Apple Los Gatos
It is both professionally and personally satisfying to randomly discover that an Apple store is being opened in your home town.
This store is 2 doors down from the coffee shop where I’m written most of the significant letters in my life. It is also 25 doors down from the dive bar which serves the world’s best Kamikazes… in a pint glass.
There is absolutely no way to take a shot of this facade without that flippin’ tree, lamp post, and garbage can. Also, it is unclear where they’ll be placing 32 foot glass cube, but my vote is to raze the nearby Petroglyphs.
Silver Bullet: No Games for the Mac
I can remember the exact moment when I knew Netscape was Screwed. It was an email from an engineer who attended a technology preview of Internet Explorer 3 and the bevy of other Internet technologies Microsoft had rallied behind following Bill Gates’ famous “Internet Wave” email.
I don’t remember the specifics of the email, but it read something like this, “IE3 does everything that Netscape Navigator does… it does it faster.. and it does a lot more… and they’re giving it away for free” Up until then, Microsoft had been tossing together half-hearted browser efforts with IE1 and IE2, but no one took them seriously because everyone knows it takes Microsoft three major releases to get anything right. Netscape dominated the browser space and thanks to a lucrative IPO, we had the cash and confidence to further that domination.
Most engineers didn’t sweat the IE3 email. They believed, “We’re leaner, we’re faster, we’re better.” I, on the other hand, was still stinging from my Borland days when we thought the same thing about Microsoft’s Office strategy and then promptly received a two year beat down which resulted in the dismantling of Borland’s office application organization.
I was watching with interest while Netscape engineering was singing our happy song of Monopolisitic Pride and our marketing department began to spin the message coming from Redmond, “We are Microsoft, we get the Internet, and we’re coming.”
This type of message coming from Microsoft is called FUD. It’s an acronym because we technology types measure progress by the number of useless acronyms we’ve created to describe what the hell we’re doing. The acronym is “Fear Uncertainty [and] Doubt”. FUD is usually an outrageous claim, an annoying fact, or an untrue opinion… they are statements which are designed to push someone else’s buttons and they are terribly fun to mull over. Some other examples of juicy FUD:
- Macs are more expensive.
- The US of A never landed on the moon.
- Lee Harvey Oswald was not a lone assassin.
- Windows is virus-plagued.
You get the idea. FUD is not intended to be a statement of fact even though it might be true. They are statements designed to tap emotion and get people talking and/or yelling. FUD is viral, FUD is sticky, and FUD rarely goes away.
At Netscape, marketing did battle with with FUD with a curious non-acronym. The answer was a Silver Bullet… the only way to answer FUD. A Silver Bullet is a well reasoned answered to whatever lame questions the FUD implicitly asks. Let’s see how it worked then and then we’ll see how it works now.
One of the key advantages Netscape had in the early browser wars was cross-platform support. Netscape Navigator ran on Windows, Mac OS 9, and various flavors of Unix. Of course, Microsoft knew this, so they claimed, “We’re developing Internet Explorer for Unix and here’s the company that’s doing the port!” The press would then rush over to Netscape, FUD in hand, and ask, “Whaddya think?” THe response would be the carefully research Silver Bullet for IE Unix support which read something like, “IE3 hasn’t even shipped for Windows, let alone Solaris or HP/UX. Also what kind of track record does Microsoft have shipping Unix products? None. Lastly, has anyone even bothered to pick up the phone and call this company that is porting WINDOWS CODE TO UNIX? HELLO?” The press would nod vigorously and rush back to Redmond, “Well, Netscape says you’re full of shit…” And the cycle continues.
Here’s another Silver Bullet with different chunk of FUD: “There are no games for Mac OS X”
This is pervasive FUD… particularly among younger computer buyers who live for the latest and greatest is key to existence. It’s also untrue. There are many games, but that’s not really the question. The FUD is “There are no good games for Mac OS X” and that’s a blatant lie. What is true is that a majority of the games produced for the PC do not show up on the Mac platform, but the majority of the games produced for the PC are crap, so this isn’t a big deal. I’ll explain.
I’m current playing Knights of the Old Republic. This was voted Game of the Year by one of the bazillion game magazines out there. I’ll admit even with a dual G4 in hand, I was concerned that the quality of the games ported to Mac OS x was going suffer. This was reenforced by my first experience with a Mac game, Sim City 4. The game was plagued with annoying graphics issues which were only somewhat addressed by a subsequent patch. Still, that was one game.
Knights of the Old Republic just rocks. Amazing sound, graphics, and playability. My fear that I’d constantly be aware I was sitting at my Mac due to game limitations has vanished. I lose myself with my dual lightsabres and I kick major ass and becoming totally lost in a game is the requirement of a compelling gaming experience.
Still, one game doesn’t not a gaming platform make. More good news. I picked up Knights after I’d completed Neverwinter Nights… another game of the year from a couple of years back. I had the same level of satisfaction with the Neverwinter that I had with Knights and I’m officially calling two great games for Mac OS X a streak.
The first part of the Silver Bullet is this. Yes, I’m guessing there are about 1/10th of the games there are for the PC. Believe it or not, that’s good news because the games which are being developed for the Mac are… wait for it… the good ones. Why in the world would Joe_PCGame_Maker push a crappy game on the Mac platform? They’re only going to invest in games which are proven sellers. This means, on average, if you are going to grab a random Mac game off the shelf, the overall quality/playability has got to be higher.
Avid gamers are still going to snoot it up when it comes to Mac OS X because most new games don’t show up on the Mac platform and that is absolutely correct. You can say the same thing about the PC when it comes to the Playstation or the XBox … and that’s the ultimate Silver Bullet: When you’re buying a Mac, you’re not buying it because you want a new game machine… you’re buying the Apple experience. Your primary function on this hardware is not playing games, it’s development, graphic design, video/music editing, or just about anything else you want out of a personal computer. When you’re done with whatever you’re doing and you’re done playing Halo 2 on your Xbox… there are some great games for your Mac.
When you tell someone you’re buying a Mac and they throw the No_Mac_Game FUD in your face, they’re being lazy. Someone, somewhere, at some time, told them that “Mac Games Suck” and that’s simple idea to remember. FUD paints a world of black and white and the good news is it’s all gray people.
