“Going by the numbers, Apple Computer Inc. appears headed for trouble again. While CEO Steven P. Jobs engineered a remarkable comeback after retaking the helm in 1997, one-time expenses, such as plant closures, have pushed the company into the red for two quarters running.” Read more at BusinessWeek.
Assuming the processor situation will be solved, I wish Apple would do just two things…actually, it may only need to be one thing. And that is get rid of the eMac, replace it with something else, something solid, not cheapo, that they will bite the bullet on and sell for about $799, in order to attract switchers and first time computer users. This Mac should be what the original iMac was – something tremendously popular, but inexpensive.
The second thing is to at least get a decent foothold in education again. And, to do that, use the above hypothetical Mac.
Also, put 256 MB RAM in the 12″ iBook and sell it for $799 too. And also use it in education.
An affordable Mac? It’d attract too many users! 😉
I’ve used some Macs before, mostly OS X, and I think they’re great, but an x86 does me fine for several hundred dollars less. I don’t think it’s in their power to sell anything for that kind of price. Too bad, cuz if they did, I’d totally splurge for a new Mac
.
Apple innovates more than any computer company you can name, and more than most combined. But hey, I guess a few billion in the bank these days means “headed for trouble.”
1. Come up with a competitor to MS Office for about half the price of MS Office.
2. Focus on a server product that would replace Windows 2k/IIS and Exchange 2k for businesses of 500 people or less.
3. Embrace the UNIX community as much as possible.
If all else fails there is a large x86 (or hammer) population out there that would buy OSX
1) Separate software from hardware bcoz just to buy the software, one has to buy the hardware too. That i think hightway robbery
2) Keep the prices competitive. Just bcoz you are giving Best OS, it doesnt mean that you put exorbitant prices
3) Design ur own office apps for your os aka M$ office 4 Windoze and staroffice/openoffice for *nix
4) Finally dont take your loyal followers for a ride and they are precious. They will support even if the ur inc in sea water ie rough waters
5) continue the innovation, stevie that is good for your job
OS X is just a very large rip of OPENSTEP/NeXTSTEP, which they bought from NeXT, AppleWorks was bought from Claris…not too innovating, is it?
Apple will eventually need to switch to an Intel based chip. They’ve barely broken 1GHz, while you can get a 3.06GHz Dell now. In the mind of Joe Consumer, this makes the Dell “better” as well as much cheaper. Apple needs to dump Motorola, switch to Intel, and sell a base model iMac for $500 as a way to compete with the $399 Dell.
Lowering prices, providing a replacement for MS Office and improving Windows and Unix compatibility will do only one thing to the Mac: Make it redundant. Apple will become nothing more than just another PC vendor and a Mac will be noting more than a mixture between a luxury version of the$199 Lindows computer and Sony.
Apple could innovate if they really wanted to:
Move away from an application-centric approach to the document-centric idea, the NeXT-inherited Services menu is a first step. Build on Objective-C and Cocoa: Runtime-typing is great, but where is the component system? We have COM+, Replicants, KParts and CORBA – a component system would be just a step away, with Cocoa and AppleScript Apple could finally bring development to the casual user.
Show us applications for Quartz Extreme. Currently, it’s purpose is just to accelerate gfx operations that are unnecessarily slow in the first place. Eye candy gets boring after a day – where are real-life applications that are useful? How about a resolution-independent UI? Quartz is capable, why don’t you finally use it instead of doing the whole UI in bitmapped graphics?
Don’t neglect CoreAudio. It is still one of the worst-documented parts of OS X and still not final. Audio on Linux is still only for experts and on Windows it is not as easy as one would want it to be.
Make decisions. MacOS X is a schizoid OS. Filenames in the terminal look differnet than in the Finder. The Finder is hiding .app suffixes and a file called “10:3:1990” in the Terminal ends as “10/3/1990” in the Finder. MDI or not? ProjectBuilder is a pure MDI inteface, and if we should really see a tabbed Safari, it’s going to be one too. And stick to your own UI guidelines, the iApps are exceptions one or the other corner.
Nathan, I think they could sell something at that price. Apple’s had this huge Switch campaign and they completely blew it because nobody, understandably, wants to take a chance on something that’s higher priced than known enities such as Dell, Gateway, etc. They’d have to bite the bullet, but if they’re going to try and get switchers and first time users and education contracts, they need a very attractive, solid Mac for that in that $799 or $899 area. Their objectives will never get off the ground unless there is an entry level Mac like that. They’re willing to lose money on the Apple Stores because they believe they will help them in the long run. If they can do that, they can do this too.
————
“OS X is just a very large rip of OPENSTEP/NeXTSTEP, which they bought from NeXT, AppleWorks was bought from Claris…not too innovating, is it?”
Give us a break, Anonymous 🙂
Eh?
It’s true, if you take a close look, you can see how much OS X stuff is lifted from NeXT* stuff. It’s their prerogative, since they bought it, but buying something is different from being innovative and creating something.
like powercomputing!
remember those heady days?
they may not expand apple’s marketshare but they can help prevent it from dropping
Okay, let’s look at what Apple has:
* Ink, perhaps the best handwriting recognition available to date (it’s certainly superior to Jot)
* The Apple community, which tends to consist of well-to-do people who will gobble up anything Apple.
* The Newton community, which is still strong and actively developing
* Existing Newton applications, which use the ARM ISA
Given these assets, wouldn’t it make a *great deal* of sense for Apple to release a new Newton? The problem with the Newton was that it was well ahead of its time (and therefore a bit large and cumbersome) and also got a bad rap.
Apple has everything they need to release an ARM based PDA which uses Ink for input and is binary compatible with existing Newton applications. They can build upon the development being done by the Newton community, and release a competative PDA, which will be successful amoung Apple customers if only for it’s branding, like past Apple products have been (e.g. the iPod) but can also garner more widespread support through its existing application base.
Apple loses 8 million on 1.4 billion in sales…whoa please file for bankruptcy soon!
Then their market share is going down but this is an easy thing in which to trick people. Apple are still selling pc’s but the market as a whole has got bigger because more people are buying pc’s…so of course their share is smaller, butthey still have the same amount of pc’s if not more.
Clones = bad
x86 = bad.
These 2 things alone will destroy apple for what they are now, they would become another dell operating off a tiny profit trying to out source the other x86 computer seller.
To the person who said Apple have gone BARELY past 1Ghz, they are now at 1.42, thats 400 mhz over the mark.
Also a G4 1Ghz doesn’t equal an Intel 1Ghz, the G4 is a more powerful chip for that speed.
No i am not a mac zealot.
” non-PC products such as the iPod MP3 music player.”
Last time I checked… the iPod did work with PCs.
“Also a G4 1Ghz doesn’t equal an Intel 1Ghz, the G4 is a more powerful chip for that speed.”
Please substantiate that claim. Hard facts, not Apple marketing hype. SPEC numbers please?
My Apple buddy tells me that a 800mhz G4 is faster than my 2.83ghz P4. So, I took a G4 and compiled KDE on it using gentoo, with all the g4 optimizations. It took 52-53 hours. On my P4 it took 12. While this is not anything more than a personal test, it doesnt prove that the G4 is faster than my P4. This is the problem, your claim has been claimed umpteen times, yet has never actually been proven beyond Apples own website.
