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Is Apple really doing enough?

M

MacManiac1224

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 21, 2001
227
0
NY
What do you guys think? I personally don't think Apple is doing enough in the computer wars. That's what they are: basically it is Wintel against Mac. They have great products, but the problem is that nobody knows about them.

They have a great lineup: iMac. iBook, Titanium Powerbook, and Powermac(that can use a little work though). The only problem is price and speed. Apple has always been more expensive, but I don't think that is as much of a problem. The other thing is speed: a G4 is fast, but come on, it can not compete with a P4 on most tasks. We need something that will compete with the P4, ah the G5. but guess what? By the time the G5 comes out, Intel will have a whole new chip that will be far beyond that. Intel is getting smart, they know CSIC is getting old, and they go out and develop VISC(not sure about that word).
I'm not sure, but what do you guys think?
 
hmmm interesting points...

Well, I'm really hoping that the apple stores will help apple lose the "unknown" status (BTW, does anyone know how the stores are doing in general?)

As far as chip speed, I really don't know if its generally true that a G4 doesn't compete with a P4 on most tasks. There seems to be quite a bit of debate about that. In any case, a G4 seems to have the ability to perform quite satisfactoraly for most tasks most of the time - I think this is very important.

And you are right, as soon as the G5 comes out, Intel and AMD will have something to compete with it - that "see-saw" battle will rage forever (which is good, because that means better stuff for us! :))

I think the most important point is that apple makes top-quality hardware that should be able to satisfy the needs of 99.9% of the people 99.9% of the time. Plus, with apple you get great style!

My money will always go to apple :)
 
just go to zdnet and check out their "ultra-portable" reviews. both the iBook and the Powerbook compete as far as size goes. Yet on the PC side they are lacking in just about everything. they are all crusoe processors and lowend p3s. in other words, they can't hold a candle to any apple notebooks.

notebooks are the hot market right now, and people who want desktop power but dont need/want a superdrive should always go mac.

its like i told a friend of mine looking for a new computer. "i can build you a desktop for cheap, and it will be just fine and i can get you anything you need. if you need a laptop...don't you buy a PC, because you will be sorry until its time to get a new one."
 
Speed....

Today there is no real reason for speed in a machine, as long as it does what you need. My iBook, the slowest machine in Apple's limeup today, can do everything I through at it.

Even the tibook with the so called low end G4's has more than effort power to do really anything. Speed should not be a factor anymore, it is what you can do. Apple excels there....

Consumers are starting to get picky, they dont care about numbers as much anymore, they care about what they can do with their machine for the money. Apple has the right game plan.
 
in reality, we are fast enough

but our perception of speed to the outside world of non technical computer users is what needs a major remake starting with us passing 1 ghz as soon as possible

passing 1 ghz is more of a sales tool but apple inc is a company and sales are important
 
Apple is going to rock in 2002

I think apple is slowly realizing the fact that it can slowly catch up with windoze world with its new os X. At least apple is trying hard to win consumer market with Digital Hub philosophy - and the new iMac is going to be a bigger hit. Now Apple needs to focus on the corporate world - convince one big corp. like GE or something to try Mac OS X as their OS. and more and more products are coming. Lotus Division of IBM realeases Lotus Notes for OS X. If apple can get g5 chips from IBM ( i dont see much future for Motorola), i think apple is having real good chance to capitilize a good market share..
 
A step in the right direction...

I think that Apple has made definite progress in getting their name out there in the public eye with the Apple Stores (wish I lived near one ;) ) and their new iMac ads in some major mags. It wasn't long ago the only Mac ads you seen in mags were the ones in Macworld (like you need to advertise to people who already have a Mac :rolleyes: )

At this point with the rest of the industry in shambles and some major players hanging by a thread ( Gateway, Compaq...) people are looking for something different. Consumers are more willing to shell out a little more for a good machine than they were just a couple years ago. Apple's line-up has the bases covered (towers are hurting a little though :( ) now its just a matter of time to see if they get it. With iMac sales already surpassing even Apple's wildest dreams, I would say they do.
 
intel speed bumps

apples processors are fast enough but their is one big problem, their speed bumps, g4 powermac came out about oh... 3 years ago, they were about 350 or 400, but now they are only at 867 most!? thats a long time to get so little speed bumps as for intel they were around 700 mhz when g4 came out, and it took intel a long time to catch up but now they are soaring past g4, they are almost to 3 ghz, much faster than a dual 800, oh and just a note, dual processors dont impress me as much as a good single processor, i think the big problem has been motorola, they seem to be doing sortof bad lately, but they started working on g5 a long time ago and i think that ibm should either buy the g5 processor or buy motorola and drop it. I think that faster speed bumps or huge speed bumps are the only thing now that can keep the top ends the best, becuase many people will look at top models and compare spec then drop to the low model and but that. So impressive top more people run to it, but really 300-800 in 3 years is way too slow, apple needs to work on that some sort of bad, but im going to wait for powerbook g5 to replace my pbg4,
 
