“Apple picked the worst possible time to take the biggest risk imaginable. Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server are unqualified hits on everything from $999 notebooks through entry servers. Developers are climbing onto the platform in droves, as well they should. I can’t say it emphatically enough: Apple is a serious player in the broad IT market now.” Read the editorial at InfoWorld.
Apple: Let’s Make a Toast to this Recession
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Developers are climbing onto the platform in droves, as well they should. I can’t say it emphatically enough: Apple is a serious player in the broad IT market now.
I read on OS News a few weeks ago though that Apple were losing marketshare, and before then that OS X wasn’t selling fast enough for Microsoft of all people to be happy. So how are these two totally opposite opinions reconciled? I don’t get it.
I suspect that the InfoWorld article is mostly hype not based on any real facts – most people I talk to seem to assume that the new Apple is a gigantic success and everybody is buying their stuff. Not sure whether that’s backed up by the real world though.
> I suspect that the InfoWorld article is mostly hype not based on any real facts
I agree. It is an editorial, which means that this is the author’s opinion… possibly by a Mac user.
Apple indeed has its marketshare declined severly since last year (currently around 2.1%, from 3.4% of October 2001) according to all big stat companies.
but if the overall market grew, it’s unit shipments may have increased.
does anyone know?
I read somewhere, though, that in the last 5 years Apples share price has risen by a larger percentage than microsoft’s. Doesn’t this mean the Apple has grown faster that microsoft? Apple can’t be doing that bad, then.
Here in the UK there is a clothes store called ‘Next’. They hold the same percentage of the clothes market as Apple hold in the PC market. That doesn’t mean, however, people think the store is a waste of time, and that there isn’t a Next store in every major town/city in this country.
5% of the IT market (on average) is still about 50,000,000 machines, which isn’t that bad, let’s face it.
This journalist obviously has never done any market research.
Apple is losing market share every year. That 50 million number is becoming lost in the noise as the next billion pc’s are sold, Apple’s percentage will be at least halved, if not further reduced.
Apple is not taking any market by storm. Quite the opposite, actually. OS X sales have been slow. OS X doesn’t work well on many older Macs. It is a resource pig.
Apple will never be a player in the server market. It is just another Apple niche where they can earn a few dollars.
Even a stalwart Mac software producer, Quark, is moving to Windows as well as Mac and will eventually drop Mac if Apple doesn’t do something about the falling market share.
Unofficially, Adobe is not happy with Apple, mostly because of Final Cut Pro. If there were a way to ditch the Mac market, Adobe would do it. The same goes with Microsoft. They have no real enthusiasm for the Mac. Apple makes a boutique product.
Apple is losing share in every key segment — education, consumer, desktop publishing, video, music, etc. There is not one segment where Apple is gaining share.
The price of Apple’s machines always is a huge premium over the price of a PC.
Apple has no coherent strategy on how to take advantage of the giant explosion in the Asian marketplace. Apple share in Asia is abysmally tiny.
MacOSX is competent but not a great OS by any means. It is painful to use on anything other than a fast machine. Perhaps if one didn’t have to use the GUI, it would have moderate performance.
The new UI of OSX is nice at first, but using it for an entire day shows all the design glitches. It is full of sizzle, but offers very little steak. And it is slow. Try running a few apps and then scrolling in them. Try opening a big document. Monk-like patience required.
As for Apple’s stock price, in the past two years, Microsoft’s stock has registered a small increase in value while Apple’s has undergone a small decrease in value. Otherwise, the stocks have performed in a similar fashion. Over five years, Apple’s stock performance, as a percentage, is even slightly better.
However, looking beyond share price, Apple’s market cap is currently $5.56 billion. Microsoft makes enough profit every year to purchase Apple in CASH. And Microsoft’s market capitalization is $308.4 billion.
It is silly to compare these companies. Microsoft has world vision and is creating computing architectures on a global scale. Apple produces a few expensive computers for the rich and/or stupid.
– Red Pill
Yes, I’d expect that. Microsoft has had a monopoly for as long as I can remember really, meaning that it’s hard for them to expand in their current markets: they already have close to 100% market share. Apple though (in theory) can expand, hence their share price has probably risen somewhat with the return of Jobs.
I know Next, I don’t shop there but I don’t think it’s a waste of space. I do wish Apple would pack up and go home however, because there’s one crucial difference between Next the clothes store and Apple, namely that clothes aren’t a platform. If I buy some trousers from Next, I don’t have to buy all my other clothes from them as well. If I buy a shirt from them, I don’t suddenly find myself unable to speak to my friends. Software platforms and clothes are so different it’s hard to make a useful analogy between them. The rules of competition are bent and warped by technical oddities in the way our computer technologies are designed, so you need special rules for the OS industry.
but if the overall market grew, it’s unit shipments may have increased.
I doubt it. The computer market reached saturation (ie everybody who wanted one pretty much had one) several years ago. If Apple aren’t doing all that well it wouldn’t surprise me, most Mac users could (up until recently) be split into two camps:
– Conservatives: those who used Macs because that’s what they had, that’s what they’d always used, or because Macs were strong in a particular industry (ie publishing).
– Loyalists: the brand fanatics who seem to have kept Apple afloat all these years, the type of people who would buy quite literally anything from Apple if it came with the right marketing and branding.
With the new directions and agressive marketing they are persuing, the conseratives (the bulk of the original 4% installed user base) are being somewhat alienated. They were never particularly interested in buying Mac hardware for the sake of it, and so the big transition from older Macs running OS 9 to newer Macs running OSX is a big one for them. They weren’t so keen. So all Apple could do was sell to the loyalists, hence stuff like the expensive upgrade for 10.2 which came pretty soon after 10.0 compared to the rest of the industry. I thought the line in the article about how Apple doesn’t squeeze its customers was hilarious – sorry? Apple have been squeezing their customers time and time again for years. They have the highest margins in the hardware business by a long way for instance, and the .Mac fiasco is another good example.
I’d guess that Apple are getting new customers faster than they were before, as they are (for now) cool again. However I think maybe their old guard userbase in the publishing, music, design etc industries may be deserting them – there simply isn’t a good enough reason to pay those kind of markups in business.
Just a theory. I could well be wrong.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=c&c=aapl&k=c1&t=my&s=msft&a=v&p=s&l=on…
In the lifetime of these two companies, Apple share value has increased by slightly over 0%. On the other hand, Microsoft’s share value has increased by over 20,000%.
Apple is managed by art therapy idiots. Microsoft is managed by brilliant business people.
– Red Pill
Even though Apple is loosing market share, that does not mean that they are not doing better than they used too. Here’s why… If the number of PC’s is at 1 billion and apple hold 5% that’s 50 million PC’s are Macs. If the market rises to 1.5 billion and the number of macs rise to 60 million, apple have lost market share. 4% instead of 5%.
Except Mac marketshare is nowhere near 5%, it hasn’t been for many many years.
Bear in mind having more machines than they used to in the world is no achievement, what matters from a platform perspective (due to lockin value) in their eyes is what proportion of the market is using their stuff.
I heard somewhere that Linux had a higher market share than Apple. It makes one ponder why companies such as Adobe have not ported their products to Linux.
Apparently in the computer age most people beleive that marketshare while making no profit is better then making a profit.
There is not a single commercial application published for Linux that has become a success story. People that choose Linux as their operating system are likely to go for open application alternatives as well.
I remember seeing BeOS running very well on a powerpc 603 with just 32mb of ram, back in the days of power computing.
it ran with great speed on a dual 604 (remember those?) from power computing. i recall motorola also had a mac clone.
i also recall that beos running mac sheepshaver, and able to run legacy mac os software. the be os demo god said that if apple had bought be, they could easily fit a class system 7 UI for Be, and run legacy software with mac sheepshaver, and it would run on systems with just 32mb and 100mhz 603’s/604.s
red pill said, “The new UI of OSX is nice at first, but using it for an entire day shows all the design glitches. It is full of sizzle, but offers very little steak. And it is slow. Try running a few apps and then scrolling in them. Try opening a big document. Monk-like patience required.”
i’ve used mac os x on the new imac and it has no where near the speed and responsiveness as winxp clone, esp. webbrowsing. i find it agonizingly slow.
i am curious as to what red pill, who seems to know what hes talking about, speculates if apple went with be. i would suggest that apple’s OS would be untouchable the fastest commerical OS out there, with great UI speed and experience.
I was a mac faithful, but now i use windows to get work done and play games. i’ve given up on be os.
it was my hope that apple purchsed be and made that their next-gen OS, rather than NEXT, and kept the cloners. yes, i bought a 603e power computing.
I remember reading in MacUser just a couple of months ago that Apples market share was up to 5%.
The problem is, the Mac magazines are all saying how great everything is going and give one figure and then some guy on OSNews goes and gives a totally different figure and says everything is going badly. I don’t know who to believe.
As for speed, my gf uses a tangerine ibook 300mhz with 128mb RAM and I think it’s fine. Mind you, I have never had cutting edge machines. I uses to use Windows 95 on a 486sx for years, and then a p90 when 300Mhz were top of the line. I guess since I have never tasted speed, I am not bothered when something goes slowly.
Apple will never be a player in the server market. It is
just another Apple niche where they can earn a few dollars.
Apple are now 5th in the server market selling something like 100,000 Xserve machines.
The new UI of OSX is nice at first, but using it for an entire day shows all the design glitches. It is full of sizzle, but offers very little steak. And it is slow. Try running a few apps and then scrolling in them. Try opening a big document. Monk-like patience required.
I use a Mac these days and I like it a lot. OK it’s not exactly the most responsive machine in the world but it’s certainly usable, weirdly the responsiveness stays constant even when you go up to 100% CPU power. It’s a new system, they still have work to do…
There are a few things I find annoying but my experience is it’s a machine I can get to work on without problems, the worst problems I have are with MS Word which is so buggy I’m surprised they released it – then again this seems pretty normal for Microsoft.
—
Apparently in the computer age most people beleive that marketshare while making no profit is better then making a profit.
Exactly.
Was doing a price comparison here in Australia (So prices are in Aus dollars). The new amiga is now available so I thought I would see how it compares to the Apple computers, same base hardware.
For $3,695.00 you get the new snazzy imac
15-inch LCD flat screen
800Mhz PowerPC G4
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX
256MB SDRAM
60GB Ultra ATA hard drive
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
56K internal modem
Apple Pro Speakers
For $2,460.00 you get the AmigaOne XE system comprising:
Motherboard with G4 800 mhz IBM Power PC processor module.
512 Meg PC133 SDRAM.
40 Gig Seagate hard drive.
Radeon 7500 AGP graphics card, 64MB DDR,128BIT,TV-OUT,DVI,TwinView.
Soundblaster Live 5.1 DE sound card.
DVD Rom drive.
1.44 meg floppy drive.
PS2 keyboard.
PS2 mouse.
Pinpoint ATX case with front accesible USB and audio ports, and perspex side window
400 watt power supply.
Fully assembled and tested.
Linux PPC and UAE PPC pre-installed.
Amiga OS 4 license.
12 mths warranty.
Now, 15″ LCD displays are about $700 or more for a total of $3160 for the amiga vs $3,695 for the mac. There are other differences between the 2 machines but nothing major. You could argue that the software you get with the mac makes up the difference and I would agree.
