Steve Jobs And The Oh-So-Cool iMac 1170
The truly successful technologies and technology companies are utilitarian and dull -- decidedly non-hip. You will never seen a Microsoft or AOL exec talking about how cool the their companies or products are, only how useful and easy to use. They don't really care how much heavy breathing they generate in the media or among excitable teenagers and college students. Those two companies have, in fact, dominated their environments by pointedly focusing on the non-technologically adventurous middle-class and busy business executives and workers and by presenting themselves not as cool but as reliable and accessible. And for this sin they get jeered at -- all the way to the bank. Their motives may be money, greed and power, but they understand what really drives technology in America and much of the world. Steve Jobs does not.
The tech media have served as enablers and co-dependents in Steve Jobs' sometimes-brilliant marketing impulses. Last week, the volatile Jobs projected himself onto the cover of Time magazine by unveiling the oh-so-cool new iMac, a computer as entertainment/culture center, a "hub for music, pictures and movies." It's elegant and affordable, says Time, and takes up little desk space, "but will millions of PC users get it?"
Probably not.
Gates understands something Jobs and media don't. When it comes to technology, it's middle-class consumers and their tastes, needs and expectations that determine success or failure. This is a hard lesson for many hackers and programmers too, who remain bewildered that superior systems like Linux aren't on every desktop. But the middle class, for years abused and exploited by the arrogant tech industry (just think of what poor Comcast subscribers have been going through for weeks now), wants easy of use, safety, utility. Just consider at the telephone, the automobile, or for that matter, Wal-Mart. Apple has demonstrated for years, and so, to some degree, has Linux. Harry and Martha in Dubuque decide which products will enter the mainstream and last, not college kids editing movies or downloading music and DVDs, or using firewire ports to fiddle with video clips.
Apple, perenially aspiring to coolness, has always been the favorite computer of the non-hacker hip and the creative. And of many people (like me) whose entry onto the Net and Web has been made easier for the first programming language that really made sense to non-techies. Jobs' colorful, well-designed, fun and entertainment-centered iMacs and Powerbooks have been getting fabulous press for years. His idea to fuse the desktop with pop culture is, in fact, a powerful one. But it's too soon. The middle-class isn't ready for that. Most Americans don't need the 1,000 songs the iPod can store, and would rather go to the megaplex than edit movies on their computers.
So Apple accounts for only 4.5 per cent of new personal computer sales, according to Gartner Dataquest.
That's probably because Jobs hasn't addressed the central problem facing computer makers: the public doesn't trust them. Burned by years of outrageously poor tech support, increasingly expensive software, and hardware that's almost instantly outdated, middle-class consumers aren't the least bit interested in the coolest new new thing. They want computing that works like TV does -- that's easy to use, takes little space, costs relatively little money and works every time you turn it on, year after year. The public is increasingly wise to tech scams like hardware that's obsolete every 18 months and software that doesn't even last that long. Computers -- even the jazzy new iMac -- are a long way from reliability, and are profoundly mistrusted. In fact, it was only a couple of years ago that the candy-colored iMacs were the next cool thing. Now they're about as hip as Windows 98.
If you're a teenager, Web designer, film editor or visual arts major, or even a loving Grandma, it's great that the iMac allows you to create your own DVDs, organize and edit digital pictures, play CDs or convert MP3's, turn home videotapes into high-quality edited films. What's less clear is whether or not the public -- especially that critical middle-class chunk of it -- wants to do those things on a computer, or is confident about its ability to use machinery that's still more complicated and problematic than its makers seem able to admit.
For nearly a generation now, from Jobs to the makers of instant replay TV machines, some of the best minds in the tech world -- usually the younger ones -- have been crippled and misled by the confusion between what's cool and what's going to be successful, between what's neat and what's necessary. The survivors of the Net's first generation -- brilliant plodders like Gates and Steve Case -- understand quite well that they aren't the same thing, and have, as a result, increasingly come to dominate the Net.
money, money, money (Score:1, Interesting)
Personally, I tend to think that price tends to trump all of those concerns (which of course is something that perennially hurts Apple, I'm afraid)...
Form has a place too. (Score:4, Interesting)
Make the user happy and make the machine functional and you'll never go wrong.
Defining the Big Win (Score:4, Interesting)
forget market share, what about profit? growth? (Score:5, Interesting)
who cares about market share. The real question is, how do Apple's profit earnings compare to Microsoft and to Dell (need to compare both since Apple does OS and the box).
Also a good question to ask is, how does Apple's growth (in terms of profit percentage) compare to Dell and Microsoft?
If Apple has better growth/profit than Dell/Microsoft (D/M$), then 4.5% means good news - there's still 95.5% of the market that can potentially be consumed.
If Apple makes the same profit (in terms of bottom-line $$$) as Dell, but does it in only 4.5% market share as opposed to Dell's insanely huge 35% or whatever, then which is the stronger company?