AHH wise words, but no fool
The G4 smokes the P4 and then there dual processors
DAMN
So just sit down and relax
 
G4 vs P4

I'm not sure it's so cut-n-dry. A 2.2GHz P4 I'd put some money on to beat an 867MHz G4 at most tasks. And an Athlon? Ha! Those things toast P4s of 500 million more cycles per second. I'd hate to see a series of Athlon/G4 races. The x86 world, sorry to say, seems to have Apple beaten when it comes to price/performance.

Apple NEEDS to start selling machines with noticeably faster processors in them. Yes, Apple's survived the clock speed wars this long, but with single-digit market share. As a fan of the platform, I'd really like to see them rally to 10% within the next couple of years. This won't happen when their fastest chip appears to be 1/3 as fast as the competition's (and may be about 1/2 to 2/3 as fast in actuality--but either way, the thing still can not compete in the price/performance battle). And I've said this before and I'll say it again: the 64-bitness of the G5 will not be released for quite some time. Yes, I'd love to eat those words, but I think I'm going to wind up going hungry. As for the rumored 1GHz G4 (7450 or 7460??), 1GHz, if at all true, is simply not an impressive enough speed bump. Yes, Apple will have finally broken the billion-hertz barrier, but c'mon. After all this time, I was really hoping they'd smash through it at around 1.4 gigs.
 
re Apple and marketshare

My prediction is this....

Let's say Apple were to introduce a 2.2 Ghz G4 tommorrow....

How much do I think that would increase Apple's market share? I think it would be pretty minimal... a lot of high end users might switch... and it would certainly help with certain markets... and cement them in many of the "niche/specialty" markets...

but if we want to talk about world domination.... it's the home users...

and while Mhz is nice and all... do you think the average consumer who buys an PC even knows that Macs are running at 867mhz? No... not a clue. It doesn't even come into the equation for many of them because the reason they get a PC is this one: their friends have a PC and this is the one they told them to get.

Hmm... interesting dilemma... how do you convert the masses when the masses feed in on themselves?

Well,

first, you try to advertise - which Apple hasn't done very effectively _except_ for the Apple Stores. Just the existance of these stores I think is excellent... it really makes a difference when people see the machines...

Here's a message a friend forwarded to me regarding someone who was an Athlon-kind-of-guy:

I think I am going to make the jump. I see a G4 for me this year! I was in the [Apple] store in Fashion Beach/Longbeach Cali this past
weekend and think I fell in love. Very nice stuff and I think I could get some pretty good deals this winter.

second, you make killer products... as the quote above describes - Apple does have some nice looking products - both hardware and software... their digital hub strategy is right on... People want to use their computers. The average consumer wants 1) internet 2) word processing 3) occasional games 4) digital photos, music

Finally... and here's a sublty - Apple is actually getting at many of the "geek" population. OS X as a Unix OS is really attracting the right sorts of people... the geek-developer crowd as well as the general geeks around. The people who often do make the recommendations to their "non-geek" friends.

Anyhow... just how I see it...

I think Apple's in a better position now than it has been in many years. They've really got some excellent products - both aesthetically as well as technically.

arn
 
I still saving to get an Apple, but in the UK it's rare to see any Apple advertising. As far as I'm aware there are no Apple stores in the UK.

In general most computer buyers in the UK are not very well informed. Most people go to the local PCWorld (I have expressed my opinions about PCWorld in another post), who invariably point them to PCs.

I'm an Electronic Engineering/Computer Science final year student and I regularly get phoned by a friend of friend to help someone fix their PC. I can safely say most people don't know what they are doing! One of my friends has a 733 G4 PowerMac and has never had problems, his parents brought a iMac on his recommendation and they use it all the time with no problems.

Both my parents are 'technophobes' they don't trust computers, but when they use the iMac they have no problems, they feel comfortable using it. Infact when I said to my mother "not so scared of using a computer now!" she said "it's just an iMac".

She didn't see the iMac as being a computer, but she was happily using it.

Now many people are in the same boat and if Apple could get these people to buy iMacs they would capture a lot of the UK market. Most purchases are made by their sons who say "get a PC" and happily spend mum and dads money on something mum and dad can't use.

Apple needs to be more visible in the UK market place. I'm suprised when I walk into computer shops in the UK. The people selling the PC's push any old rubbish that will be obselete in 6months. Apple's may cost more but they last longer, at least 2 or 3 years. Apple really needs to open some Apple stores in the UK and start educating the ill-informed buyer.

If they do this they will do well in the UK.

