How can I have an argument with you, if you keep agreeing with me!

;P

Perhaps I should have posed this differently. Would you rather have a user-hostile OS on a really fast box or a user-friendly OS on a moderately fast box? Especially in the professional world, user-friendly interfaces improve productivity and reduce costs.

If the original Mac OS had been shipped in standard PC-style box, it still creates a revolution. If Windows 1.0 had shipped in a Mac Classic style box it still languishes until Windows 3.0.

> My question is: How many people would be buying Macs [for
> the spiffy logo] if Final Cut sucked? If iLife sucked? If
> Logic Pro sucked?

Firstly, when the Mac was released the only software you could get was MacWrite (which wasn’t bad for its day) and a few other mostly useless programs. It still sold thousands of copies. Secondly, we are still talking about software. Apple is a software company. Their hardware is secondary to the core of what makes them Apple. AFAIK, they do not design any of the circuitry for any of their hardware. They simply layout the form factor and have someone else “make it so.” Apple’s marketing schmos conned people into thinking they were a hardware company because of the past high margins Apple got on integrated solutions. However, to be a hardware company, you need be designing more than the shiny box.

Without the software Apple does not exist. With only standard hardware but their OS, Apple still exists but isn’t quite a profitable.

Regarding the running of XP on a Mac/Intel box, from what I understand, Apple is going to play the same sorts of games with the BIOS that Microsoft did with Xbox in terms of limiting what people can do with the equipment. Yes, that also means that there will be people out there that hack up a Mac and most likely put Linux and perhaps XP on it. There are a lot of people out there that have a lot of time on their hands. ;->

Are we talking personal-use, where asthetics are of prime importance – or professional-use where time is money?

Since I use my Mac at Home, “moderately fast” is acceptable to me.

If I was trying to make a deadline, I believe the fastest performance would be of interest to me.

Not because the hardware was particularly special, but because it had their spiffy logo on it.

Yeah.

I remember reading about Shake customers, when Apple bought the program and made all future-releases Mac-only.

I’m sure the PC-version users were all happy to be required to either find another program to use, or buy Macs.

I’m sure that people who already have PCs are thrilled that they have to buy a Mac if they want to run Final Cut Studio or Logic Pro.

My question is: How many people would be buying Macs [for the spiffy logo] if Final Cut sucked? If iLife sucked? If Logic Pro sucked?

I’d add “if MacOS X sucked?” – but a lot of OS-9 users think it does!

The interesting point will be if the Intel-CPU Macs can boot Windows. I’m curious to see how many people jump at the chance to run XP on a Mac – just for it’s perceived [rightly or wrongly] hardware quality.

BeOS was the brain-child of Jean Louis Gassé formerly of Apple who went out on his own and produced an excellent new operating system in the mid 90′s. Fast, stable it had everyting going for it except users. It ran first on an Apple compatible machine; new users. Then Be made a version for Intel machines, and the number of users took off. Being able to use less expensive hardware was the key.
Steve Jobs who certainly followed the BeOS experience with interest now looks to be following in its footsteps; only this time the number of users will go from a few hundred thousand in BeOS case to multiple tens of millions who will sign on to an Intel-powered Mac OS X system and breathe a collective sigh of relief at having left the wonderful world of Windows behind. Most former BeOS users made the switch to Mac OS X a long time ago.

Bravo! Jobs

It’s not that Apple couldn’t hold it… they were and still are TOO focused on locking customers in to their OS with their hardware. This is ultimately why M$ will fail with FogHorn if they continue to try and lock in customers, to the server or with their document archives.

iPods aside this same strategy will absolutely fail for Apple when they switch to INTEL. And they will become their own victim of their own PR… years of the PowerPC is a supercomputer inside… meh! Consumers will say hey wait a minute… everything but the BIOS and OS are the same so why does this Apple thing cost 40% more… yup that’ll bring ‘m in – in droves SteveO!

Even with the “roaring” success of iTunes and the iPod only 4% of US households with Internet access used a legal music store. AND users tended to be over 30 years old and in a higher income bracket.

