Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Anti-Apple campaign?

Originally posted by G4scott
I sent him an e-mail. Here's a copy of it. I was kinda angry, so I'm not sure if it some of it made sense, or if it's actually correct, but I'm sure I did more research than him.
Click to expand...

Well spoken! It always pains me to see Mac users who compose rants and compromise their stance by representing the community as an angry mob. I am very pleased to see someone author such a well delivered analysis of the market.

Dan
 
I sent another reply to this address: letters@news.com, to go at the bottom of this page.

I used some stuff from this thread to back it up. Hope you enjoy:D :cool:


I've read the article by Michael Kanellos, "Macintosh: An acquired taste" and I have to say that he makes no sense at all in his article. He doesn't seem to understand that computers are used by more than just corporate users. Apple's main targets are the home and educational user. Below are some points in his article that I feel needed more insight:

"Technically, it was fabulous--and completely impractical. Microsoft's PowerPoint exists for one reason: Sales representatives use it to lull their audiences into an agreeable mood before asking for money. "Your company is fabulous, but I can't stand that little man holding the stopwatch and scratching his head. We're going to go with the vendor with that Egyptian papyrus theme," is a statement that will never come out of a corporate buyer's mouth. "

You know, they said color would never catch on, and that the command line was all that anyone ever needed, but they were wrong, weren't they? I'm a student, and when I need to do presentations that catch people's attention, PowerPoint doesn't do the trick. If someone wants to show information about a piece of art, or do a presentation about the Civil War, PowerPoint makes it look less than real. With Keynote, users can easily build beautiful presentations made to turn heads. This software is made for more than just corporate users, but also education, and people who want to present things to their friends in a clean, beautiful manner. The software also has its business uses. The delivery of your sales pitch, if strong and attractive, can persuade corporate buyers from 'no' to 'yes', and Keynote may have what it takes to do this. There are also more themes than 'Egyptian Papyrus". Aside from Keynote costing less than PowerPoint, it is a much nicer application, easier to use, and packed with features.

"The uninitiated, though, saw something different: two notebooks. The elegant new PowerBook comes with a 17-inch screen, but it's not all that different than 16-inch-screen models from Sony and Toshiba. A nearly identically configured Sony Vaio, in fact, sells for $2,699--$600 less than the PowerBook."

Actually, it is all that different. It has a 17" widescreen display. Much different than the 16" behemoths on the Sony's and Toshibas. This computer is also made out of aircraft grade aluminum, weighs 6.8 pounds, and is only 1" thin, as opposed to being made of cheap plastics, weighing 10 pounds (yes, I have seen 10 pound laptops), and being 2" thick. There's a reason you pay more for a BMW than you do for a Ford. The quality of the craftsmanship is much better. Here is a comparison of the two computers. Tell me how much the same they are:

Apple PowerBook G4 17" (Wide-Screen)
Sony VAIO PCG-GRX600 16? (non-Wide-Screen)

1Ghz PowerPC G4 RISC
Pentium 4-M 2Ghz CISC

512MB PC2700 DDR-SDRAM
512MM PC2100 DDR-SDRAM

17-inch TFT Widescreen (1440 by 900)
16-inch TFT Non-Widescreen (1600x1200)

NVidia GeForce4 440 Go with 64MB of DDR-SDRAM
ATI Mobility RADEON 7500 with 32 MB DDR-SDRAM

60GB Ultra ATA/100
60GB (Ultra ATA-66 or ATA-100?)

Slot-Loading internal Superdrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
Tray-Load internal (DVD-RW/CD-RW)

Built in Bluetooth 1.1
No Bluetooth

Built in Airport Extreme card (802.11g @54Mbps)
Optional 802.11a or 802.11b card

DVI and VGA output (Dual Monitor or Mirror)
VGA output only

1 Firewire 400 and 1 Firewire 800 (800Mbps and backwards compatible with included adapter)
1 i.link port (IEE 1394 4-pin cannot power devices)

10/100/1000 BASE-T (Gigabit) Ethernet port
10/100 Ethernet port

Integrated V.92 modem
Integrated V.90 modem

1 Year Warranty
1 Year Warranty

6.8 lbs. (3.1 kg) with battery and optical drive
Height: 1.0 inch
Width: 15.4 inches
Depth: 10.2 inches

8.4 lbs. with battery and optical drive
Height: 1.8 inches
Width: 14 inches
Depth: 11.5 inches

Light sensing keyboard with blue self-illumination which monitors light levels in the environment and adjusts accordingly.
Are you kidding?