Come on Apple don't leave the UK out!
 
G4 about equals Athlon Mhz for Mhz

That's my opinion, and I've been running both systems quite a bit. The G4 (chip, not the machine) is pretty much on par with AMD's Athlon architechture, speed-wise. Now if only that %€&"#**"" Motorola could get their act together and get us to 1.6 Ghz as well. Then we would truly have a PC beater.

It's a smarter design than Athlons (and, certainly, Pentiums), but that may not necessarily be good. It seems like the design is a little too smart for Motorola themselves....

I wouldn't bet the farm that Apple will come out with any machine that really is faster than a PC anytime soon, let alone this year. Pentium 4 seems to be scaling up radically faster than the G4 (come on, you really cannot argue with that!), and although it is very slow for general tasks, it too relies on a SIMD instruction set (like Altivec) for true processing speed. So both PC and Mac software makers need to rethink, and reprogram, their apps to take full advantage of either chip. I know where I would put my money.

But, like the rest of us sad Mac fans, I will fork out $3000 for a G5 (if it ever materializes) even so.
 
arn

That is the best analisys I have seen in this forum.

You forgot to mention one thing. Right now, for the first time ever, processors are long way too fast for aplications. I work with a G4 400 and I do not need to change speed. I work with Protools, Digital Performer. I was doing web desing and as everything is 74 dpi the graphics are very light.

The only aplications that needs faster procesing are rendering (After Effects and over), but they are getting in a tolerable stages if you are organized.

I mean, Apple is really fighting for the masses and is offering a really god product with the new iMac. PC people love it.

For the profesionals.... we will have to wait for our share some time this years I guess.
 
Forgot to tell

Remember the US and the entire world is in a resession (sorry about the spelling), so high end machines ($2000 plus) are not a good market today.

I have seen big production houses getting low end models in place of high end.

For example. Right now for audio editing I do not need my G4 400. I'm using an audio media 3 pci card and a Miró DC 30 plus. Motu has 2 very good fire wire audio interface and there are some very good andlog to fire wire adaptors on the market. So, I do not need a PCI computer un less I want to do very heavy After Effects things and get some PCI FX card.

So, many pro video companies can resolve a lot of things with the new iMac and Fire Wire interfaces that at the end works with the high end models and even with the Power Books.
 
G4 = Athlon

You're right that on the whole, what one might call 'normal' users of Macs don't need any extra speed - for their applications. I will agree with you that many apps run fine on a G4/400 (mine is as well).

However, with Mac OS X, expect to lose at least 30 per cent of your productivity. It's a really nice OS, it's just so g o d d a m n sssssllllooowwww. In fact it is slow about everything except network handling. But anything that requires the Aqua interface to spring to life, is way way slower than the same task performed in OS 9. In spite of the seemingly smooth and simple interface, everything in OS X requires more clicking and dragging, and waiting - and waiting. Sure, the wait duration is reduced when one uses a faster processor (and I'm sure the guy with a DP800 doesn't feel my pain), but it's still there. OS X waits for everything: click a folder, oops gotta search the file system for the contents, scratch scratch on the hard disk, then 5 seconds later it lets you have that file list. Oh! But woe betide you if you dare to scroll that file list, scratch scratch now where did I put that file list, oh, there, no, wait, crrrr.. crrrrrrr... it's just no use to anyone.
In OS 9: boom! It's nearly instantaneous. People tend to forget that when they wax about OS X. Yes, it's great that we finally have a pre-emptively multitasking operating system. It's great for *some* things. But by and large, the good old collaborative multitasking in OS 9 does everything *better* and *faster*. Sure, it's not secure (but then who needs server-level security on their home computer? Why do you have to login as root to save your window views?!!? Why DO you even have to login to your own personal computer?). Sure, it's doesn't do X things at the same time. It crashes. Sometimes. But then you do know that so do OS X apps, don't you?
In OS X, not even Word 10 is there for you, responsive. Try to measure the time it takes for Word 10 to catch up with your typing! I know that no programmer could stand that from their dev environment! What the hell is it doing? All it's supposed to be doing is waiting for you to press that next key. That's all! But even that, it can't do properly.
So what's wrong then? I lay the blame on Aqua. And maybe even more so, I lay the blame on Carbon. I wonder if any of us have ever even experienced true Cocoa code run. Everything (that matters) is being carbonized, because no-one, simply no-one, can afford to start their app development over from scratch, teaching their coders a new OS, a new dev environment, AND a new programming language to boot! No wonder Adobe, Macromedia and the rest are simply carbonizing their stuff. No wonder it is slow as well. Nothing is being optimized. Nothing!