Spam Death, Briefly
I am very pleased with Mail’s ability to handle spam. I’ve got three different accounts of various ages pointed at a single account that is used by Mail. This meta-account receives a huge amount of spam, most of which is filtered nicely into nothingness.
One strain of spam that has been getting through for the past few weeks has been a slew of mortgage, loan, and financial crap. Getting frustrated, I looked at the Junk Mail pref and looked at what knobs and dials were available. Turns out there is one which immediately handled the problem. Out of the box, Mail exempts messages messages addressed using my full name and this was how this class of spam was getting through.
I’ve been running with the modified rule set for three days now and it’s nabbed everything with only one moderate false positive.
Your mileage may vary.
WWDC @ Moscone
I’m going to be up at WWDC for various days next week. If you’re going to be there, please drop me a line. I’d love to met fellow Apple-types in a heavily geeked environment.
[Update]: Yes, I am at WWDC all week. Yes, the wireless network there is swamped. Yes. G5, iSight, Expose… droooooooooooooool. That is all.
[Update]: Notice three of the top 5 Popdex entries to your right (as of 11:16am) are Apple related. Further proof of a disproportionate amount of Apple-zealots in the weblog community.
[Last Update]: If you’re at WWDC and will be traveling down to the Apple campus today for the Bash, I’ll be hovering around the Server table… preferably with a beer in one hand… possibly two. Look for the goofy glasses.
First Minutes of iTunes 4
There are lots of Macs in my office and everyone is furiously downloading iTunes 4 to check out the new software as well as the music store.
I’ve only tinkered with the store briefly… what has been fascinating is watching the playlists of co-workers appear in my shared music folder. Wow. Until this morning, I thought I had a lot of MP3s on my machine… Damn.
Currently, I have shared list on shuffle. I’m listening to country western — I do not, in fact, like country western music. I think I’ll keep running total of the size (by number of songs) of each of the libraries which show up:
516 (mine), 1990, 3211, 7, 486, 311, 240, 987, 2111, 135…
[Update]: Just noticed that iTunes maxes out the number of folks who can stream from your music @ 5. It’s unclear whether this is a performance check or ‘we don’t want you to be a radio station’ check. A quick examination via top revealed nothing interesting about the machine currently stream for five folks.
… the ads are up.
Feature request: Now that I know five people are listening to music on my machine, I’d really like to know what they’re listening to. Hacking commences…
… First test of the iTune music library. I was looking for one song off the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. Not available — none of the album. Anyone know whether 200k songs is a lot or a little?
… My first run-in with the copyright infringement. I was randomly playing songs from someone’s else playfilist when I received the dialog “This computer is not authorized to play “Insert song here”. It asked for my .Mac account which I submitted. I was then presented with several pages of account verification forms which finished with a request for credit card information. HERE’S THE CONFUSING PART: Was I about to be billed for the song which was RANDOMLY being played or I was I just authorizing my Mac to listen to the song? If it was just authorization, why was I being asked for credit card information?
[(Not) Last Update]: The part of the iTunes story which is compelling is the licensing terms w/ the content. “..you can play your music on up to three computers, enjoy unlimited synching with your iPods, burn unlimited CDs of individual songs, and burn unchanged playlists up to 10 times each.” These are, by far, the best terms you can get for a music service. The big question is how are they enforcing playing music on three machines? I understand that as long as you’re in iTunes they can enforce the terms as they control a player, but is there anything preventing me from pushing a purchased MP3 to a PC? To a Mac using a different player? Is there any attempt at digital rights management?
[File Sharing Update]: iTunes 4 listens on port 3689 for file sharing requests (FYI: if you’re behind a firewall, you need to open this up in order to share) That port appears to be serving HTTP — I’m currently TCPDUMPing to see if I can slap together some Perl to watch what people are listening to on my machine.
… Continued hacking on port 3689. Rough conclusions… DAAP server = Digital Audio Access Control = Apple’s DRM solution? Further investigation leads us to believe DAAP is related to the Rendezvous technology. MOVE ALONG. NOTHING TO SEE HERE.
Doesn’t iTunes require Quicktime? Perhaps the file sharing is based on Quicktime streaming server? Perhaps there is documentation on the developer network?
… MacRumors posted a nice summary of the DRM in iTunes 4.
… How to create links to the iTunes store
Apple Music Service
CNet is reporting that Apple is scheduling a music event for April 28th where the company may debut a new online music service.
Briefly.
#1) I really want to pay for music. Honest. I really do.
#2) File sharing has been a delightful disruptive technology that has torpedoed the music industry. I like torpedoes because a) you hear them coming b) there isn’t much you can do and c) explosions are cool.
#3) No one has put together what I would consider to be a reasonable alternative. $.99 has been rumored to be the price point for Apple music service.. that makes a decent amount of sense, but if the service puts any restrictions on what I can do with my purchase… buh-bye.
Mac OS X Tweakin'
The planets are in alignment today and all managers are either on vacation or otherwise busy. My calendar is blissfully devoid of meetings and I’ve moved from my HIGH PRIORITY to do list onto my MEDIUM PRIORITY list which gets touched, maybe, once or twice a month.
So far today, I’ve…
- Tinkered with Python
- Installed the latest version of VIM (finally)
- Combed through various lists of “cool Mac OS X applications” to see if there is anything worth paying attention (see below: LITESWITCH)
- Investigated various TCP flow monitoring tools
- Hacked on my .tcshrc script
Other than having the peace of mind that my login shell is nice and clean, the only other significant discovery was the LiteSwitch applications which I found courtesy of Mark Liyanage.
Mark comments:
The authors of this utility really “got it” how such an application-switching program has to look and feel on Mac OS X, it seems like it came straight from Apple.
Ironically, what the designers of this fine application “got” was that copying the Windows task switching metaphor was a good idea. While LiteSwitch has plenty of very useful additions, it is a direct copy of Windows task switching model where a window appears in the middle of the active screen when CMD-TAB is selected. Further TABs iterate through open applications making task switching a breeze for we keyboard enthusiasts.
What LiteSwitch allows me to do is hide the dock for more screen real estate which, based off two hours of usage, I’m not convinced is worth it. The primary issue being that window management (ie: activating/minimizing windows) in Mac OS X varies dependent on application. This means that while it’s easy for me to switch to a different application via the keyboard, there is no guarantee a window will be present and, if there’s not, I’ve got remember a different keystroke for each application in order to maximize it.