Note, I havent looked up the numbers. I'm just suggesting that these are more interesting demographic/statistic metrics than merely repeating market share market share like a mantra. Market share isnt everything.
Product lifespans (Score:3, Interesting)
The big uses for computers for the average folk these days would be email, web browsing, word processing. For that, you can live on less than a gigahertz of speed. Things aren't going to improve that much with a top-of-the-line Athlon as compared to a discontinued PII. So if you don't need the extra speed, what differentiates the computers? RAM, HD, video card... style maybe.
What differentiates cars? Why don't car manufacturers spend gobs of cash throwing the newest "maximum speed notched up by 10 mph!" engines for their vehicles? Why do they, instead, focus on styling, CD players, automatic this-and-thats? Probably because you could make a car that can go 500 mph in the shape of a Civic, but honestly no one would need the extra speed (mainly because of traffic laws, but you know...)
So maybe the iMac's push for style (and very good specs, given its intended audience) is just Apple moving into the next arena of computers as stuff-of-life: the basic concept stays the same, but it's what you add in details that matters.
In that way, Apple is definitely ahead of the game.
Re:Total gibberish (Score:2, Interesting)
WARNING--I am not trolling
The problem I see is that the majority of the people he seems to be going for are really a niche market. Honestly, unless you are an artist or technophile, most of the products MS has out there will do what you need, and they are super easy to get. Ease of use for new computer users--sure, except that 90% of the people out there recommend Win9x or 2000 for them, since it is truly easy to use (think of it this way, is that grandma in Des Moines likely to slap a dvd in and make a movie, or is she more likely to have a crap machine SHE CAN AFFORD win 95 on it and dial up access for the ONLY thing she uses it for--email)? It is sad to see that most are ignorant of the choices they have. When your avergage user thinks of a computer, they think MS...
but, what do I know, I am just a stupid user
Re:"ONLY 4.5%" (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is Apple's retail manifesto:
Apple currently has around 5 percent market share in personal computers. This means that out of one hundred computer users, five of them use Macs. While that may not sound like a lot, it is actually higher than both BMW's and Mercedes-Benz's share of the automotive market. And it equals 25 million customers around the world using Macs.
But that's not enough for us. We want to convince those other 95 people that Macintosh offers a much simpler, richer, and more human-central computing experience. And we believe that the best way to do this is to open Apple stores right in their neighborhoods. Stores that let people experience firsthand what it's like to make a movie right on a Mac. Or burn a CD with their favorite music. Or take pictures with a digital camera and publish them on their personal website. Or select from over 300 software titles, including some of the best educational titles for kids. Or talk to a Macintosh 'genius' at our Genius Bar. Or watch a demonstration of Mac OS X, our revolutionary operating system, on our theater's giant 10-foot diagonal screen.
Because if only 5 of those remaining 95 people switch to Macs, we'll double our market share and, more importantly, earn the chance to delight another 25 million customers. Here we go
Shop different.
I stopped reading at the "AOL" Part (Score:3, Interesting)
When's the last time Mr. Katz watched TV and saw an AOL commercial? The blinking lights, teenagers shouting, "Wow, Cool, Instant Messenging!" and other things like that.
Sorry, Katz, the shift is definately towards the younger, hip audience, especially for AOL. Microsoft? Maybe not, but there's still focus on the gaming industry there as well. Not sure what the point of this rant was.
'Coolness' not the perennial Apple motto (Score:4, Interesting)
1984, enter the Mac. What was the motto? Anyone? Yes, it was "The Computer for the Rest of Us". The machine for everyman. Its aim was usability and simplicity. And it was. For a long time, the 128k Mac typified computing for the average slob. Not until 11 years later did M$ come close to this.
Steve Jobs did not find the mantra of coolness until returned from the wasteland of NeXT. The idea that a Mac was cool did not develop until the iMac. And it is what has succeeded.
I think that Jobs has matured, rather than devolved. He realizes that people won't buy insanely great things. Not en masse. But as long as 4-8% of people do, the company will be okay.
In 1993, people didn't buy usability. They don't in 2002. What people buy is familiarity and cheapness. And at that, M$ wins.
It all depends on your definition of "successful" (Score:3, Interesting)
...
The truly successful technologies and technology companies are utilitarian and dull -- decidedly non-hip.
Consider the following classes of people:
- artist
- craftsman
- engineer
- businessman
I believe they all have different "success" criteria when it comes to their "products/services/career". Don't assume the financial or market-share bottom line is the universal criteria. It probably is for the last category, but even then, that's a stereotype that not all businessmen care to follow.
And don't laugh now... even corporate entities don't need profitability or market share as their success criteria. Consider non-profits.
Thank god the world has people who consider hip and well-designed products to be successful even when they don't take over the world.
Jobs does get it, Katz doesn't. Your dad needs to. (Score:2, Interesting)
What I see as Apples problem is not with Apple it's self, it's Microsoft. Rather obvious yes, but here's what I see.