And please, dont tell me compilation is not a “real world” app and thats why it doesnt show what the PPC 750 is made of.
I’d say gcc is a very bad benchmark. While it is not the best compiler for x86, it is a lot worse on PPC. All the optimizations show effect at runtime, not during compile time.
That said, the claim that a 800MHz G4 was faster than a P4 2.8GHz is far-fetched indeed.
Still, if you want examples of a G4 being faster than a P4, check out RC5 results.
This is one of the reasons I’m hesitant to buy a mac! Jaguar should have been a free update.
He wrote,
“Also a G4 1Ghz doesn’t equal an Intel 1Ghz, the G4 is a more powerful chip for that speed.”
He did not write that it was comparable to a 2.83Ghz.
Despite using a Mac at work I have a Windows PC at home, I mainly use it for web browsing and entertainment. The Mac doesn’t have many games and there isn’t a web browser I like as much as Opera 6 on Windows, so I wouldn’t want to replace my PC. But it would be nice to have one at home as a second computer for when I need to work from home.
If Apple had a cheap, upgradable Mac that doesn’t have a built in monitor, I would certainly buy one. After using large monitors for the past few years I’d find the small screen on an eMac/iMac intolerable. Plus I have a couple of spare 19″ monitors that are hooked up to computers I don’t use much. I’d really like a G4 desktop, but considering how much I’d use it I can’t really justify buying one.
I remember back in the early 90s Apple had some really cheap 030 Macs and there were bargain 040s available after the release of the PowerPC. It’s a shame there isn’t an equivalent low end Mac available today.
I second that. I wanted to buy a powerbook, back when the ibooks sucked, but Apple kept the price just out of my range. And now that I can afford one I’ve had to witness how they treated other powerbook owners. Like forcing them to pay for updates to the OS, features that should have been there in the original release. And paying for new software that I can get for free with Linux doesn’t add much value to the package, for me. By the time OSX will be able to replace my current network of Linux and Windows systems Linux will be able to do it cheaper. And I still can’t buy OSX for any of my x86 boxes.
And what’s up with the 100~166 Mhz system bus speeds? Those are so ’00. DDR that puppy or something. Even in their own benchmarks they say a 1.42 Ghz Dual G4 is only twice as fast as a 500 Mhz G4 in Final Cut Pro. Could there be a bottleneck somewhere? Hmmm, I wonder.
I’m sure my 1.7 Ghz Dual Athlon MP (266Mhz sys bus) is at least twice as fast as the 1 Ghz Athlon (133Mhz sys bus) I purchased for $500 several years ago.
My Apple buddy tells me that a 800mhz G4 is faster than my 2.83ghz P4. So, I took a G4 and compiled KDE on it using gentoo, with all the g4 optimizations. It took 52-53 hours. On my P4 it took 12. While this is not anything more than a personal test, it doesnt prove that the G4 is faster than my P4.
It doesn’t prove anything. It is akin to saying ‘the Porsche factory takes 3 weeks to build a 911, whereas the Volkswagon factory can build a Beetle in 3 days, therefore this doesn’t prove that the Porsche 911 is faster than the Volkswagon Beetle’. The test might have been fair if both were building KDE for the same platform, doing the same work you moron.
BTW your P4 2.83 GHz took 12 hours to compile KDE 3? My 1.4 GHz Athlon only took 8 hours for the whole of KDE 3.1 (Koffice, Quanta, KDevelop …), still I didn’t have all the optimisations turned on, though I imagine you did (being a Gentoo user and all), so I would expect to take longer (optimazation does).
There is certainly some truth to that article but its the same old tired perspective.
“Apple is all about design and colors and they are in a tough spot again.”
Apple is in the best position that it has been in in long time. Period. They have an awesome OS that is based on UNIX. That is enabling them to go after lots of high-end segments (servers, work stations) that they could not touch before. They are partnering closer with IBM, and they are pushing out into digital electronics (ipod). Just wait for the iphone (you know it will come).
Market share is important and apple really can’t play this we can charge a 40% premium on everything game for much longer but OS X and the partnership with IBM will open up doors so that they don’t have to do that any more.
As sun is finding out, it is not enough to be in just one segment anymore. You need to do desktops, servers, work stations etc. You need volumes and performance. Apple can and will get even better with the introduction of the next gen power pc from IBM. Ibm by the way is clearly interested in pushing the powerpc core into a lot more than just computers. I guess wish i had more free cash to pick up a few thousand shares of apple stock.
GHz or cheap headless boxes don’t matter when we’re talking about innovation. Even a $50 10GHz box would be just evolution.
They have an awesome OS that is based on UNIX.
I have yet to see the advantage of the overhyped Unix-base, and I’m saying that as someone using the command line daily. I have bash, grep, gcc and the rest on Windows, OS/2. AmigaOS and BeOS too, which are very likely to be not Unix-based.
“I have yet to see the advantage of the overhyped Unix-base, and I’m saying that as someone using the command line daily. I have bash, grep, gcc and the rest on Windows, OS/2. AmigaOS and BeOS too, which are very likely to be not Unix-based.”
Sorry. I really was not referring to the actual performance of unix. I was referring to the fact that unix is tried and proven in work stations and servers and other markets.
That means that apple can (with the right gear) approach those markets with a OS that is based on something that those buyers already trust. That is a huge marketing advantage.
“OS X is just a very large rip of OPENSTEP/NeXTSTEP, which they bought from NeXT, AppleWorks was bought from Claris…not too innovating, is it?”
You are trolling, but i will bite. OPEN/NEXTSTEP was run by Steve Jobs, who started apple. Claris was a subcompany of apple (started by apple, funded by apple) with the hopes of some day making claris an independent company. While i thought there was also an appleworks prior ro clarisworks, claris was always an apple company, and when they decided to merge back with apple, clarisworks was renamed.
Then there are “non innovations” like their rendevous(sp?), a zeroconf implementation. Or OSX itself, with aqua. or how about itunes, idvd, and the like, some quality software that is very easy to use.
Sorry. I really was not referring to the actual performance of unix. I was referring to the fact that unix is tried and proven in work stations and servers and other markets
Darwin has not been proven and tried anywhere before Apple came up with it. Your statement would be valid if if OS X was build upon Solaris, IRIX, AIX or similar. But a reimplementation of Unix is not guaranteed to be stable nor secure.
Gabriel: 1. Come up with a competitor to MS Office for about half the price of MS Office.
Of all the stupid suggestions on this thread, this takes the cake. Yes, maybe they could get an Office clone out. But would people buy? I doubt it. Why? A number of reasons
a) Mac only. And even if that’s isn’t the case, Apple would still have a better Mac version. Like Quicktime – the Mac version is nice, stable, beautiful. The PC version is crap… oh wait, that’s an understatment.
b) Hardly anyone buys something office-related from a company that isn’t targeting that market. So if they would want to compete with Office, they have to change at least part of their company’s focus to reflect that. That takes a hard time. Unless of course competing directly with Office isn’t their aim, which brings me to c)
c) It would always be in the shadow of Office, unless they do b}. For example, the file format, they still have to spend on getting it compatible with Office, their whole aim would be Apple’s version of Office. Doesn’t sound too inviting to me.
Gabriel: 2. Focus on a server product that would replace Windows 2k/IIS and Exchange 2k for businesses of 500 people or less.