But the interesting thing to me is not that the Amiga costs less. Its that if they make/sell more than 10000 of the Amiga’s worldwide I would be surprised. How many does apple expect to sell, Surely they have the advantage in costs here. The Amiga costs more than any PC I could put together which I expected but the Apple costs even more. Ouch.
No somehow I don’t think Apple is likely to grow its market with those prices.
Cheers
David
Apple would be much more competitive/appealing if their machines were considerably faster than PCs…OS X responsiveness issues would dissappear and they’d be worth paying a premium for.
It would be nice if IBM can deliver for Apple what Motorola has not been able to in many years
-bytes256
Apple aren’t going to disappear overnight, people. I know no-one’s really saying they are, but it is important to remember they control most of the artistic market. People working in fashion, graphic design, music and education all have a preference to Apple machines. These groups aren’t suddenly going to “switch” to Linux or Windows as they need the simplicity, style and stability of a Mac. They may only make up 2% or so of the market, but 2% is still enough to keep a company afloat. They also appear to be making inroads again into homes of people who perhaps are not completely educated in the world of computers with their stunning hardware design.
There is one thing Apple needs to do though. DROP PRICES. Especially outside the U.S. In New Zealand a top of the line, 800MHz, superdrive iMac will set you back a whopping $2,806.60 US in comparison to $1999 US in the US. It is hard for ANY casual consumer to justify sticker-shock on such a scale.
The author may have done a bit of exaggerating regarding the uptake of OS X but his observation is valid. Apple is getting more consideration in the mainstream IT world than ever before. That does not mean that apple is anything near an Ibm but the perception that they are just producers of nice looking equipment is no longer. OS X is suceeding is giving apple a more serious image and If they are considered in teh IT world, they will get some contracts.
OS X, is thus also succeeding in expanding apple’s potential and existing market beyond the education/graphics heavy core of the past.
The author has, let us say, magnified the situation. However, it is true that the XServe is a hit, given a certain context. It is somewhat surprising too. I I was really surprised when they came out with the XServe. So, that’s a bonus for Apple.
Apple though is movng ever more to digital lifestyle devices and the software to run them. The iPod is an unadulterated hit – and now for Windows too. This coming year, look for more digital lifestyle devices/apps from Apple. They want to be a mini-Sony.
Aki wrote: There is not a single commercial application published for Linux that has become a success story.
I call FUD on you. There are loads. Check out the stuff ILM are doing with Linux for a particularly pertinent example.
I guess CrossOver and WineX aren’t commercial products either then? I guess RealPlayer isn’t a commercial product? The games Loki ported and sold actually did quite well, the company went bankrupt due to massive fraud by the managers and hopeless business management.
What you mean is, Linux does not have a million and one download utilities crammed with advertising that people feel forced to use because there is nothing better?
Apple aren’t going to disappear overnight, people. I know no-one’s really saying they are, but it is important to remember they control most of the artistic market. People working in fashion, graphic design, music and education all have a preference to Apple machines. These groups aren’t suddenly going to “switch” to Linux or Windows as they need the simplicity, style and stability of a Mac. <p>
You’re assuming artists get a choice of whatever hardware they like. I know in most jobs you use the machine you’re given unless there’s a good reason to get another one. If those people want something faster, more stable (remember most are still on os 9) it’d be pretty hard to justify to management the high cost of a new Mac on grounds of style (given that windows is as stable and simple). Linux is catching up pretty quickly in the graphics low end as well, we all use the gimp around here to do graphics for our projects.
Apple offers a compelling response to a me and my developers. I just bought a $3,000 1 ghz powerbook. And I know many “new” and “first time” Mac owners who only develop for Unix, mostly finally deployment on J2EE platforms. They have purchased new powerbooks too.
I’m seeing it firsthand.
Sorry, a few more points [ btw eugenia, mozilla just ate my post as i forgot to put a title in!
]
I heard somewhere that Linux had a higher market share than Apple. It makes one ponder why companies such as Adobe have not ported their products to Linux.
That’s probably not true on the desktop yet if you count MacOS as a whole. It’s highly likely that desktop Linux has a higher installed user base than OS X however.
Adobe don’t port their apps to Linux because:
a) They’d be entering a new market against established competitors. Although the GIMP is no match for Photoshop at the high end, most users don’t actually need all the features that Photoshop provides. It’s not so much that Linux users don’t buy anything (a ridiculous stereotype), it’s more that they don’t really need to as often as Windows or Mac users.
b) Porting their stuff to Linux would a lot of effort. Adobe had to be given a big push by Apple to port Photoshop to OS X, and they could reuse most of the OS9 code in that. A Linux port would effectively be starting from scratch.
c) We can run it under Wine (almost). Why port their apps when if we want we can run it anyway? You also get all the plugins that way. A port to Linux would only increase integration, and merely looking an integral part of the desktop probably isn’t worth the price they’d have to charge for it.
Apple would be in a very different place if they had chosen BeOS, especially if they had chosen to offer both PowerPC and Intel architecture systems.
There is much to say on this particular topic and I won’t write it all, but stick to a few points.
1. Performance
Given Apple’s preference for Motorola hardware, they’d actually would have had a speedy OS to run on this hardware. The “perceptual speed” would easily match that of Windows 2000 or Windows XP if BeOS were on PowerPC and dramatically exceed it if BeOS were running on equivalent Intel hardware.
And the BeOS version of OpenGL was very fast as well.
And the file system was full-featured and speedy.
If Apple were viewed as the performance champion in the market, they’d have the high ground vs. Windows and other competitors. Right now, Apple offers the slowest OS and hardware of all major vendors.
However, the most important aspect of BeOS performance is UPGRADEABILITY. Apple would have been able to give all their installed base of hardware a FASTER and SLEEKER OS, not some bloated pig that cripples their system and demands expensive memory upgrades JUST TO BARELY RUN.
If Apple had something that could run well on all their installed machines… there would be a much larger market for software for this new OS.
2. Applications
There would be MORE applications available for Mac if Apple had gone with BeOS. Why? Because Be had much more of a developer following than NeXT. Because mainsteam development methods and tools were supported by Be. Because porting games to Be was easier than porting games to Next. For many reasons beyond these.
Be had better developed media (sound, video) support than NeXT. So these applications would have flourished — important for Apple as this is one of their target market segments.
Apple would have had COOL and COMPELLING apps if they had chosen BeOS.
For getting their OS9 base over to BeOS, Apple would still have needed to find a way to get Microsoft Office to run on BeOS. Or Apple would have had to buy/license an equivalent. Maybe with a new market, there would have developed software superior to Microsoft Office on the BeOS Mac?
Apple would have had a whole new tree to grow with BeOS. By getting NextStep, Apple pretty much got no new growth.
Also, to reiterate the previous point. There would also be more software because the market would be many times (10X?) larger as BeOS software would run well on all the old machines.
3. Portability
BeOS had a cleaner port to Intel than NeXT. And the virtue of a modern, tested kernel, not an ancient Mach kernel.
Also, BeOS worked on set top boxes.
With Apple’s digital hub and digital appliance strategy, BeOS is a much better fit than OS X.
4. Scalability
BeOS scales far better on multiple-CPU boxes than OS X.
Customers had BeOS running on 8 processor Intel boxes. Where is OS X today, after YEARS and YEARS of development? Stuck on 2 processors… and hardly scaling well because of the monolithic and non-threaded nature of OS X. On the other hand, BeOS is pervasively multi-threaded and has “performance to burn”.
In the rendering farm market, Apple could have made some super cool machines to do rendering using BeOS to run on Athlons, Intel chips, and eventually Opterons and Athlon 64’s. Apple could have a strong offering in this market. Instead, they have NOTHING in this market because OS X is slow and doesn’t support the video card worth a darn. Not to mention doesn’t scale on n-processor systems.
5. Quality vs. Features
NeXT offered a multitude of features vs. BeOS offering a core set of quality features.
NextStep was the big, heavy corporate OS. BeOS was a lightweight developer’s OS, more similar to Linux in spirit.
If Apple had chosen BeOS, they would have gotten a well-designed, high performance foundation for their future.
Instead, Apple bought a giant office building that was in serious need of repairs.
If Apple had the highest quality OS in the market, the one were each feature were implemented to a level unavailable elsewhere, they’d be standing tall and strong. Instead, they have a mish-mash of junk features in OS X, almost all of them slow and low quality implementations. Apple’s OpenGL? Apple’s default audio capabilities? Both very poor, especially for an expensive computer. And then’s there’s Apple’s current file system. It has has neither features, nor quality, nor speed.
6. Future
Apple has much work to do with OS X. It will be years before it offers any sort of real “feel it in your gut” performance. Apple has to get high speed chips to market so OS X at least appears to run fast. And with Apple’s tight control over the OS and the drivers, there is no way to get it to run fast.
Given all the years it took to get OS X even working, it is obvious that if Apple had bought Be and used BeOS, they would be far ahead of where they are now. They’d have an OS that scales from set top box to 8 processor machines, works with standard tools easily, and supports multimedia far better than OS X. And all this would have been years ago.
Apple could have created a full OpenGL “Aqua” interface 3 years ago, all hardware accelerated and pervasively multi-threaded. It would be the class of the industry. Instead, they have to hack the OS just to get some pieces of their ponderous rendering system to use 3D textures.
Apple could have brought nearly 100% of their installed base into a bright future with BeOS. Instead, because OS X is such a CPU and memory pig, only 10% of Apple’s installed base has migrated to OS X. The “rest of them” simply don’t have the machine to make it worthwhile.
7. Reality
Apple bought NeXT because of Steve Jobs. They didn’t buy it because it offered a good operating system.
And now Apple has Steve Jobs. And with Steve at the helm, Apple’s market share has fallen faster than at any time in history.
Apple has no clear future and is stuck with a heavy and slow OS that doesn’t run well on the vast majority of Apple hardware that is out there.
Everything would have been completely different if Apple had invested in high-performance technology instead of bringing back their exiled former leader.
-Red Pill
The day you guys stop whining, then will Apple be in trouble.
It’s installed base is probably seeing no reason to upgrade.
The Mhz rates of Motorolla CPUs look abdismal, it has to be harming sales. The sooner Apple switches to IBM PPC CPUs the better.
Apple is hopeless at selling Macs outside of the USA. They have setups which have importers charging crazy markups. Macs cost insane amounts of money in most countries.
Case design. They’re culturally innapropriate in many countries. Almost nobody would be caught dead buying a Mac where I live just because of how they look. If they at least optionally came in plain PC cases, they’d probably greatly increase their sales outside the US.
Apple will never be a player in the server market. It is just another Apple niche where they can earn a few dollars.
PC Magazine would diagree with that. They thought it was a great bargain of a UNIX box.
Apple is losing share in every key segment — education, consumer, desktop publishing, video, music, etc. There is not one segment where Apple is gaining share.
This is the biggest blanket statement without backup that I have seen. While I realize that Apple is losing overall marketshare. How can you justify saying that it is losing it in , say, the music department, where I have been in SEVERAL recording studios over the last few years and let me give you w wake up call, ALMOST ALL (read: over 90%) are using Macs (with ProTools) And for those that are unaware, ProTools is also available for the PC, but has any of these recording studios ‘switched’? No.