[3/15/03 Update]: First, readers who are not as lazy as I do a good job of explaining the differences between Mac and Windows task switching.
Second, I’ve got one machine with NEW task switching and MINIMIZED Dock and another with OLD task switching and VISIBLE Dock to try to compare and contrast.
Thoughts:
- The Mac OS X desktop looks pretty bare without the Dock… it really is part of the look and feel of the desktop.
- There is no equivalent of the application which is th Dock in standard Windows. It’s not just active applications, it’s “short cuts to things I launch often”. Rightly so, LiteSwitch just displays active application which means I still need to use my mouse to fire up an application… so far.
- LightSwitch has an option to “send an open event” when an application is selected… this effectively gives me what I want in terms of application activation as long as there is an open window for that app. As is noted in the comments, Mac OS X is fine with having an application open without any windows… really no way around that.
- Long and short of it is, I think I’ll be buying LightSwitch. It gets me off of the mouse and onto the keyboard and that means I can get around my desktop faster.
17" Powerbook -- Great Under The Arm Appeal
I’ve got this huge black notebook that I bring to meetings when I feel the Titanium Powerbook is not appropriate. 11x14 sketch book. I usually get long stares when I plop it on the table and the occasionally, “That’s a big notebook”.
Glibly, I reply, “I’ve got big thoughts.”
The 17” Powerbook is vast like my sketch book. I’m currently sitting on my couch typing in side a full BBEdit window along a full Terminal window and my iChat buddy list and there is room to spare. There is nothing but space on this machine..
To understand how I evaluated the Powerbook, you first must understand there are two basic use cases I ask of notebook: at work and at the couch. “At work” basically means it must integrate with my desk environments (home and work) and travel well to and from meetings. I don’t travel a ton so, the ability to exist on an airplane just doesn’t matter that much for me. “At the couch” means I can use the notebook in the variety of positions I end up in on the couch. Sitting normally, feet up on the armrest, pretzel style, on the floor, who cares… it better work.
Out of box experience
Before I even opened the Powerbook, I sat it next to my current TiBook. I was shocked to see, first hand, that it actually really is as thin as it’s predecessor. Unlike the TiBook the edges are curved — this gives this illusion of depth, but folks — it’s still terribly thin. Amazingly, it’s even more solid than the TiBook. I don’t know what’s going on inside the box to reenforce the 17”, but whatever has been done gives the machine the feel of a rigid piece of steel.
The hinge that the screen rests on is, I’m told, similar to the newer iBook as it folds out and back opposed to the regular flat hinge found on the Tibook. Aesthetically, I’m a fan of the hinge, but in my first couch sessions, I ran into some issues. (See: “The first hour on the couch”)
The keyboard and the track pad are just a work of art. They’ve applied a paper-like texture to both.. your fingers are going to be in heaven. The keyboard ties the whole machine together by no longer being a distracting black… the keys are the same silver as the rest of the machine and that gives the 17” even more class.
Finally, the color of the 17” is akin to the lighter of the two grays on the TiBook with a very subtle dark gray outline which, now that I look at it, is similar to the dark gray of the TiBook. Clever.
The first hour of real work
For the first hour of work, I decided to do some web research on a future article. This involved a bunch of surfing on Safari and a bunch of BBEditing while listening to some retro 80s music on iTunes.
As I said above, it’s an ample amount of visual space. There was much less window management once I settled into my work. Perhaps the first disappointment was in regular usage, I noticed no significant improvement from the 1Ghz chip. I’m sure if I sat down and did some benchmarking, I’d see a 10-20% increase in speed, but, apparently that’s not enough to notice with regular usage. Sigh.
One small contradiction to my speed malaise was that my wireless connection did feel spunkier. I did some ad-hoc wandering around the house to see if the positioning of the Airport antennas was giving me better signal, but a random sampling of spots at work showed pretty much the same signal strength. Odd.
In terms of fitting in with my desktop environment, the only two noticeable differences are the large footprint of the machine which means you need a bit more space, and the power cord being on the side of the machine. I’m assuming the move for the cord was to make room for the new hinge… Personally, I like the power cord on the back. It feels cleaner, but I’m guessing that folks who dig the hinge are not going to mind.
The first hour on the couch
The first hour on the couch was spent writing this article. Again, the desktop had space a’plenty for this BBEdit window as well as my notes from the past two days of usage. The first thing I noticed was, again, how solid this notebook is. The keyboard feel is significantly different than the TiBook. The impression your fingers will have is that there’s a sheet of metal under the keys… again, I have no idea how they fit so much strength is such a thin enclosure.
For normal sitting around, the form factor of the 17” works. I’ve got a sea of pixels staring at me and I just have no complaints… until I started getting squirrelly. At one point, I spun around to bring my legs up, a move I often do with the TiBook, so it felt natural… until the flat panel came flying down. What happened? Remember the hinge on the 17” comes out and down. This means the bottom of the screen, when fully open, is flat with the base of the computer. The action of my knees lifting up to swing around PUSHED the monitor closed. Combined the increased weight of the larger screen, this has given me the impression the 17” monitor is more flimsy which I don’t think is necessarily true. It’s just designed differently and I believe I need to get used to it.
Other miscellaneous observations:
- Much has been made of the backlit keyboard and auto-dimming of the monitor. While it’s a cool thing to show friends, so far, it’s one of those use it and forget type of features. Right now, the keyboard is lighted up, but that doesn’t really help me because I never look at the keyboard anyway.
- The 17” is heavier than the TiBook, but this is not a factor for me as I’m not dragging this thing to Shanghai and back.
- After an hour of usage on the couch, I got that familiar sweaty lap from the notebook’s batteries… again, I don’t think this something easily addressed by notebook design.
- Bluetooth capability is sitting there in my menu bar taunting me, but I have no Bluetooth devices with which to exploit it.
- I don’t normally use the speakers on my notebooks, but the 17” has huge grills to both sides of the keyboard and this somehow compels me to listen to more music and, in a brief comparison with the TiBook, it does sound much better.
- Airport Extreme is also sitting unused on my laptop. I’ve got a regular Airport base station and it already is way to fast for my DSL set-up.
- There are more ports than I know what to do with this sucker. I look forward to further exploits with Firewire 800 and a second monitor.
