OT MacWorld Keynote by Jobs HUGE!

[aka_tom_w]

I mention this because I understand Steve and Charles work on Macs and Developed CM on a MAC.

Did anyone else here see the Keynote Speech by Steve Jobs?

It was a great Speech and the new technology announcements from Apple are remarkable.

iTunes

iDVD

iMovie

and Maya to run on OSX on NEW faster G4's

and The NEW G4 Titanium Power book at 500 mHz

15.2 mega Wide LCD display, 5.3 pounds ONLY 1 inch thick.

ALL cool new Toys!

-tom w

[Slapdragon]

I have been glued to my computer not getting any work done! I switched to all Mac Video production for my own work and it seems it was the best choice I ever made. However, my poor Dell Optiplex now feels totally ignored.

[Slapdragon]

Also, Maya is a dream come true. The idea of having Photoshop and Maya on the same machine....

[Jeff Heidman]

Steve Jobs?

Another great speech, another doomed product line?

Did he annouce that Apple was going to finally open up their architecture? No?

Jeff Heidman

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman:

Steve Jobs?

Another great speech, another doomed product line?

Did he annouce that Apple was going to finally open up their architecture? No?

Jeff Heidman<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The new architecture is Unix silly, about as open as you can get.

[M. Bates]

I find it strange how computer users treat Apple like a friendly/enemy sports team.

[aka_tom_w]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by M. Bates:

I find it strange how computer users treat Apple like a friendly/enemy sports team.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

WHAT??

Apple Computer is OUR Passsion!

(its not just some "sports team")

We are THRILLED with new technology

the New Titatium G4 Powerbook weighs only 5.3 pounds and is 1 inch thick and is MADE out of Titantium and carbon fiber composite technology.

new iTunes software for digital audio is FREE and you can download it RIGHT NOW! (for a Mac of course)

You probably can't imagine the sheer elation Mac fanatics feel right now

Unix is the root of OSX and it is OPEN architecture.

The "Closed" OS 9.1 will be left behind when Apple starts to Ship CPU's with OSX install this coming June! (BSD Unix is the root of OSX)

I'm still BLOWN away!!

-tom w

[This message has been edited by aka_tom_w (edited 01-09-2001).]

[Subvet]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by M. Bates:

I find it strange how computer users treat Apple like a friendly/enemy sports team.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It is a little strange isn't it? Part of it may have to do with people getting burned awhile back. They went to school and learned on a Mac, then went to get a job and realized that most businesses use PCs. Also Apple lost a lot of reputation in most people's eyes in the past by almost going under. That stuff doesn't explain why it goes both ways though. Of course there is also the "I'm smarter, my car is faster, my crank is bigger..." sort of psychology going on.

[Jeff Heidman]

I fail to be impressed.

Apple keeps making supposedly great products that fail (in the market) consistently. They certainly have their uses, but unless your an Apple nut, their just doesn't seem to be a compelling reason to spend a bunch more money for a computer that runs a small subset of the available software.

CM is the exception, not the rule.

It is interesting that the new OS is going to be a flavor of Unix. How open will it be?

Is Apple going to maintain the death grip on hardware that they have always had?

Jeff Heidman

[Chupacabra]

The trouble with Macs have always been price and software support. It's a vicious cycle: Macs are more expensive than PCs, so fewer people buy them, so fewer software developers develop for the Mac, so fewer people buy them, etc...

Macs have survived mostly by having a few killer apps, mostly multimedia stuff. I've used both Macs and PCs for MIDI sequencing/digital recording, and I would happily chop off my nose rather than go back to using a PC for that stuff.

I love Macs, but as cool as they are, Apple still hasn't figured out a way to take a market share that's not a niche.

------------------

Soy super bien soy super super bien soy bien bien super bien bien bien super super

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Subvet:

Originally posted by M. Bates:

I find it strange how computer users treat Apple like a friendly/enemy sports team.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It is a little strange isn't it? Part of it may have to do with people getting burned awhile back. They went to school and learned on a Mac, then went to get a job and realized that most businesses use PCs. Also Apple lost a lot of reputation in most people's eyes in the past by almost going under. That stuff doesn't explain why it goes both ways though. Of course there is also the "I'm smarter, my car is faster, my crank is bigger..." sort of psychology going on.

Acyually it was the opposite for me. I learned on a PC in school, then went out into the work world and only found UNIX and Mac. Only in the past two years has the high end used PCs for anything more than tiddle office work. I bought a Dell as an undergraduate and it was a nice computer, but never as reliable or as power as the Macs on the market.

The best way I can put it is that PCs are lowest common denominator computing. Cheap, not very reliable, you buy one, keep it for 24 months, then toss it away and buy a new one. Numbers drive the PC market so Intel boosts the clock speed of its processors while ignoring how much work they do per cycle. They have lower productivity, higher cost of operations, and lower total life in operation, but they are cheap (80% the cost of a Mac) and there is a lot of software for them. In tank terms, PCs are like T-72s.