Price $3299.00
Price $2699.00

You see, there is a difference in the two computers. A big difference.
Click to expand...
 
"Apple's new mini-notebook, meanwhile, fits squarely within its category. It's not the thinnest or lightest model (that distinction belongs to the 2-pound Sharp Muramasa) or, at $1,799, the cheapest. It's good, it looks cool--but it's a mini-notebook. Outside of Japan, a depressed market, few people buy them. "

Apple claims the new 12" PowerBook to be the world's most compact full featured notebook. The 2-pound sharp Muramasa, and every other mini sub-notebook don't have built in optical drives. They used underpowered graphics cards, and aren't good for much more than portability. The 12" PowerBook and the Sharp Muramasa are two completely different kinds of notebooks. The depressed market you're talking about is for the mini-notebooks, which the new PowerBook is not. It's a full featured notebook, in a smaller package. Apple's iBook was a hit product, and is what this new PowerBook is derived from. It is small, yet fast, and packed with features, such as bluetooth, 802.11g, and the option of a slot-loading DVD-R/ CD-RW drive. This computer is appealing to people who want or need a small computer that is easy to carry around, yet powerful enough to do their job. As a student preparing to go to college, I am looking to get one of these PowerBooks because of its portability and power, and it's low price (for a Macintosh computer.)


"More important, Apple partisans--and to some degree, the company itself--believe the public should care about things like pixel count, aspect ratio and data transfer rate. "

If I remember correctly, isn't it the PC crowd who is usually pushing pixels and clock speeds? Apple uses numbers to show how much faster or better their computers are to people who need to know, such as corporate buyers. They don't decide to buy computers 'because they're cheap' or 'because they look nice' Some companies buy computers because they need bandwidth from external devices, fast network transfer speeds, or adequate screen space for whatever they do, whether it's punching numbers or designing graphics. You can't slam the Mac for focusing on 'cool and neat' yet also 'caring about pixel count, aspect ration, and data transfer rate.' PC users do it too.


"This compliments the public too much. When it comes to discerning quality, we're simpletons. Instead, corporate buyers and individuals just want to know how much their computer will cost and will they get busted if they make one or two copies of their software. (Of course, think of the scary flip side. If Apple had changed the course of history in the 1980s and emerged as the guiding force in computing, we'd be up to our necks in graphic artists, freelance DJs and career temp employees.) "

If corporate buyers saw more than the initial sticker price, then I'm pretty sure that more companies would be using Macs. In the long run, the basic Mac that does everything a corporation needs it to do (networking and number punching) costs less than a PC considering maintenance costs, and the fact that PCs need to be upgraded more often. It's been proven that Macs are cheaper to own and maintain, and that they last longer than PC's. I have yet to see a PC that fits the description of 'simpleton'. I know of people who still use 6 year old Macintosh laptops. They worked when they bought them, and they still work today.

As for being busted for copying software, what's that got to do with anything Apple? Did you know that client licenses for Windows 2000 servers can cost a company thousands of dollars each year, while the Mac OS X Server with unlimited clients costs only $999, which is cheap in a large network environment, considering the number of clients. And for your artists and DJs, come on... Other companies make software for business. As a matter of fact, Microsoft was one of the first companies to offer applications for the Macintosh. If Microsoft hadn't created windows, then Macs would probably be cheaper, they would run all the applications you could possibly need because someone would've made them (there are more people than just Apple who make applications for the Mac,) and they would still work.


"Microsoft and Intel understand this completely. Standards exist in the industry not because of a secret, evil conspiracy. They exist because, in many circumstances, conformity is more important than perfection. That's why the two companies, and the rest of the PC market, spend more time talking about price and availability than anything else. No one will ever "woo-hoo" a speech by Intel CEO Craig Barrett, but his company provides the chips in most of the world's computers."

www.apple.com/server

Apple does adhere to standards, believe it or not, and they probably are better at it than Microsoft. It's Microsoft who decides that certain standards could make more money if they controlled them, and then create proprietary protocols and push them onto the windows world as standards, leaving the Macintosh, Unix, and Linux worlds on their own.

