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Jobs To Keynote MWSF '06
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digitalbiker
macrumors 65816
Change Good or Change Bad?
I agree and this is one of the major issues that I think Apple / SJ will have a hard time adapting to.
In the past Apple really has not been good at a rapid update cycles for computer products. They haven't had to be. They were unique in the marketplace and people were willing to suffer a little stagnation of product line, pay more for that product, because when it did come out it was unique, interesting and useful.
By switching to Intel hardware, Apple gains access to current tech but loses that uniqueness in the marketplace. Now the only uniqueness will be the OS and formfactor. To be honest it is very, very, hard to be unique with formfactor when you are using the same innards as everyone else.
In addition, x86 compatability will almost certainly allow WINE or VPC apps to run at nearly native speeds. This will mean software vendors that once had a unique position of being the only OS X supplier of a certain software will now be competing with windows versions of similar software. I wonder how many small Apple developers will be killed off by this type of competition simply because they don't have access to windows version sales but windows developers have access to Apple version sales through WINE or VPC.
Also how many major software vendors will simply drop OS X native versions and simply instruct Apple users to run their product in WINE or VPC. OS 2 suffered this same fate because it was too compatible with windows.🙁
AidenShaw said:
I agree and this is one of the major issues that I think Apple / SJ will have a hard time adapting to.
In the past Apple really has not been good at a rapid update cycles for computer products. They haven't had to be. They were unique in the marketplace and people were willing to suffer a little stagnation of product line, pay more for that product, because when it did come out it was unique, interesting and useful.
By switching to Intel hardware, Apple gains access to current tech but loses that uniqueness in the marketplace. Now the only uniqueness will be the OS and formfactor. To be honest it is very, very, hard to be unique with formfactor when you are using the same innards as everyone else.
In addition, x86 compatability will almost certainly allow WINE or VPC apps to run at nearly native speeds. This will mean software vendors that once had a unique position of being the only OS X supplier of a certain software will now be competing with windows versions of similar software. I wonder how many small Apple developers will be killed off by this type of competition simply because they don't have access to windows version sales but windows developers have access to Apple version sales through WINE or VPC.
Also how many major software vendors will simply drop OS X native versions and simply instruct Apple users to run their product in WINE or VPC. OS 2 suffered this same fate because it was too compatible with windows.🙁
~Shard~
macrumors P6
digitalbiker said:
And, as you elude to later in your post, this essentially applies to the OS as well, not just the hardware "innards" of the machine. When other options become available, whether it be VPC, WINE, or more and more people hacking OS X for PCs themselves, Apple loses another unique attribute. Some Mac users who stick with Mac just because of OS X, and decide to put up with some shortcomings would have fewer reasons to put up with them if they weren't tied down by OS X.
digitalbiker
macrumors 65816
iWork
By the way, as a side note on the iWork subtopic, Apple should either dramatically improve this product or drop it completely.
Keynote is useable and has some unique features but it still lags sorely behind PowerPoint.
Pages just plain sucks. I find it a real annoyance to use and refuse to deal with it anymore. Unless Apple has a Pages template that matches what you want exactly, it is a real pain in the a$$ to suitably modify. It also is the slowest WP that I have ever used. I used Pages to make a modest document of 55 pages with embedded tables and jpegs. It literally takes 15 minutes for pages to open this document and get to a point where the beachball stops so that you can scroll the document. It took me 2 days to generate this document and fart around with all of the stupid, unlocking, ungrouping, shifting, centering, re-grouping, relocking to get things to flow correctly on the page.
As for the comment about keeping it simple;
Well this is presentation software and complex word processing, If it can't be used by professionals who make daily presentations and want nice looking formated documents because it is too simple and doesn't include pro features then who is going to buy it.
So far MS Office has absolutely nothing to worry about from iWork!🙄
By the way, as a side note on the iWork subtopic, Apple should either dramatically improve this product or drop it completely.
Keynote is useable and has some unique features but it still lags sorely behind PowerPoint.
Pages just plain sucks. I find it a real annoyance to use and refuse to deal with it anymore. Unless Apple has a Pages template that matches what you want exactly, it is a real pain in the a$$ to suitably modify. It also is the slowest WP that I have ever used. I used Pages to make a modest document of 55 pages with embedded tables and jpegs. It literally takes 15 minutes for pages to open this document and get to a point where the beachball stops so that you can scroll the document. It took me 2 days to generate this document and fart around with all of the stupid, unlocking, ungrouping, shifting, centering, re-grouping, relocking to get things to flow correctly on the page.
As for the comment about keeping it simple;
Well this is presentation software and complex word processing, If it can't be used by professionals who make daily presentations and want nice looking formated documents because it is too simple and doesn't include pro features then who is going to buy it.
So far MS Office has absolutely nothing to worry about from iWork!🙄
Epicurus
macrumors 6502
digitalbiker said:
Apple can fight this in two ways: (1) Encourage its rabid fan base to turn out a mountain of new code/applications for the Intel platform that only work for Macs, or (2) Play up the "whole package" concept for the Mac like they do with the iPod (iPod+iTunes+iTunes Music Store).
For the first option Apple needs to shine some light on the emerging Dashboard/Spotlight/Automator community and all the cool things going on there. Secondly Apple needs to turn out something like DashCode to make building Widgets really easy for the amatuer programmer. A more fully featured Automator (made even more like an iApp while also bringing in some Xcode features to make "iCode") with a real GUI editor and better code level editing outside of AppleScript would let users develop small applications for the Mac platform easily and quickly. Essentially Apple needs to churn up its current development base and bring in a new wave of developers at the same time. Aiming at the person new to programming (the student programmer) is the best way to grow a new base.
