“On the eve of Apple Computer’s semi-annual MacWorld event, Microsoft has dropped a bombshell on the company: Work harder to accelerate Mac OS X sales, or Microsoft will exit the Mac market forever. This sentiment is one shared by many Mac developers, as Mac OS X has not sold well at all.” Read the report at WinInfo and MacMinute’s report of the original Wall Street Journal article.
Microsoft to Exit Mac Market If Sales Continue to Lag
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
“. But thats because its a horrible design, I mean 2 inch screen with no backlight”
yeah i got suckered into buying a GBA. i can’t see the friggen screen.
it baffles me that sega game gear, with its color screen and backlit screen, died out to the original monochrome gameboy.
🙁
DC was good for its time but i’m of the opinion that ps2 has better graphics than DC.
of course, i hold the view that gamecube is even better than ps2
What? And where are all those OS X apps? Where is Adobe in all of this? Have they even ported most of their software to OS X? Nope. Games? The PC is way ahead in that department, and you are not going to even attempt to run a game in Virtual PC…
Adobe is moving to OS X quite fast. Every new release of one of their apps will be OS X native. See Photoshop 7, for instance. The biggest problem for many publishers is Quark XPress, but Indesign is already native. I consider this a good moment for them to move from that buggy, bloated, rarely updated POS to Indesign.
As for games, the Mac has actually been doing very well over the last few years. Most quality games have become available. Sometimes a bit later than on the PC, but that usually means that you forgo beta testing the game (most are very buggy for the few months of rapid updates). I agree that a hardcore gamer shouldn’t get a Mac for gaming(perhaps he should get a PS2), but most casual gamers will be very pleased with the games they can play.
I don’t think that your nephews wanting to play a cool game you showed them illustrates that there is a plethora of good Mac software.
The point I was trying to make at that point in my argument was another. Perhaps you should reread what I wrote.
Dude, the PowerPC processors are going to trudge along in the PC market just like Apple.
Are we talking about the architecture which has one of the fastest chips in the world available (the Power4)? Do you actually have any proof to support your claim that the PowerPC is dead? It seems to me that you are just using FUD to try and scare people.
but they would also be able to compare their machines on an equal MHz footing and ride on the advertizing provided by the CPU manufacturers.
Wrong. Intel is also moving to processors with lower clockspeeds. Their new Itanium 2 will run at 1 Ghz. I guess that if a 1Ghz computer will always lose out to a 2.2 Ghz one, Intel is in big trouble themselves.
Doesn’t this make some sense?
No, you don’t know what you are talking about.
I don’t believe that this is true among most users. Are you saying that Apple’s really are not as powerful as PCs?
Macs are more powerful for many tasks (which is why I use them), but not necessarily any faster or slower. It strongly depends on what you want to do. Maya is a bit slow on the Mac for instance (probably because the port still has to be optimized). Encoding a DVD is much faster compared to a similar priced PC. I can probably make a long list of things that are faster on either platform.
If you are using demanding software, you should try and find benchmarks for them (or do them yourself). But there is no reason to believe the myth that Macs are somehow not competitive when even PC Magazine feels they are (see the review at the bottom):
http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0,3048,a=25306,00.asp
This software comes with the PC when you buy pieces of hardware. Apple people keep talking about iTunes and the video editing software.
Do you know what you are talking about? Have you ever used the software? There is a big difference between getting crappy software with your PC and getting the iApps. iDVD is the easiest way to create DVD’s according to the independant National Software Testing Labs: http://www.apple.com/creative/resources/nstldvdreport/ . iTunes is an excellent mp3-player, most people that tried it consider it the best. iPhoto is unique. Is there another app that can seamlessly import your pictures from a digital camera and let you navigate through them easily?
but the adverage user is not going to use this crap. Its a feature without a benefit.