Look at the MP3 and Mpeg4 codecs. Microsoft attacked them with their own proprietary .wmv file format and windows media player. Even though the Microsoft format may be better, or able to store more per megabyte, Microsoft still controls them, so no matter how good the technology is, nobody else can do anything to make it better, unless they worked for Microsoft. Check out this article: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-980007.html

Although it seems that Microsoft is offering cheaper and better technology, that means that you have to use a Microsoft media player, and that it probably won't work on your cell phone properly, and it won't play on your new digitally enhanced TV, because Microsoft will control everything, and let only certain people integrate the media player into their products. With open standards, there is no one company to saw who can and can not use a standard, making technologies like mpeg-4 available to cell phones, computers, digital lifestyle products, and any other product with a powerful enough processor and a color screen.

Microsoft can't stand to not dominate any market that they compete in. If you read this article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/28724.html you will see how Microsoft will cheat and steal, just because they can't stand to not be first.

Another thing that is good for users is open source. It allows the best minds in the world (no, the best minds in the world aren't all at microsoft and intel) to contribute to a piece of software, making it better than any one company can attempt. Microsoft sees anything that can threaten their products as extremely hostile, and takes every measure to see that they end up on top. Tell me, if windows products were so much better than everything else, then why does Microsoft have to spend money to send teams of people out to persuade people to use their products? Can't the products speak for themselves? They spend all their time Unix and Linux and OpenSource bashing, yet their products can't compare to some of the things that other companies and open source programmers have developed.

This writer bases his article on opinions and poorly researched facts (of course, that's why it's under 'perspectives' .) He has also taken on the mindset that Macintosh computers are a niche market for none other than graphic artists and wannabe DJs. They are more than that.

It is true that Apple inspires rave and reviews, but without Apple, you would probably be using the equivalent of windows 3.1 on a super fast computer.

I'll admit that PC's are good for gaming and punching numbers all day because they are dirt cheap, but for the creative, education, and any other market that requires the user to do more thinking than the computer, the Macintosh clearly shines. Without the Macintosh, there would be no innovation in the computer market, except for Michael Dell, who innovates only by making computers as cheaply as possible. You get what you pay for, and for $599, I wouldn't expect much for that new dell dimension...

Apple and Dell are the only computer companies making money, and Apple is doing it through innovation, while Dell is doing it by being wal-mart. Apple isn't afraid to try new things. Some things work, and others don't. Right now, Apple is being conservative due to the nature of the economy, since they can't afford to take many risks, but during better times, Apple has been known to do things unheard of in the PC world. And you can't say it doesn't work because it does. Apple computers are the most imitated computers in the world. If Apple is making money, windows users are buying more Macs than ever, and other companies are trying to copy their computers, then they must be doing something right, and more people are getting used to this 'acquired taste'.
Click to expand...
 
My response

I normally don't reply to goobers like this guy, but for some reason I felt compelled to. Here's my email to him, in case anyone cares.

As you may have guessed from my email address, I am a current Mac user. I started using them about 4 years ago after they anounced OPENSTEP would be the basis for their new operating system. I am a programmer by trade, developing enterprise C, C++ and Java applications for the travel industry. I use my Mac for both work and home applications, including video editing as a hobby.

As I am in the market for a newer Mac, I watched the MacWorld keynote address and was very impressed with the new 17" PowerBook. Then I ran across your article and was dumbfounded by your point of vew so much so that I felt compelled to comment on it.

From the tone of the article, you sound like a Windows user who got assigned to MacWorld. I'm also guessing you may be getting a bunch of hate mail from Mac zealots who think Steve Jobs is the Messiah and that Apple can do no wrong. Rest assured, I don't fall into that group and hope that my comments aren't too harsh sounding.

Thanks for your time and please forgive any spelling errors! :)


> Macworld Expo in San Francisco is more than a technology convention. It is a
> personality litmus test, too.
> For Mac fans, the four-day annual convention serves as a lightning rod for
> the future of the high-tech industry. A number of firsts--or at least
> noteworthy seconds--debut at the show. For example, Gateway may have come
> out with a digital home <http://news.com.com/2100-1040-248632.html> strategy
> first, but Apple Computer has been far more successful at selling the
> vision.

I assume you are talking about Apple's "Digital Hub" strategy. Something Job's announced at the January, 2001 MacWorld expo keynote. The linked "digital home" article was dated November 15, 2000 so I guess you are right. Ignoring the fact that Apple's strategy was more targeted to small "digital lifestyle devices" and the C|Net article was a bigger whole-home type of of thing, you may not have noticed something... Apple actually followed through and delivered on their strategy.