The take away
The 17” Powerbook is a luxury item, plain and simple. I can’t think of a legitimate scenario where you could use the word “need” and the 17” in the same sentence. You don’t need this fine piece of hardware, you want it.
Is there reason to want it? Sure is. The list of luxuries the 17” sports boggles the mind. Cutting edge design wrapped around bleeding edge technology.
Has the 17” replaced my big fat black sketch book? You bet it has. What the notebook has is tremendous under the arm appeal. With the 17” tucked under your arm, running between meetings, you’ll feel you’ve got all your big thoughts in a safe, sexy place.
17" PowerBook Backlash
There has been a small buzz anti-buzz building against the 17” with the folks I hang out with they’re commenting on the fact that “it’s WAY too big?”, “the 15” inch is the sweet spot”, or “it’s going to bend’n’twist”.
Every single one of these people are a) full of crap, b) totally wrong, and c) secretly in love with the hardware.
While it may not merit a holy shit moment, you simply MUST put the 17” in your lap and try it to have any sort of opinion. At a slow moment at MacWorld, I had a solid 10 mintes with the machine and I’m happy to report that it’s pure sex.
First, the case is solid. More solid then my 800Mhz TiBook. Second, as has been reported, the hinge is similar to the iBook, but you won’t fully know this until you open one up yourself. Third, they’ve updated the texture of both the keyboard and trackpad. It’s got a pleasant light graininess to it. Fourth, the huge amount of space is not distraction like the sea of pixels you have on the Cinema screens? it’s pleasantly large. Fifth, they’ve pulled off a great optical illusion by beveling the corners of the machine, it gives the impression that it’s thicker than the current TiBook, but it’s exactly the same thickness.
Dammit.
MacWorld Hangover
Spent a good portion of the day at MacWorld… saw the keynote… lots of interesting news regarding this elsewhere. You know where to look.
Random_very_tired thoughts mixed in with PRETTY CRAPPY PHOTOGS:
- Safari is fast. I’ve used it for most of the second half of the day and visting my regular suit of sites. Noticably faster than IE and Chimera.
- I was shocked Safari wasn’t based on Gecko/Mozilla. I’d never heard of KHTML/KDE.
- Really, Safari is fast.
- Pop-up blocking is cool, but mostly irrelevant. Overlay ads are becoming much more prevolent these days and harded to block. (Turn off Flash? All plug-ins?)
- Airport Extreme is slick. Bridging airport base stations is slicker.
- Pseudo-quote by Steve Jobs, “Bookmarks are hard” — obviously, an avid Rands in Repose reader.
- I’m missing a good view source command in Safari more than I missing tabbed browsing.
- Jobs sure likes showing off those themes.
- Ken Burns effects?
- Given the variety of pricing schemes Apple could have done with the iApps, the iLife bundle was just a great compromise. Keep what’s free, free… charge for the bundle. Sweet.
- Nobody, I repeat, nobody thought they were updating the Powerbooks. Now that is serious secrecy.
- I can figure out how to pay for iLife, I can’t figure out how to pay for a AIBook.
Mac Rumor Insanity
This being my first MacWorld as a Mac-ite, it’s fascinating to watch the rumor flurries increase in intensity. I’ve been perusing rumour sites, but now Reuters, Forbes, and News.com are in on the game.
Now, if the big news guys have any more credibility (which is debatable) than the little rumor guys, you’ve GOT to believe that Apple will being releasing something iPod-like tomorrow in the AM. I’ll be @ Moscone… pictures forthcoming.
Gillmor on OS X on x86
Dan Gillmor lays out the pros and cons and on Apple should move OS X to the x86 platform. See any themes from the Apple 2003 column?
iPulse Gems
iPulse has been sitting in the lower left hand corner of two of my computers since Xmas. To date, it’s identified two issues with OS X that I probably would not have noticed if I wasn’t running it.
Problem #1 was a runaway SystemUIServer process. I noticed it this morning when iPulse began reporting unusually high percentage of the CPU being devoted to the user… hovering somewhere between 40 and 70 percent. Now, I hadn’t actually noticed a performance degradation in the system, so props to iPulse for hanging out in the corner of my screen and being colorful.
Turns out Problem #1 may be related to menu extras… specifically WeatherPop. This article talks about the issue in depth. I can say that shutting down WeatherPop didn’t solve the runaway process, but restarting did… so far.
Problem #2 was on my work machine, a G4 Mac OS X Server. After staring at iPulse on an 800Mhz TiBook, I was shocked when I fired it up on the server and saw how much network activity was going on. Now, it’s a server so Problem #2 may not actually be a problem, but I have very little actually turned on, so it’ll be interesting to figure out who is hogging the network cycles. (FYI: A quick glance at netstat shows slp being rather chatty)
Until now, iPulse has felt like a guilty pleasure. HEY LOOK AT ME I’M A MAC USER WITH A COOL LICKABLE UTILTIIES. HA HA ha. I’m happy to see the insight the tool gives me is helping me continue to understand what the hell is going on under the hood in OS X.
Apple 2003
The Apple Luxury Tax column generated a huge amount of discussion. In fact, in preparation for a response, I printed out the comments and the final page count was just under twenty pages. Jesus, folks like to discuss all things Apple.
There were many issues that I wanted to comment on, but upon reading and rereading the comments, a thought popped in my head that I want to lead off with.
I would like to suggest that Apple Computer is an absolutely huge success that need do nothing radical than stay it’s current course in order to continue to be a spectacular success story.
Huh? HOW’S THAT KOOL AIDE RANDS?
I’ll explain.
Once you get by the Apply ][ and early Mac years, Apple made a career of being just about out of business. Having not been there nor wanting to go over Apple’s balance sheet from ‘88 to ‘98, I can’t say whether or not Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy. I do know that while Apple was stumbling along, their major competitor in software, Microsoft, was putting together an unheard of string of hugely profitable quarters combined with phenomenal market share growth.
The story is similar if you choose to compare Apple with it’s hardware competitor, Dell. In the intensely competitive PC space, Dell has apparently come out on top, scaring the likes of HP into buying it’s competition (Compaq) in order to compete.
Problem is, both comparisons are flawed. Folks want to compare Apple to Dell and Microsoft because “they build the same stuff” and, in a very basic sense, they do. Still, they are in very different markets. Microsoft and Dell sell to the folks who need software and a computer. Apple sells luxury versions of these and sells them very well. Apple owns the high end luxury computer market and no one else comes close and when someone tries, they suck because that isn’t their primary business.
