Apple Pretention
I haven't waxed Macintosh in awhile.
There's been fear amongst the the few, the proud, the Mac-users, that Apple is abandoning them for music sales, focusing too much time promoting the iPod and iTunes.
Bullshit:
The research found that 6 percent of iPod users have made the switch. An additional 7 percent said they are planning to dump their old PC for an Apple machine, according to the survey.No, we're not big fans of surveys here at Like You Really Care; however it does go to show that when you walk into the Apple Store to buy an iPod and the Apple sales dude or chick demonstrates iTunes on a Mac, it's going to have an effect. Ooh, it's a pretty white or brushed aluminum. And you say that there's, like, one Mac internet malware to every gazillion Windows viruses? And it comes with all of this software that I don't have to install that'll let me make music and use my digital camera? Damn, that's worth an extra few hundred bucks for a computer, Hell yeah!
But here's something that just burned my ass in this brief article:
The switchers, according to Munster, tend to be people who aren't necessarily techie types.Yeah, Mac users are stupid. "Tech people" know that Macs suck.
"A lot of people, with all due respect, don't understand the technology...They're people with money, not tech people," he said.
C-Net:Microsoft::Fox:Republicans. Here's some "tech people" who love Macs?
Finally, I'm now the proud owner of an Airport Express. Now, you're saying, "Arlo, $129 for a wireless router?" Eat me. Let's put the same thing together with non-Apple products, just using the cheapest not-refurbished gear I find using Froogle:
- Wireless router: $39.56
- Ethernet USB Print Server: $42.50
- Wireless Digital Music Player: $69.99 (after rebate)
Yes, I'm evangelizing. Don't like it? Blast me in the comments or get your own blog.
5 Comments:
Apple is still feeling the effects of stopping licensing of their OS back in 1998. First Motorola retaliated by abandoning the Mac, then they lost interest in developing better chips for Apple, and finally, they weren't up to the task due to the company's financial troubles. It took about 4 years for IBM to step up to take over R&D. In the last 2-3 years, IBM has come up with the G5 and plans for a chip which could be a G6.
While the iPod is going well for Apple and the laptop market, especially with the iBook (which is the most competitive with PC's on specs of any Apple computer), are successes for Apple, and while Apple is finally starting to get serious about the server market (which is also competitive due to unlimited licensing), the desktop has progressed slowly for years.
Apple makes a great product and when you buy a Mac you get a lot of functionality from iLife and iCal, but the delay in processor development has left the Mac looking (not actually being, but looking) like a boutique computer. It's fun and looks great but it doesn't have the horsepower of a PC and can't begin to match the price.
Apple provides a good user experience, a good looking product, and a lot of value but that really reinforces its image as a niche product. You get more value but pay a lot for it and in a Wal-Mart/Krispy Kreme/McDonald's world, people spend for cheap on the front side. They pay later but they'd rather invest in what they already bought rather than pay up front.
To make matters worse, the OS has also moved forward slowly on several fronts. OS X was released as a full version almost 4 years ago. The next version, Tiger, will be released about a full 4 years after 10.0 and promises to be the first OS X operating system that fully makes use of the processer capabilities of a 64 bit processor.
When Apple was developing Copeland, intended as OS 8, they scaled everything back to release something but took a while longer to meet the goal of a PowerPC native OS. Still, they didn't provide modern computing features like protected memory. Now, as we approach 2005, Apple seems to finally be on the brink of having a modern operating system that is also native and optimized for the chip it runs on.
If Apple can deliver 3.0 Ghz machines with a native 64 bit operating system, and get developers to move their code to 64 bit friendly, and come closer to the tech specs that PC's offer for the price, Apple could be in position to grow it's market share back up over 5%. That would not only grow the user base and attract even more developers (or attract back developers) but it would put more money into the company's coffers for chip R&D. That could give Apple a chance to build a better chip than what Intel offers. Apple came close before in 1997 when PC and Mac speeds were the same so it's possible. If Apple was in a position to attract gamers, their market share could boom and they'll have the possibility if their speeds are faster than PCs.
The other thing to consider is that Apple has moved away from the basic tenets of OS design based on human learning paradigms. The icon centered GUI was never a problem, even though you'd think it was if you looked at OS X, the problem was more under the hood. Apple needs to stay different and better by being the OS that a child can use but that has the power to handle complicated tasks for professionals.
I cannot imagine my life without my Mac. Dude, seriously.
The above comment is very valid. I agree that Apple has made several mistakes, especially under the leadership of Gil Amelio and John Sculley. Licensing the OS way back when could have seriously hurt Microsoft. The Newton was a great idea, but too far ahead of its time and way too far ahead of the technology.
I also agree that OS X, while totally kick ass and offering simplicity for luddites and UNIX power for nerds like myself and my brother, shows a few boneheaded UI decisions. Some of the most intelligent features of the Mac OS pre-OS X are now gone. Moving the close window button from the right to the left is counter-intuitive. There's no rhyme or reason anymore to what's a brushed metal window and what's Aqua. Dragging an icon off the dock and having it disappear in a totally out-of-place cartoon poof is senseless. (But for every UI feature that comes from the marketing department instead of the engineering department, a UI feature that kicks total ass is introduced. Expose is absolutely brilliant, for example.)
I do, however, completely disagree with the author of the above post about desktop development. First of all, speed is in the eye of the beholder. Sure, I'd love for my Photoshop rendering to run a few seconds faster. 3D artists always want more speed (Pixar just switched to Macs, but that's to be expected since they share their CEO with Apple). And gamers are never happy with speed, even when they have the fasted Intel processor and the newest ATI video card. However, OS X was the first to accelerate the UI with the video card GPU. The interface is document-oriented instead of application-oriented, making multitasking more efficient. Most importantly, I will never be disappointed by the hardly-noticeable reduction in CPU speed considering all of the time I've saved by not having to remove spyware and viruses. (The G4s, like my Powerbook, still suffer from horrible bus speed, but the G5 bus speed certainly leaps ahead most PCs.)