Make your blanket claims about the platform as a whole, but don’t speak on specific areas that you know extremely little about… =|
-birdFEEDER
All those points are correct. But IMHO Apple intentionally make OS X push the limits of the hardware (though perhaps they went a bit overboard). They make almost all their money from hardware sales. Therefore they didn’t want an upgradeable OS, they wanted people to buy new Macs because they wanted the new OS. If they’d gone with BeOS, Apple would have two problems which probably would outweigh the benefits:
– It’d run well on older hardware. No need for hardware upgrades all the time, hence their revenue takes a drop.
– It wouldn’t look as good. Macs these days seem as much about marketing, perception and image as technology. They have to be seen to be the coolest kids on the block, otherwise what else have they got? Well, that’s the road Jobs led them down anyway. What do people always rave about with OS X? The way it looks. The usability argument is a flimsy one at best. It’s slower than other operating systems, has a narrower choice of apps and so on. But it looks great, and combined with hardware design it makes Apple the Nike of computers. Or something.
In the rendering farm market, Apple could have made some super cool machines to do rendering using BeOS to run on Athlons, Intel chips, and eventually Opterons and Athlon 64’s. Apple could have a strong offering in this market. Instead, they have NOTHING in this market because OS X is slow and doesn’t support the video card worth a darn.
For a rendering farm, the video card isn’t important. Generally, video cards are only used by 3d apps for the on-screen previews. Fully raytraced renders are done by the processor and not the video card. For a rendering farm, a series of headless systems is actually best. No need to waste CPU cycles in maintaining a GUI when CPU is all you really want from the system.
The modeling system is another matter. There, you do want good support for the video card so you can get good feedback on what you are designing – but for a renderfarm you want the lightest overhead by the OS possible so that as much CPU is free for rendering as can be.
Hello All,
I’ve really got to ask: how much marketshare does BeOS have? Is it even calculatable?
It is a dead OS? Am I wrong?
-LV
One nice point about BeOS & YDL etc is that one can directly compare Apples & Oranges ie ppc v x86 for either of those OSs. I don’t have any slow x86 or any fast ppc to remotely compare equivalence, but if anyone has access to say 1GHz x86 & ppc how would performance of BeOS/YDL compare. Then I would then assume thats how much OSX would benefit by coming over to x86 too, I am presuming x86 is faster and of course cheaper, but at least its possible to get a number that might convince Apple.
I agree with almost all of what you’ve written and i wish apple had choosen beos as well as steve jobs. But i think the UNIX core is giving apple a marketing edge in the corporate and server world that beos could not.
IT managers know and trust linux, unix, etc. That helps apple cross over to a large and real market that it does not play a role in today. It also helps apple in the scientific and work station fields. Beos would have provided better performance for lots of applications but OS X is less of a leap of faith since Unix is well understood and tested. That is important.
Beos would not provide that because IT managers would have considered it too new and untested. Though i still think beos rocks. I will await palm’s expansion into more capable devices, like laptops, with their derivative of beos.
About Adobe not porting to Linux…
Apparently the high end graphics houses have gone lock stock and barrel over to Linux for both the front end (graphics prep) and back end (rendering). I know that these houses have been desparately asking Adobe to port photoshop over to Linux, which they repetitively have refused. The response has been to develop Film Gimp.
Strange that Adobe would let such high profile, high end graphics houses dump their product without even any kind of response. It seems like Adobe tied themselves too tightly to a specific platform.
OK, we can complain about and trash an OS all day long. The PC guys will be pro-windows, the mac-guys will be pro OS X. Yawn.
Back to the topic: is Apple’s market share increasing? I personally have seen very different numbers, depending upon who you ask and also depending upon which market you’re talking about. I would welcome someone to post some real data sources to back some real numbers.
But also consider this: How are ‘market share’ numbers calculated? By units purchased? If so, anual license renewals would count as new units of an OS in use even though that’s not really the case – there’s still only one instance of the OS. By “really being used” copies of an OS? How do you count those? I could download linux-es from a variety of places. I might then install on one machine, many machines, or none at all. I might have Windows running on a Mac. Does that count as one of each? How about this: I have two Macs, one PC at home, and one PC at work. I use my Mac PowerBook most. it has Windows XP running in emulation on it. I never use the PC at home… it’s old and crappy. The work PC is almost never turned on, because I am either on the road for business or just using the PowerBook in the office. So how do you count these? And who in the world has ever bothered to ask? Not the big analysts. They’re more likely to get ‘data’ from those obtuse forms that you have to fill out to get free magazine subscriptions than from any real research. It’s not because the analysts are doing a bad job (most of them are pretty good overall) it’s simply becasue realistic numbers are just too damned hard to pin down.
The bottom line is that market share numbers end up with the same credability as political campaign slogans. A good marketing dept. can find numbers to back anything. That’s why Apple says 5% and rising, and others say 3.5% and falling. Neither is lying, they’re just taking different numbers from differennt sources and manipulating them to make a point.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he said the desktop wars are over – and that Microsoft won. So, Apple has taken a different direction. Yes, they have the Switch ad campaign, but that’s really just brand advertising to try and drum up some business. I wish Apple and Microsoft would make another five year deal. Not only so that MS would continue to develop I.E and Office for the Mac, but perhaps add some other things like a Mac version of Encarta, for example. Even if Apple makes something like Chimera their iApp browser, if I were Jobs, I would still keep I.E. as the default browser if it meant having an ongoing relationship with MS.
Yes, PC World gave the XServe very high marks!
You guys should read Scott Kelby’s “Macintosh: the Naked Truth.” All these arguments have been beaten to death before. Years ago. Fact is, Apple’s marketshare is growing where it’s important. What’s important? OS X. How many people used OS X three years ago? Zero. How many people use OS X now? Several million. Who cares a fig how many people are using Mac OS 9 or earlier — it’s a dead OS. What matters is that more and more people are using Mac OS X every day, and that means more software being bought, and, eventually, more machines being bought. All these people who are still using ancient hardware are going to have to upgrade to better machines sooner or later because none of the cool apps coming out will run on the classic Mac OS. So is Apple’s marketshare growing? YES! Where it counts.
I also resent the notion that Macs are for idiots. Guess what? I’ve been using computers for about 17 years, and I have a wealth of experience in Windows, Linux, and BeOS. I’m a Web designer, programmer, pro audio engineer, and I’ve done a fair bit of 3D graphics in my day. And I can tell you, I’m no idiot. In the last two years I’ve completely switched over from using PCs to using Macs (except for the pro audio stuff where I’m waiting for a few pieces of software to get finalized for OS X). Not only did I switch because of OS X but also because of the great hardware designs. I think Apple has the best hardware/software combo out on the market today in just about every segment of the industry. I think the “performance problems” have been blown WAY out of proportion — in fact, the majority of people I see complaining are a few geeks trolling message boards like these. The rest of us are using Macs to make movies, release albums, write books, create Web sites, run businesses (WITHOUT an IT staff!), and even perform number crunching on huge amounts of scientific data.
Get rid of the “Macs are toys for dummies” mentality. It’s not only complete BS, but it’s also extremely infantile and only shows YOUR lack of maturity.
Regards,
Jared
I DECIDED TO DO A QUICK RESEARCH FOR FUN…
Apple nearly triples server marketshare
Monday, October 28, 2002 @ 4:50pm
The US server market continued to show signs of recovery with a 12.2 percent increase in the third quarter of 2002, while the worldwide market share grew by 3.1 percent, according to preliminary statistics by Dataquest. Apple showed a 273% market growth over the third quarter of 2001 with a total of 5,700 units shippped in the US. (The Xserve began shipping early in the quarter.) Apple was No. 4 in the US server market with 1.2 percent marketshare behind Dell (26.3%), HP (25.9%), IBM (11.7%), and Sun (6.9%).
EDUCATION
In the same period, Apple’s market share fell from 20.2 percent in the first quarter of 2000 to 15.2 percent in the most recent quarter of 2002, reaching a low of 12.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2001.
WORLD NUMBERS
Apple U.S. market share unchanged in second-quarter
July 18 – 19:55 ET Despite flat-panel iMac sales losing momentum, Apple’s U.S. and worldwide market share in the second-quarter remained little changed from a year ago. U.S. market share remained unchanged at 4.1 percent, making Apple the fifth largest computer maker, up from sixth last year, according to preliminary results from research firm IDC. Apple increased its position as a result of HP and Compaq merging, although there was no increase in overall market share: Apple shipped 453,000 units in the quarter, compared to 459,000 units a year ago. In worldwide numbers, Apple moved from eighth to seventh place — again because of the HP-Compaq merger — but actual market share dropped slightly from 2.7 percent to 2.6 percent. HP was first in both worldwide and domestic market share.
OTHER STUFF
IN JAPAN MARKET SHARE HAS INCREASED TO OVER 6% THIS YEAR – THEY LOVE COOL LOOKING STUFF.
I have to agree with all those who think BeOS would have been wonderful on the Mac. Growing up with Windows I found trying other OS’s require(d) a steep learning curve. Some things just didn’t feel natural.
BeOS is not like Windows at all, yet it took me about 5 minutes to get comfortable with it. All the apps are just so intuitive to use and it is hard to mess things up.
I tried OSX 10.0 and I hated it. Probably just because of it being so slow. I did also find Sherlock to be difficult to use and things like changing file assocations just did not seem to work.
OS 9.0 was fast (UI). I think Mac users would have been far more comfortable with the transistion to a BeOS like environment and many would not have been so reluctant to make the change. Those that have made the change anyway.
It is also amazing how timing is so critical. If before Jobs came back, the economy had struggled and Microsoft had come up with the new licensing plan. Corporations may well have considered Mac and Mac clones. With Mac as it is now, changing to Mac would still mean being locked into one vendor this time a hardware and OS vendor. Certainly we may live in a World today where Mac clones were a reality and MacOS had decent market share.
“Nvidia is the first of the consumer graphics companies to firmly understand what is going to be happening with the convergence of consumer realtime and professional offline rendering. The architectural decision in the NV30 to allow full floating point precision all the way to the framebuffer and texture fetch, instead of just in internal paths, is a good example of far sighted planning. It has been obvious to me for some time how things are going to come together, but Nvidia has made moves on both the technical and company strategic fronts that are going to accelerate my timetable over my original estimations.” — John Carmack
The floating point computing power of a modern DX9 compatible video card far surpasses that of a general purpose CPU. It is Carmack’s belief — and I share it — that rendering farms in the future will utilize the vast power of the modern GPU’s to render video/film.
In fact, today’s cutting edge applications are starting to use hardware rendering instead of software rendering.
For example, the new 3ds max CgFX Plug-in allows artists to author and visualize content in 3ds max 5 using advanced hardware rendering and the Cg high level language.
Is this possible in Apple’s closed video card world? Nope.
ATI has a similar hardware rendering technology called RenderMonkey. Is it available on Mac? Nope.
All in all, the Mac and OS X don’t make a very good platform for high-performance graphics.
Nvidia supports Windows and Linux, they don’t support Mac.
ATI supports Windows, with Linux as a future possibility.
It’s plain to see that Apple is not viewed as a real player in the 3D world.