And compete directly with Linux? For these cases (people who actually use Exchange), ease of use wouldn’t be an issue, which shoots down Mac’s only competitive edge in the market. But TCO, price, speed, support, etc., they may as well switch to Linux than to a Mac.
Gabriel: If all else fails there is a large x86 (or hammer) population out there that would buy OSX
Which would hardly be profitable.
Apple will become nothing more than just another PC vendor
To do that, they would have to use Windows, use Intel processors, and price their hardware so cheap that Dell finds it hard to undercut. Which wouldn’t happen if they have their own Office clone, better Windows and Unix compatiblity and lowering prices.
Anounymous: if you take a close look, you can see how much OS X stuff is lifted from NeXT* stuff.
Isn’t that the whole point of *buying* NeXT?
Bascule: Given these assets, wouldn’t it make a *great deal* of sense for Apple to release a new Newton?
Not too many companies, with the notable exception of Sony, are making money with PDAs. And if they are doing so, their profit margins are very low.
Bascule: which uses Ink for input
IIRC, Ink is pretty much made for Quartz. Seeing Quartz run on a PDA would be interesting…
CrackedButter: Also a G4 1Ghz doesn’t equal an Intel 1Ghz, the G4 is a more powerful chip for that speed.
Proof?
Besides, even if that’s the case, Intel hardly pushes 1GHz processors anymore. They are pushing 2-3GHz processors, and to consumers, like it or not, this is faster for them.
CrackedButter: No i am not a mac zealot.
Of course you aren’t. You are on of those people that bashes everything that has to do with Microsoft. And x86 being the platform Windows runs on…. well, this is rather expected.
stew: While it is not the best compiler for x86, it is a lot worse on PPC.
Well, Apple’s GCC 3.x is certainly way way way faster than 2.x, and on x86, 3.x is actually slower than 2.x…
sirmikester: This is one of the reasons I’m hesitant to buy a mac! Jaguar should have been a free update.
One of their major mistakes is not naming Jaguar as “Mac OS 11″…. Please, Windows XP is NT 5.1, I don’t see you on Windows-related threads saying Windows XP should have been a free upgrade…
But I do agree however there should have been a “upgrade” price (lower than the normal retail price).
nonamenobody: still I didn’t have all the optimisations turned on, though I imagine you did
Using optimizations actually slows down the compile process (but the end results is faster). Another thing to take in mind is that you might have more RAM than he does.
ryan: That is enabling them to go after lots of high-end segments (servers, work stations) that they could not touch before.
And still can’t touch today. Just because Darwin is BSD, doesn’t make it anywhere as good as commercial UNIXes like Solaris and Irix, or even free Unices like FreeBSD and Linux. Significantly slower than anything UNIX i have used, in addition of scalling terribly (makes Linux look sooo good)…. No, I don’t see your point.
stew: GHz or cheap headless boxes don’t matter when we’re talking about innovation. Even a $50 10GHz box would be just evolution.
Funny. Last Monday on the Screensavers, one Intel gal showed a 10ghz prototype using 90 nanometer process that runs in room temparature…. That’s innovation. It doesn’t matter if it is useless, innovation doesn’t change its defination.
ryan: Sorry. I really was not referring to the actual performance of unix. I was referring to the fact that unix is tried and proven in work stations and servers and other markets.
Ryan, first off, you are under a illusion Darwin is anywhere the performance of any modern UNIX. Plus, Darwin is not tried and proven, and if you go to Apple’s knowlegdebase, you would see a lot of complains of a kernel panic – you wouldn’t see than on Linux, or Solaris, or HP/UX, or Irix…
If this apple wants to be in gree pastures, they should stop rob their own community ( after all, govt can only do that
) and provide some cheaper versions ( but not cheap hardware).
Moreover, they should stop charing even for upgrades.
Otherwise, apple’s face will turn red
rajun just settled it all.
I wasn’t intending to troll, but I feel strongly about Apple’s contortions of OPENSTEP into OS X. Even thoug Jobs started Apple, Apple sans Jobs bought NeXT: doesn’t mean that OPEN/NeXTSTEP was an in-house creative Apple concoction. And so in OS X you have Cocoa (with the NS prefixes, same as OPENSTEP, and Cocoa is basically OPENSTEP with a few things added on), NetInfo (from NS/OS), a modified Dock, Project Builder, Interface Builder (still using the *N*eXT *I*nterface *B*uilder extension), Terminal, Grab, and so on. Yes, Rendezvous is an innovative tool, as is Quartz (even though at times it seems to be really a cheapie way to get out of having to pay licenses for DPS). For something to be innovative, however, it really has to be new and original. Apple’s iLife suite really isn’t new, since people have already made video capture and audio management tools before. Apple have simply made their own implementation of it.
You’ve taken me out of context. I also said:
>It’s their prerogative, since they bought it, but buying something is different from being innovative and creating something.
Funny. Last Monday on the Screensavers, one Intel gal showed a 10ghz prototype using 90 nanometer process that runs in room temparature…. That’s innovation. It doesn’t matter if it is useless, innovation doesn’t change its defination.
No, it’s not innovation. It’s just continueing what has been going on for the past 50 years.
Not too many companies, with the notable exception of Sony, are making money with PDAs. And if they are doing so, their profit margins are very low.
The same could be said for PCs, rajan. What’s Apple’s solution? Sell at inflated prices with high profit margins, and the Apple crowd will eat it up anyway. And hey, maybe they’ll make a nifty enough product that some newcomers will be willing to pick it up.
I also forgot to mention the increasing amount of Bluetooth support that’s been going into newer Apple systems. Apple is definitely poised to release a PDA…
IIRC, Ink is pretty much made for Quartz. Seeing Quartz run on a PDA would be interesting…
Uhh, what? Quartz is a graphics API… in what possible manner would it be “made for Quartz”? You think that a company that emphasizes MVC separation as much as Apple would make a product that’s inseperable from a particular graphics API?
I find ludicrous the idea that the handwriting recognition engine behind Ink is completely integrated with its view/controller components to the point that it couldn’t be separated out and used in a PDA.
Apple certainly cares about design, and I have *serious* doubts as to the ligitimacy of your claims…
Lately apple has made some moves in the right direction. They have been axing their prices to much more sound levels. Also they have been introducing some things for people to drool over, 17″ powerbook mmmmm. Also by adding their new browser and X11 the have made their product more attractive. Now they just need to continue things more.
1) More apple stores! this is huge. People arn’t going to switch to a mac if they have never seen or played with one. For most people seeing a mac is very rare, especially one running osx. It was only a few weeks ago did i finaly get to play with osx some. Apple does not have a huge user base where people can see Macs and OSX everywhere. I currently live in the middle of one of the most people dense state in the US, but there is no apple store for hundreds of miles.
2) ditch the switch commercials and get new ones. I have yet to find someone who wasn’t offended and turned off by them. Making potential customers sound dumb and current mac users sound like idiots is not the best way to go. For the amount of effort put into them they should have done much more. Also most people see right through them because they don’t have the problems claimed by the commercials. Apple needs to switch to commercial actully showing product. Let people see it and how nice it is. The new powerbook commercial with Mini Me and Yoa (sp) is the right thing.
Also the commercials tie into the apple stores, if a person is interested where are they going to check one out? the website is not going to do much for those who have never played with a mac.