The Macs are more relaible, impossible (or nearly so) to hack, hard to write viruses for, and have very high productivity, very low cost of operations, and very high reliability. There are fewer software applications written for then, and they are more expensive than a PC. In tank terms Macs are like M1 Abrams or Leopard 2s.

An office manager who purchases smartly will buy PCs for the grunt workers who type letters and do low end, low risk work. Grunt work needs to be done, and if the computer crashes you just buy another. Macs get bought for creatives or people doing mission critical tasks. Here the higher productivity of the Mac pays for itself because the worker's salary is wasted in the lower reliability of the PC systems, and because the PC user interface is less exact.

In reality, Macs and PCs work side by side and have two different purposes, just as Unix and PCs and Macs and Unix (until March that is) do.

[Jeff Heidman]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by M. Bates:

I find it strange how computer users treat Apple like a friendly/enemy sports team.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't really care one way or the other. The brand on the machine is relatively unimportant to me. I have never noticed enough of a difference between all the computers I have used to make me get emotionally involved.

I do think that Apple users are often rather amusing for their, uhhh, "enthusiasm" for their chosen computer. Conversely, I think the company itself is rather sad for its amazingly bad management.

Why does everyone still think Jobs is this brilliant guy?

Jeff Heidman

[Chupacabra]

Jobs (and Apple) are great designers. The iMac was a coup. There's a reason PC developers all started designing see-through candy-colored computers after the iMac came out.

Unfortunately, there's a gap between design and marketing, which Apple hasn't managed to bridge yet. It's a shame. I really do think the Mac is a better computer.

------------------

Soy super bien soy super super bien soy bien bien super bien bien bien super super

[109 Gustav]

Originally posted by Jeff Heidman:

I do think that Apple users are often rather amusing for their, uhhh, "enthusiasm" for their chosen computer

733 mhz G4s! Boo-yeah! How d'ya like them Apples? (couldn't resist)

Why does everyone still think Jobs is this brilliant guy?

Well, he did turn the company around in 1998, when Apple was on the verge of being bought out by Sony or Microsoft. Besides, how many other people can turn a garage computer shop into a company the size of Apple?

------------------

Well my skiff's a twenty dollar boat, And I hope to God she stays afloat.

But if somehow my skiff goes down, I'll freeze to death before I drown.

And pray my body will be found, Alaska salmon fishing, boys, Alaska salmon fishing.

-Commercial fishing in Kodiak, Alaska

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman:

I fail to be impressed.

Apple keeps making supposedly great products that fail (in the market) consistently. They certainly have their uses, but unless your an Apple nut, their just doesn't seem to be a compelling reason to spend a bunch more money for a computer that runs a small subset of the available software.

CM is the exception, not the rule.

It is interesting that the new OS is going to be a flavor of Unix. How open will it be?

Is Apple going to maintain the death grip on hardware that they have always had?

Jeff Heidman<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually your definition of fail is interesting. An 8 billion dollar company with the last 14 quarters of profits and a 25 year operating history with only 8 quarters in the red is a hell of a definition of a failing company. I paid off half my student loans on Apple stocks advances. Apple has remained successful despite being in a monopoly controlled market, while continuosly coming to market with products 2-3 years ahead of the rest of the industry.

Of course, by your definition, the Panther was a failure (Germany lost the war) and it sucked as a tank because everyone else was driving Shermans. My Dell remains mostly unused because my Mac is much faster to do digital work on, crashes way less, and never gets those damn viruses.

However, you are correct about software. One of the biggest problems with the Mac community is that they are snobs. Only the best software need apply. You can publish almost any old crap on the PC and be assured that people will buy it, and many will love it. Their standard for comparison is warped because so much of the software on PCs is so bad. If you eat cow turds for lunch every day of your life, Spam seems pretty good to you (which is how Word came out on top of the Word Processor market).

I even have proof. All of the top 15 best selling computer games according to data quest for the past three years have Mac versions. The best selling game of all time was written on a Mac and had Mac versions, and using a Mac in business is directly correlational with your salary for non management workers. Use a Mac, and your salary is .8 higher than the same PC users.

[This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 01-09-2001).]

[Guest Big Time Software]

Jeff wrote:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Apple keeps making supposedly great products that fail (in the market) consistently. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Wrong. The iMac is just the most recent example of Apple leading the industry. If you don't believe me, do some searches for iMac articles in PC biased publications. They couldn't stop talking about it when it first came out. Heck, Apple had to even sue one company for doing a complete ripoff of it. And where do you think Compaq came up with their latest case designs?