– Red Pill
Apple is far from dead, but not moving forward either. Lack of Enterprize commitment (0%), no OS marketing (Switch?? Why is the MacOS better? It is and Apple should be boldly telling the world why), and finally stop wih the re-org’s every quarter. If Apple can’t hire good people, then it sell to a company .. Sun/Oracle, that seems to have that skill. Apple’s survival is not important, but Apple’s stupidity is crimal.
OK, we can complain about and trash an OS all day long. The PC guys will be pro-windows, the mac-guys will be pro OS X. Yawn.
I have a mac buddy, and this is where he loses me all the time. When his argument goes ‘Screw the win-tel’ world. Apple users want people to recognize their small but loyal community, but fail to recognize those of us in the free OS community. Just because we aren’t with you, doesn’t mean we’re with them.
I deal with a lot of people who are in my shoes, and this where i see Apple v. MS
I have no love for MS, and don’t use them. But I did not leave them to trust another proprietary OS. Also, they need to get this hardware thing handled. If you’re going to charge like you are the cadillac of computers, you better be the best. Charging over a G for a box selling with 256mb of ram, ide drives, and a motorola chip? That would be a suggested place to start.
-T
it’s hard to make a point with a sledgehammer
that’s what I get for using a windows editor while at work…
-t
Thats the first time I have ever heard that tom yager is a Mac zealot( I know You said mac user not zealot, but…. );
especially a guy that calls XP a secure OS in a win XP debate.
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/tc/xml/01/10/29/011029tcpcp.xml
I read earilier this year that Apple was in number 10 now pushing Acer to 11th place in computer sales. That’s pretty good when you figure hp-compact, dell, ibm etc make up the other 95 percent. I read Apple’s share rose this year, so i have to dismiss what people say on here when they say it has sunk.
Compairing my new Dell 1.6 intel running xp to my 400 imac running os x its hard for me to say that windows is the best experience and zippy as people say. XP has gotten slower in the last few weeks(its 2 month old) and I have to reboot it often to reset the system resourses so it will run faster.
I like both machines and I will make this last point. If you really want to say something about a mac or a pc, then buy both. Heck a mac is only a few hundred dollars more then a pc now.
Apple, like Nokia, seems to think that only the ‘low-end’ of their market is seriously vulnerable to commoditization and that the ‘high-end’ is where they will be able to be profitable via expensive, designer-branded “boutique” tech products.
It remains to be seen whether Nokia will succeed in making itself the Calvin Klein or Rolex or Denon of the cell phone world that it wants to be, but I think they are destined to share the same fate as Apple in the long run.
I would be breaking rules 1 & 2 if I wanted to fully express my distaste towards most of the nonsense I’ve read in here.
I’m not even going to try to debunk all the crap that I’ve read. Some scoundrel tried to say that BEOS had a speedy file system. What a load of nonsense. BEOS has a SLOW file system. It’s slow because of all that metadata nonsense. Even BEOS users & developers admitted that it was slow. Who are you trying to kid here?
Right, right, Apple would have been better if they went with BEOS. Anyone who believes this is horribly misinformed. I sure hope to god none of you ever make it into management.
When Apple bought NEXT not only were they buying themselves a new OS but they were buying themselves a new market. There’s a hell of a lot more market potential in Unix than there ever was in BEOS. What is the market potential of BEOS? How many companies are going to say: “Hey these guys are offering a BEOS solution. Finally! Now we’ll be able to replace all our aging BEOS servers.”
Furthermore Apple sees a lot of potential in the Open Source community. They’ve acquired a rich source of talented BSD/Linux/Unix programmers who are willing to contribute for free. How many talented BEOS programmers are there? Maybe one BEOS programmer to every 50 *nix programmers?
You guys must be smokin some potent bud if you believe BEOS could have been a better solution.
apple is doing fine, at least as good as they have been in the last 12 years. they won’t go away, possibly never in my lifetime. it’s been said that apple has been dying since 1981 but they have sold over 25 million macs since then. an alternative on the desktop will always exist. linux is too different and possibly difficult to be that alternative on the desktop. apple’s products sell for a reason, even at a higher cost. we don’t all drive toyota tercels.
i think in 10 years or so we’ll still have ms dominating the desktop with apple a distant but stable 2nd place. linux will continue to make inroads into the server space but will remain a geek tool. other OS’s will come and go (quickly), just as they have in the last 10 years. linux is a free unix, apple os x is a fancy desktop unix, and windows is windows. i don’t see how that is so unacceptable for so many people. some apple people want apple to have 85% market share (that would be bad), and most windows people want apple to go out of business. frankly my computer setup can do some really really cool stuff, the kind of stuff that would have made my jaw drop 10 years ago, and that’s all the matters.
for the record, i have a IBM P4, Gateway P3, Apple Dual-G4, and apple powerbook G3. the dual G4 with OS X and all kinds of firewire and bluetooth goodies (iPod, digital video, cell phone, etc.) is a wonder of multimedia integration, and i can do all my geeky coding and unix-y stuff on it.
It’s funny how “wonderful” the BeOS has become after a few years of separation from it. Be put together an OS with a lot innovation and a great deal of potential, but anyone that ever used could tell you that it still needed a lot of polish.
Jim S. is right on the money. There have been some posts here that are nothing more than uninformed drivel (Red Pill). Unfortunately it is generally futile to address these things point by point.
As for the BFS. Yes, it was a terrific file system by most accounts, but it was also slow. The metadata and journaling features added a great deal of overhead to the fs that was difficult to overcome. I will mention that Apple did hire the creator of the BFS about 1.5 years ago. Since then, journaling ( the BFS’s most enviable quality) has been added to HFS+ in OS X 10.2.2.
Lastly, if Apple had purchased Be (which was grossly over-priced at the time) they would have been without Steve Jobs. Say what you will about the guy, but he saved Apple. Period. If Apple had bought Be in ’96-’97, Apple would have been RIP in ’98.
“The author has, let us say, magnified the situation. However, it is true that the XServe is a hit, given a certain context.”
XServe is a hit? Where would that be? I am really really curious. Because I keep hearing its a hit, but then I cannot find any credible information about where it is being deployed.
In fact, I was trying to hunt down some info about OS X Server using my trusty old stand by “google groups”. OS X Server brings back a few hits, but almost all of them were relating to that period in time where Apple released the first Server that would only be around for a year, and people were chatting on the groups about how the release of the new strain of server would effect them.
I know its an informal survey, but I have a hard time finding any information from the types of communities that pop up around other OS’s. There simply seems to not really be much of a “serious” community brewing around OS X Server and XServes.
Proove me wrong. I sure am interested.
Most of the Xserves are being sold to universities and research firms from what I understand. Most of the Xserves in this context are actually being used as clusters as opposed to servers. Biomedical and genetic research firms are buying the largest number of Xserves. I read an article ( I think maybe on Slashdot) about one university buying around 38 of these boxes to use as a cluster. One of the draws for these research firms is the version of BLAST developed for use on the Xserve, Apple/Genentech BLAST.
Unfortunately, I don’t have hard numbers in terms of sold units, but it seems that somebody is buying them. Maybe they’re buying them in secret.
I can’t put a number on Apple’s marketshare. I have heard everything from 2 to 10 percent, depending on your metric. I CAN say that, except for the XServe, I can see little reason to upgrade this year. I am hoping to see a 64 bit IBM-forged PowerPC option by the end of ’03– that really appeals to me. As for what other people are doing– I think lots of people are in a holding pattern. Nobody has any money, so Apple people hold off, and PC people buy Dells (cuz they are cheap).
As for the future, things can only get better. With 90-98 percent of the market, Windoze has no place to go but down. Some people need computers that ACTUALLY WORK– these people will continue to buy Macs. I see market growth for Apple among 1) consumers (the iapps/digital hub concept) 2) enterprise (once the Xserve blazes the trail) 3) geeks — why mess with one of 20 LINUX distros when you can get something that a lot of people actually use?
I see Apple has made the conversion to UNIX, and open source, and RISC– and maybe to 64 bit RISC soon. MSFT has done NONE of these things. MSFT just stagnates, making incremental “improvements”, like spy-on-your customer-ware, and forced-upgrades.
Where is the love on the Windoze side? Every Mac user I know LOVES his machine. If you hold outs would just take the plunge and go Mac, you’d never go back to legacy-ware, like Windoze. Any more that you’d go back to DOS or COBOL.
Here is a bit of info that you might find interesing: Perhaps there are no/few mentioned of XServe on groups.google because anyone who owns one gets support from Apple, yep, just pick up the phone and call em, if that doesn’t work or don’t want to hang out on the phone, hit the Apple-hosted forums:
http://lists.apple.com/mhonarc/macos-x-server/
Just because one platform or application is popular on groups doesn’t mean that they all are, take Steinberg’s Cubase for example, I would never think of researching a problem/question on newsgroups, why? Because Steinberg hosts a forum at cubase.net, anyone who has Cubase knows this and goes to the right place for the right answers.
Sorry to burst the bubble, but newsgroups is NOT the end-all resource for information… =|
-moshek
Certainly a very narrow view you have.
I a sure that a lot of what you said is very true. Unfortunately apart from anything someone may have sais about the BE filesystem, not much is wrong with what people say about BeOS.
If you are having trouble with rules 1 and 2 because you can’t say what you think then you should remember that what comes out of persons mouth is a good indication of who they are.
If they bought BeOS it is not like they could not change the filesystem or even have many for different situations.
From what I have read the current beta Apple Journaling filesystem is pretty pathetic and that is how many years after BeFS. If Apple had taken something working who knows?
From a users perspective BeOS is very fast. It is the user experience that counts most often and not benchmarks. It is hard to explain to someone why when buying much newer hardware with a “Modern Unix OS” their experience of speed is just disgusting. Again this is all years after BeOS.
Finally, somehow you seem to believe that if you are a nix programmer you can only program for nix. I think your world is a very static one, one which does not take into account the kind dynamic.
What is it with OSNews lately? It’s like whenever there’s a negative story on Apple, a lot of people pounce all over it with glee. If there’s a positive story on Apple, then those same people drum out the denial sticks.
If Apple is such a dying company, why is “MacOSX: The Missing Manual” the top-selling computer book on Amazon.com?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/657762/1/104-8848186-…
“Mac OS X v. 10.2 Jaguar Killer Tips” is number 8 on the computer best-seller list at Amazon. The best-selling Windows related book comes in at #11 and that’s a .NET book. If .Net is supposedly so huge and the next big thing, why are two MacOS X books outselling it on Amazon.com?
Tim O’Reilly himself has stated multiple times in his blogs that the OS X book O’Reilly Publishing puts out are by far the best sellers. They can’t print enough of them. This is all the more amazing considering that Apple’s market is supposedly smaller by a factor of 40 according to some of the market share experts on this board.
And does anyone read any of the messages other people post? People point out some very positive trends like Apple being now the #5 server vendor in the U.S. (see one of the above posts), yet we continue to get this drivel about how Apple’s server market is somehow non-existent and that Tom Yaeger’s assertion in the InfoWorld op-ed are just based on perception. Maybe Tom actually saw the latest market share data, and sees how XServe is making inroads at a lot of corporations (perhaps the unlimited client license has something to do with it).