3) price, well they have got much better of late. But there is still improvement needed. Mainly a cheap starter computer. It doesn’t need to be much. Just take the guts of the 12″ power book and give it a real HD and put it in a slim case and sell it without the monitor, or do similar with an emac and sell it for 500 bucks.
4) following up on 3) if you have a low end model you loose money on thats fine. You don’t need to make money on them all. Those people will by a higher end machine in time. Many markets take a loss on their lower end stuff just to gain market share, they know those people will move up. This is what the auto industry does. You need to get the user base up. with that comes more developers and lower manufacturing cost per unit. If your going to grow you don’t have much choice here.
5) of course a new cpu will be nice, it doesn’t matter if the G4 can do everything a normal person just fine, people want power even if they don’t need it. Fast CPU’s sell even if not needed.
Apple may be getting new costomers from the switch commerical but they are hardly doing anything impressive. Also there is probably a large chunk of people leaving Macs Most of them ether don’t like OSX, or can’t afford a new Mac , or don’t want to get new software (yeah there is classic, but it’s slow). Fortently for apple if newbies = leavers that’s not a totaly bad thing. It means they are getting rid of OS9 since switchers arn’t going to run OS9. I doubt Apple is going out of business any time soon. But Unless they make a few small shifts they arn’t going to go anywheres ether.
hello rajan r I bet u have a raging hardon right now because you’re so gay all the time.
i just want to point out how STUPID you are about Windows. obviously WinXP added much more features than Jaguar did. Jaguar was just apple BLATENTLY copying WinXP features, like spring loaded folders. calling Jaguar the WinXP of OS X just shows you how stupid you are, you flaming Apple zealot. I can see your rabid mouth which u like to run SO MUCH just foaming right now when I say Microsoft is better company than Apple.
jaguar did nothing except change look and add this and that, it wasn’t major upgrade like XP was to NT. just look at things like DirectX support and improved DOS support. did apple improve classic at all in Jaguar? NO.
all apple did instead of adding DirectX was make the UI into hardware direct 3D because their CPU is so SLOW. WinXP doesn’t do this and its UI is 1000x as fast as OS X’s. u can resize windows and voila, they redraw instantly, u don’t have to wait a second for it to redraw each time. this is so ANNOYING.
obviously YES jaguar change OS X look and YES WinXP also change Windows look but there’s so much more under the hood of WinXP than there is OS X. It is like comparing two slug bugs to different mustang moddle year, only a stupid person would do that. but u r stupid fag, aren’t u rajan?
OS X was full of bugs from the start and Apple hasn’t fixed ANY. OS X is still crashy on SMB. the UI is still ugly and looks like CHEAP PLASTIC. Luna is beautiful refined GUI and Apple should take lessons from Microsoft’s graphic designers. OH NO they can’t because they’re going under! ha ha
I have a few ideas for Apple, from the perspective of a Windoze user…
Buy or merge with Sun. Apple would finally get that enterprise credibility it’s been trying to obtain for all this time. And they’d get their hands on a lot of sexy technologies that complement their current product offering.
Go x86. Yeah, I know Apple’s a “hardware” company. But think about it, hardware involves inventory… a huge financial risk in any business. I liken Apple’s situation to Sega in 2000. A fantastic software company with good hardware, but the hardware business kept them from achieving the financial success they always deserved. I still think that Apple would have no problem selling x86 hardware in an already oversaturated marketplace (especially if they use proprietary mobos). Apple’s industrial design is unrivalled. Sony comes close, but there’s something about owning an Apple, isn’t there?
By going x86 and partnering with a company like VMWare, OSX/86 would run Windoze software with a much smaller performance hit than with the current emulation offerings on OSX. With x86 there would be no more excuses. They’d have the same CPU performance roadmap as Windows, and it would give the Switch campaign a whole new meaning.
Rowel, I like the way you flamed rajen, very mature, considering he made so many good points, its because of you “windows zealots” that I prefere to stay away from it.
I wasn’t intending to troll, but I feel strongly about Apple’s contortions of OPENSTEP into OS X. Even thoug Jobs started Apple, Apple sans Jobs bought NeXT: doesn’t mean that OPEN/NeXTSTEP was an in-house creative Apple concoction. And so in OS X you have Cocoa (with the NS prefixes, same as OPENSTEP, and Cocoa is basically OPENSTEP with a few things added on), NetInfo (from NS/OS), a modified Dock, Project Builder, Interface Builder (still using the *N*eXT *I*nterface *B*uilder extension), Terminal, Grab, and so on. Yes, Rendezvous is an innovative tool, as is Quartz (even though at times it seems to be really a cheapie way to get out of having to pay licenses for DPS). For something to be innovative, however, it really has to be new and original. Apple’s iLife suite really isn’t new, since people have already made video capture and audio management tools before. Apple have simply made their own implementation of it.
Trolling yes…. when Steve Jobs left Apple he started a new company. The new company Steve started was called NEXT, which by the way made NextStep/OpenStep. Apple later bought Next and Steve Jobs was part of the package. Now Steve is running the ship again along with his Next/Openstep/OS X.
We’re on the beaten track again…
Everyone acknowledges that Apple is a niche player. Very few acknowledge that that may be one of the big reasons why Apple is still around today.
They have lower clock frequencies and higher RRPs than many. They also have a top-rated OS platform and top-rated “digital hub” applications, and a RAD that has attracted new developers to the platform, or enticed old developers back (the article mentioned Intuit; they’re not alone).
Sometimes these are good things, and sometimes they’re not. But all the suggestions so far have been about jacking up their clock frequencines and lowering their RRPs; that’s only part of the equation. Would you still buy that entry-level “sans monitor” Mac if it had no FireWire? Only a CDRW drive (ie. no DVD capability)? No speakers? Only 256MB RAM? Only an 800MHz G4? Only a 16MB GF4MX card? Because that’s what it comes down to for an entry-level computer.
But suggest that to potential buyers and they say “Well no way! I want a fully-fledged Mac and I want it for less!”. It’s simply not within Apple’s capability to deliver such a beast right now.
I’m going to leave Apple alone for now, because they’re progressing fast to a point where they will have lots of options and few encumberences. Then I’ll be all about what they should do with their new-found ‘freedom to innovate’, namely ensuring that the Mac has so many unique advantages that the price is worth it. And who knows, maybe they’ll then be able to bring on the entry-level model.
Well, you can use that same argument to what Microsoft does…Microsoft thus innovates since after it buys another company and its products, it is part of Microsoft, and thus Microsoft has innovated.
What I’m trying to say is that Steve *left* Apple, and the Steve-less Apple bought NeXT. If you argue that Steve was innovative in his creation of OS X, then that works, but Steve doesn’t write all the software. Apple the company did initiate writing OS X from scratch but bought OPENSTEP and modified it (ref Rhapsody, which is basically OPENSTEP for ppc). Basically, Apple merely bought NeXT’s flagship products and changed them for OS X.
Sorry, meant to say:
Apple the company did NOT initiate writing OS X from scratch but bought OPENSTEP and modified it
Hehehe. I like the idea of buying or merging with Sun. Then Apple could turn their Macs into UltraSPARC workstations. It wouldn’t be the first time they switched CPUs, although this switch would be a much bigger difference for developers.
Apple has a solid product offering, both hardware and software. Apple offers made-in-Asia computers just like everyone else, except Apple offers their own OS. Apple sells these machines at a super duper price premium which does limit their appeal. We find that it is not simply price that steers people away from Apple, it is something else, something even more powerful.
