster theoritical speeds. This doesn’t mean USB is displace – until USB becomes a bottleneck for performance, it would be used for devices like mouses and keyboards (why spend more to use USB 2.0 or Firewire for something you don’t need?).
Of course I’m not sweating MPEG-4, but as for FireWire, the journey has just begun. I think Intel will not be able to keep USB up to FireWire’s potential in performance. Hopefully with this whole new licensing and adoption with the FireWire name will do away with the whole confusion that has kept consumers baffled of what FireWire actually is. I doubt Apple will adopt USB 2.0, it wouldn’t make sense to!
Apple would be smart enough to adopt USB 2.0 when devices start using it. Why? For devices like thumb drives, physical wise, it is a smarter choice using USB 2.0. Also, there is a lot of devices that uses USB 2.0 (external CD-RWs, HDDs etc.).
Of course, most likely they won’t include USB 2.0.
After all, they recieve royalties for every IEEE 1394 device.
Out of the blue: IIRC, Real was the first to introduce streaming Internet video and audio, something Quicktime copied. WMP of course, copied ideas from everyone 🙂
I don’t have any problem with Apple using open standards, but claiming that they’re pushing those standards is patently false. PDF came from Adobe. OpoenGL was integrated into Windows NT, and later Windows 95, long before Apple ever used it. LDAP came from X.500, as did Novell’s NetWare NDS. True LDAP implementations preceded OSX by a wide margin, and Sun is switching from their trademark NIS+ directory to LDAP. Give credit where credit is due.
Okay, did Apple ever claimed it was the main person pushing these open standards? Nope, never. They however claimed that they do support open standards – which they do anyway.
Whether FireWire can keep up remains to be seen. I just keep on hearing some pretty reasonable explanations about why the battle is already lost. I’m a bit miffed that Apple did what they did, after a number of companies like Adaptec and Compaq pitched in to turn the long-nascent technology into a marketable product. When Apple’s greed backfires, everybody loses.
Firewire is more adopted than USB 2.0. For example, the MiniDV standard requires IEEE 1394. With IEEE 1394b coming out anything soon, Firewire could beat USB 2.0 in performance.
USB was conceived to handle low-speed peripherals like HIDs and the next generation floppy drives. USB 2.0 wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for the royalties. But now that it is here, it’s not going away. Vendors who have committed to USB will fight to protect their investment. Apple’s concession may well be too little, too late. Retail buyers really don’t care about the finer technical points. All they want is what’s available now, and for a good price.
There are products that uses USB 2.0. Most of them products, all of them either high end scanners and printers, external hard disk drives (and devices that use HDDs) and external CD-RW drives. And most of them either have a similar IEEE 1394 model. And those who don’t; there are altenatives that use IEEE 1394.
As for Firewire, it has digital camcorders; something USB 2.0 doesn’t have.
And OpenGL on windows, yes its there, but they are pushing DirectX and all the other MS-formats.
If you read the history behind DirectX, it was Microsoft (and Nvidia) answer to 3dfx’s Glide, which wasn’t exactly “open”. OpenGL and DirectX are very different, and OpenGL is more useful in other places like 3D animation desiging and so on.
If Jobs wanted to say that they used a technology, he should have said they used the technology, just like that! Using dofferent words with different connotations reduces truth to falsehood. I’m tired of the Apple flim-flam, be it weasel words or outright lies, that has Apple taking credit for other people’s work.
You haven’t put any prove behind your claims that Steve Jobs claimed those open standards were created by his company. In the CNet interview, he claims he pushes these open standards in OS X – which there isn’t anything wrong. He pushing OpenGL to 3D programmers, for example.
I mean I don’t say everything which Apple is doing is good. Every company wants to make money, and as long as there is no monopoly of one, all is alright. What I want to say is, if Apple would be the big player and MS the little one, everybody would hate Apple (as it was when IBM was the king) 😉
If… I hate Apple pre-monopoly, one could imagine post-monopoly.
Secondly if Firewire is so bad then why is Microsoft endorsing it?
Microsoft is not endorsing it. It had support for IEEE 1394 before USB 2.0 mainly because IEEE 1394 came out first.
Thanks rajan for the clearity. The main point of the Microsoft endorsement of Firewire would be the fact that they hosted one of the 1394 Association Conventions this past year and have accepted it. As for what Microsofts position between the two, there is probably no between the two but rather how do they support both of them.