> For nonbelievers, though, it's sort of like being at a seminar on
> gluten-free diets. There is all sorts of enthusiasm and useful, interesting
> information swirling about that will make me a better person, but somehow
> it's difficult to whip up the requisite excitement to adopt the lifestyle.
>
> Case in point: Keynote, a new graphic-intensive PowerPoint-like application
> from Apple. "This is the presentation application you need when your
> presentation really counts," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs as he put the
> application through its paces during his keynote speech.
> Instead of scrolling through pages, Keynote lets users fade out of one page
> and into the next. A single screen slide can be divided into nine tiles,
> which flip over independently to form the next slide--somewhat like a card
> section in a college football stadium.
> The crowd ate it up. "Oh, my!" gasped one man in the audience as Jobs showed
> how words on Keynote could be centered in the middle of a slide. "I like
> that. I LIKE THAT," said another as Jobs showed how the application could
> make pages in a financial report look like they were drawn on a chalkboard
> or with crayons.

Quick note here - those guys are what you might call GEEKS! Geeks can get excited about the layout of the function keys on a keyboard for Pete's sake! The Windows and Linux worlds are full of them too.

> Technically, it was fabulous--and completely impractical. Microsoft's
> PowerPoint exists for one reason: Sales representatives use it to lull their
> audiences into an agreeable mood before asking for money. "Your company is
> fabulous, but I can't stand that little man holding the stopwatch and
> scratching his head. We're going to go with the vendor with that Egyptian
> papyrus theme," is a statement that will never come out of a corporate
> buyer's mouth.

I've seen and/or presented dozens of PowerPoint presentations in the past year. I think all of one of them was a sales pitch. The rest were technical presentations or training between groups of software engineers or network operations admin's. The main reason no one uses the "fluff"
>transitions and what-not is that, under PowerPoint, they suck. From what I saw Tuesday morning, people might actually use some of those transitions and, even better, it only costs $99! (Which may not matter to most people as PowerPoint is *free* with MS Office, but that's a whole other can of worms.)

> Apple's new notebooks <http://news.com.com/2100-1040-979491.html> inspired
> the same sort of divergent reactions. The company unveiled two on Tuesday: a
> PowerBook G4 with built-in wireless connectivity and a 17-inch screen, and a
> mini-PowerBook with a 5-hour battery life.
> Crowd members yipped and "woo-hooed" as Jobs said the notebook comes with a
> lithium prismatic battery--whatever that is. When he showed off the
> mini-notebook and said it came with an 867MHz processor, a member of the
> audience (a completely new one) drunkenly gasped "Aaaah," as if weary from
> amazement. Many applauded when Jobs unveiled the $3,299 price of the
> 17-inch-screen model

I believe they "yipped and 'woo-hooed' about the 5 hour batter life, not the chemistry involved in it's making.

> The uninitiated, though, saw something different: two notebooks. The elegant
> new PowerBook comes with a 17-inch screen, but it's not all that different
> than 16-inch-screen models from Sony and Toshiba. A nearly identically
> configured Sony Vaio, in fact, sells
> <http://www.sonystyle.com/is-b! in/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD
> /SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start;sid=AwQTcIplX6UTerR-TGEZe8Vpbn7FmErzvMU=
> ?CatalogCategoryID=TzoKC0%2eNHLIAAADy4wpES5hL&ProductID=NjgKC0%2eNwOcAAADyZr
> BES5hN&Dept=cpu> for $2,699--$600 less than the PowerBook.

Sony makes excellent laptops, if I was in the market for a Windows compatible machine, I would most likely look to them first. But let's take a look at that $600 difference and what Apple gives you:
* Nearly 2lbs lighter
* Nearly 1 inch thinner
* Faster video card with more video RAM
* Built in 802.11g Wi-Fi networking
(Note: Sony is currently giving away an 802.11b PC-Card, but not
with the model you specified - it is also slower and has
to have an an antenna sticking out the side of the laptop
as well)
* Built in BlueTooth
* Gigabit Ethernet
* Firewire800
* 6 Pin Firewire400/IEEE1394 allowing bus powered devices like
external hard drives
* A keyboard that you can use at night on a plane without
disturbing your neighbor!