So what does alienate people? We find Apple is having troubles selling machines because of Apple’s narrow cultural base. Apple has perfected monoculture. And not a bland broadly appealing monoculture. Apple has painted itself into a small cultural corner, creating a prison for itself.
There just aren’t that many people that want to be hypesters and hipsters and the freaks that you find epitomize Apple. The ‘switch’ commercials are insulting and offensive to people who own a PC. And again emphasize the narrow monoculture of Apple.
There’s no appeal to a ‘normal’ person. They don’t have a rock band in their garage, don’t sit and drink caffe latte with the Dalai Lama, etc. Apple has reduced itself to the culture of advertisement, still going after some edge of hip and wealthy trendsetters that gets smaller and smaller every day.
There just aren’t that many people who are willing to pay extra money for cult membership and a ticket to see the freak show. It’s just not that important to most people.
Normal people want money to buy a printer, some software, a few games, whatever. They want a computer that’s just a computer, not some sort of cultural statement.
Apple is appealing to the people who own them because these people mostly have issues with the world. For the people who simply live in the world, Apple doesn’t make sense.
So while Fred Anderson can sit and tell Wall Street he is working to expand market share, Apple might want to take a closer look at themselves. They are not appealing to most of the world. They go to the ends of the earth to make themselves very different and alien from others. They are problemed people, not people you invite over for a beer.
Ultimately, it will only be when Apple changes its culture that they are able to sell dramatically more computers. Oh, the new machines are always interesting to people, no doubt. As is the circus in real life.
steve jobs should read this
“3) price, well they have got much better of late. But there is still improvement needed. Mainly a cheap starter computer. It doesn’t need to be much. Just take the guts of the 12″ power book and give it a real HD and put it in a slim case and sell it without the monitor, or do similar with an emac and sell it for 500 bucks. ”
You want to bring back the cube and sell it for a loss… could work.
” i just want to point out how STUPID you are about Windows. obviously WinXP added much more features than Jaguar did. Jaguar was just apple BLATENTLY copying WinXP features, like spring loaded folders. calling Jaguar the WinXP of OS X just shows you how stupid you are, you flaming Apple zealot. I can see your rabid mouth which u like to run SO MUCH just foaming right now when I say Microsoft is better company than Apple. ”
I would think of jaguar as more of a Second Edition rather than a full upgrade, did MS give 98se away for free? I could be wrong, but wasn’t osX released before xp?
“Buy or merge with Sun. Apple would finally get that enterprise credibility it’s been trying to obtain for all this time. And they’d get their hands on a lot of sexy technologies that complement their current product offering.”
agreed.Sun has always favored SPARC over x86, so i dunno about intel/amd solutions, but adding the power of solaris would be a good idea. Only probelm is that if they made dawin/solaris would be that they could “lose” their cool solaris-ness to the somewhat open apple license (think of opendarwin)… Also, *dreaming* make a licensing deal with palm, trade them everything newton for everything be, even though palm has some be(palmos) stuff and apple has some newton(ink) stuff, license the code to eachother with a “do not compete with me in my market(pda/dekstop-server)” clause.
“Well, you can use that same argument to what Microsoft does…Microsoft thus innovates since after it buys another company and its products, it is part of Microsoft, and thus Microsoft has innovated.”
If Bill Gates left MS, and started… GatesWorks, built some amazing software then was boughtout by MS and Gate was named CEO/Software Dictator (don’t know his title but is head software something) then what is the problem of MS incorporating GatesWorks? They arn’t stealing, and they even have the founder of the incorporated work running the company… Apple and Next was more of a merger than a buyout.
So what do we have? Apple should: Bring back the cube, and sell it to the lowend consumer; merge with Sun and make darwin/solaris a world class server OS; License BeOS from palm. hey, it could happen
If anyone wants to know why OSNews gets slammed on occasion for trolling the Mac users, one couldn’t find a better example than this, with our esteemed contributing editor not only linking to an editorial–not a news article or even an opinion piece that’s actually about “the future of computing”–but titling the OSNews link and giving it a pull quote that makes it look like the article is a dire warning to Apple. That way, nobody would even have to read the article, we could just all launch into this nonsense. And it worked! Nobody seems to have noticed that the Business Week article is essentially positive.
Since none of you seem willing to pull out the positive quotes, I’ll do it for you: “Apple continues to be the trend-setter for the PC industry, which has been far more focused on cost-cutting than on innovation. In recent years, Apple has drawn crowds of copycats with its AirPort wireless networking gear and its flat-screen iMacs. Now, Jobs is sparing no expense on the R&D front. Even as revenues fell from $8 billion in fiscal 2000 to $5.7 billion in 2002, Apple’s R&D outlay surged from $380 million to $446 million.”
And we’ll look at the article’s conclusion: “Jobs hasn’t convinced everyone on Wall Street that the spending is wise. Besides R&D, he’s pouring big bucks into his retail outlets. This year, Apple will spend $77 million, even though the stores aren’t profitable. But those critics miss the point. Jobs needs to keep dreaming big when it comes to innovation. That’s how Apple can turn 3.5% of the market into a winning formula.”
But gosh darn, it’s a lot easier to keep missing the point, isn’t it? And it sure does keep OSNews’ traffic up!
YOU should NOT write about somebody’s personal life.
If rayan.r is gay then that is fine by me, it has nothing to do with his view on computing and his comments.
I really do not get it why you comment was not moderated down/burned.
If you begin a comment like that then the rest has a value < 0
>If Bill Gates left MS, and started… GatesWorks, built some amazing software then was boughtout by MS and Gate was named CEO/Software Dictator (don’t know his title but is head software something) then what is the problem of MS incorporating GatesWorks? They arn’t stealing, and they even have the founder of the incorporated work running the company… Apple and Next was more of a merger than a buyout.
When Gates leaves, according to whatever his termination agreements is, most likely Gates will want to bring his intellectual property with him. Once Gates’ IP is gone from MS, then whatever his IP encompassed *is no longer MS’s*. Whether Gates is an ex-employee or not is irrelevant. Say Gates wrote Doors, something better than Windows. Now if MS wants Doors, they have to buy GatesWorks. MS hasn’t written Doors, they’ve just bought the rights to muck about and change it. Once they’ve bought it, they can use it. Bottom line, in this hypothetical, MS hasn’t been innovative because Gates wasn’t *in* MS to create Doors. Ditto Apple and with OPENSTEP. Like I’ve said, Apple has the rights to OPENSTEP technology and can do with it what they will. However *pre-Jobs* Apple hasn’t been innovative (which is what we’re talking about), since they didn’t create OPENSTEP in the first place!
From: WattsM
But gosh darn, it’s a lot easier to keep missing the point, isn’t it?
It is, which is annoying. This article was about past, present and future at Apple, so these comments are at least somewhat on-topic. But then you get an article about the XServe (or similar), and instead of posting actually about the XServe, the comments come off-topic to this subject again.
Still, we can but perseveer…
Evidently the market didn’t think too highly of NeXT and NeXTStep and OpenStep and all the other NeXT bloatware.
NeXT was essentially bailed out by Apple because NeXT was failing as a company.