The Apple Luxury Tax is applied to those people who to make a statement about their hardware and software. The statement is not, “I hate Microsoft”, it’s “I appreciate the finer things in life.” The finer things are, by definition, scarce and; therefore, more expensive. This means the folks who can purchase these expensive items are in the minority and THEY LIKE IT THAT WAY.
This is stockholder heresy, but the absolutely worst thing Apple could do is become a market leader in software or hardware. The moment such a thing occurred, those who espouse the delicate beauty of Apple products would begin to rail on how Apple had sold out and turned it’s back on those people who got them there, the minority.
Apple is in a delightful, profitable Catch-22.
First, you have the business world who is saying, you must grow to survive. Take that four billion in the bank and give Microsoft a run for their money. Then,, you have the Apple zealots. They want Apple to grow, to be successful, but doing that means Apple could become mainstream (and very profitable) and WHO WANTS THAT? Well, everyone… sort’f.
Understanding this kooky contraction actually illuminates a couple of recent Apple news events:
1) Apple sucks at enterprise/big business sales not because they don’t know what that customer base wants, it’s just that customer can’t afford them — Apple’s gig is high-end niche player. This would suggest that for their enterprise play, Apple should be targeting an customer base who has lots of money and hasn’t already spent a lot of it on Windows infrastructure. I’m thinking BioTech… clusters… emerging uses for servers.
2) Apple continues to lose the education market share. Sure, they owned it in the beginning because they were the first ones there and they had the “ease of use” bit going for them. Rumors are that 80-90% of current Apple education customers are still on OS 8/9. It’s not that they don’t want to upgrade, they don’t have the money and if they did, they’re buying value and value = PCs. The main reason Apple hangs out in this market is because STUDENTS MAKE GREAT ZEALOTS. This idea alone must drive the deep discount Apple must be throwing at accounts of a reverse switch.
Ok, other random feedback from readers comments:
- Instantaneous sign that you are an Apple zealot: Usage of any of the following preposterous terms when describing Apple products “it just works” or “it never breaks”. I tend to stop reading articles when they include such claims because they don’t always work and they do break. Yes, even iPods… a lot.
- “There are no ‘OEM’ Macs. It’s a closed platform”: Of it is, only Apple can make Macs. If everyone made ‘em, they’d be more and they’d cost less. Bad.
- “iApps rock”: I agree. What these applications do well is have a compelling answer to the question, “How quickly can I build the thing that I want” where thing may be a photo album, movie, CD, etc. The point is the mean time to productivity with Apple software is simply less than comparable products. The Final Cut Pro success story appears to imply the same is true of the Pro-version products. I can’t comment, I haven’t used them.
- “The truth worth”: The point made here was that there is no way to describe the Mac experience in words. You must touch Apple products in order to have an opinion… this also helps with swallowing that 30% tax. This must be one of the main reasons for the retail stores.
MacWorld is next week and the rumor sites are a buzz with tidbits of fact and fiction regarding potential announcements. I predict the following based on this column:
1) Following the steps of .Mac, the iApps suite will become a product that you must purchase.
2) While Apple may throw a new eMac out for education customers, it will continue to be very expensive relative to PCs. (Where very = >30% a comparably equipped PC)
3) Whatever the “dazzling secret” is, it’s going to cost us.
The Apple Luxury Tax
The holidays mean retail therapy. You were ignoring this fact until Thanksgiving, but now you’re beginning to sweat it. What does Aunt Claire want? How about the Wife? If you’re list hasn’t formally written down, it’s, at least, sitting in some form inside your head.
I’ve been planning on spreading the love Apple-style this year. Frequent readers will know that I recently (and painlessly, I might add) made the transition to OS X at work and other than a pretty shaky networking architecture, it’s slick.
Really, the only piece of Apple hardware that falls inside my current price range for family and close friends is the iPod and even that is a stretch with current iPods running from $299 to $499. As I was losing sleep over my Christmas list, I realized, “Hey, there are probably a lot of other MP3 players that aren’t going to fleece me for three bills.”
If you ask someone why they haven’t bought a Mac, they’re going to give you one of two standard answers. Answer #1: It doesn’t run software application X (where X is usually equal to some type of video game) - this topic is probably worthy of another column, but for now, let’s talk about Answer #2: Macs are too expensive.
This answer bugs me because my instinct tells me that it’s true, but I actually haven’t done the math which is why we’re here. We’re going to figure out how much more Mac hardware is relative to comparable PCs in four categories: Tower, desktops, notebooks, and, for kicks, iPods.
A NOTE ON THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD: This is an experiment fraught with assumptions. If, while reading this, you discover a particularly heinous assumption, I will listen to your argument and probably ignore you. Go for it. In particular, if you’re a hardware geek who knows every damned chip on a motherboard, I’d love to hear from you.
ANOTHER NOTE: In this column, I’ll be referring to the Apple Luxury Tax. This is a “for fun” statistic which is computed by first selecting a piece of Apple hardware and then finding a comparable piece of PC hardware. Using the lower price (usually the non-Apple piece of hardware… go figure) as a baseline, the price differential between the two is computed as a percentage and this is the Apple Luxury Tax. What I think this number represents is what you, the consumer, are being taxed for “Thinking Different”.
iPods
Let’s start with something simple and without a lot of options. I picked the top of the line 10GB iPod. A cursory scan of the web, revealed the most comparable player to be the Creative Nomad Jukebox.
Here’s the breakdown:
| iPod | Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen | |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | 20GB | 20GB |
| Weight | 7.2 ounces | 9.5 ounces |
| Size | 1.8 inch drive | 2.5 inch drive |
| Ports | Firewire | Firewire + USB |
| Cost | $499.00 | $349.00 |
| Apple Luxury Tax | 42% |
For pretty much the same piece of hardware, you are paying roughly $150 extras dollars. This is an Apple Luxury Tax of roughly 42%. Youch.
Showing off my painful Apple bias would be unwise this early in the column, but for your Apple zealots, you can SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM if you want to read why I believe iPods (and Mac hardware in generally) are much better.