My Dad is a executive my step-mom is a school principle. My dad never has had much computer expirence, he always had secretaries that did it for him. Now though you need a personal computer to get any work done in the workplace. Your secretary and read your e-mail and reply to it for you unless you're a CEO or otherwise.
As a result my dad has had a computer forced on him. Thanks to the Microsoft monopoly Windows was thrust upon him and he learned the bare minimum he needed to know to use the damn thing. It was painful for him (and me) to learn it.
At his age he has an ingraned way of thinking about things and how they work. It's hard to retrain him.
He sees a lot of the things I do with my Macs when I'm over there. And he asks me can his computer do that. I say yeah but you have to add this to the computer and buy this software or you could buy a Mac, you need to get rid of that Intel 133 machine anyways, why not get a Mac?
His response is always macs are different I don't want to have to relearn how to use a computer. So, he's stuck in Microsoft.
My step-mother is another story. She was used to windows and knew how to use Office well enough. When she came out of retirement to become a principle again she was in a Mac school.
She initially resisted like my dad and made the school get her a Windows box. Here though the Microsoft monopoly backfired. She had so many compatilibity issues with the Windows to mac office translation she sent back the Windows box and get a Mac.
It took her all of a week to learn it. Everytime she called me for help I'd say "You're making it too hard, you're thinking windows, with the Mac just do this like you would in any other mac program." I'd also tell her "Don't be scared to play aorund with it, there's nothing you can do to the Mac that can't be undone."
After a month she stopped calling and has never looked back. Hopefully she can convince my dad that there are other alternatives. If this continues Apple can grow beyond it's 4.5 marketshare.
Apple has a great story, they have a solution that caters to geeks (the cool factor, OS X being a BSD derivative) and they're doing well there. What's needed is for the masses to break out of the Microsoft mentality and realize learning to Mac isn't that hard of an ordeal. I'd like to see Linux get more penetration too, but not on my Dads desk, it's not there yet for him. OS X is, and when he learns OS X he'll be more apt to give Linux a try as well.
OS X can be a stepping stone for the masses to Linux. Apple is not a foe.
This is going to have be fought with advocacy. The more people who stand up and say "Macs are easy to learn.", the better Apple will do.
Inexpensive and Reliable? (Score:2, Interesting)
M$ and AOL most certainly do not provide Reliability or even consistency (I just spent 30 mins rebooting my win98 system 4 times after an install, so I could do my daily quicken update) and the price/performance ration of linux is infinitely greater than that of M$. Most of Middle America simply does not know better, or needs a critical bit of software (Word or Quicken for example). Better solutions arise in sectors that do not have monopoly control (Palm)or in sudden paradigm shifts when the alternative design is sufficently superior (Internet, GUI's) as to render the previous solution irrelavant.
Apple's problem isn't poor reliability, and isn't even lower price performance ratio, it's mainly the betamax factor. Betamax was technically superior, but was a propreitary technology under the control of a single corporation, Sony. VHS won out because multiple corporations could licence and produce the standard and Sony couldn't out-market the competition.
Apple missed the boat on clones and licencing, and is now stuck in a position where licencing would simply cannibalize their limited market share.
Hook 'em while they're young (Score:2, Interesting)
Hardware Quality (Score:2, Interesting)
I will say though that the hardware is absolutely top notch. I work at my Comm College doing Mac and PC Tech support for the Art and Computer Graphics departments. We just sent out one of our almost 2 yr old G4's for the first time(power supply problem). These are systems that are used 6 days a week for nearly 14 hours a day doing heavy video editng, fairly high poly rendering, quite a bit of photoshop work, and Poster sized Illustrator and Freehand files(now if we could just get Postscript 3 printers that will actually print half of the nifty effects).
You have to admit that isn't bad, especially considering this is a public Comm College and the machines aren't exactly treated nicely all the time.
The Win2k labs on the otherhand... Constant problems caused by what amounts to "lowest bidder" hardware.
Re:hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
The thing is- I don't think most people know enough about computers to even TELL when they are getting the most bang for their buck. I can guarantee you my parents don't (I think the new iMac is too weird for my Dad, though).
But anyway, to explain my point in the comment above- say you buy a computer to edit home movies. What does it matter if its a Athalon 8.5 GHz, with 1 Tb of RAM, if it edits movies just the same, with the same ease as the iMac? If it accomplishes the goal for the machine, in the same time, with the same ease of use (or better) - why should you care what's under the hood? That is the philosophy of most Apple users (note: I am not an Apple user). That's what I'm getting at in my comment above. Apple people simply don't care if they can get a PC that's faster. If this one edits video (or whatever) easier, with less errors/setup, they want it. Which is a viable point of view, especially if you don't know enough to troubleshoot a computer.
I can see someone buying an iMac for their kid who wants to play with editing home movies, moreso than I can see them buying a eMachine and then the DV editing card, then Premiere...