The fact is, Apple has had some losses (like in education), but Apple has also chalked up some pretty good wins (like XServe, iPod, Jaguar). The iPod has a 19% share of the MP3 player market in the U.S. and 40% in Japan. What’s Microsoft’s marketshare in MP3 players? That’s right, the point is sometimes “market share” doesn’t mean anything without the proper context. But it’s pretty typical of the arguments PC types use, using statistics and numbers.
And for all the “BeOS would have been better” arguments. Give me a break. BeOS was revolutionary for what it did in its time, but one of the reasons why it died was there were no compelling applications. The file system, while elegant to the tee, was also dog slow because of all the meta data and journaling. Funny how OS X 10.2.2 now offers full journaling, which is something that won’t be available for Windows for another 2-3 years. And let’s remember the reason why developers are jumping onto the OS X bandwagon in droves is because of its test UNIX foundation. A friend of mine who works for an AI company recently switched to the MacOS X because, guess what, all the other Ph.D AI programmers at his company switched to the Mac because of its UNIX base.
Maybe the entire point of Tom’s article was, in a down market, Apple has been ignoring the typical response of vendors to panic and cut back on services. It’s simply focused on delivering for their customers. As Steve Jobs said, Apple is going to innovate itself out of a down market. Mac users are the happiest they’ve been in 10+ years, and that will pay-off big once the economy improves.
It’s always comical to see the Apple cultists go into X-files mode and come up with some completely mystical hogwash on the latest X-thing.
Gartner’s projection was that Apple was going to sell a whole 5,700 servers in 3Q2002.
Taken as a fraction of world wide server sales, in units, that’s an entire 0.5%.
If you take Apple’s cumulative server sales, taken as a fraction of the installed base of servers, it’s just about ZERO.
Apple is going nowhere in server share. Sure, they have a BRAND vs. the VAST ARMY of white box server resellers, so they “rank” on some Gartner list.
Why don’t we get to hear some more campfire tales from the cultists about how market share doesn’t matter, on how OS X is actually higher performance than BeOS, on how the high cost of Apple machines helps boost market share, etc.
How about that near ZERO return on investment for Apple stock? All you get with Apple is soap opera. There is no real performance, either in the stock or in the computer.
The best one was stating that by cutting off 90% of the Mac user base from using OS X, that it was a good move by Apple. One thing is for sure — Apple will not need to call Kevorkian. Not with Steve “I wanna a new iToy!” Jobs at the helm.
I still haven’t heard any response to why Nextstep was a good choice other than “it’s UNIX!”. There were quite a few other UNIX options that wouldn’t have run $400 million +. What’s wrong? Did you lose manage to lose your homework on your shiny little Mac, too?
– Red Pill
That should be “tested UNIX foundation.”
And while I’m at it, another thing that peeves me when I see it – those messages regarding the “slowness” of OS X. Do any of you nay-sayers use OS X on a regular basis? Where are people getting this claim from? For example, take a look at the 10.2 report at ArsTechnica.com which describes just how good the GUI performance is under 10.2:
“To explore the actual performance benefits of Quartz Extreme on the G4/800, the old standby: I returned to the transparent terminal window. First, I downloaded the largest version of the Star Wars Clone War trailer.
To set a baseline, I played the movie as-is. As expected, the G4/800 had no problem playing it at its full framerate of 24 fps. The torture began with the placement of a single transparent terminal window (80×24, 0.25 transparent, where 1 is totally opaque) on top of the movie. I noted the maximum and minimum sustained (for more then 1 second) framerate during playback. Then I repeated the test after positiong two transparent terminal windows on top of the movie, then three, then four, and so on. The results are shown in the table below:”
The chart basically shows that after stacking 5 transparent windows over the trailer, 10.2 with Quartz Extreme was able to play the trailer at a full 24 fps – not a single frame was dropped. In fact, the author went on to stack 25 transparent windows on top of the trailer and still couldn’t get a frame to drop. Let’s see how good WinXP is doing something similar (a single transparent window will cause the OS to drop frames in a trailer in Windows, btw)
The URL for the 10.2 review is at:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q3/macosx-10.2/macosx-10.2-9.html
So basically, for some things OS X is slower than WinXP, for other things, it leaves WinXP in the dust. Is that so hard to accept?
So what were these brilliant other UNIX options, oh mighty Red Pill?
For one thing, Apple didn’t just buy an OS. They also bought the entire NeXT development team and their expertise. You sound very smart denigrating what they accomplished with OS X, but then again, I don’t really expect a reasoned response from someone with blinders on their eyes.
As for the Gartner number, let’s see…Apple began selling the XServe in Q2. You expect them to go from 0 sales to 100,000 in 4 months? That’s more laughable than your denial that Apple is doing much better than expected. XServe sales will be much higher than the 5,700 it recorded in Q3, that much is almost certainly guaranteed. Now suddenly the whole concept of growth doesn’t seem to matter, we’re now (again) looking at numbers that are meaningless without the proper context.
Why do Mac owners buy “MacOSX: The Missing Manual”?
1. Because OS X, past all the glow-gel fluff, is almost impossible to learn without a manual?
2. Because Mac users are too dumb to learn something without a manual?
3. Because Mac users buy anything that says Mac on it?
4. Because Mac users buy books to make themselves look smart?
5. Because Mac users are afraid if they don’t buy tons and tons of the “missing manual”, they are going end up having to purchase “MacOSX for Idiots” subtitled “Including the brand new solution to the ‘Case of the Missing Manual’ “.
Leave it to Apple to ship an OS they worked on for years and years so screwed up that the #1 computer book is its “missing manual”.
And leave it to an Apple cultist to claim it as a virtue!
“Our OS is so easy to use that the #1 seller is a guidebook on how to use it!”
– Red Pill
all adds up to “i cant afford a mac on a trolls salary”
In fact, today’s cutting edge applications are starting to use hardware rendering instead of software rendering.
Yes, Quartz Extreme on the does exactly that. It offloads all compositing and most compute intensive aspects of rendering the desktop UI environment to the video card where possible. I don’t think Windows is doing this yet. Apple uses OpenGL and does all 3D rendering through hardware.
For example, the new 3ds max CgFX Plug-in allows artists to author and visualize content in 3ds max 5 using advanced hardware rendering and the Cg high level language.
Guess what? Apple offers a tool to interactively develop renderers for 3d video cards. Cg is one of those languages. It is very easy.
Is this possible in Apple’s closed video card world? Nope.
Closed? Apple is using both ATI and NVidia as Graphics card verdors, both work very well. Apple long ago stopped developing their own proprietary video cards.
ATI has a similar hardware rendering technology called RenderMonkey. Is it available on Mac? Nope.
I don’t know about Rendermonkey availability on the Mac, maybe it is or maybe it isn’t, but it is my guess that, if it is not available, it probably will be soon. This guess is based upon ATIs prior commitment to the Mac.
All in all, the Mac and OS X don’t make a very good platform for high-performance graphics.
Obviously ridiculous.
Nvidia supports Windows and Linux, they don’t support Mac.
ATI supports Windows, with Linux as a future possibility.
Wrong! As I said, NVidia and ATI both actively develop drivers for the Mac and release them on a regular basis. Apple sells NVidia cards. You really should check your facts before you write this junk.
It’s plain to see that Apple is not viewed as a real player in the 3D world.
Alias/Wavefront’s Maya availability totally counters this argument. This is probably the best platform for creating 3d. The latest version came out on the Mac before it was available elsewhere. Having OpenGL and real Unix pretty much means that it is fairly easy to bring most SGI based apps to the Mac.
Red Pill, you really need to go and do some homework before you spout a bunch falsehoods. The information is available on the internet.
– Pos
Because so many of them are Windows switchers, and they need a manual to unlearn the Windows way of doing thing. That’s not something that can be considered at all easy.
Apple paid $400 million for NeXT.
And then they paid the “over 1,000” Apple developers for over 2.5 years to ship OS X.
For a total cost of well over $800 million!
And now all the Apple cultists can fall back on… “it plays Quicktimes real good with transparent windows on top of the movie”.
What about simply scrolling a browser window up and down? How much will that be to run fast? Another $100 million while the Apple dev team scratches their heads and tries to figure out what the “Velocity Engine” really does?
Or maybe scrolling the browser goes faster if I put a transparent window over my browser? Five times faster with five transparent windows? And I hope my browser doesn’t lose a single frame…
Sheesh. What human problem is Apple solving with OS X? Nothing that I can tell. Oh, it’s finally brought the original MacOS out of the dark ages. Years after every other OS.
I somehow think if Apple had spent $800 million on BeOS, it would be very difficult to not be better off.
– Red Pill
re: all adds up to “i cant afford a mac on a trolls salary”
I already said Macs were for the rich and/or stupid.
You’re forgiven this time. I know that Mac users often mistake ‘reiteration’ for ‘innovation’.
– Red Pill
ATI’s MOBILITYâ„¢ RADEONâ„¢ 9000 and MOBILITYâ„¢ RADEONâ„¢ 7500 processors now available in Apple’s new Titanium PowerBook G4 and iBook portables
http://mirror.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2002/4578.html
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti Upgrade Kits Now Available for Apple Power Mac G4 Desktops
http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20020716_7644
Yep, now we know Red Pill was right for sure in saying that ATI and NVIDIA only supports Windows and Linux. Looks like omeone needs a hit or two with a clue stick.
Microsoft loses money on everything it does bar Windows and Office. Everything. It makes squillions because it has an operating system and office software monopoly on which it makes an 85% profit.
If your definition of brilliant business people is the financial equivalent of boots and braces skinheads then I guess your right. Oi! Oi! Oi!
All those Windows users rushing out to buy the “missing manual” for their new OS X systems, eh?
That explains why the Mac market share is dropping so fast. And why the Windows and Linux shares are rising.
It’s not ‘new math’ anymore, it’s ‘mac math’, otherwise known as “McMath”.
You’re onto something, though. OS X is more difficult to use than Windows XP, isn’t it?
– Red Pill
Thanks, Red Pill. It’s great that your argument for why the Mac is such an awful/dying platform hinges on your belief that Mac users are all rich and/or stupid. I’m sure that pumps up your self-image a lot and I’m very happy for you. It’s also nice to know that a computer platform with such a miniscule market share is that much of a threat to your world view. But you know what, I’m happy with the Mac even though I have to use Windows every day for work. Oh, correction, make that rich, stupid, AND happy.
I forgot to ask pill brain, how much is Bill paying for all this dick sucking?
Homework Assignment #1:
1. Go to Nvidia’s website.
2. Try and download a new and improved MACINTOSH driver.
Homework Assignment #2:
1. Go to Nvidia’s website.
2. Try and download the Mac version of Cg.
Homework Assignment #3:
1. Go to ATI’s website.
2. Try and download the Mac version of Rendermonkey.
Homework Assignment #4:
1. Talk to an ATI video driver engineer.
2. Ask who writes the MACINTOSH drivers. It is mostly Apple.
3. Ask the ATI engineer why the drivers are so slow compared to the PC drivers.
Maya was out on PC long before Mac. And to date, Maya is the only major vendor 3D software package for Mac.
No 3D Studio.
No Softimage.
Mac is not viewed as a serious 3D platform. There is no computing power available — either via the processor or via hardware rendering, which is not supported on OS X.