Portables
Comparing actual computers starts to get hairy mostly because of the advanced voodoo surrounding processors. There is a wealth of information on the web stating that PowerPCs outperform faster Pentium chips running certain programs and tasks. Unfortunately, all this processor hoo-hah is about year old and most people have shut up since Intel broke the 3Ghz mark and PowerPC continues to hover around 1Ghz. Apple has attempt to make up this growing distance by offer dual processor machines, but it is a myth that twice the processors gives you twice the speed, I’d peg it at a 50% increase per processor although I’m sure people would like to yell at me about this.
For this comparison, I chose the iBook and then built a Dell Inspiron with the components that mostly closely resembled the iBook. Here we go…
| iBook | Dell Inspiron | |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | 800Mhz | 1.5Ghz |
| System Bus | 100Mhz | 66Mhz |
| L2 Cache | 512k | 128k |
| Screen | 14.1” | 14.1” |
| Memory | 256MB SDRAM | 256MB DDR SDRAM |
| Storage | 300GB Ultra ATA | 300GB Ulra ATA |
| Video | ATI Radeon 7500 (32MB) | NVidia GForce2 (32MB) |
| Optical | CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive (24x) | CD-RW/DVD Combo drive (24x) |
| Cost | $1599.00 | $1306.00 |
| Apple Luxury Tax | 22% |
Some notes worth noting:
1) The Dell includes the WordPerfect Productivity Pack w/ Quicken New User Edition. Adding Microsoft Office to this machine would add $130 to cost of the Dell and $199 for the Apple.
2) FOR ALL of these comparisons, I just have no idea how to compare video cards. In general, I attempted to match memory size and type, but as every fan of Quake knows, it’s the graphic processor chip which really helps you cut the mustard. Again, if someone would like to weigh in on this subject, go for it.
Desktops
This is where the head scratching really began. I started by comparing the Power Mac with the Dell Dimension and the higher end Dell Optiplex and there simply was no comparison ($3299.00 for the Mac versus $1744 for a comparable equipped Dell Optiplex). After watching an hour or two of Sunday afternoon football, it dawned on me. The Apple desktop to compare was, duh, the iMac.
Take a look…
| Apple iMac | Dell Dimension | |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | 800Mhz | 2.66Ghz |
| System Bus | 100Mhz | 533Mhz |
| L2 Cache | 256k | 512k |
| Memory | 256MB SDRAM | 512MB DDR SDRAM |
| Storage | 60GB Ultra ATA | 120GB Ultra ATA |
| Video | NVidia GeForce2 MX (32MB VRAM) | NVidia GeForce4 MX (64MB DDR) |
| Optical | Apple Superdrive (24x) | CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive (32x) |
| MS Office | Not include | Included |
| Cost | $1699.00 | $1167 |
| Apple Luxury Tax | 5% (~19% w/ Office for Mac) |
Notable notes:
1) Processor on the Dell just wails, I don’t care what the Velocity Engine on the Mac is doing for you.
2) Microsoft Office. If you use the Inspiron’s Microsoft Office cost, this means there is an additional $130 against the Mac which would bring the Apple Luxury Tax to 19%.
Workstations
| PowerMac G4 | Dell Workstation | |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Dual 1.25Ghz | 2.6Ghz |
| System Bus | 167Mhz | 533Mhz |
| L2 Cache | 256k @ 1.25Ghz | 512k @ 2.66Ghz |
| L3 Cahce | 2MB @ 50Mhz | None |
| Memory | 512MB DDR SDRAM | 512MB ECC RDRAM |
| Storage | 120GB Ultra ATA | 120GB Ultra ATA |
| Video | ATI Radeon 9000 Pro (64MB DDR) | ATI Fire GL (64MB DDR) |
| Optical | Apple Superdrive (24x) | CD-RW/DVD Combo (32x) |
| MS Office | Included | Not Included |
| Cost | $3299.00 | $2142.00 |
| Apple Luxury Tax | 54% (~60% w/ Office on Mac) |
54% No wonder Dell and Gateway drool over Apple’s fat profit margins. Apple isn’t even close on the workstation hardware. Dang.
What you just learned
HOLY GOD RANDS MACS ARE MORE EXPENSIVE - HERE’S AN AWARD.
Overall Cost: If we average the four Luxury taxes above, you get a rough tax of 30%. If you wanted to use this number in every day conversation you would say, “I heard that if you want to buy Apple hardware, you’re paying 30% extra for the honor. (Rands said so)”
Competition: Really the only place where Apple can actually go toe-to-toe with Apple is on the iMac and that is with HALF the processor the comparably equipped Dell Dimension. My guess is this is Apple’s most popular (ie: affordable) model and; therefore, they can make it up in volume.
Processors: As every Apple rumor site is fond of pointing out (daily), what is up with Apple’s processor strategy? This is the festering sore on some otherwise very appealing hardware.
Why Apple?
Who, in their right mind, would buy slower hardware at a 30% premium? Well, lots of people. Myself included. The biggest reason is simply because Apple owns both sides of the problem: the hardware and the software. Nothing frames OS X like the lines of the iMac or the Cinema Screen HD and when it comes to balancing ease of use with performance, Apple software consistently delivers.
I’m of the opinion that Apple’s success is primarily based on their ability to evoke an emotional reaction with their products. Their goal is to have you walk in a room, see their product on the table, and say, “Holy shit, what is that?”
APPLE TO SWITCH TO INTEL PLATFORM
There has been a lot of incessant yammering about Apple potentially shipping a Mac OS X version which runs on Intel hardware. This is the first article I’ve read which lists three good reasons why Apple won’t.
TWO WEEKS OF OS X
Good Day.
I’m writing this entry on Microsoft Word v. X, Service Release 1. This implies several things. First, that I successfully installed Mac OS X on my desktop. Second, that I’ve been able to successfully install and launch applications on aforementioned system. As you look at those two sentences, it just doesn’t look like that much work, but it was… culturally. I’ll explain.
First, before I get into the nitty gritty details of Week #1 on OS X, I first need to describe my profile as a user of an operating system as it will illuminate why I care what I care about. Let me start by saying that I’ve been a Windows for more than a single decade. This means that Windows conventions have been grinded into me over the course of many years. Other important aspects to my usage profile:
NO MOUSE: I really dislike using the mouse because I find it to be an imprecise tool. For example, why in the world when I want to click a minimize button which I might miss? It is pretty small and I can achieve the same effect by typing ALT-SPACE-M to minimize a window AND I NEVER MISS. Now, the mouse has a great many good uses in the form of drawing and games, but for window management, no thanks.