In terms of selling useful computer software and/or hardware, it was clear from the market’s tepid response to NeXT, that there was no USEFUL innovation to be found. Or if there was anything useful, the price to access the useful part was too high for people to pay.
I bet that outside of Steve Jobs and his cronies, many at Apple regret the NeXT purchase. OS X is not all that. It is bloated, slow, antiquated, and has only achieved a modicum of acceptance in the market. Oh, it is not Windows and not Linux and not-normal which is why the counter-culture Apple hypesters like it.
It is very unclear other than the more robust memory and multitasking systems, what makes OS X more USEFUL than OS 9. It is certainly not the unpolished UI. Or the machine-killer saccharine sweet eye candy. Or the mish-mash-clanky-clank of all the different metallic UI pieces Apple ships with their iApps.
The original Mac OS was clean, spare, and elegant. It ran well in 1MB of RAM. OS X is none of that. It requires 1GB of RAM to really run well. It certainly doesn’t deliver 1000X the functionality of Classic Mac OS.
I would only say that Apple has to focus less on their us-against-them cultural manifestos and more on providing useful innovation to normal people at a rational price.
You forget one thing, I would not have bought a mac if it did not have os x, and honestly, software matters apple has the software.
Apple loses 8 million on 1.4 billion in sales…whoa please file for bankruptcy soon!
Then their market share is going down but this is an easy thing in which to trick people. Apple are still selling pc’s but the market as a whole has got bigger because more people are buying pc’s…so of course their share is smaller, butthey still have the same amount of pc’s if not more.
AND as usual people decide to argue about processors more than anything, i agree with the person who said the article is positive about apple, but people seem to forget that and head straight for the processor arguement probably because it is easier.
Nobody really continued the point about the fudging of numbers against apples favour with regard to market share.
It’s better than Linux. There, I said it.
In fact, if any of you have _looked_ at the Linux source, much of it is hacked together, poorly optimized code. Not what you want to rely upon for high-level operations.
Darwin is, on the other hand, much nicer. Much more optimized (I mean massively so), much less hacked together. This is mostly due to FreeBSD/Mach being projects that were taken seriously; not just some pet project.
IMHO, Mac OS X is better suited for server operations than Linux. If you want an x86 based server, use FreeBSD or NetBSD. They’re much more stable, coded better, optimized more, etc, etc.
Also, if you use a Mac OS X based server, you don’t need to worry about massive install times, etc. Installation of (mostly) everything is easy. And nothing is more difficult than Linux, so in the end you get an easier to maintain server. In fact, Linux is more costly than Windows to maintain (It’s been proven. The TCO of Linux is higher than Windows in the long run; it was on /. a while ago, though I’ve forgotten the link).
Not to bash Linux. It’s nice and all, considering its begining, but FreeBSD is just as cheap. And Mac OS X is about 800x better.
Oh, and don’t tell me “Mac OS X has no X11”. You can choose from any WM you want on Mac OS X (you do need to intall X; an easy task on Mac OS X thanks to Apple’s implimentation), including the Quartz WM which optimizes X11 apps and runs them side-by-side with native-Aqua apps.
Also, don’t say “Mac OS X can’t be run sans-GUI”. It can. Make a user named “>console”, login as them by typing in the login name/password (No clickity click logins for this), and you’ve got a gui-less Mac. No Aqua. And yes, you can startx from there. So, with Mac OS X we get: FreeBSD, damn easy X setup, ease of maintinance, very, very good servers (They’re comprable in speed/stability to Solaris servs, I believe. And again, they;re easier/less costly to maintain), etc.
So enough with the Mac OS X bashing. Enough with the Apple bashing. They’re doing just fine, and so is OS X.
–Squidgee, a recent long-term Linux/Windows user to Mac OS X convert
Michael, you’ve gone off the deep end 🙂 You’ve exaggerated the Apple culture to the point of it being unrecognizable. However, even if there is a whiff of that at Apple and among Mac users, it does not help, that’s true.
OS X is coming along very nicely. I agree that those of use that bought OS X 10.0 and 10.1 were beta testing for Apple. But, you have to watch out – they’re on about an 18 month cycle, so we’ll no doubt be paying again. However, people have said iLife is nothing, all those apps have Windows counterparts, etc. But, that isn’t the point. The big thing Apple does have going for it is the increasing integration of these apps with each other. You can’t find that anywhere else. And frankly, it is because it’s propriatery software/hardware. Look at Safari, it’s just a beta browser and it is integrated with the Address Book and Rendezvous already. This type of stuff is the innovation that’s going on. It isn’t that Apple invented these things, but their application of them is innovative.
digitaleon made an excellent point about how an entry level Mac, to keep the costs down would probably be just a 800 G4, etc. That is very true right now. Apple would have to wait. They have a 1 GHz Power Mac out now. As time passes and, hopefully, the processor problem is resolved and Power Macs have something else under the hood, the prototype entry level Mac could then use a processor like the 1 GHz. I say bring back the Cube. Some may say, understandably, that the Cube wold be seen as a “loser” because it didn’t have a niche when it was out. But, as the entry level Mac, that would be its niche. The design of it is already done and paid for. They should bring back the 15″ Studio Display they just dropped as the display companion for it. It would be a money loser, but, would bring more people to the Mac. It would be the coolest entry level computer ever.
CFO Fred Anderson says there is a ton of software coming out this year. That should be very interesting and, I hope, innovative.
Other things some have posted are true. Dual processors help the Power Mac situation, but not that much. As others have pointed out, the bus to way too slow. They do use DRR RAM, but the bus holds it up. One gets the feeling that all of this is going to explode – if Apple gets that IBM processor in there, that’s when we’ll see the fast bus too, etc. This needs to be taken care of soon though.
So, I too think, despite the tech market being flat and Apple’s processor and price problems, that Apple is in a good position. As far as I can tell, there probably won’t be a whole lot of innovation with Windows XP until Longhoen. That gives Apple a huge opportunity. If they don’t take advantage of it, it’s their own fault.
“OS X is just a very large rip of OPENSTEP/NeXTSTEP, which they bought from NeXT, AppleWorks was bought from Claris…not too innovating, is it?”
Nice trolling. AppleWorks was originally called AppleWorks before it changed to ClarisWorks and then back. And it’s not been a flagship app for years…
The processor problem must be solved – and IBM looks like the bset way to do it. Apple should produce and support OS X for certain IBM servers. That would give it a bit more credibility.
They need to work on their software strategy, which they seem to be doing, and eventually make a decision about Mac clones or x86. The latter would have to be some years away, as the Mac market has had too many shake-ups over the last few years..
I see these “bloated and slow” comments from people who it seems never have even used MacOSX for some period of time or they think they know all about it because they read a few articles on it in magazines and the internet and now they are experts on MacOSX…right.
MacOSX is slow on slow hardware. I have a slow Mac and a fast Mac. MacOSX is fast on the fast Mac, how hard is that? MacOSX works well on supported hardware. Its gonna be slow when you run it on a machine it was not designed for. I’ve done hacked configs of MacOSX and got them to run on 1996 hardware. It works but its slow. Amazing isn’t it?
Boated? Do you even know how big the default install is or how long it takes to install macOSX? The core software minus the iApps is 1GB. Installation on my fastest Mac takes less than 15 minutes. The size of MacOSX is comparable to a commercial Linux or even WindowsXP.