The problem is that the industry has been shackled to Windows for so many years that whatever Apple innovates gets "borrowed" and then given to Windows users. Then Apple is quickly forgotten about.

If Apple were to go out of business, I shudder at how unexciting computing would be until some other company came about to take the lead.

Steve

[Jeff Heidman]

Slapdragon, you have jsut jumped right into the *exact* stereotype of the Mac fanatic.

Throw out a bunch of half-truths, claim victory, and hope no-body notices that you are talking out of your ass.

I am not going to make any testoserone induced claims that PCs are somehow superior, and Macs are for the worker bees, because that is no more true than the silly claims of the opposite.

I will say that I work at a company where *everyone* uses PCs, we develop very mission critical software for very large corporations, and we hardly throw our PCs out if they crash, not that mine has since I got here almost a year ago.

Prior to this job I worked at a company that used a mix (about 50-50) of unix boxes (HP and Sun) and NTs. Prior to that I worked with just Suns, and prior to that I worked with just NTs. So it is certainly the case that the market hardly recognizes your claim that PCs are for garbage truck drivers and such.

The simple fact is that the brand on the box in front of you has little to do with the quality of work done, or the quantity. I have developed on everything from Macs to Suns to HPs to NTs, and for what I do (write software), it made no difference. I do not do what Macs supposedly specialize in (Multimedia), so maybe the software avaialble for that is superior, I don't know.

We can all look at the various bechmarks that claim that the G4 at X clock rate is faster than the P3 at Y clock rate, but we can look at other benchmarks that say the opposite. Depending on what processor and compiler you using for your bechmarks (and what optimizers those compilers have available), you can make any of them look superior. Who cares?

I encourage anyone who does care to go out into the world and visit some of the various forums where you can watch the faithful tearing into one another. It's even more amusing than watching Christians argue with Muslims, and about as meaningful.

Jeff Heidman

[Jeff Heidman]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software:

Jeff wrote:

Wrong. The iMac is just the most recent example of Apple leading the industry. If you don't believe me, do some searches for iMac articles in PC biased publications. They couldn't stop talking about it when it first came out. Heck, Apple had to even sue one company for doing a complete ripoff of it. And where do you think Compaq came up with their latest case designs?

The problem is that the industry has been shackled to Windows for so many years that whatever Apple innovates gets "borrowed" and then given to Windows users. Then Apple is quickly forgotten about.

If Apple were to go out of business, I shudder at how unexciting computing would be until some other company came about to take the lead.

Steve<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Come now, the iMac? Cute, but so what?

It is exactly what Apple is good at: Come up with something interesting (a pretty case), and then watch everyone else copy it and try to figure out how they became irrelevant, again!

I agree that Windows makes it VERY hard for Apple to break into the general purpose PC market, but that is business.

However, it looks like I have stumbled into a Apple coven, so I will withdraw, as this can only get more unpleasant.

Jeff Heidman

[Jeff Heidman]

erased

[This message has been edited by Jeff Heidman (edited 01-09-2001).]

[Hiram Sedai]

I'd like to interject with a hearty, happy, "Hi Mom"

thanks

------------------

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. - Blaise Pascal

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman:

Slapdragon, you have jsut jumped right into the *exact* stereotype of the Mac fanatic.

Throw out a bunch of half-truths, claim victory, and hope no-body notices that you are talking out of your ass.

I am not going to make any testoserone induced claims that PCs are somehow superior, and Macs are for the worker bees, because that is no more true than the silly claims of the opposite.

I will say that I work at a company where *everyone* uses PCs, we develop very mission critical software for very large corporations, and we hardly throw our PCs out if they crash, not that mine has since I got here almost a year ago.

Prior to this job I worked at a company that used a mix (about 50-50) of unix boxes (HP and Sun) and NTs. Prior to that I worked with just Suns, and prior to that I worked with just NTs. So it is certainly the case that the market hardly recognizes your claim that PCs are for garbage truck drivers and such.

The simple fact is that the brand on the box in front of you has little to do with the quality of work done, or the quantity. I have developed on everything from Macs to Suns to HPs to NTs, and for what I do (write software), it made no difference. I do not do what Macs supposedly specialize in (Multimedia), so maybe the software avaialble for that is superior, I don't know.

We can all look at the various bechmarks that claim that the G4 at X clock rate is faster than the P3 at Y clock rate, but we can look at other benchmarks that say the opposite. Depending on what processor and compiler you using for your bechmarks (and what optimizers those compilers have available), you can make any of them look superior. Who cares?

I encourage anyone who does care to go out into the world and visit some of the various forums where you can watch the faithful tearing into one another. It's even more amusing than watching Christians argue with Muslims, and about as meaningful.