KEYBOARD CRAZY: I’m extremely speedy on the keyboard. My form is atrocious, I think I use about seven of my ten fingers, but I fly like the wind. Combined with the NO MOUSE issue, this means that I’m ALWAYS looking for shortcuts via the keyboard because it’s reliable and I’m fast. An example, if I want to fire up notepad on Windows2k / Windows XP, I hit WINDOWS_KEY - R - NOTEPAD -
FINICKY ABOUT MY SCREEN REAL ESTATE: This really falls into two different quirks. First, I run everything in MAXIMIZED mode in Windows. Meaning, if I open Word, the first thing I do is maximize the window to fill the screen. This is really a clutter avoidance tactic. If there aren’t multiple layers of windows on my desktop that I can see, I’m less apt to wander off task.
Second, I’ve grown very fond of the dual monitor set-up. This is a by-product of my full screen mania. With two monitors, I can have one monitor be the “primary task” window and the second one contains miscellaneous widgets like instant messaging, audio players, and other toys. The other monitor is also a huge advantage in debugging code as you can have the running application in one window and all sorts of debug windows in the other. A dual monitor set-up is just plain sexy.
DAY TO DAY USE: I’m a manager of engineers which means I’ve got a dual use for my machines. I need them to, first, reliable run the standard set of office applications (mail, word processor, calendaring, etc), but I also need them to serve as a test bed for application development. I often solve this problem by having a manager machine that I don’t touch and a development machine that gets hammered.
As quirks go, this list isn’t particularly demanding on an operating system, but, more importantly, I’m not particularly cranky about my set-up. When Windows XP arrived and made Windows look like a Fisher Price toy, I didn’t freak out, I adapted.
For my new hardware, I have a Macintosh G4, Dual 1Ghz. As far as I know, this represents the best piece of desktop hardware Apple is currently shipping, so I was expecting to see decent performance. The machine came with Mac OS 10.1.5, but as I wanted to experience the installation, I dug up a BETA copy of the next release of the OS, 10.2 a.k.a. Jaguar.
Installing crap on a Mac has always been painfully easy, so I’m not going to delve much into the process. I created a couple of partitions as I’m expecting to have a couple of operating systems on this machine and I installed Jaguar. Just a few questions to answer and we were running. Simple. Simple. Simple. This is why folks love the Mac.
With my freshly baked version of Jaguar, I sat down to try to get actually work done. This is where I began to run into my first cultural differences. As you can discern from my quirks, I’m heavily dependant on keyboard shortcuts to navigate my way around the system… if I have to use the mouse, I feel like I’m working slowly and find that annoying.
As the Mac and the mouse were essentially unleashed on the world at the same time, they are heavily dependent on each other. I remembered from my earlier Mac experiences that there was often no way of getting from Point A to Point B without engaging the mouse. The good news about OS X is that I’m in day #8 and there is nothing I can’t do without the keyboard.
More random details:
The Dock: I’ve been messing with the Dock every single day. It started at the bottom, moved to the right side, returned to the bottom, and is now currently automatically hiding on the bottom. The main reason for the hiding is that I’m on a single monitor and I’m trying to conserve real estate on the screen.
The Dock rocks. It’s straightforward and intuitive to use. I quickly turned off the gee-whizzy features of magnification and the genie-minimize effect. They’re very cool and demo well to people who need to be wowed by your Mac, but functionally useless.
As a means of gathering data about the state of your desktop, the Dock does an elegant job. The moment I hit Command-TAB, I can glance down at the Dock and see what is running, which applications needs attention, and whether I have mail. Also, it’s completely configurable, you can add, move, and delete whatever you want from the Dock.
From a functional perspective, the main reason I love the Dock is that it obeys some familiar conventions from Windows-land. Namely, I can use Alt/Commend-TAB to cycle through open applications. This is the main way that I get from Point A to Point B and its existence in OS X is bliss.
In terms of minimizing applications, I quickly stopped using the Dock to minimize apps via the Command-M convention because there did not appear to be a consistent way to maximize applications that had been Docked/Minimized. Rather, and more usefully I might add, I’m using the hide function (Command-H) to clean-up my desktop which is divine because it’s quick and it’s consistent for most applications that I’m currently using. More good news, Command-TAB brings the selected application right back. Slick.
My biggest complaint with the Dock is provides no means to specify keystrokes to launch applications. A quick search of the web found a System Preference called Key Xing which makes launching applications via the keyboard a snap. Problem solved.
The Desktop / Finder: Because of my keyboard mania and mouse phobia, I’ve slowly removed all icons from my desktop. I was worried that this practice might be at odds with my historic perspective of Mac users in that they use the desktop as the springboard to everything, but with OS X, that isn’t an issue.
Remember that OS X is built on Unix which means under all those sexy candy colored buttons is a flavor of FreeBSD (a.k.a. Darwin) and that means a Unix file system. No more of the loosey goosey put the Applications wherever you like attitude, Mac OS X recommends a directory hierarchy for your applications/documents and while you can still spill stuff all over the place, I hear it will make the usual process of upgrading applications problematic (translation: WELCOME TO WINDOWS).
As of this moment, I still have the hard drive icon on my desktop, but that is mostly because I just love the detail of the Mac icons. That leads us to our next topic…
Performance: This was initially a trouble category for me. Here’s why: I’m staring at a Dual 1Ghz G4. Next to it is my old machine, a Windows XP box running a 800Mhz Pentium 3. After several days of only OS X, I went back to the Windows box and, well, the Windows box “felt” faster.
Let’s talk about “feel”. This term has nothing to do with actual performance benchmarks. I didn’t sit down and run Photoshop filters against MASSIVE images to see which machine was faster. I just used it to do my usual activities… firing up windows, jumping around between applications, and typing horribly. Windows felt faster. Here’s why:
1) I’m used to Windows, which means there are no brief pauses where I’m thinking, “Ok what next?” You can’t blame OS X for the fact that I’m dense.
2) (This is a guess) OS X has devoted a lot of CPU cycles to the interface all over the place. Full color icons, translucent button, animated window resizing effects, the list is endless. This is a design point for Apple. They do this intentionally because they create sexy product and, yes, it does have an impact on performance.