The major graphics houses are switching to Windows and Linux, not to Mac. They are done with expensive boutique computing. You might say, “they learned their lesson”.
– Red Pill
Andrew Lackey, a visiting professor of business and economics journalism at Boston University, said Apple’s monopoly in the Mac business allows it to get away with things companies in a competitive market can’t.
“With Apple you’re a captive, and to some extent they abuse that privilege,” Lackey said. “I would have thought Apple would be all folksy, like a Ben & Jerry’s kind of company. But in my experience, PC companies are much more responsive.”
The loyalty to Apple has led some to describe the Mac community as masochistic, the “punish me harder” brigade in the words of the Register.
“They eat it up,” said Matthew Rothenberg, an editor at Ziff Davis and a longtime Apple watcher. “It’s like a B&D (bondage and dominance) relationship. There needs to a psychosexual analysis of the Mac community.”
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,56575,00.html
– Red Pill
Obviously, Red Pill has never had to use math for real world stuff, like running a business. Red Pill seems to have the problem understanding that selling a lot of books is a good thing. Red Pill also seems to equate sales of a manual with ease of use, but then again, maybe he also believes geese flying south causes the onset of winter. So I probably shouldn’t go into the multiple reasons why an OS X manual is selling so well because, according to Red Pill, the only reason is that Mac OS X is so hard to use. Did I mention the geese have flown south and now it’s winter?
Red Pill also doesn’t seem to understand a previous poster’s observation that “market share” is highly dependent on the premise you make to calculate that number and Apple’s market share can be anywhere between 2% to 5% depending on which premise you use. Red Pill also seems to find it hard to believe that a lot of people are happy with using the Mac, and it apparently threatens his sense of self-worth where he has to deny that a lot of people are happy with it.
It’s funny how the only people who are really concerned about market share numbers (instead of quality of product and service) are people like Red Pill. But then again, it’s Microsoft’s market share to lose (to Linux and the Mac).
“I lose market share therefore I am Apple”.
or is it
“I am Apple therefore I lose market share”.
?
Which one is “think different” ?
Are Mac users actually capable of thinking? Or are they more like pets? Maybe a wire frame that’s shaped just like a Mac would work just as well as a Mac? The price difference to Apple to make the wire frame vs. the Mac is neglible, I’m sure.
It’s great fun watching the Ritalin cult try and use logic.
Obviously, a near ZERO return on Apple’s share price since Apple has existed as a company shows how good Apple is at running a business!
– Red Pill
Going back to what Brian said. All the high-end houses have been using linux and asking for a port of photoshop to linux. But I think the problem runs deeper than just making a port. There is still an extremely large user base using Photoshop for printing, and it will be years (if ever) until a printshop will be willing to support a linux-based printing solution for their presses. Even today, it can be a challenge to get PC files printed in a primarily MAC based industry.
Another thing that MAC has going for it that linux and windows don’t is colorsync, and the commitment to a color correction system built into the OS. Windows nor linux have provided the imaging community with an OS level color system such as colorsync.
Linux is making headway into the 3D world, but it is still the new boy on the block for publishing. It will probably be a while before Adobe makes a commitment to linux, and even longer till the print industry will give it a serious look. But it should be interesting to see what the future holds.
…ah say, don’t feed the trolls.
Some good comments about color spaces and color sync.
The whole end-to-end treatment of color needs a revamp. It is obvious that no good solution exists whether it be on Mac, Windows, or in Adobe app world.
It is a challenge to get MAC files printed at a MAC printshop. Sometimes PC is easier as there are fewer type conflicts! And the default profiles that come with Adobe apps don’t seem to match up with any of the local printshops. And most printshops don’t give you proper profiles for their printers. And most screens aren’t profiled well, etc.
Linux is waiting for a few good apps — and the proper OS support for those apps. Linux has the virtue of playing their hand last. It will be fun to see what happens as the world becomes more and more competitive, driving margins down in every segment. Paying for two computers instead of one is going to get less and less popular.
I agree with Quark. I don’t see a long term future for Mac in publishing. Short term they are still the incumbent. But Apple is doing very little to innovate in publishing.
– Red Pill
Red Pill, it’s nice to know you can’t debate worth a salt. No one is denying Apple’s market share is small. No one is claiming Apple didn’t lose a lot of opportunities in the 80s and 90s. But since apparently you need to be reminded, the point of this thread is that Apple is NOW making a comeback, and that comeback is a surprise to many. By all arguments, Apple should be a dead company and it’s survived more deaths than a cat with nine lives.
First of all, you’ve done nothing to disprove any of Tom Yaeger’s assertions that Apple is making big strides now in the enterprise space. Since I have to spell it out explicitly for you, Tom never said Apple is dominating the space, he merely said, “Apple is a serious player in the broad IT market now. (emphasis added). Now why does that statement threaten you so much?
Secondly, while you seem to find it enjoyable to beat down on a small player that, by your own arguments, does not deserve any consideration, I can’t for the life of me figure out why you made the following statements in your earlier post.
There would be MORE applications available for Mac if Apple had gone with BeOS. Why? Because Be had much more of a developer following than NeXT. Because mainsteam development methods and tools were supported by Be.
So can you name how many developers there were for Be? Where was Adobe? Microsoft? Macromedia? Can you name one major game developer for Be? How does this translate to “MORE applications” if Apple had bought Be? Come on, you’re so smart, so list all the apps that Be would have had that the Mac currently doesn’t.
BeOS had a cleaner port to Intel than NeXT. And the virtue of a modern, tested kernel, not an ancient Mach kernel.
OS X does not use the Mach kernel. It is based on Mac, but they also took a lot of things from BSD’s kernel and made a totally new kernel out of it.
Nvidia supports Windows and Linux, they don’t support Mac. ATI supports Windows, with Linux as a future possibility.
Can you please explain once more your justification to this flat-out incorrect claim? Because considering the ATI video card in my 2-year old Mac, I find it hard to understand how ATI only supports Windows. Be a man – now that you’ve been caught with your pants down, admit you lied just to put Macs down to stroke your own ego.
In fact, the only “fanatic” here is you, my dear Red Pill. You’re so fanatic in your Mac bigotry, you have to lie about Macs just to put them down, instead of coming up with real facts. You also have to call Mac users “rich and/or stupid.” You also don’t seem to care that we Mac user are quite productive with our systems and quite happy using them.
Instead, you devolve into unrelated arguments about Apple’s historical mistakes or its stock price, which Tom never mentioned in his editorial, nor did anyone really bring up as a topic of interest here. I don’t give a damn about what Apple’s stock price was trading in 1985 – the thing that’s important to me is, does OS X live up to the hype and is Apple producing products and services that are worth looking into? The answer is an unqualified “Yes.”
Does that mean I think Apple is going to overtake Microsoft in marketshare? No.
Does that mean I think Apple is going be sell 10 times as many Macs as they do today in 5 or 10 years? No.
Does any of this mean I think Apple is a perfect company unable to make mistakes, now and forever? Absolutely not.
But if you ask me, I think Apple is doing what it SHOULD be doing, given their situation. As Tom wrote, “As did the other success stories of this recession, Apple got there by turning to its customers instead of putting the squeeze on them when times got tough.” If you can’t accept that, that’s not Apple’s problem, it’s more indicative of you, Red Pill, having some personal issues you need to work out. Apple succeeding is obviously a threat to you, although I have no idea why, considering that, by your admission, Apple is irrelevant a company anyway.
Homework Assignment #1:
I don’t have to go to Nvidia to download the driver, it is automatically downloadable from Software Update.
Homework Assignment #2:
Apple provides the developer tools to do all this, why do I need to go to NVidia or ATI?
Homework Assignment #3:
As I said, I don’t know if it is available, at least I can admit when I don’t know something. It has only be around since August, it does sometimes take a while for support to appear but it usually does.
Homework Assignment #4:
You seem to imply that Apple because develops the most of the drivers, that it is a problem. You say the drivers are slow. Do you have any facts to back that up? I doubt it. By the way, I know for a fact, by looking at job listings in the past, that Nvidia does hire Mac driver developers.
Maya was out on PC long before Mac.
And to date, Maya is the only major vendor 3D software package for Mac.
No 3D Studio.
No Softimage.
Maya, came out very shortly after OS X was released. Doing it on OS 9 would have been problemmatic, I agree. But OS X is a totally different story. They saw it was a real Unix unlike BeOS or Windows. You did not mention Lightwave 3D.
There is not much we can do for companies who decide not to develop for whatever platform. Given Apple’s relationship with Avid, I doubt that we will see Softimage anytime soon (directly competing with them with Final Cut Pro). But, Just because they are not available now does not mean they will never be. Discreet (makers of 3d Studio) did release Combustion and Cleaner for the Mac.
Mac is not viewed as a serious 3D platform. There is no computing power available — either via the processor or via hardware rendering, which is not supported on OS X.
Just because you keep repeating this does not necessarally make it true.
The major graphics houses are switching to Windows and Linux, not to Mac. They are done with expensive boutique computing. You might say, “they learned their lesson”.
Says, you. Givin your false statements, I have little reason to believe what you have to say.
– Pos
I don’t know what drugs you people are on but the BeOS File system is not dog slow by any standard, I wouldn’t even call it slow.
It smokes any other file system for finding files for example.
Me thinks the Apple users are a bit put out because their Journaling file system IS dog slow.
Cheers
David
Yes searching was fast with BeOS. They used some sort of database like scheme to index the metadata. Searching by certain metadata is fast in Mac OS as well, such as find by file name. The Mac is considerably faster at this than most other OSes excluding BeOS.
I think what people are talking about is, that there was overhead with creating and modifying a file in BeOS due to journaling and maintaining all of that metadata.
“Another thing that MAC has going for it that linux and windows don’t is colorsync, and the commitment to a color correction system built into the OS. Windows nor linux have provided the imaging community with an OS level color system such as colorsync.”
One word. Patents. Sucks, but that’s the world we live in, and even the big boys are bitten by them from time to time. Although I believe that Windows has ICM. Two I’ve heard that getting the desired results out of Colorsync isn’t as “PnP” as people think.
Mike Hearn: I guess CrossOver and WineX aren’t commercial products either then? I guess RealPlayer isn’t a commercial product? The games Loki ported and sold actually did quite well, the company went bankrupt due to massive fraud by the managers and hopeless business management.
Neither CodeWeavers nor Transgaming posted a profit, so we can’t really say about their success. However, they are more like bridges than the apps themselves, their only use is to run Windows apps.
And ever wondered why RealONE isn’t for Linux? Why we get a old buggy version? Because it doesn’t bring in money for Real. And about the fraud and business management of Loki, we can’t say because it isn’t proven. It is something disgrunted investors and ex-employees tell, we have no idea about its validity.
Mike Hearn: Linux is catching up pretty quickly in the graphics low end as well, we all use the gimp around here to do graphics for our projects.
Nah, Linux isn’t catching up on the low end. On the very high end, 3D animation, it is catching up REAL fast. To be frank, you are the first person I know that rather use GIMP than Photoshop/ Photoshop Elements/ Paint Shop Pro.
Mike Hearn: Sorry, a few more points [ btw eugenia, mozilla just ate my post as i forgot to put a title in!