It's not just you either, I see it all over these comments, "Well those speakers are good enough for most people" or "Most people don't need to expand their systems" or "Most people are blah blah blah". While this might have a shred of truth, it's not the way consumers think.
More than a shred. My parents have NEVER upgraded any of the computers they've owned. None of the various non-computer-geek girls I've dated have, either. Neither have most of my non-computer geek friends. The most any of them do, generally, is buy peripherals. Maybe these people are weird- I mean, I upgrade my boxes all the time and you probably do, too- but I tend to think we are the weird ones.
Again, as I said... It remains to be seen whether Apple will be successful with their strategy. I don't own a Mac. I might get one, used, for Final Cut Pro purposes, MAYBE. Definitely not an iMac, though. Remeber, too... As long as Apple doesn't LOSE their faithful, they stay a viable company. That's the main thing to them, pleasing the "MacAddicts".
In summary (Score:5, Interesting)
Standardized up the wazoo, gives pretty good service, aimed squarely at middle-class consumers that want value and reliability at not too high of a price.
Extremely standardized (to the lowest level), very cheap... aimed at consumers who want/need the product (be it food, cars, computers) at the least cost. Products aren't as reliable and may produce breakdowns as a side effect (gastric or mechanical). Product as a commodity.
Not bad products, aimed at their target segments (companies that need lots of them) mostly for price and cost of ownership (although in Compaq's case, that's debatable).
Aimed at upscale, upper-middle and upper class image-conscious consumers who usually don't know too much about the product they're buying. Product hallmarks are that it looks cool, nobody will look down on you for buying their products (except the next segment), they're usually overpriced, it looks cool, and they have good reliability, service, and ease of use. Did I mention it looks cool? Underneath the appearance, they have pretty standard, very good quality components.
Products that are usually upgraded from stock products by people with a high knowledge of what they're doing with it. In Mom's case, she goes to the grocery store and cooks some damn fine pasta from ingredients she gets there. Sometimes she orders ingredients from specialized stores. In the computer geek's case, they take a stock computer (or build one themselves) and replace and upgrade the parts they choose. And we all have a car geek friend who can tell the 20 different modifications to a '69 Mustang just by listening when someone revs it up. (Sometimes we are that person.)
And how can you summarize another long-winded Katz article and lots and lots of posts?
To each company their own market segment. Business 101.
Re:"ONLY 4.5%" (Score:4, Interesting)
Donald Norman Begs to Differ ... (Score:4, Interesting)
In a brief piece on the BBC web site [bbc.co.uk], Donald Norman offers this opinion of Apple and the new iMac:
Apple is the best company in the world to make this because Apple understands consumers, understands design and understands computers.
Steve M
Hell Yes (Score:3, Interesting)
There is plenty of astute commentary, which Katz has apparently not bothered to read nor absorb, on how MS won the desktop battle. It was over and above all a business victory, not a technical one. The only thing easy about AOL and Windows is that they're easy to buy. The so-called "ease of use" falls into two categories: familiarity due to dominance of the market share, and being forced into limited options of what you can actually do by poorly designed software.
I'm not a Mac fanatic. I've used both systems extensively and all computers basically suck to work with, because they're like Model T's: very early phases of a burgeoning technology. I was convinced enough to put in an early order for a new iMac because it was a truly different entity from the usual desktop monolith, because it was a powerful computer for an acceptable price, and because it meant I could stay away from Windows XP. Having seen plenty of OSX and XP there is no question whatsoever what is the OS I'd rather own.
It is the first new computer I've purchased, although I've owned or borrowed several and been working with computers near-daily for the last 16 years. Not a bad accomplishment for Mr. Jobs.
All this being said, I'm sick to the teeth of hearing about Steve Jobs' "attitude," about hipness, squareness, personality, and market shares. I don't care if Steve Jobs is an egomaniac or obsessed with being the hippest. I don't care if he's a maverick just to satisfy some mental hang-up. Would someone just review the damn computer?!
Katz is a moron (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Apple has the best tech support of any company out there. I recently had a problem with my 3 year old 21" Apple Studio Display (still under Apple extended warranty)... it was sent to Apple overnight ($500 on their dime) and was back with me in less than a week (this is a 100lb monitor mind you).
2) iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD... all free, all best in class. Nuff said.
3) And if their hardware is almost instantly outdated, how come my 3 year old g4 500 runs Return to Castle Wolfenstein 1024*768 at more than acceptable framerates using normal settings? No small feat by my estimation.
Reply to Katz's Monopoly-based Conclusion (Score:2, Interesting)
And all for about the same price as a mid-to-high level P.C.! Of course the P.C. would then incur additional expenses to begin to have the same funtionality as the iMac...