Yes, you can get an ipod for windows. They have been selling a windows version for months now. And even if you got the mac version, you can buy some 3rd party software that allows it to work on windows too.
As for apple switching to x86, that would IMO be a huge mistake. I am soon going to buy a new mac, and im buying it because of the hardware, and especially the G4. Im tired of of of having to install a huge CPU cooler with noisy fans, or buy a very expensive version that is somewhat quiet. No, i think the PPC line of processors are a much better choice when it comes to personal workstations.
As for apples prices. I think their laptops are cheap. Sure i could get a faster dell for the price of a 12″ powerbook, but it would be heavier, have a plastic housing, have a shorter battery lifetime, and have less features. (i couldnt manage to find another laptop with a dvd-r drive, nor is it common to see 802.11g network or bluetooth built in.) So for me really, both the ibook and powerbooks appears to be quite cheap compared to the alternatives. I did of course not rate performance very highly in a laptop, which others might do. I also see the small display as a feature, not a drawback.
I do find their workstations to be too expensive, especially the powermac. But i wouldnt want an imac or emac anyway as i dont want a buildin monitor, or specifically, i want at least a 19″ monitor. I really think their workstation line is their weak spot, and as others have suggested i would like to see a cheap monitorless workstation, which i think could easily replace the emac.
And in case anyone should get the impression that im a mac zealot, well, i have never owned a mac in my life, and i would no way want one using os9 or older. I am going to buy one in about 3 months from now however, and one of the selling points for me, next to the nice hardware, is the fink project.
Yes, I certainly agree with that. And it is pretty fast on the dual G4’s. But, Apple has to resolve this processor business. It doesn’t have to be some 10 GH processor, just one that will easily carry the load.
Speaking of loads, OS X is not bloated. But, it does have the drag that Quartz layer around wherever it goes and that’s the big problem. And, if you want to turn on journaling, that’s a problem. So, something has to be done.
As far as Apple innovation is concerned. how far shall we go back? Starting with Jobs return to Apple, Apple popularized USB with the first iMac. And, with the first iMac, began revolutionizing computer design. Apple invented Firewire, Jobs implemented it and no we have Firewire 800. Of course Apple did not invent wireless, but again, it was Apple first who popularized wireless among “regular” users with AirPort. Apple did not invent the Rendezvous networking, but has implemented it better than anyone else (so far).
One of the greatest achievements was the development of the Classic Environment to help with the transition to OS X. Of course, many will say it sucks and I don’t use it myself, but it still is a remarkable feat, bridging two OSes that are not even remotely akin to each other.
There is much more that could be said, but I think people who have never used OS X or don’t have any idea what they’re talking about (no iPod for Windows) might benefit from shutting up and listening and learning from those who do use it. One of the great problems with forums is that so many people have no interest in learning anything new. They just want to get their two cents in, whether they know anything or not. This becomes very tiring when you’re reading the forum looking to learn something.
What you call a slow Mac is actually a very fast computer IMO, I think any OS that’s unresponsive on a 300+ Mhz computer with 256Mb RAM has to be considered slow and bloated. Windows XP certainly isn’t a light OS, but it can run quite well on a low end Pentium II, Windows 2k on my old P166 feels faster to me than OS X on an early iBook. IME Mac OS X does not run well on a low end G3 that’s meant to be a lot faster than a PII of equal Mhz.
NeXTSTEP 3.3 was responsive and usable on a 25Mhz 040 with 32Mb RAM and OpenStep 4.2 ran great on a 200Mhz K6 with 64Mb RAM. I find it hard to see any reason for Mac OS X to need so much more CPU, graphics and RAM to run well, even with all it’s eye candy. I think it’s a shame that Mac OS X needs the latest hardware to run well, when traditionally Mac OS has run well on low end Macs.
Having said that, it’s slow speed is probably a good thing for Apple. It forces people to buy new hardware who would probably keep on using their low end G3s if they ran OS X at a decent speed.
Hi All
It must be about time that Apple produced an operating system for the Intel system. Then people will have a real chance of an alternative OS. I know that a few of you die-hards will say it is the wrong way to go. However, this is the time to take on MS at their own game.
Perhaps Apple could even give Linux a run for their money. 😉
Regards
Togora
Here’s some advice for Apple….Don’t take any advice posted on an website where the majority of people think that you should focus on supporting x86 desktop computers. I also think that spending a lot of resources building office productivity software and low-end severs is a complete waste of time. If you were to ever gain considerable market share here it would be at the expense of missing opportunities in newer less saturated markets.
I think Apple should focus on media devices and create technologies that allow me to integrate all of my existing electronic/entertainment systems. It would be great if I could retrieve music from the internet (legally) to build a digital music library that was accessible to my home entertainment system, my car stereo system, remote devices (iPod?), etc.
Computers and technology in generally will become more pervasive, but definitely need to become less obtrusive. How can computers make my life easier or more enjoyable? I for one don’t think the next killer app will be running on a desktop or laptop computer.
There are a few comments that come up far too many times.
1. Apple should go x86
2. Apple should be as cheap as Dell
3. OS X is slow
4. there are also people claiming that Apple isn’t innovative because they bought OS X off of NeXT.
In other words Apple should become another Dell, whilst still doing a ton of R and D needed to produce the innovative products that they do. This is impossible. Dell, and the other cloners, produce at that price because they do no R and D. They just put the bits together that have been supplied and developed by other companies.
Apple have a choice, become a Wintel cloner and compete at that price point. Or remain an expensive independent and continue to innovate.
OS X is not that slow, and not slow enough to interfere with anything I want to do (a little programming, ray-tracing, plus the usual web browsing etc.) and always perectly responsive to me. This is on a 233MHz G3 with 320Mb RAM. To say that it takes a Gb of RAM to run well is just fatuous.
As for raw innovation. Yes they bough NeXT, so yes OS X cannot be considered 100% theirs. But you all seem to have forgotten everything else such as being the first to get rid of the floppy drive on a mainstream desktop machine, Firewire (IEEE 1394), ZeroConfig (developed by an Apple employee). As for the comment about OS X copying spring loaded folders from XP, it was actually copying from OS8.
From the CIO of Dell, on innovation and how to allocate money within a company.
To get out of the rut of obsolescence, Mott recommended a cultural shift. Rather than spending 85 percent of a company’s resources on the status quo or keeping the lights on, and 15 percent on development and innovation, the ratio should be turned around.
Mott plans to put his money where his mouth is.
Dell has turned the Internet and a fully, software-greased supply-chain into huge competitive advantage. Without an emphasis on those systems (and some leverage Dell can bring to bear on its suppliers), the company’s direct model might never have transformed the technology industry’s channel the way it has, nor might have Dell been as successful at lowering its DSI. Few companies have streamlined their supply-chain to this degree. But Mott is not willing to rest on Dell’s laurels. Staying far ahead of the obsolescence curve, says Mott, has incited a cultural revolution within his organization that will lead to a long term reallocation of Dell’s resources.
But these revolutions take time. Mott’s roadmap shows Dell getting to the 15/ 85 status quo/innovation ratio by the end of the decade. By the end of Dell’s fiscal year 2004, Mott predicts, the company will achieve a 45/55 split. By 2006, it will be 25/75.