Younger people are still more likely to use P2P services, with older people more likely to be deterred by the possibility of legal action by the record industry. – According to the NPD Group’s Music and Movies Division. – Maybe because most “younger” people can only afford a $80 MP3 player. hmmmm

What’s important to remember is Apple for ALL is PR and all of Steven Jobs jaw flapping only has a pitiful 3% share of the market. Supercomputer sized BS maybe. PC killer… not a chance!

Jobs is just too afraid of competing with the big boys head to head. He loves to rub Windows users noses in their own shit but seems to be just too damn afraid to let the real free market decide of Apple is really the best damn 3% market share OS ever! LOL!

He “could” do the same thing with iTunes… let other MP3 players work completely with iTunes (value-add the service for iPod users) and let the free market decide. Crippling other players simply drives people who might want to purchase and will eventually purchase music legally (if iTunes worked properly with the “regular” MP3 players), back to other less legal sources. You see more kinds will use iTunes to rip and share their CDs and other music… NOT to buy music… cause we all know every 15 year old has a credit card for online purchases… riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiightt? meh!

Apple’s crippling of iTunes to drive their iPOD sales is no less legal then the music companies controlling the distribution and prices of CDs. They’ve just agreed to split the booty of their monopolies… Apple gets the iPOD cash and the RIAA gets the music cash.

And the consumer still does not have free choice… and P2P sharing continues virtually unabeited and continues to innovate beyond locking consumers in!

There will not be many converts from Windows (or Linux for that matter) to OS/X as it has too little marked share, bad Apple enterprise support and is not open source. And contrary to Dvoraks comments, it is much slower at multitasking (see anandtech) and multi coring, which is going to be the future of Intel X86 chips.

The really interesting part, is how many people will be buying Apple hardware and installing WIndows. And will Apple be a OEM Windows customer, preinstalling Windows on selected AppTels.

If the new Intel Macs are 100% PC compatible, Apple will be very interesting as a premium PC company. An Apple Power Mac, iMac or MiniMac with Windows XP will be a dream machine, well worth a premium. Certainly a lot of people misses a well designed PC, and don’t want a garish gaming PC as Alienware and other “premium” PC’s(Dell XPS as an example) and have not bought Apple until now because of OS/X.

If that is Apples intention then: Wellcome to the real world, and sign me up for a dual processor, quad core, PowerApptel – but with Windows XP or Longhorn.

The chips in those G4s and G5s were made by IBM not Apple. The motherboards were made by someone else. The graphics cards and chips were made by someone else. The only hardware that Apple *might* have manufactured is the shiny box in which it runs.

Apple is a SOFTWARE company. Saying they are an “Internet company” is another way of saying they are a software company IMO. Yes, in addition to software, they sell integrated solutions with the software they write. No question that they heavily test the hardware that other people make that they then brand with their logo. But the only thing that Apple actually designs is the software and the external shiny boxes. That would include form factors like the iPod. I would bet that the circuitry inside the iPod was designed and manufactured by someone else.

> I’m sure a lot of Pro-users would like to be able to run
> Final Cut Studio, Logic Pro, and Shake on cheaper [faster?]
> Intel/AMD-based boxes – but Apple can charge a premium for
> the Dual-G5’s or PowerBook G4’s they need to run those
> programs.
>
> The way I see it, people are paying a premium on the
> hardware to have access to the software. If Apple’s
> software sucked, nobody would be buying their hardware!

I completely disagree. Would you prefer a super fast box with BSD Unix or a moderately fast machine with OS X? Would you rather have an artisy-fartsy machine that awes the art critics but runs Microsoft BOB or have an ordinary box that runs XP?

Hardware has simply been one of the ways that Apple has been able to charge ridiculous premiums. Not because the hardware was particularly special, but because it had their spiffy logo on it. Everyone, except Apple zealots has been wondering why it took Apple this long to come to the realization. That they can somewhat painlessly port their primary company product to another platform is a prime illustration of the fact that they are a software company.

In 1984, if you take the Macintosh machine and put a crappy OS on it, no one buys it.

Ed, the problem with your analogy is that someone a little younger could easily replace your auto and GM reference with computers and Apple.

Steve Jobs and Apple had everything working for them 20+ years ago: best hardware, best software, and the greatest market share. I’m waiting for someone to explain to me how throwing away market dominance in return for higher profit margins actually benefited Apple.