Jeff Heidman<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is great, I have stumbled onto a PC fanatic. I own and use both a PC and a Mac. My experience at PC purchasing comes from an assignment with Eastman Chemical Company. Using dataquest reliability figures (ignored by PC fanatics) they decided to take the company all PC but look for a way to make the computers have as high a productivity as the Macintosh platform with an equal reliability.

Here is how they did it:

Buy all one computer. No different RAM, hard drive, processor, or video card options for different departments. Kind of a pain, but they had to live with it.

Set a 24 month ceiling on computer operation. After 24 months, buy a new computer. (Previously their Macintoshes had been on a 48 month purchase cycle - as are most companies that use Macs).

If it crashes, pull the computer from the persons desk and replace it with a brand new one. Take the old one back and return it to Dell.

Every 30 days, erase every hard drive in the company and reload from disk images on a rotating schedule.

Using these management techniques the PC was as reliable, and had the same low cost of operations as a Macintosh, plus you got a big discount from Dell for buying all the same machine (18,000 of them) and training was easier because everyone had the same computer. Only in print did the Macs stay on board because windows does not have color balance software and they blew a $36000 printing job trying to do it on a PC, and that was only 11 machines in the whole company.

So, my T-72 PC versus Leopard 2 Macintosh is born out by fact.

[Jeff Heidman]

Sorry Slap, but I am not fanatic about any piece of electronic equipment. its a computer, not a woman.

I thought I made that clear. I couldn't really care less what brand is on my computer, and that includes Apple. I can, and have, worked with everything, and my productivity, in both quantity and quality, has been unaffected by the brand of computer. I would be perfectly happy to do my devlopment work on a G4 or something similar.

Sorry, you are going to have to find another zealot to try to convert.

I just think that the fanaticism that is almost unique to Apple users is amusing.

Your single example of one companies ianbility to properly manage their network is amusing, but says nothing. I am sure I could come up with, or make up, a similar horror story.

Jeff Heidman

[This message has been edited by Jeff Heidman (edited 01-09-2001).]

[Slapdragon]

I forgot to add, never ask a computer consultant for the straight take on computer technology. Most of them are trained very intensely in one system. Windows NT / 2000 is a big Dog (although 2000 on my Dell seems to be much more stable than NT or 98) and takes an immense amount of know how to get functioning in a networked environment. Most network people I hire who are like Jeff are very smart, and put years of hard work into learning the huge Seattle Folly of Windows, and their very livelyhood depends on Windows remaining a pig to maintain (afterall, if it worked right, who would need them?)

Often Macintosh systems scare the heck out of them because they are pretty bullet proof, and Unix systems scare them because all those years of learning NT are down the drain. (I can't blame them. I just started my conversion courses to be a Unix administrator to replace my NT 3.51, and I am very, very confused -- partly because I do not have a good enough technical background, but partly because NT is so backwards from how things work in Unix)

So much of the anti-mac rhetoric from the computer professionals is very understandable. It is their livelyhood being threatened.

[Guest wwb_99]

I have to say that Macs have some uses (graphic design, cool furniture). But for simple utility PCs are far superior, not to mention the price.

1) Mass market: everything (with the exception of some very hardcore multimedia) comes out for the PC. Games, productivity, and unfortunately virii. But because the competiton, the software is forced to be better. If it ain't good it won't last, the exception being MS Office, which dominates the Mac world as well anyways.

2) Price: The most overpriced PCs are still cheaper than the cheapest macs. And I can build a PC from parts for half of what Dell would charge. Can you build a mac from industry standard parts?

WWB

------------------

Before battle, my digital soldiers turn to me and say,

Ave, Caesar! Morituri te salutamus.

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman:

Sorry Slap, but I am not fanatic about any piece of electronic equipment. its a computer, not a woman.

I thought I made that clear. I couldn't really care less what brand is on my computer, and that includes Apple. I can, and have, worked with everything, and my productivity, in both quantity and quality, has been unaffected by the brand of computer. I would be perfectly happy to do my devlopment work on a G4 or something similar.

Sorry, you are going to have to find another zealot to try to convert.

I just think that the fanaticism that is almost unique to Apple users is amusing.

Your single example of one companies ianbility to properly manage their network is amusing, but says nothing. I am sure I could come up with, or make up, a similar horror story.

Jeff Heidman

[This message has been edited by Jeff Heidman (edited 01-09-2001).]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Productivity figures are based on Dataquest survey of people using all systems, so they are an average of all users and not a test of any single user. The same goes for total cost of operations and average length of ownership. Remember though that this includes all clones of PCs -- so that Pac Bell that died in the first week of use, and the Compaq which lost 6 floppies in a month, is right in there with that Dell that lasted 2 years with no hitch.

Eastman Chemical, as far as I know, still uses that system. Eastman Kodak may have adopted it also, which is up in your neck of the woods (not really sure). You should just call them and ask if they still have the Dell contract.