Are you serious in suggesting that average users don’t use MP3-software? As for video editing, it is more and more becoming a commodity. It’s really not that hard. You point the camera, shoot the footage, connect to your computer with firewire and edit it. iMovie makes the latter quite easy, it’s very popular in schools actually. Here are some examples of movies that created by the average people you say don’t exist:
http://www.apple.com/imovie/gallery/
I think that your belief that video-editing is not for regular folks is a demonstration of how (unnecessarily) hard it is on Windows.
That is because when they bought their hardware, they were not considering real reliability. Many PC problems are brought about using cheap hardware with crumby drivers.
Nonsense. I build my own PC’s using first class components (Asus, Abit, Hercules, etc). Problems still arise. OEM’s aren’t any better. Perhaps I should move to $10.000 server hardware? Or I could save up for a new Mac. Hard choice indeed.
This may not happen with Macs because of Apple’s proprietary designs, but at least with a PC there is a wide range of choice in hardware.
There is also quite a wide range of options for the Mac. I can add regular RAM, HD’s, burners, printers, some videocards, scanners, etc. The somewhat reduced choice is offset by the fact that a Mac is much, much more reliable and better integrated. It may not be your cup o’ tea, but it’s a fair deal.
Dude, in computers reliability AND speed can go together. There are many other computers, including PCs that can provide both.
That depends on the task you want to do. It may be the fastest to perform on x86, PowerPC, Alpha or Sparc. Sometimes Windows is the most best option, in other cases you might go for Linux, FreeBSD or Solaris and sometimes MacOS is the better choice. None of these platforms is superior for every task.
I have seen alot of Mac software from other vendors that has not been that hot, especially OS9 software.
And I have seen an immense amount of crappy Windows software. So? Is there a point to your rant?
So far, apple’s die hard stupid fans think that Apple hardware and software is the best. They miss lots of points. Apple is also very good at cheating them, and making them believe that they are actually better.
It is extremely hard to compete with a titan like Microsoft. They hire the best people. Apple can not compete with Microsoft in any case.
Apple’s hardware is also dying, because of lack of enough user base. Intel and AMD spend more money on research then Motorola and IBM in developing CPUs. Every year Intel and AMD comes up with new CPU technologies, but Apple is still tied with the old technology, doesn’t introduce new CPUs as fast as Intel and AMD does.
Apple’s OS X attempt is a very good one. There are couple of problems though. OS X’s Aqua interface require a very fast hardware which is expensive to buy. It is fancy, but less useful, because it is less responsive in the current hardware. With the slowdown in the spending, it is very hard to convince many people to buy new hardware. This is a big problem for Apple, because there are less number of people who actually use Os X, and this in turn is a problem for developers like Microsoft, Adobe and so on.
Os X’s second problem is that, it depends on Free BSD, and they are not very quick on adopting new technologies. Apple seems to ignore the operating system itself, but rather wants to concentrate on the user interface, as it did before in the older Oses. This is a serious mistake, because in Os 9,8 and so on, the OS was crashing for very stupid reasons, there was no multi-threading and memory protection. With UNIX these are solved, but still Apple doesn’t really want to develop an OS, but rather the interface itself. I have checked out certain Operating system issues in both Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, like virtual memory. I found out that Mac OS X is the only operating system which doesn’t care too much about these issues. Most of the things Apple wants to talk about is Aqua, Quartz and so on, but not these important issues.
People are not stupid, everyone wants to buy a computer that looks like Apple’s ibook, titanium power book, or new iMac. Everyone likes Os X’s aqua interface. But these all should work well, and shoul be better than the competitors. Apple is like gorgeous in the outside, but very bad in the inside. So I believe that sooner or later Apple will go out of business. I was planning to switch to Apple, but when I see the slow response in Os X’s aqua interface I decided not to.
No doubt MS is trying to punish Apple for the “Switch” campaign; MS always tries to punish its opponents, rather than simply not dealing with them or trying to compete fairly!. Did you notice Apple’s stock drop sharply when analysts took the “hint” from MS about pulling Office? There was no reason to down-grade Apple stock, except that Apple is in MS’ sights now. When will Americans and their “leaders” have the guts to counter corporate greed and bullying, of which Gates and Microsoft are archetypes?