For me the chance to buy an Apple computer are gétting better; still here in Germany 1500EUR is still a HUGE amount of money for such a machine (altough i think it’s a wonderful one).
When we will see better prices (i mean lower prices :O) expecially in Europe??
>>Apple would be smart enough to adopt USB 2.0 when devices start using it. Why? For devices like thumb drives, physical wise, it is a smarter choice using USB 2.0. Also, there is a lot of devices that uses USB 2.0 (external CD-RWs, HDDs etc.).<<
Well it’s not hard to find FireWire devices like it was 2 years ago, I even have a FireWire CD/RW drive myself. I have noticed that third arty vendors are starting to dual support for both, ‘LaCie’ being a prime example of that. Also with Amiga coming (hopefully by the end of the year), they will also be supporting FireWire and I can imagine third party vendors already supporting the Mac exclusively will probablt bring Amiga into their target zone, being the 2 will share some similarities in hardware.
>>For me the chance to buy an Apple computer are gétting better; still here in Germany 1500EUR is still a HUGE amount of money for such a machine (altough i think it’s a wonderful one). When we will see better prices (i mean lower prices :O) expecially in Europe??<<
When they get rid of 19% BTW!
🙂
Out of the blue: IIRC, Real was the first to introduce streaming Internet video and audio, something Quicktime copied. WMP of course, copied ideas from everyone 🙂
Indeed. QuickTime was the last to join the streaming game. That’s why they open sourced their streaming server.
As for the guy who said that Amiga was doing software-only digital video before 1989: Can anybody confirm this? I’m really interested in the topic.
rajan, if you had bothered to read the article that we’re discussing, you would know what we are making references to. As it stands, you have nothing to contribute to the topic and are making unprovoked personal insults. Pretty much makes you a troll, doesn’t it?
Speedier- Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! Too bad that your content doesn’t live up to the name. You too need to read the article, unless your goal is to prove yourself a fool.
Wasn’t the Amiga used for video editing back when the Amiga 2000 was released. There were add in boards to turn it into something called a “Video Toaster”. However, I think the point was made that Apple claims the first computer *not* requiring special hardware for rendering.
As for the guy who said that Amiga was doing software-only digital video before 1989: Can anybody confirm this? I’m really interested in the topic.
I remember old Amigas playing video – maybe there is hardware under the hood, but one can’t be too sure.
rajan, if you had bothered to read the article that we’re discussing, you would know what we are making references to.
Yes, I have read the entire article, as I do before posting in any forum.
As it stands, you have nothing to contribute to the topic and are making unprovoked personal insults. Pretty much makes you a troll, doesn’t it?
Well, it seems you have nothing to contribute to the forums., Take a look at the quote by Steve Jobs by the interview:
With Mac OS X and other products, Apple has been pushing more open, rather than proprietary, standards.
Absolutely. I think the list of open standards we are supporting now is long–everything from PDF (Portable Document Format) for our imaging model, OpenGL for our 3D model, to Unix itself–FreeBSD Unix, which is totally open sourced with Darwin–to obviously all the communications protocols we support, which are all open standards. It’s a lot of stuff. We do great implementations of them, and we really do believe in open standards. It’s working for us. We have customers calling us up now about Mac OS X who wouldn’t even talk to us when we banged on their door before with Mac OS 9 or its predecessors. We’re getting a lot of interest because of this strategy. As you may know, in Jaguar our whole directory service is going to LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol). There’s a lot of support in our customer base for this and, again, we’re able to attract a lot of new customers.
It said nothing about Apple creating those standards. Also, Steve Jobs did not claim to push these standards outside the Mac market. In other words, the “compulsive liar” would be you. Maybe you could pick out a quote by Jobs or any of Apple’s spokemans or executive showing they are liar on the regard of open standards?
Sorry I’ve been gone…
It has only become obvious that Speed, you are not up to speed on the topics you claim to know something about. rajan continues to point out the obvious and provides details and facts.
For the sake of this forum Speed go to school and get an education. Then only talk when you know what you are talking about.
Sticks and stones Speedier, sticks and stones. The only thing that’s obvious in your post is that 1. you’re incredibly jealous of me, and 2. you have nothing to add to the topic.