3) It’s extremely difficult to do an apple to apple comparison with two different operating systems. There are million little decisions which went into the code that, say, redraws a window. Given that all of these decisions were made by different people with different design goals on different hardware, how can you compare the two? And we haven’t even thrown differing hardware architectures into the mix, yet…
Terminal Window: Another ancient perception I’d had of the Mac was stability. Since the arrival of Windows 2000, I’d pretty much left the world where I was required to reboot my system on a daily basis and I was concerned that I might be returning to Reboot Land.
It’s only been two weeks since I’ve begun on OS X, but I’ve yet to have to reboot a BETA version of Jaguar. Whew. I have had a few applications wedge on me and I’ve yet to figure out how to properly close them because of the Terminal Window.
In your head you should translate Terminal Window into Unix prompt. Again, Darwin (the underpinnings of OS X) is based on FreeBSD so when you fire up Terminal Window, you’ve got the power of Unix at your figure tips. Mail.app wedged? Kill the process. Some unknown process hogging CPU cycles? Type Top and find the culprit.
OS X has a slew of friendly utilities to do much of the work you can do much from a shell, but THAT IS NOT THE POINT. The point is that OS X functionality appeals to very broad demographic. On one side, you have the artistic types who are (and always will be) Mac zealots. The folks see their Mac in more of a religious content than a practical one and that gives them an unparalleled level of passion.
On the other side, you have a new constituency, the architects. These are hard-core Unix types who have artistic tendencies. This means that while they must have the endless functionality (and complexity) of a Unix command prompt, the beauty of the Mac interface also fulfills them. This is relevant because it’s a different requirement than Joe Blow engineer. Joe Blow wants to get the job done while Joe Architect wants to get it down right (with extra bonus points for sexy solutions). This is also relevant because Joe Blow is always watching Joe Architect and following where he/she is going because they can smell the intoxicating inspiration emanating from Joe Architect and they like it. This is good news for OS X.
I’d like to say that I’ve adapted well to the OS X environment in my two weeks, but I’m still feel constrained by my lack of experience. I’m happy to report the reported dearth of applications for the Mac has yet to bite me, but, then again, I really haven’t had an odd request for functionality, yet.
My biggest complaint appears to be that a comfortably size font that is sent from my mail program is showing up as retardedly large on Windows mail clients and I’m not a big fan of appearing retarded.
Given that is currently my largest complaint, you’d have to say the first two weeks were going amazingly well and that I don’t know what I don’t know.
MAC WORLD NEW YORK
MacWorld New York is tomorrow and, as usual, the Apple marketing machine is certain to have a surprise up its sleeve. Coming off another profitable quarter amongst a continued economic downturn, what makes sense for Apple to release? Larger screens on the iMac and an OS X update (now with iChat) are all fine and dandy, but all of that has already been leaked.
What’s the big secret? I don’t know, do you?
MAC USERS SMARTER
According to this:
Those who surf the Web using a Mac tend to be better educated and make more money than their PC-using counterparts, according to a report from Nielsen/NetRatings.
APPLE (PRELUDE)
In your circle of co-workers, who do you pay attention to?
For technology trends, I tend to pay attention to the folks who I get along with the least… The architects. You know these guys, they are the curmudgeons who are always telling you that you can’t do it because of this inane reason or that performance concern. It often feels their one job is to take the wind out of our sails when you have that world-changing idea. Problem is, they’re usually right. Other problem is, sometimes you should ignore them, but it’s difficult to decide when. That’s another column.
So, why pay attention to technical trends in these architects? Quite simply put, they usually resist change because they’ve designed a system which works. When change does occur, it’s rationale change, it’s change for a reason, and it’s usually much bigger than you can actually discern because they are smarter than you.
There have been two interesting shifts in my immediate architect community in the past six months. First, the use of the Mozilla browser as a primary browser. Second, the appearance of Apple hardware for use as a development platform.
Apple hardware?
Let me disclose what I do. I manage a group of engineers who primarily work in Java on a hosted web application.
Apple hardware?
This isn’t some web design shop. This is a software development shop which produces heavy weight applications used by really big companies who yell really loud when things break.
Last time.
Apple hardware?
I approached the senior architect as he was merrily typing away on his iBook. I sat next to him and nodded towards the translucent white box. He grinned; knowing exactly what I was asking, have reciting an answer I’m certain he constructed months ago.
“FreeBSD and the best windowing manager around.”
I nodded, getting half of what he was saying. He continued, “FreeBSD, that’s what the Darwin kernel is based on, is Unix and it’s generally viewed as one of the more stable Unix implementations. Add the Macintosh window manager on top of that and you’ve got the power of Unix and the pleasure of the Macintosh.”
I nodded some more.
Think of the pace of change in high tech as a train. This train lives in a world that is constantly changing and reinventing itself and you get to choose where you sit. Seats in the front are frightening, you are rapid fire exposed to new crap constantly. Your definition of the world is constantly in flux and if you blink, you might find yourself in the middle seats.
The middle seats can see the front seats and are aware that something is going, but middle seaters are content to take the lead from the front seats and trust they know what they are doing. I tend to hang somewhere right between the front and middle seats.
The back seats are on the train, but they shouldn’t be. They’re aware of change, but they’ve settled into a comfortable little COBOL world and are happily ignorant of change because what they have works for them. It takes train wrecks to change their world and, even then, they’ll find some way to reconstruct their back seats (Think Visual COBOL).
The sudden appearance of Apple hardware in the building gave me the impression that my seat had moved backwards a couple of spots while I hadn’t been paying attention. This fear was compounded by the fact that when I started asking around outside of the company, I found a good many architect-types who had made the switch to OS X. This concerned me and this is how I’m going to fix it.
First, we’ll consider the Apple business model. We’ll go read their investment information, read their news clippings, and see what we can discern about what their strategy is.
Second, I’ll move my primary development machine over to OS X and tell you about it. Similar weblogs have already covered this experience here, here, and here.
Third, I don’t know what third is, but everything happens is threes, so I’m certain we’ll figure Third out during First and Second.
Off we go.
Update (6/29/02): I did mention there were two interesting technology trends, OS X and Mozilla. I was considering lumping Mozilla into my shift to OS X, but that may be too much of a switch. I’m currently a Windows dork, so it would be difficult to compare and contrast browsers on OS X. I would end up with questions like, “Well, is it better because of OS X or because of the browser?” More later.