However, Apple's true customers, the Wintel-to-iMac crowd, will never feel any of this pain. They will get the great white hope (the new iMac) and go right ahead and use the i-apps, which are the only apps out there coded from the ground up in Cocoa. Even Word and Entourage (shudder) will feel responsive to them. Because they'll have a 700 Mhz G4 and a lo-res desktop, it'll run just fine in OS X. They'll be playing Harry Potter and Otto Matic, it'll run fine. But what about the kid who gets a new iMac because he thinks it's sexy and he wants to play Return to Castle Wolfenstein on it? Have you tried the beta under OS X recently? You're lucky if you can get 15 fps.

Alas, I come across as a Mac basher. But I love Apple! I love the Mac!
All I want is:
a) proper G4 processor speeds (1.4+ Mhz) which will make me feel good about my Mac again (and maybe even OS X)
or -
b) an even better processor (the G5?) which, at the sorry speeds that Motorola can churn out, actually beats an Athlon in a real-world test (and no Phil Schiller hand-picked-the-only-3-Photoshop-filters-that-can, thank you)
c) DDR RAM and a 266MHz bus
d) a BTO GeForce3 Ti-card at REAL competitive prices, not 2x the street
e) BTO RAM at REAL competitive prices, not 5x the street
f) and, you know, while we're at it, I wouldn't mind a double button mouse

Is it really all that much to ask?
 
OS X needs faster chips

I tried OS X 10.1 on my iBook (500mhz) and it's too slow for me. So I ended up going back to OS 9. OS X is great, but the ibook is too slow to run it. They need to get the low-end systems up to minimum 700-800 mhz G4. Maybe a 800-1000 G3 would do OK but 500/600 G3 is too slow.

My guess is that Moto has no problem churning out 700/800 mhz G4s and they're cheap enough to put in iMacs. But that eats away at higher end systems. You need to have more of a gap to justify the higher prices (and higher profit margins) on the Towers.

Having fast iMacs are great; it helps them expand market share. (BTW, I see the new iMacs as the next great corporate machines. A better-priced Cube.) But the higher-end machines keeps the profit margin up.

Now that Apple has OS X in place and a great lineup of hardware, they should really focus on developing the PowerPC. I agree with the people who say Moto is dead, as far as the PowerPC is concerned. They're cutting people left and right and closing down plants left and right. Apple's gotta take charge here.
 
lower the price of the powermacs and lower their margins so it will increase numbers of machines sold and that will take care of business

the high margins and thus high prices of macs make many pros look elsewhere

for the first time, i am seeing pc only graphic design departments and migrations away from g3s/g4s to pc graphics boxes

this is a disturbing trend
 
Consumers are starting to get picky, they dont care about numbers as much anymore, they care about what they can do with their machine for the money. Apple has the right game plan.
Click to expand...


Just keep on thinking that and watch the only place to get a Mac from a year from now be a pawn shop.
 
arn is right, Apple needs to target the home consumer. They need to show the average joe the tangable benefits of a computer system that is simple to use and doesn't require upgrading every 6 months.

Has anyone actually done any research into what most users do on their machines? If Apple can attract the first time buyer they will build market share quickly through word of mouth. I don't care what anyone says about the value of advertising, if a friend recommends something you can be pretty sure it's good, and this sort of advertising is priceless.

As for RazorMouse's comments on OSX, it maybe slow now, but it's got a lot a code in it to allow OS9 compatibility. It will get faster and better with each new release.

As for having to log in to use your own computer, come on it's hardly an issue. Security is the one of the major selling points for an OS. If your computer is stolen and it contains your credit card details, bank details etc you will be glad that no-one can access them!
 
duh

Apple was just plain stupid not to open a stor in Salt Lake for the Olympics. They would have done really good. All the people from other countries going to Salt Lake, and then they would see the beutiful glass doors of an Apple store with the iPod and the new iMac beckoning them in. A store in Salt Lake would have been so good for their advertising. They should have thought.:mad: :confused: :eek: :rolleyes: :(
 
Well....

Thinking about Aqua and speed, I think I know what the solution is.

When Apple designed it, I think they had 64 bit processing in mind at least. It would be able to throw most of the code through its chip and get instant results. 64 bit processing has been in the wings for a while and it is about time to get it out.

Speed and response time will improve from 64bit and it will work at around the same speed as OS 9.

As for the consumers, yes from my experience Mac OS X and Mac's in general are totally sufficient for use. My parents love the simplicity of a Mac and enjoy using mine (they are about to get a new iMac). My gf's parents can now actually use a computer!

Yes Aqua is slow and Mac OS X in general but having moved from Windows world, I don't find anything wrong with it. Yes OS 9 cooked but I don't care, Mac OS X does everything I need....Programming, Office, Games, Internet. etc.
 
I think Apple needs to spend more on advertising, other computer companies are far more visible.
 
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