What's less clear is whether or not the public -- especially that critical middle-class chunk of it -- wants to do those things on a computer,
"What's less clear is whether or not the public -- especially the critical middle-class chunk of it -- wants a mouse and a GUI and a 32-bit operating system like the Mac!" -- P.C.-apologist circa 1985.
or is confident about its ability to use machinery that's still more complicated and problematic than its makers seem able to admit.
But somehow Microsoft's first few attempts are going to be on-par... or "better" than what Apple has now: see Windows 1.0, Windows 2.0, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1, etc.
For nearly a generation now, from Jobs to the makers of instant replay TV machines, some of the best minds in the tech world -- usually the younger ones -- have been crippled and misled by the confusion between what's cool and what's going to be successful, between what's neat and what's necessary.
For nearly a generation now, some of the most mediocre minds in the tech world -- usually the older ones -- have been crippled and misled by Microsoft marketting: "What's cool, neat, useful, robust, and availble now is not necessary... wait and test our beta-version copy of this, besides we know all the secret Windows API's!"
The survivors of the Net's first generation -- brilliant plodders like Gates and Steve Case -- understand quite well that they aren't the same thing, and have, as a result, increasingly come to dominate the Net.
Ha! Calling Gates a "survivor" of the Net's first generation is like calling Saddam Hussein the survivor of his own first wave of Kurdish/ethnic cleansing! The only thing Microsoft understands is this:
Re:Frank Lloyd Wright... (Score:3, Interesting)
However this begs the question on how to define the function of the computer.
Ultimately the function of the internals is computational power and the throughput of data through the system. This of course should be the primary concern in the design or form of the components.
However, I must also say that there are more elemental functions that must also be taken into account. The swiveling LCD for example greatly succeeds in its implimentation of a zero footprint monitor that can be placed in almost any position you like, however, it fails it the need for easy replacement and maintenance. So basically what I'm saying is that there are many functions of the computer as a whole that need to be addressed and far too many people only address the functions they are accustomed to using.
Re:Ease of Use (Score:2, Interesting)
This is directly contrary to my experiences with Macs. The last Mac I used was a G3 running OS 8, so things may have changed since then, but it was REALLY bad. Hard locks all the time, I'm talking 4-5 times a day, and this thing locked up so hard that even the power switch wouldn't work and I had to crawl under the desk and unplug the thing from the wall. A reset switch would have been nice, but I never found one. Not even a switch on the PSU like most of the Current ATX ones have. The only other computer I used at the time was an Acer P-120 running Windows 95A (by all accounts the buggiest OS ever produced). It only crashed on me about once a week (usually Netscape, but that's a whole different gripe), and only hard locked to the point where I had to hit the reset switch twice in 2 years.
On top of that it took us forever to get this G3 to recognize the (external) modem that it came with (direct from Apple). All the admin tools are totally buried, which I've always found extremely irritating. There's no such thing as perfection. Give me access to the tools I need to fix your product when it breaks and I'll be a happy customer. Try and pretend nothing ever goes wrong with your product and I'll never buy it again, which is exactly what Apple did.
Cool PC's and laptop draw additional users. But, it's not all about that at Apple.
That's exactly what Macs are about, because that's what the Mac market wants. Macs are most popular with gaphics people. How do you sell to graphics people? Make something that looks cool. I'll admit that ease and power were once the domain of Apple, but they lost the usability crown years ago to an OS that could display multiple toolbars at the same time (Windows), and they gave up their last hold on the power crown when they switched from SCSI to IDE (sorry, but the G4 just doesn't keep up for anything other than Photoshop). The caveat here is that I'm only considering systems that have survived, and thus ignoring the Amiga, which IMHO topped Apple on both fronts.
The growth of Mac seems inevitable as it becomes as BSD box with the coolest hardware and the most capabilities.
Right... because BSD is such a popular OS...
Sorry, I don't mean that as flamebait, but you have to admit it's a pretty head-in-the-clouds statement. I think it'll take another year for Apple to get all their ducks lined up behind OS X. They're building on a solid foundation this time, but I'll have to see where they're able to take it before I'll buy into the hype. OS X has recieved high marks from my personal *nix guru, though, which is the only reason I'm even paying it any attention.
It is not understanding PC users that brings Gates to the top. It is the fact that he uses monopolistic powers and bully tactics to force people and competitors to use his sytems.
You have this exactly backwards. One has to have a monopoly before one can abuse it, and Microsoft didn't spring forth whole from the computer industry like Athena from Zeus' head. Jobs and Gates both knew what they had to do, people buy what they're familiar with. Jobs went for the schools and Gates went for the business world. Those were both places where people were going to be familiarized with computers. Gates won because the people with jobs are the ones who have the money to buy stuff, and very few adults are ready to throw down a couple thousand dollars on the word of a 12 year old. The ones with money are the ones who the make decisions, and they were more familiar with MS/IBM than Apple.
Gates understood PC users and what would get them to buy his product, and that's what put him the position where he could use "monopolistic powers and bully tactics".