That's a lot of stuff, and not much of it is upgradeable through PC Card or USB adapters.

In Sony's defense, their 16 inch screen has a higher resolution, even horizontally, than Apple's 17 inch one. This surprised and disappointed me, I like the wide-screen aspect of the PowerBook better, but Sony's 1600x1200 resolution LCD is awesome.

> Apple's new mini-notebook, meanwhile, fits squarely within its category.
> It's not the thinnest or lightest model (that distinction belongs to the
> 2-pound Sharp Muramasa) or, at $1,799, the cheapest. It's good, it looks
> cool--but it's a mini-notebook. Outside of Japan, a depressed market, few
> people buy them.

Few people buy mini-notebooks? Who are you kidding? Where do you work? Corporate exec's love those things. Every senior manager and VP I've worked with in the past 3 years has had the smallest laptop they could get. In fact, I think Apple should have made another, smaller one with an external optical drive or docking station option. When I used to fly all the time, I would have loved that! (Although, they need to get those lighted key caps in the mini-notebooks!)
Click to expand...
 
My reply - con't

Man, I'm an air bag tonight!

> The line that divides Apple fans from agnostics partly lies in the
> circumstances of history. Apple should have been the dominant PC company in
> the high-tech industry, according to partisans. It came up with and/or
> promoted many of the bedrock inventions of the computer world--such as the
> graphical interface and the mouse--first. The company was also the first to
> get people in schools and homes excited about computers.
> Unfortunately, history didn't follow the script. Championing today's
> products, therefore, comes as a way to right past wrongs.
> More important, Apple partisans--and to some degree, the company
> itself--believe the public should care about things like pixel count, aspect
> ratio and data transfer rate.
> This compliments the public too much. When it comes to discerning quality,
> we're simpletons. Instead, corporate buyers and individuals just want to
> know how much their computer will cost and will they get busted if they make
> one or two copies of their software. (Of course, think of the scary flip
> side. If Apple had changed the course of history in the 1980s and emerged as
> the guiding force in computing, we'd be up to our necks in graphic artists,
> freelance DJs and career temp employees.)

Oh please! The Wintel crowds has been selling people on the fact they need 3 GHz processors and 2 GB DDR RAM to balance their checkbooks, check email and surf the web. People will buy whatever is marketed as "the best". You can't slight Apple for doing the same thing with FireWire800, Gigabit Ethernet or their HD Cinema displays.

Oh, and if Apple had changed history as you said, they're probably be resting on their laurels, putting out "just good enough" crap just like Microsoft does today with Windows Me or XP Home Edition.

> Microsoft and Intel understand this completely. Standards exist in the
> industry not because of a secret, evil conspiracy. They exist because, in
> many circumstances, conformity is more important than perfection. That's why
> the two companies, and the rest of the PC market, spend more time talking
> about price and availability than anything else. No one will ever "woo-hoo"
> a speech by Intel CEO Craig Barrett, but his company provides the chips in
> most of the world's computers.

I don't know how we got on to standards, but here's a few that Apple supports:
TCP-IP networking, support for FAT, UFS and ISO9660/Juliet drive volumes, Apache web server, BSD Unix based kernel with Posix compliancy, uses ATA drives and standard PC RAM DIMMs, SVGA and DVI video ports (DVI requires a $25 adapter on PowerMacs), USB, IEEE1934/Firewire, native support for nearly all flash memory readers and dozens of digital cameras, native support for dozens of MP3 players, QuickTime, ColorSync, support for Windows/SMB and Unix/NFS file sharing, Java 1.3 Hotspot JRE (1.4 in beta), CUPS printer drivers, OpenLDAP, KHTML based browser, native BlueTooth in OS X, X11 X-Windowing, native PDF file support ...

Yeah, I guess you're right, Apple doesn't support standards at all, and Microsoft is known for supporting standards, like: WindowsMediaPlayer, their own version of html and scripting, ActiveX, DCOM, their own version Java, and Exchange server.

> By contrast, Apple inspires rave reviews. And accounts for only 2.3 percent
> of the worldwide computer market, according to research firm IDC.

And somehow, they are profitable, even in an economic slump. They must be doing something right.

>The company blazes forth, but few answer the call.

Enough to make a profit - which is a whole heck of a lot more than Gateway, the company who came out with the "digital home", can say.

Eric A. Smalling
Sr. Software Engineer
GetThere - A Sabre Company
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back