Please pardon my own analogy: Microsoft has knocked the crap out of Apple through 14 rounds. We are now supposed to believe that a bruised and bloody Apple will deliver a 15th-round, knockout blow to an untouched Microsoft? Because they switched to Intel?

Did Gates retire? Have aliens transplanted the brain from a marketing genius into Job’s skull? Do adults believe in the Tooth Fairy?

In the early 80′s, Apple owned the PC market, but couldn’t hold on to it. I’m now supposed to believe this “brilliant” marketing team can somehow fight back from a 3% market share?

I was wondering about that, too.

The 68k-to-PPC transition used “Fat” binaries that contained code for both CPUs, but the RISC-code for the PPC took up more space than the CISC-code for the 68K. [sorry for the geek-speak]

There were utilities which would recover disk-space by deleting the un-used code. Important in those days of smaller hard-drives, especially for those with 68k-based Macs.

Steve’s keynote mentioned developers being able to put “both versions” of a program on one CD. Makes it sound like they will be seperate, while the name “universal binary” makes it sound like they will be co-joined, similar to the “fat” binaries.

It will be interesting to see, especially with so many apps and updates being downloaded over the internet. We should be able to download the version we need, without wasting bandwidth for useless bits.

You struck a nerve with me.

“Sure, Apple makes great software, but it’s only sold via Apple’s hardware.”

I see it just the opposite:

“Sure, Apple makes great hardware, but it’s only sold via Apple’s software.”

I’m sure a lot of Pro-users would like to be able to run Final Cut Studio, Logic Pro, and Shake on cheaper [faster?] Intel/AMD-based boxes – but Apple can charge a premium for the Dual-G5′s or PowerBook G4′s they need to run those programs.

The way I see it, people are paying a premium on the hardware to have access to the software. If Apple’s software sucked, nobody would be buying their hardware!

Anyway ,

I’m typing this on a 20″ iMac, with a prominently-positioned Apple logo. I don’t care who made the LCD-screen, the hard-drive, the DVD-burner, the video card, or the memory. Why should I care who made the CPU?

I like the t-shirt idea!!

No, Stardock did. They were doing it years before Konfabulator.

A factor you guys neglected to mention when discussing the Mac switch to Intel is laptops. Notice there’s no G5 laptop? It’s a heat/energy issue. IBM cannot or will not engineer a chip that can attain G5 power while still remaining cool enough for laptop work. Plus, in all theprototypes I heard about, battery life is abysmal. An hour or less in some cases.

Apple HAS to stay competitive in the laptop market. It’s half of their computer business. x86 chips are specing out faster and faster, and dual-core laptops are the next wave. If they stuck with IBM supplying PPC chips, Apple would be stuck selling the same old G4 laptops or be forced to engineer bigger cases with monster cooling and huge batteries, and that ain’t the Apple style!

I think all of you guys neglected to consider just how massively important the laptop factor is.

Anyway…don’t mean to sound like a big “you suck” kind of jerk…I worship the TWiTcasts! Just wanted to throw that idea out at you to let you know what us lowlifes who have to pay for hardware (Damn that Dvorak!) are thinking.

Wouldn’t t-shirts that say “Damn that Dvorak!” sell like crazy?

Again I call BULLSHIT. Funny Steve Jobs kept mentioning how much Apple cares about their developers yet look at what Apple has done with Widgets… as Jobs calls them.

These widget were a significant part of his developer presentation and you could tell he saw them as a great example of how Apple can get great added value to their OS from an existing community.

I wonder what the folks from http://www.konfabulator.com/ think of Apple’s developer support. They started the main stream widget business.

Yeah sure Apple will support you until like M$ we take the best ideas from their developer base and fold them into their OSes as “new” features.

Yup… now that’s what I call developer support!

What an ASSHOLE! Steals from the Open Source community, steals from his developers and market innovators like the PODCASTING community (ipodder) – sucks innovation out of the market at every turn… sound familiar. At least with Windows the feature stolen or otherwise will eventually end up in the mainstream.

They never learned better. Certainly, a large number of Americans never learned better. That still doesn’t mean I should make decisions as a consumer based on the lowest common denominators of value.

If we followed that premise throughout our lives, we’d all be living in mobile homes and dining at MacDonalds and WalMart.