This is where the Unix issue plays a key role in Mott’s plans. To reallocate resources in this fashion, Dell has to do more (or at least the same) with less. Because Dell’s systems are based on Oracle, and Oracle is available to both the Sun Solaris and Red Hat Linux environments, Mott says that Dell looked into switching to Linux. The company determined that such move would yield a configuration 89 percent faster and 41 less expensive. Keeping in mind that Dell has strategic sales relationships with both Red Hat and Oracle, it’s hard to say how much of this reconfiguration is mandated. On the other hand, I can’t believe that Mott would risk his career and his company’s future on a move in which he did not have full confidence.
http://www.computeruser.com/news/03/03/01/news8.html
Jaguar was just apple BLATENTLY copying WinXP features, like spring loaded folders.
Mac OS 8 had spring loaded folders in 1998 : P
“that there was no USEFUL innovation to be found”
Yeah right! Have you ever actually coded in Cocoa/OPENSTEP? Or used NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP? NeXT failed because they failed to recognize the difference between actual value and the monetary value of their products. Their products were definately worth the $5000 they may have costed, but no one would be willing to fork out that much for software.
And I admit I made a mistake about Claris. I’m sorry.
So Michael, Dell innovates by moving their supply chain systems from Sun/Solaris to X86/Linux?
What relevance does this have with Apple innovating or lack of innovation as some people believe?
Innovation and being different is what keeps Apple afloat, not its low priced systems or lack thereof.
I still think Apple needs an entry level yet solid Mac as a lure for new uses. The original iMac was like that, although not so much in price as in style. It’s been just over a year since the flat panel iMac came out. At first it was a sensation, but then the economy went bad and sales plummteed. And, although technically you can get the low end one for $1200, you have to get more RAM, etc. So, it isn’t a lure. Macs are so stylized now that I don’t know if another new, radical design would do anything now. The economy being what it is, a good, inexpensive entry level Mac is the only thing I can think of that would help gain market share.
“The economy being what it is, a good, inexpensive entry level Mac is the only thing I can think of that would help gain market share”.
WITH NO MONITOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dan
I usually agree with about 90% of what you’re saying Apple needs to do.
So when it comes to offering a new entry-level machine, I think that’s a splendid idea. PROVIDED Apple doesn’t cripple it. To slot a machine in below the iMac…. I can only imagine Apple would make this a wretched machine.
Apple has to rethink all their glam and style and iHype. If they offered a cheap machine, like a Shuttle in the Windows world, with SLOTS and EXPANSION… this is the sort of machine that at a good price would build genuine enthusiasm for the platform.
How much time and money is Apple wasting on things that don’t really do anything good for them? They wasted 9 months or more getting the new iMac done because of the industrial design.
Apple could also build share by offering higher price/performance than PC world across their computing line. With Apple selling machines based on slow PowerPC chips, it is tough for them competing with machines that are twice as fast for half the price.
If Apple can offer a monitorless Mac using the eMac or iMac motherboard or even their laptop motherboards, I do agree that the acceptance rate for Macs would be higher. At the same time they have to be careful that these low end systems do not take sales away from their mid and high end systems. Also, if Apple does make such a machine I can tell you that they will probably put a lot of thought into the form factor like they did with the iMac G4. You may not like it but EVERYONE knows about it or is curious as to what it is when they see it, you don’t see these reactions with an average PC or with the Gateway Profile.
As to the high performance, I think Apple needs faster and more competative processor speeds, but you can’t entirely blame them. Motorola has been dragging their feet. When Apple switches to the IBM PowerPC970 the playing field may change.
//Still, we can but perseveer//
Spell different.
LOL, Apple might very well make it a wretched machine. I can understand Apple’s fears, expressed well by linuxlewis, that it would cut deeply into sales of other, profitable Macs. But, I think Apple should take a chance on it. I don’t see how they can get their foot in the door otherwise, no matter how great OS X becomes and how great the iApps continue to get. They would lose money on it, but it might be worth it.
I was thinking of the Cube. It’s not very expandable, but the R&D work has already been done. They’d just have to put a (silent 🙂 fan in the bottom. Apple has a bracket for one there as it is – they knew they would have to use fans for faster processors and graphics cards, but, of course, the Cube was discontinued before it got that far. Either that or drastically cut down on the price of the 15″ FP iMac and bite the bullet on that. Give it more Ram. Another case where the R&D has already been done. Again though, not very expandable.
Anyway, Jobs ideal company is Sony. So, I can see where he’s coming from. But, Sony has a lot of high priced stuff, but also has some fairly inexpensive stuff too. One might say they can afford to do that. And that’s just it, to do that, you have to start somewhere. I’m very pro OS X, but especially in this economy, new users and switchers are balking at the idea of buying a Mac. The Switch campaign has failed because of that. Apple like to portray itself as taking risks in various areas, but I think this is where the real risk should be taken. And, if fact, it’s actually much less a risk than the talk of clones, etc.
The buzz is that Apple is going to discontinue the problem ridden eMac. If so, what a perfect opportunity for this new, low end prototype we have in mind!
http://archive.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/01/10/15/011015opfoste…
[quote]
The most frustrated readers were those who had been forced to go back and forth between Dell and its partners without getting answers from anyone. “This is an example of the so-called vaunted Dell support,” writes one reader when sending me his futile e-mail exchanges with Dell and the OEM vendor of a software utility in which each repeatedly referred him to the other. “Why won’t these guys give me an answer? I would pay $100 more if my PC came with manufacturer’s support for the software rather than the totally useless OEM support.”
[/quote]
Sounds like the kind of person Apple needs to have as a customer! If PC-makers continue to cut back on service, Apple’s offering may become even more attractive.
4) following up on 3) if you have a low end model you loose money on thats fine. You don’t need to make money on them all. Those people will by a higher end machine in time. Many markets take a loss on their lower end stuff just to gain market share, they know those people will move up. This is what the auto industry does. You need to get the user base up. with that comes more developers and lower manufacturing cost per unit. If your going to grow you don’t have much choice here.
The auto industry is a poor analogy here. Often the smaller cars are simply made to satisfy CAFE fuel requirements. Losing money on a small car is much better than government fines for missing the CAFE mark. However, I do agree with you that Apple should sell a quality low end computer on which they break even on HW/support costs to try to gain market share.
As was said in your quote “Few companies have streamlined their supply-chain to this degree”, that is they are not the only company to be doing this (the definition of innovation), they have just done it better. Apple does similar things with their build to order options, as do many other PC vendors. If not with the same level of efficiency as Dell.
This has zero impact on the product that they are delivering, which is still just a collection of standard parts, created externally, put together. They do not create an innovative product (which is what the article was about), even if they apply new manufacturing techniques to create said product.
a) Grab more apps from Linux and get it into the core.
For instance KOffice or OpenOffice come to my mind.
They should integrate them into their desktop, bundle the stuff with their machines. There is a wealth of software out there and both sides could benefit like Apple/KDE did with the Safari browser.
b) Put out an entry level machine which has a good cost/value ratio. I recently saw an iBook, I almost was sold, but as soon as I went into the next computer store I saw notebooks at the same price of their entry level iBook which resembled their 4 times as much costing high level model. The difference between Apple and the rest of the world is simply too much.
c) Bring back a PDA, they have the Newton technology inhouse, and just as Palm has a wealth of BeOS code which rots there, Apple has with the Newton, bring out another model.
d) Increase the iPod line for instance an iMovie device would be great. They now have a foot in the door to consumer apps, open it more.