]
It happens to a lot of us, except Opera users. 🙂 Whenever I post a long message on IE, I normally copy it to the clipboard before pressing “Submit Comment”.
b) Porting their stuff to Linux would a lot of effort.
I think (a) is a better reason. It is easy to port Photoshop to Linux via WINE (like Corel’s Linux apps). But really, the ultimate reason is that many Linux users just don’t buy much software. If they do buy, it is shareware-priced software from very small companies.
Red Pill: And the BeOS version of OpenGL was very fast as well.
As well as very limited (in R5). But how sure are you that Apple would be more profitable with BeOS than NeXT. If anything, Jobs is a great businessman, he is unlike many in the industry, profit-orientated.
Red Pill: There would be MORE applications available for Mac if Apple had gone with BeOS. Why? Because Be had much more of a developer following than NeXT.
This may be true, but remember, Apple couldn’t care less about that. They want apps to be ported from their OS to their new OS, and neither BeOS nor NeXT offered a migratory API. So any choice is a good choice.
Red Pill: Be had better developed media (sound, video) support than NeXT. So these applications would have flourished — important for Apple as this is one of their target market segments.
However, Be had far worse printing support than NeXT, and having a Postscript display really made NeXT a good choice for Apple as printing is their main traditional market.
Red Pill: BeOS had a cleaner port to Intel than NeXT. And the virtue of a modern, tested kernel, not an ancient Mach kernel.
OpenStep was for x86. In fact, Apple had problems because of that (their ABI, for example, is made for x86).
Red Pill: Where is OS X today, after YEARS and YEARS of development? Stuck on 2 processors… and hardly scaling well because of the monolithic and non-threaded nature of OS X.
We have no idea how OS X can scale because Apple has no plans to offer more processors regardless about capability. They have no reason to.
Red Pill: And now Apple has Steve Jobs. And with Steve at the helm, Apple’s market share has fallen faster than at any time in history.
So what? Apple’s profit increased, and that’s what their investors are after.
I wouldn’t buy any of their Macs. The prices are insane. Well, with the price of the middle-end (1GHz) PowerMac, I could get a dual-Athlon XP 2600+, a MSI K7D Master motherboard, 1GB of DDR PC2100 memory, a Radeon 9700 Pro, Creative SB Audigy 2, a Sony DVD-R/-RW/+R/+RW/-ROM/CD-R/-RW drive, 120GB Western Digital 8mb cache hdd, a Intel Gigabit NIC card (if the 10/100 NIC on the MoBo doesn’t suit you), Microsoft Internet Keyboard plus their optical 3 button mouse, Windows XP Professional and a 17″ Sony LCD display.
And that’s street’s price in Malaysia. If I use Singapore’s price, I could get it cheaper. The shop I got the price from builds really good machines (open up the case and see how clean their machines is). They do practically everything for you, including installing the OS and the drivers and activating it.
Pretty much more hassle-free than getting a machine from Apple. Plus, right now I’m getting more and more into Photoshop, it would be likely this would get a performance boost. And I’m also into compiling (as I’m learning C++), again a performance boost. Compared with that PowerMac. Of course, I could get a CRT monitor and get Office XP bundled in too.
So what happens if I wanted a machine from somewhere branded? For $40 more, I can get the following AlienWare system in a nice beautiful gorgeus casing (I chosed Conspiracy Blue).
For the same price, you not only get a better casing, you get a faster processor (Athlon MP 1800+), better graphics card (Radeon 9000 Pro), faster RAM (PC-2100), far more better optical drive (made by Plextor, the best), MS Internet Keyboard and IntelliMouse in Conspiracy Blue (it would be $80 cheaper if in space black). Not only that, you get a free subsciprtion of a good magazine, better support than from Apple and a better assurance that the machine they built for you would work.
Which I would rather buy? Try to guess (overall, I would go for the first one, for obvious reasons).
quote “Lastly, if Apple had purchased Be (which was grossly over-priced at the time)”
well apple did pay steve jobs $400 million, which is $300 million more than what be was asking for. it’s my understanding that most of the $400 million went directly to steve job’s pocket. if they spent $100 million on be, and the following $300 million improving on be os, such as its driver and printing architecture, “carbon api” and legacy support, along with perfect mac UI sticthed on, it would be a better os.
i don’t deny be may have been grossly-over-priced, but what about paying next 3x as much?
in defense of red pill:
as for ati and nvidia not being on apple, it is true that pre-direct X8 cards are available (like ati rage and nvidia geforce 2mx/4mx) for use on apple platform. but the direct x 9 cards such as ati radeon 9700 and nvidia FX are NOT available for the mac os x platform, as well as 8x agp
uh i am unsure steve jobs saved apple. first, he killed the cloners. that pissed me off. i used to own a fine 200mhz 603e powercomputing.
powercomputing, daystar, moto, etc. were offering configurations distinct and better than apple. for example, can you buy an apple computer with 6 pci slots, full tower with 6 bays, and by using atx form factor and power supply spec, be less expensive than even an imac.
second, i can’t run os x on my former 603e, so i sold it. if apple had bought be instead, and kept the cloning market alive and well, the apple os platform/marketshare have have remained steady or even grown. there is more profit in software than hardware anyway.
third, the cloners would provide an incentive for moto and ibm to devote more r and d to chip technology. we may have 3ghz powerpc g5 now – with advance 333mhz DDR system bus!
the rise of cloning may entice chipset manufactorers like VIA SIS ALI NVIDIA to develop chipsets for apple powerpc.given that amd athlon uses dec alpha EV6 bus, it is even possible for amd and moto/ibm to use the same bus, hence, powerpc g4 having plug in compatibility with any off the shelf athlon motherboard!!!!
the rise of chip cloning may allow for alternative powerpc chips, as the VIA C3 and Transmeta, as well as AMD to intel.
what i love about pc’s, as i built my own, is the choice in motherboards, powersupplies, chassis, cpu’s, memories, etc.
imagine that anyone could build a mac os compatible with choice of heatsink, agp cards, atx chassis, etc. imagine a bios that allowed for overclocking, pci divider manipulation, voltage adjustments, etc.
compared to what could have been, i am unsure steve jobs saved apple.
why can’t i run OS X on my 603e powercomputing? you can run xp on a cely 300a! also, i am unsure if switching GUI midstream is a good idea. the classic Mac UI has withstood the test of time.
anyhow, i find win xp to be faster and more responsive, so i sold my 603e and got a 1.4ghz athlon xp 1800, which i built myself.
Yeah sure, apple’s market share has lowered over 30% in one year, while their sales have slipped by 4%. By these estiments the PC market must be way over-heating. Maybe Dell & Gateway should stop their comercials, and put that money into shipping more boxxes. Their customers must have to wait for months with these growth-rates! In fact, nobody here has even mentioned that Apple’s (margin rich) server market-share has raised over 300% in the last few months. The journalist that wrote this piece may be biased, but many respondants seem to be even more biased. OSX runs fine (and snappy) on my five year-old mac (well better than Win ME does on my two year-old PC) with over a dozen apps open. My friends tell me that it’s even better when you upgrade to the suggested 128 MB of Ram. I definately believe developers are flocking to OSX in droves, because Apple has doubled the number of Mac developers in the last year.
If you’re working a $5job, where all your boss wants to invest in you is a cheap pee cee, where the price of said pee cee is even an issue, your obviously not paid for your gray matter but how fast you can type. That’s called data entry.
let me agree. mac’s are overpriced data entry consoles. dull makes cheaper ones.
for the rest of us, mac’s do just fine, thank you very much.
You are correct about Microsoft loosing money at most things they do. Their last report indicated that 4 of the 6 divisions lost money. But they have Windows and Office.
I think even Bill realises that the Office and Windows revenues will eventually reach appropriate levels and are banking on using what they have now to reap huge rewards in web services when the Office and Windows cash cows finally disppear.
Not to attack or defend any side, just to throw an idea into the mix. One of the major strengths of Nextstep/OS X is that it is quite easy to program. I am not claiming that it is easier than BeOS (as I have never programmed for that platform) but there is no doubt in my mind that OS X is one of the easier platforms to develop for (at least using the cocoa framework).
Dave, I think you are right. I remember reading on this site an Interview with the creator of the Pepper Editor (Maarten Hekkelman) which was orignally only for BeOS said that it became difficult to program in BeOS because of all the multi-threading.
Here are some extracts from his comments, it is interesting because he also talks about MacOS X and Windows.
Maarten Hekkelman- Programming for BeOS was simple when you just started. But it became quite messy quickly. The problem is the multi-threading.
MacOSX, however, loses on all fronts. It claims to be a Unix but it doesn’t support much of the more advanced Unix features, since it is using such an old kernel. It claims to be user friendly, but I find it more obscure and difficult to use than my Win2k box. And then, it is dog slow.
The link to the full OSNews interview – http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1659
You people who are bigoted against particular OSes are so funny. If Steve Jobs didn’t save Apple then who did – the Tooth Fairy? Why not enjoy the wealth of diversity in computing instead of putting it down?
ha ha ha, why does any mention of good things at Apple get the Apple haters so flustered? Because deep down they know nobody loves Winbloze — for good reason. It’s overpriced crap – a monopoly taking advantage of the public with an 85 percent profit margin!
Oh yea, macs are overpriced with Apple making a small profit. The price is fair, the Mac haters just can’t afford one and can’t stand all the Apple goodies making the Peecee look small even with its gigahertz this and doublepumped FSB that.
Sorry to break it to you Apple haters, Apple’s never going away until a product made by ten different companies — OS from MS. hardware from Dell, addon board from whoever, app from someone else — can match the integrated beauty of a system of hardware and OS and apps all designed to work together. Maybe some day, but methinks it’s a long way away. Sorry guys!! bye bye
…I would buy a Mac and be happy!
Well, truth is, I am stupid: I use a Mac (and Mac OS X) everyday.
But I’m not happy: I’m not rich, and the Mac isn’t mine.
Damn, how I long to be rich and stupid!
Here’s more evidence that the Switch campaign is netting import results. From the blog of Joichi Ito:
“I was talking to Jun Murai the other day and he said that a lot of the IETF folks were switching as well. I think the Unix at the core really makes it easy to get the geeks over…”
http://joi.ito.com/archives/2002/12/01/see_ya_later_windoze.html
OS X is winning the mindshare game, regardless of the marketshare numbers certain people seem to think is the only measure of success. So when you have a lot of people at places like the Internet Engineering Task Force switching over, perhaps that’s what Tom Yager meant when he stated that Apple is now a serious player in the broad IT market.
If anything, all this anecdotal evidence, from Tim O’Reilly to Joichi Ito to Wil Wheaton (who recently bought an iBook and is loving it) are leading indicators. The geeks are always the early adopters, with the rest of the market tending to lag by 1-2 years.
One thing is for sure, Apple is building a whole new developer foundation and that bodes well for the MacOS.
Paul: OS X does not use the Mach kernel. It is based on Mac, but they also took a lot of things from BSD’s kernel and made a totally new kernel out of it.
OS X does indeed use the Mach microkernel. This design was largely discredited long ago, everybody except Apple who has tried to use one have dropped it as being a flawed design. Apple hired the guy who invented it though, so they got what they paid for…. note most of the FreeBSD code is afaik userland stuff.