For the second option, Apple needs to build on the "halo" effect further. Getting people to think iPod->iMac is one thing, but having them think iPod->PowerBook is another. The Mac has to be a complete package. For many, the iMac with iLife is 90% there already. But that's just one segment of the market. Making the PowerBook that complete out of the box is more difficult. Shipping an expanded iWork '06 with all new Macs would help (if iWork picks up all the remaining AppleWorks features and can mirror MS Works in basic functionality). iWork doesn't need to compete with MS Office, but it should at least clearly beat out Works.
Adding iSight to the portables gives some added value, as would adding flash drives to increase boot times/extend battery life. Apple could try to keep its edge with gimicks like these, but selling a complete package is easier and earns you bigger revenues.
digitalbiker
macrumors 65816
~Shard~ said:
Exactly. It will be interesting to see how Apple responds to this brave new world.
I am hoping that the additional pressure and competition will push Apple to be truly innovative, so that they will not only survive but will flourish and produce some of their best computer products in decades.😎
Epicurus
macrumors 6502
digitalbiker said:
iWork will survive at least another year if only to replace AppleWorks for the Intel Macs. Apple isn't going to port AppleWorks to Intel, and probably won't bother pushing it through Rosetta, so iWork gets the bill.
As for Keynote, I find it far and above better than PowerPoint in my daily uses of it (Keynote 2 was better than Keynote 1 and I have high hopes for version 3). Pages was a wash, but its just v 1.0 software anyway. We'll see what Pages 2 brings and then decide. iWork needs spreadsheets, which it will get if iWork really is replacing AppleWorks entirely. Hopefully whatever does come out is in better shape than Pages 1.0, especially with its AppleWorks heritage.
Even with a better than expected round of upgrades for '06 iWork is no match for Office, nor should it be. As I've said before, all it needs to do to make a place for itself in the market is beat MS Works. As far as I can tell, Apple should have little trouble accomplishing this very shortly.😀
~Shard~
macrumors P6
digitalbiker said:
I hope this is the case as well. If so, it could be extremely exciting and rewarding times ahead for the Mac community. I hope this forces Apple to adapt (which it of course will) as in the end, it will make Apple a better company and will result in its user base reaping the benefits. If this means some growing pains and hard lessons in the interim, so be it, I say. 😎
digitalbiker
macrumors 65816
physics_gopher said:
Good points. I also think that Apple needs to really focus on the Dashboard/Spotlight/Automater iCode project. Right now these features have tremendous potential but most Tiger users probably don't take advantage of any of them except once in a blue moon.
Most users are creatures of habit and keep organizing and doing things the same old way. Apple really needs to create a new paradigm for the daily workflows and organization of the typical user. Educate the user or automate everthing for the user.
mdavey
macrumors 6502a
digitalbiker said:
They won't use the same innards as everyone else. They'll just be using the same CPU as others. Right now, Apple ships a custom IO chip with most of its machines (Intrepid, KeyLargo and various other versions). I would expect them to continue to design a custom IO chip for their Intel range.
Given Apple's stake in AltiVec, I continue to speculate whether we won't see a new Apple IO chip with AltiVec support and perhaps an integrated BlueTooth and/or GPU in 6 to 18 months time.
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
Why would they go to this expense, when Intel is investing a huge amount in building exactly these kinds of chipsets?mdavey said:
Especially since Apple's "custom" chips are the root of many problems (e.g. the 1394 performance of the G5).
This would surprise me immensely.mdavey said:
AltiVec
Any external general-purpose AltiVec coprocessor would almost certainly perform far worse than the native SSE set of SIMD instructions in the Pentium. It would have huge latencies, and probably a arcane programming interface.
On the other hand, Apple might put a Cell or Xbox360 cpu on the board as a dedicated media processor - allowing something like an MPEG-4 encode to be offloaded. Even so, a specific commercial MPEG-4 silicon codec would probably be cheaper and faster.
Bluetooth
Doesn't really fit the model of a device that needs to be in the Northbridge or Southbridge. Doesn't have high bandwidth needs, and already requires offchip components for radios and antennae.
My Dell laptop's Bluetooth is a tiny card about the size of a AAA battery (but flat) that contains the Bluetooth chip, RF drivers and antenna. It plugs into a miniature USB socket on the motherboard. Seems like a pretty good solution, and not one that would be "improved" by putting a small portion of the card into the bridge chipset.
GPU
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma900/ - 'nuf said.
Intel already has PCI Express DirectX9 (that's "CoreImage", in Mac-Speak) graphics in the Centrino chipset.
I find it unlikely that Apple will want to invest in the effort required to take on Intel, ATI and nVidia in this space. It would be a huge effort, and probably take Apple a long time to come up with a product as good as what's on the market.
steve_hill4
macrumors 68000
I have a feeling it will be. Yonah has the same number of pins as the current Pentium M range, but they have moved the position of one pin to make sure it is incompatible. I don't think they will change it again yet.~Shard~ said:
speleoterra
macrumors regular
Epicurus
macrumors 6502
AidenShaw said:
Being the first to use the new technology is still brag-worthy. If they can get Blu-Ray into their desktops/laptops first too, that would be good. Since the whole Apple market is smaller and Apple has almost total control over their hardware/software, even if Intel makes their new technology available to everyone, Apple might be the first to implement it.
Apple could serve as Intel's field tester for new technology. This could hurt as much as it helps, but it may happen. Especially if Apple still has a hand in creating its own chipsets (although I feel they'll hand that off to Intel sooner or later).
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
Perhaps it's incompatible with the previous chipset, say due to some small thing like being dual-core, or a different voltage, or different cache bus, ....steve_hill4 said:
If that's the case, moving a pin or two to prevent damage from being accidentally plugged into the wrong motherboard is a good thing.
do you think apple will get into the portable gaming thing, with the success of the ipod taking over portable music. or does the cost out way the sales😕