Flawed premise (Score:2, Interesting)
The premise in the above article that people want ease-of-use above all is negated by the conventional wisdom regarding micro-computers, is incorrect. It simply does not fit the historical facts. Apple's first generation of computers [Apple II] followed by the Macintosh were easier to use than the equivalent micro computer of the time. Ease-of-use encompasses many factors such as ergonmics, reliability, performance and appeal. Ask a member of the "middle class" and he/she will tell you the Macintosh is a "better" product. It is easier to use. If anything would turn people off from using computers, it is Microsoft's Windows 95 constantly crashing when they write a letter to Grandma.
However, ease-of-use is not what the market is primarily interested in.
The reason why Apple has 4.5% of the market is similar to BMW's 4% share of their market: Their product is expensive compared to others. Granted, cars and computers function under different market forces but the fundamental principle of price still applies. [Also, they f*cked up their dealer program, pissed off their software developers and got out manuevered by Microsoft in the application and OS market.] When the typical person is buying a "computer" they are trying to get the biggest bang for the buck. Apple doesn't compare. Their computers are expensive. This maintains Apple's extremely high gross margins.
Being utilitarian and dull has little to do with success or failure in the computer industry. Pricing does. Perhaps Mr. Katz should take a refresher course in economics before he attempts to analyze an example of the free market.
Thank you for your time.
Re:Total gibberish (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think its a stretch to for Jobs to concede that MS won the operating system war - thats why he is trying to fight the total user experience war - something MS can't do unless it wants to start making boxes.
Yes, and to amplify on this a little more, one should ask why the various major features were added to MacOS X versus Windows XP. In the case of MacOS, virtually every feature was added to enhance the user experience. Apple is pretty good at paying attention to detail and making life easier for the users. Microsoft, on the other hand, added most of the big new features to XP in order to lock it's users into Windows, to increase revenues, and to kill competitors. The Windows UI is still a hodgepodge, and Windows applications follow loose guidelines if any with regard to user interface.
The Mac has some major advantages (Unix!), and my guess is that Apple will gain significant marketshare this year. The thing that Katz most seemed to miss is that Apple is good at making complex tasks simpler. That is the exact thing required in order for the Mac to begin displacing Windows in the home of the proverbial Joe Sixpack.
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Re:"ONLY 4.5%" (Score:1, Interesting)
This is exactly what I was talking about. Although I agree that these are all nice easy, logical things to do. However, these are all things you cannot do on Windows, and no secretary has ever been told they can do this. My point is that the environments are different and a non-techie person has trouble figuring out the new system.
I know of 6 people who sat down in front of OS X for 5 minutes at the Apple Store or at a friends place and have decided to sell their Windows machines (many of which are under a year old) for new Macs and OS X. These are geeks and teachers mostly who have never used anything but Windows or Unix and immediately recognized how much friendlier OS X felt.. A number of the researchers here have purchased Macs for their desks. They code in project builder (which are generally run on Athalon boxes running Linux), write papers using TexShop (PDFLaTeX), touch up figures using Adobe Illustrator for OS X, read the interdepartmental memos using Word v.X, and maintain their grades in an Excel v.X spreadsheet... The point is that a lot of people are seeing Macs and saying "Wow! You mean I just drag and drop things where I want them and it works? Damn!! That's cool!" and that's what Apple is selling...
Great. Good for you. Good for them. But I was NOT disputing the fact that Mac OS X is rather good. In fact you seem to be replying to an argument which I never started.
In fact to be honest, I kinda wish I could afford a mac, mainly because the NeXT-like oo-programming environment looks like it's going to be the future (years ahead of everyone else), and the heavy encouragement of using Objective-C (which is an absolutely beautiful language).
Actually I was discussing this with a friend the other day. I was saying that even if I did have the money to buy a mac, I probably would not get one, because if I DID have that kind of money, there are better things I could do with it. That's one of the troubles of macs if you ask me, they are just expensive enough to not make it worth it. Anyway, I'm not meaning to start a flamewar.
OS X is useful for me, Windows is not (Score:3, Interesting)
Right on! Windows and MS Office are very well suited for doing your basic run of the mill office work. Windows boxes provide a cheap and standardized way to fill your office full of machines that you can easily find minimum wages workers to run and do routine office chores.
But an iMac with OS X is suited better for other "niche" markets. Sure theres the Artist/Musician market that everyone says is Mac land. But now with iPhoto and iMovie they are also well suited for the doting parent market which is full of people like me with pictures and home movies I want to get out to far flung relatives without spending hundreds of dollars for extra software that I'll have to fiddle with to get working the way I want anyway. For me the extra cost of the iMac is offset by the software that it comes with that will let me quickly cobble together photo albums, dvds, and CD-roms with movies on them to send out to the extended family thousands of miles away.