Red Pill, it’s nice to know you can’t debate worth a salt. No one is denying Apple’s market share is small. No one is claiming Apple didn’t lose a lot of opportunities in the 80s and 90s. But since apparently you need to be reminded, the point of this thread is that Apple is NOW making a comeback, and that comeback is a surprise to many. By all arguments, Apple should be a dead company and it’s survived more deaths than a cat with nine lives.
Apple have been kept afloat only by the bizarre cult which lives around it. Look at the profit margins they make on their hardware and then their financial performance. It becomes clear that Apple have been on life support for a long time. There is now the perception on geek sites like OSNews and Slashdot that Apple is surging forward – the statistics however do not back that up (see eugenias comment at the start).
rajan r: OK, true, those were bad examples. There isn’t much commercial software for Linux (though it does indeed) exist, mostly because the commercial software that does exist is high end specialist stuff that we don’t hear much about.
“Nah, Linux isn’t catching up on the low end. On the very high end, 3D animation, it is catching up REAL fast. To be frank, you are the first person I know that rather use GIMP than Photoshop/ Photoshop Elements/ Paint Shop Pro.”
I hope you were excluding people who have pirate copies of Photoshop and who would probably use the gimp if they had to pay the full price? Our dept is audited regularly, hence the fact that we all use the Gimp. It works great. If piracy wasn’t so endemic in the Windows personal PC world I think you’d see a lot more people use it, but when there is a well known brand that all the pros use for only a click in Kazaa what do you expect?
I think (a) is a better reason. It is easy to port Photoshop to Linux via WINE (like Corel’s Linux apps). But really, the ultimate reason is that many Linux users just don’t buy much software. If they do buy, it is shareware-priced software from very small companies.
Yes, see my previous point. Photoshop wouldn’t sell well on desktop Linux except to business that actually needed it. I’d be willing to bet a lot of Photoshop users statistically don’t really need or use all of its features, much like how many people use MS Word but could use something much simpler.
Nvidia supports Windows and Linux, they don’t support Mac. ATI supports Windows, with Linux as a future possibility.
Can you please explain once more your justification to this flat-out incorrect claim? Because considering the ATI video card in my 2-year old Mac, I find it hard to understand how ATI only supports Windows. Be a man – now that you’ve been caught with your pants down, admit you lied just to put Macs down to stroke your own ego.
He was correct, Apple produce drivers for ATI and nVidia drivers, and those drivers are often out of date and inferior to the “offical” ones.
I definately believe developers are flocking to OSX in droves, because Apple has doubled the number of Mac developers in the last year.
That’s not hard, as there was virtually no developer community of note for MacOS 9. A lot of those “developers” are not actually developing Mac software beyond yet another Cocoa IRC program however, often they use it to develop java stuff for eventual running on Linux/Solaris. Anyway, where did that statistic come from?
Not to attack or defend any side, just to throw an idea into the mix. One of the major strengths of Nextstep/OS X is that it is quite easy to program. I am not claiming that it is easier than BeOS (as I have never programmed for that platform) but there is no doubt in my mind that OS X is one of the easier platforms to develop for (at least using the cocoa framework).
Perhaps so, I have only limited experience of it. However, considering that the only languages available to use with Cocoa are Objective C and Java that seems to me to immediately limit the appeal of the framework. Java is alright, but Objective C is Yet Another Language. I know its users all think it’s great, but that’s the same for Python users, Ruby, Lisp, Delphi, whatever. Java suffers somewhat from not having a terribly optimized VM, so further compounding speed issues.
MacOS speed issues: This is tricky, because the feeling of speed is subjective. Lots of Mac users say “well it feels fast to me on hardware that’s X years old” but that doesn’t tell us much other than perhaps Apple give the GUI priority over everything else speedwise (if fact, they do just this). Personal measures of speed are also useless for real comparisons – moving windows about on OS X feels fast to me, but resizing windows is dog slow. It’s better to look at the numbers, which say the Mac is slow.
You people who are bigoted against particular OSes are so funny. If Steve Jobs didn’t save Apple then who did – the Tooth Fairy? Why not enjoy the wealth of diversity in computing instead of putting it down?
Understand this: Apple are not for wealth of diversity in computing. Apple want to own the market just like Microsoft do today. They want this because they make platforms, and because this would maximize return on their shareholders. Apple and Microsoft are just the same when you look at their business plans, except one is sucessful and the other is not. It’s far too dangerous to have either around, unless you feel like another decade of monopoly abuse but at the hands of Jobs rather than Gates.
No? Didn’t think so.
Red Pill, go to macobserver.com and click the link that says Apple Death Knell Counter. Maybe your post should be up on there 😉 People have repeatedly said apple is going under throughout the years. Has apple ever gone under? No. I find it funny that you people keep giving reason after reason why apple should go under, yet apple never does.
All of your points might be logically correct. But they don’t matter, in the sense that apple is making a profit. In fact, they are the ONLY computer company turning a profit, despite the huge resession. While everyone else is scrambling, apple is doing fine. What does that tell you?
“That 50 million number is becoming lost in the noise as the next billion pc’s are sold” :: I typical statement. PCs are selling zillions of units, so apple should be worried. Bullshit. The PC world is a zillion companies, while apple is the only one that makes macs. Apple doesn’t need to compete with windows boxes directly to be successful. Instead of making general statements, why don’t you try citing REASONS why things have suddenly changed? Apple has survived thus far, so obviously, they’re doing some things right. I see no event that’s occured recently as to why apple should suddenly be scared, any more then they already were. And obviously they aren’t scared- they’re attacking windows directly with switch ads, and people are actually switching.
“OS X sales have been slow.” :: There’s no point it buying OS X if you don’t have a machine that can run it. If you buy a new machine, OS X comes pre-installed. Apple has said that the majority of people leave OS X installed. Are you factoring the sales of ALL new macs? All of these come with OS X.
“Apple will never be a player in the server market.” :: I have found that people who use “never” in a sentence usually have idea what they’re talking about. Anything can change. In fact, Xserve is the fastest selling server box on the market right now. People are switching to it in droves. There are numbers to back that up.
“Even a stalwart Mac software producer, Quark, is moving to Windows”
Quark is crap, and has always been crap (IMHO). The only reason for the mac platform’s reliance on Quark is because many of the print shops have it and are too inert to switch to something else. In contrast, Adobe InDesign blows away Quark in all respects. Many professionals prefer it. The mac market will certainly survive without Quark, regardless.
“If there were a way to ditch the Mac market, Adobe would do it. The same goes with Microsoft.” :: What in the hell are you blabbering about? Adobe makes a TON of money off the mac with their other products. Photoshop 7 was DESIGNED for OS X. Sure adobe is annoyed about FCP, but that in no way means they they are ditching the mac platform. Graphics professionals still prefer macs, and adobe is the king of graphics programs. And microsoft makes plenty of money with Office vX.
“There is not one segment where Apple is gaining share.” :: Numbers to back this up?
“The price of Apple’s machines always is a huge premium over the price of a PC.” :: An age-old argument. Many mac users feel the worth of their machine is more, since they don’t have to reboot every hour, or reinstall their OS after they get a virus-laden email.
“MacOSX is competent but not a great OS by any means. It is painful to use on anything other than a fast machine. Perhaps if one didn’t have to use the GUI, it would have moderate performance.” :: What a rediculus statement. “Gee, if I didn’t have to use the GUI, it would be faster.” Well no shit! Use a command line then if you’re that desperate for speed! Sheesh. Or just install Darwin, and you don’t get Aqua at all. Darwin is free. Or you could install a skin. Or, you could use a 3rd party browser. For GOD SAKE OS X IS NOT SLOW. Try running 20 apps at once on OS X. All of them run. All of them get processor time. Lastly, my mom has a damn 500 Mhz G3 in her iBook, and it’s not slow at all. That’s a bunch of crap.
Wired magazine (like Mike Hearn in his post above) needs to get a grip and lose their obsession with depicting Apple users as members of some “bizarre cult.” It’s a product, for Christ’s sake. Some people like — no demand, a quality product. Many of these people simply have work to do and don’t want to be fumbling with hardware, OS and apps from 10 different companies anymore than they want to put together a kit car and be their own car mechanics.
And a lot of Apple users, as enthusiasts, like the sometimes wild, sometimes halting leaps forward in personal computing you get on the Apple. Because when you make the whole enchilada (hardware, OS, apps, online service), it’s easier to implement innovations that take hardware and software working together. That applies to innovation of Apple’s own invention and others. Sorry PC guys it’s just a plain FACT. You’ll just never be able to admit it because you’re so in love with building a box or “choosing” your PC. I feel for you.
Mike Hearn: yes Apple and MS are both the same in wanting to promote a proprietary platform and make money. But the fundamental difference is Apple’s plan is making a platform people actually WANT to use, while MS’s operational plan at least so far is making one you “have to buy because everyone else is using it.” They claim to be changing their tune in response to Linux. But how are those guys going to go “quality” and “innovation”? They wouldn’t know it if staring them in the face (witness the Tablet PC, what a joke).
Apple haters: you ought to just get over your inferiority complex about the mac and buy one. You can keep the PC too. It has its uses and positives in its own right (although unless you use Linux, the stink of winblows is always around).
given that in 1988, amiga and mac both ran on moto 68k, but amiga os was a better os than mac os?
Mac loyalty is so well-known, it’s a cliché. Mac users are routinely referred to as Apple’s faithful, Mac zealots, members of the cult of Mac, Appleholics, Macheads, Maccies, Macolytes and Mac addicts. The biannual Macworld conference is often compared to a religious revival meeting, where Steve Jobs is worshipped like a rock star, or a charismatic cult leader.
…
The loyalty to Apple has led some to describe the Mac community as masochistic, the “punish me harder” brigade in the words of the Register.
“They eat it up,” said Matthew Rothenberg, an editor at Ziff Davis and a longtime Apple watcher. “It’s like a B&D (bondage and dominance) relationship. There needs to a psychosexual analysis of the Mac community.”
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,56575,00.html
– Red Pill
Both Lightwave and Maya support Cg according to this article:
http://www.architosh.com/news/2002-06/2002a1-0616-mac-cg.phtml
This was back at the announcement:
“When Nvidia first shipped the GeForce2 MX, we committed to supporting the Macintosh with all future GPUs,” said Black. “This announcement extends our commitment to software as well.”
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0206/13.cg.php
– Pos
I have been reading a lot of comments about how Apple will die, or Apple doesn’t matter because of marketshare. I think I will disagree. If you follow that line of reasoning then Linux (on the desktop) doesn’t matter. After all, Apple has more desktop marketshare than Linux. Apple has a lot more mindshare on the desktop as well.
I think it is good to have competition. The computing world would be an awful place if just one company made all of the OSes.
on a side note. Apple is making a lot of headway and gaining marketshare in several markets. One would be video/film production. Final Cut Pro has made serious headway into that market. Another would be bio-tech reasearch.
I think Apple is content to be a niche player with 7-10% (future) marketshare. They could make a lot of maney and keep their base of consumers Happy. I don’t think that they will go over 10%. Ms is way to strong. I also think Linux will eventually get to be about 2-5% desktop penetration. As soon as they figure out how to make money.
I also think Apple made a good decsion to buy NeXT and not Be. Apple needed Jobs. I only wish Apple could have baught them both.