As for 64-bit issues, the G5 is only slightly older than one year, and already Apple has promised 64-bit arithmetic processes in their next OS. It took Microsoft longer than that to produce a 64-bit version of Windows. And with Apple, you won't have to buy a separate, more expensive version of the OS to gain access to the power of the processor. Plus, Apple proved during the transition to PowerPC processors that they are very adept at using fat binaries, meaning application developers will be able to distribute their software compiled for both 32-bit and 64-bit processors with ease.
When it comes to most users, they don't give a flying shit about 64-bit processors, bus speeds, UI design, etc. They want to check their email, listen to music, etc. If you can do that easily and look cool at the same time, and since video gaming is making an exodus from PCs to consoles, Apple is positioned far better than Microsoft and commodity PC manufacturers to grab an increasing amount of market share for home users. IT folks are looking at Apple, and many are using Macs at home. Maybe with the nerds talking Apple and users bringing their iBooks to work with them, the managers will get squeezed and realize, sure, putting an iMac in the cubicles will cost more at the start but cost far less to administrate.
Apple's not perfect, for sure. Just about the entire 1990s was almost their death. Like I said, too many of their decisions are being made by Steve Jobs' desire to show something cool during his Macworld keynote speech. And if anything makes their computers seem like a boutique item (they are the Bang and Oulfsen of PC makers), it's the price and the image. But Apple is by leaps and bounds a better company than it ever has been. Their products are the best they've ever been. They are competitive in speed and, when you compare features and quality, are competitive on price.
As for me? I'll take an Apple any day over the alternative.
In response to the response to my response, first I'd like to say that one of the issues I was raising was perception. If you're going for PC users, they're used to paying less up front and more in the long run and they're used to bigger numbers (hard drive size, RAM, processor speed).
On the other hand, i.e. in reality, I love my Mac, a PowerMac 7500 which is 9 years old. I've upgraded just about everything and it still works and gets a lot done. I love to tell PC users, especially IT guys, that my computer originally came with 16MB of RAM, now has 432MB and can go up to 1GB of RAM. Their eyes pop out. Then I say, "it's a Mac," and they say "Oh, that explains it."
My next computer will definitely be a Mac. There is no choice. I will pay more and get more. I just want to know that the video production I want to do on any machine I would get would be top-notch. With faster hard drives, memory, processors, etc. I should be able to do what I want. That's why 64-bit processing and native support is important to me.
You can do an awful lot with an old computer (mine, case in point) but even ripping MP3's could be done a lot faster with 64-bit processing and that's a consumer user issue. My digital camera can take pictures in RAW format but my G4/700 processor and OS 9.1 can't manipulate them fast enough so I have to you SuperFine JPEG mode which is slightly poorer quality than the RAW file. What if someone starts taking RAW format pictures with an 8 megapixel camera? They could wait a long time for their computer to handle those files and slow work flow means interruptions in trains of thought which is especially bad when you're trying to do something creative (it's like Harrison Bergeron made flesh).
I guess I'm just waiting for the convergence between the hardware and the software that will reflect a giant leap forward for the Mac. We may see that next spring.
And I still think that you're giving the average consumer too much credit. Apple knows it can't compete on price, so they compete on looks and user experience. That goes a long way. And the G5s are competing on performance handily, even if 2.5GHz is a smaller number than 3.4GHz. As I often tell friends looking for computers, stop telling me how fast you want the machine to be. Tell me what you want to do with it, and we'll choose a computer that way. Buying as much RAM as you can afford will give you a larger speed increase than buying a slightly faster processor any day.
The G5 Mac hardware is leaps and bounds beyond that G4/700 of yours running OS 9.1. Even an iMac G5 would kick its ass. A photographer at my office works with a Dual 1GHz G4 PowerMac running Panther, and he works with RAW files all the time using the Photoshop RAW plug-in. I'll ask him how he feels about the performance. I would imagine that it's just fine, though a Dual 2.5GHz G5 would be a Hell of a lot better better.
64-bit processing, by the way, isn't going to do much for MP3 processing. MP3s are created using integer arithmetic, and 64-bit processing will only increase floating point performance. 64-bit-ness doesn't magically double your speed; it merely increases the amount of accessible memory (which is the biggest speed increase) and the accuracy and complexity of calculations. Working with RAW files on 64-bit processors will be an enormous boon to photographers like you, and hopefully companies like Adobe will take advantage of the 64-bit processes available to them in Tiger. In fact, it's going to be up to the software manufacturers to take advantage of it. You know that Apple's excellent videography products will take advantage of 64-bit-ness soon.
Perhaps we both want Apple to crush Microsoft, but we both know that's not going to happen. Apple's doing the right thing -- upgrading their computers as fast as they possibly can, using the iPod and the retail stores to increase their computer market share incrementally, and meanwhile making a shitload of money in music gizmos. It'll take a lot to strip a hardcore nerd from his home-grown PC running a custom compiled Linux kernel, but that's not Apple's market anyway. It's not Dell's market, either. It'll take a lot to convince a single mother of three to spend a few extra hundred dollars on a computer, but I'm not sure if that's Apple's market, either. Apple's trying to be a cool brand to have and still please computer users who know better. They're on the right path to do that. In fact, I think they're doing it now.
I'll probably be due for an upgrade on this Powerbook when there's a Powerbook G5 running OS X 10.5 Ocelot or whatever big cat they can come up with. (By now, it really should be OS XI, though, don't you think?) I can't wait to see where we'll be then.
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