I also happen to be in another niche market. I'm one of those people that uses computers for hard core number crunching (ya know the sort of work that got computers called "computers" in the first place). The iMac has a G4 with its AltVec vectorization routines and that means I can now have a machine at home that will outperform the $10,000 HP workstation sitting on my desk at work. The iMac really is like a mini supercomputer and I start drooling when I start thinking how much time this little thing could save me. Granted Linux boxen and Linux clusters can reach comparable performance levels to G4 macs... but with a mac I don't have to do any work to set up the system or to keep it up. (I've run Linux and I like it, but the laziness in me prefers OS X) With OS X I have a full-on UNIX development environment right out of the box. Besides, I'm betting that the G5 will pull ahead of the Pentium-4 in terms of number crunching ability (measured in flops not megahertz), so I'm porting my software from the HP to the Mac hoping I'll get a G5 at work with the next replenishmnet cycle.
Finally, I have to give OS X credit for finally making me like GUIs. I always hated hunting through mazes of menus to change a setting where in UNIX I could just edit a config file or type a command line argument. So far my experience with OS X has been that I get the power of the command line very well integrated with the GUI. Heck, I can even drag and drop icons into the terminal window and get the full path to a file and that is sooo sweet.
Re:Total gibberish (Score:3, Interesting)
Steve Case and Bill Gates are laughing all the way to the bank because they've managed to sell millions of people inferior products. The knowledgable hate them, sure, but the mainstream? It's so easy to use, no wonder it's number one.
Steve Jobs is different. He doesn't want to damn the world and get rich quick. He wants to change the world, and for the better. That's been his goal ever since he started stealing executives away from sugar-water companies, since before that, marketing a product that no one knew anything about to the masses.
Steve Jobs is not doing what Bill Gates et. al. are doing because they only care about the money, and they're too blinded by greed and arrogance to see that their product is inferior and unreliable (I honestly do believe that Gates thinks he is doing the world a great favour with Windows; I don't think he sees things from our point of view).
So yes, Jobs and Gates may both be lunatics who refuse to see reality, but the reality Gates refuses to see is substandard, overpticed software. The reality that Jobs fails to see is that you can't get rich by making quality products and competing fairly on style and reliability.
Remember what happened the last time a Steve (in this case Woz) refused to see reality? He built a personal computer in a garage and enabled Jobs to start the entire personal computer revolution that we can't live without today.
I don't know about you, but my money's on Apple.
--Dan
A PC and/or Software Success Formula (Score:2, Interesting)
People go with what they know.
Of the 4.whatever% of the market share that owns Apple Computer, I would bet 90% of them use or have used an Apple as part of their job or education.
The 80something% of users who run Windows at home, at some point have used Windows at work or school as well.
The history behind this is plain to everyone who has been in the industry for awhile, or saw Pirates of Silicon Valley. Simply put: When the market needed a business platform, IBM and Microsoft were there and Apple was too busy with the home-market. When the market needed a home platform, Microsoft was there again and Apple was...somewhere else.
Point being, it does not matter what the middle-class consumer wants or needs. It doesn't matter who makes the best PC or OS. It doesn't matter which products in any category is the newest, coolest, or least expensive.
It matters that people are creatures of habit, and will use what they know.
If you just want to code, don't buy a new Mac... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PC market is not an election (Score:3, Interesting)
> produce Mac hardware is Apple. That
> sounds pretty exclusive to me.
The only company that has the right to produce Presario hardware is Compaq. The only company that has the right to produce Windows operating systems is Microsoft. Your point is meaningless. You think of a "Wintel PC" as an open cake (x86 hardware) with closed icing (Windows). On the Mac, the open cake goes up past the hardware well into the OS, where all of the core is open source and exposed to any user who wants in. Then the closed icing is the Aqua GUI. However, Aqua pays you back for its closed nature with really defined GUI standards and a ton of great, mature Mac software, and it doesn't ask you to leave the file system and networking in a closed layer where one company can add "content protection" or sanction apps that ignore network security.
Mac hardware has evolved over the past five years, and standards are always favored. High speed peripherals are 1394, low speed ones are USB. Wired networking is Ethernet in the consumer machines, and Gigabit Ethernet in the pro machines. Wireless networking is 802.11, with every machine having built-in antennaes and an internal spot for the networking hardware. Displays are DVI. VGA, S-Video, and composite-video (TV) outs are there for convenience also. RAM, HD, etc. are all standard components. Graphics are either NVIDIA or ATI. Everything you see on the screen is a PDF. There is also a PostScript interpreter built-in. The Mac's "BIOS" is an international standard that's also used by Sun (Open Firmware). The file system and app platform is fully Unicode
Get over your out-of-date Microsoft FUD. "Proprietary" is about as meaningful an adjective as "terrorist" or "drug lord". The terms mean NOTHING. They are used as argument enders because there's no reason in them. They destroy debate and discussion rather than advancing them. You don't want to be locked into one vendor, so make standard documents on a standards-based system. If, in the future, you switch away from Apple, all of your documents and peripherals will go with you.
Humor: The Onion's Take (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out this piece from the Onion [theonion.com] poking some fun at the new iMac. I especially like "special drool tray catches saliva of enthralled technogeeks."
'Way off Target, Katz (Score:1, Interesting)
Let me say something first. I'm not a Mac user, and have never even owned a Mac: I use Windows every day. But as part of that group of "Harry and Martha Dubuques" who "isn't ready for it" as Katz says, I've been seriously thinking of getting my first Macintosh. And I think Katz is underestimating the Harry and Martha Dubuques of this world - how does he know what we're ready for? I guess he does and that's why he's running a successful computer company and little Stevie is not.
Katz also has the most narrow definition of success. Apparently, if you're not the monopoly, you're not successful. So Linux is also an abject failure because of market share? I would have to say in many respects, Linux is a great success despite a low market share. And so is Apple; our entire computing experiences - from our GUIs to software to hardware - have been heavily influenced by Apple, even if we've never used a Mac before. And as was recently and wisely stated, success in the computing industry is spelled "survival". From that perspective, Apple is not just successful, but flush with profits when other, more "successful" computer companies may not survive for much longer.
Katz seems to say that Apple focusses on being cool, while MS and Compaq focus on being functional. This thinking is wrong: cool and functional are not exclusive. Isn't it both cool and functional to burn the DVDs you want with ease? Isn't it both cool and functional to have a small computer that dosen't take up half your desk space? "But the middle class, for years abused and exploited by the arrogant tech industry [...] wants easy of use, safety, utility." And is this not exactly what Apple is giving them? How utilitarian is Apache? Or easy to use is iTunes? How much safer is a stable computer that is immune to 97% of viruses out there? The list of contraditions to Katz's arguments is endless.
Katz is right with one thing: Apple won't Take Over the World. They may never even achieve dominance on the desktop. But I don't give a rat's ass. So long as they survive and innovate that spells success to me.
Think Marketshare (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a perfect, highly unscientific example of this. I teach an introduction to Macintosh course in the art department of a local college. This course is a prerequisite to all the other design courses in the curriculum since all the classes are Mac-based. On average, less than 5% of my students have ever used a non-Microsoft OS and, in fact, most of these students thought "Windows" and "Computer" were synonymous -they were unaware you could even have one without the other.
Despite this demographic skew, at the conclusion of the course around 90% of my students stated that they were planning to switch from Windows to Macintosh. Now the question is, were the students switching because they liked the Mac better or because everyone in the art department used Macs? Part two of the question? Does it matter?
Marketshare = success. Plain and simple.
the logic of jon katz (Score:5, Interesting)
jon katz writes:
"Burned by years of outrageously poor tech support, increasingly expensive software, and hardware that's almost instantly outdated, middle-class consumers aren't the least bit interested in the coolest new new thing. They want computing that works like TV does -- that's easy to use, takes little space, costs relatively little money and works every time you turn it on, year after year. The public is increasingly wise to tech scams like hardware that's obsolete every 18 months and software that doesn't even last that long."
how does this make sense in his greater argument? apple seems to be the only manufacturer and large os retailer that is doing anything about these issues. so is apple addressing these concerns and is thus losing the battle? or are they not but others are? or nobody is?
point by point commentary (slashdot take-down style)
"Burned by years of outrageously poor tech support...
apple has excellent tech support and wins accolades both over the phone and at the apple store. what makes it even better is that their products are easier to provide tech support for.
increasingly expensive software and hardware,
final cut pro has certainly lowered the cost of professional-level video editing by about $50 000. and the iapps are the best consumer applications of their type on the market, all free. apple hardware has not risen in price, it has fallen. the imac configuration last year offered a slower processor for $4500. this year it sells for $1800. impressive.
that's almost instantly outdated,
apple hardware retains its value in resale better than anyone else and remains in service longer. in fact, one of apple's problems has been that their hardware (and software) last too long. users don;t want to upgrade because their machine is doing for them.
middle-class consumers aren't the least bit interested in the coolest new new thing.
six million imac owners and 150 000 ipod owners say otherwise.
They want computing that works like TV does -- that's easy to use, takes little space, costs relatively little money and works every time you turn it on, year after year.
the mac works more like a tv than anyone else's box, more reliably. (i will remind jon that the whole reason we are using computers instead of watching tv is because computers are more complex and challenge us in ways that tv cannot (the info flows two ways here), and that there will be trade-offs in ease of use.) if the tv could do it, why isn't it? if someone is doing this better than apple, why aren't they?
anyway, my point, jon, is that you can't have it both ways. either apple is going in the right direction and you've defeated your own argument or they aren't and you just aren't paying attention. or everybody is going in the wrong direction which doesn't make for much of an argument.
either way you lose. what makes you lose even harder is that you walked into it.
maybe apple's market position has to do with other factors you haven't cared to comment upon?
maybe.
Re:PC market is not an election (Score:2, Interesting)