A Good Day for Apple

[bloodzombie]

, so after that skipping thru tracks to find a certain song wont be hard...it's like a CD.

a cd with 240 songs on it.

I need to be able to arrange the music by cd and then pick which cd I want to listen to.

It's a good price for that much storage, it's just not for me.

[bloodzombie]

If you're willing to put out the cash, I doubt you'll find a better mp3 player than the iPod

The iPod still might be the best of the big boys, but Creative is moving in.. the Zen Touch is quite a bit bigger than an iPod, but if you don't care about that, it's definitely a competitor, and I think the Zen micro is a better buy than the iPod mini.

I'm hoping Creative slims down the next one, and fine tunes their touch-sensitive controls, and I'll probably buy it.

[Sarien]

Real men don't do fruit.

Because being stuck in Windows State Penitentiary is a good thing, right? Before the Linux etc argument is even broached, that is a good OS, but face it, the average person just wants to buy a computer, get the OS with it and get it working while having to learn as little as possible about the "why" it does such and such thing.

I'd say it was a pretty good *year* for Apple.

I'm still in love with the iMac.

Yeah, Apple released their 1st quarter earnings today. 295 million. The highest quarterly income and net profits in Apple history.

The iMac is a great computer, a perfect starting place for those people that know for certain that they either want to switch or want to own a Mac. The Mini is more geared towards showing people that there is an alternative, to just lure people at a price competitive level to just try a Mac, and see the world of difference there is between the two sets of products.


BZ, I've been burned by Creative before, with a shitty CD Burner. Apple has consistently met pace with all my expectations for their products. That alone steers me towards the iPod, because I know it is a quality product, and well made.

[Mr. Peanuts]

Don't be dissin Creative, Sarien or I'll hunt you.

[Sarien]

You mean on an island, like in The Most Dangerous Game?

[Kontrolz]

Waste of money

The Ipod shuffle is a waste of money. Why spend $100 on an mp3 player that has no LCD and wont allow you to select what track you want to play? You can get an mp3 player with LCD, radio, radio record function and the same amount of hard drive space for the same price. <_<

[Jerome Scuggs]

The iPod name, the features, the size, the price, and the easiness / simplicity make it a potentially awesome seller. Sure, it might not be as good as an iPod, or even as good as it's flash card competitors, but it doesn't have to be as good as the ipod - it's a different idea altogether. It also makes a compact, good storage idea, a sort of USB key you can jam all your fave tunes into

[Ephemeral]

Because being stuck in Windows State Penitentiary is a good thing, right? Before the Linux etc argument is even broached, that is a good OS, but face it, the average person just wants to buy a computer, get the OS with it and get it working while having to learn as little as possible about the "why" it does such and such thing.



Yeah, Apple released their 1st quarter earnings today. 295 million. The highest quarterly income and net profits in Apple history.

The iMac is a great computer, a perfect starting place for those people that know for certain that they either want to switch or want to own a Mac. The Mini is more geared towards showing people that there is an alternative, to just lure people at a price competitive level to just try a Mac, and see the world of difference there is between the two sets of products.


BZ, I've been burned by Creative before, with a shitty CD Burner. Apple has consistently met pace with all my expectations for their products. That alone steers me towards the iPod, because I know it is a quality product, and well made.

Sarien,
I was simply joking. I find it amusing when threads with 'OS jahad' breaks out. Of course, 'which OS is best' can take make forms, are we talking about which OS is best from a technical standpoint? Or perhaps from a marketing standpoint? Or which OS is the most stable? Or which company is most likely to produce innovations? Or which OS is best from a usability standpoint?

My OPINION:
- Apple has the best OS from a technical standpoint. It is now best from a usability standpoint. But marketing? No way. Microsoft is a marketing machine. IPod aside, let's not forget that Apple targeted students and artists years ago as a way to break into the desktop market. Students and artists aren't exactly the demographics that reflect deep pockets. Doh.

- Microsoft products remind me of how many Japanese car companies kicked the American Big 3 car companies in the ass during the 60's and 70's. They reacted to the market exactly in the way it needed to be responded to. Anyone who ignores this fact has never spent 2 hours sitting through a presentation given on an overhead projector, complete with upside down transparencies. Listening to people whine about MS now is just like listening to people whine about the Japanese car companies years ago. The Japanese delivered what the market wanted, high value for the buck. This is exactly what MS has done and continues to do. I know it is fashionable to be ABM (Anything but Microsoft), but everyone should at least give them credit for marketing machine they are and the fact that we can buy software at dirt cheap prices.

Linux – I feel it ranks as ‘average’ in most areas. Technically and from a usability standpoint it is not all that outstanding. It has found a home as web servers but is still struggling on the desktop and in embedded devices. I think the ‘open source’ movement is losing momentum and with good reason. Between the legal issues and the lack any quality control in the open source code, many companies (including mine) are now re-evaluating the true cost of developing under Linux.

Bottom line, I have no allegiance to any particular OS. The techno-ecology is always changing, and these are all operating systems in that ecology. Many exploit specific niches, and through competition they will be improved and extended into other niches. Each system that is surviving at the moment serves a purpose. They will grow and shrink as time passes, and eventually some will cease to exist. I believe that they all have served people and influenced the designs of other systems.

[Heatha]

The shuffle is more for a person who wants something super portable and sleek looking. It's going to be great for working out at the gym and those kinds of things because it's less bulky than the ipod.

It's all about OS X Tiger people.

Oh, dont forget Apple and sony becoming close friends.

[geekbot]

Yay, let's talk about OSes.

I'd agree that Linux is average overall on a x86 desktop. But there are many other applications- how about a server running Linux+Apache compared to a Windows solution?

Linux is not technically outstanding? Perhaps you meant in terms of hardware support, etc. on a x86 PC? I'll give that it has more than BSD or others but less than Windows. But Linux clusters are used to create supercomputers that rival Crays, etc. That's pretty cool. They are also stripped down and used in embedded systems. Modified and used in Real-Time systems. All technically cool stuff.

As for open source- go to sourceforge and you'll see the proliferation of open projects. Almost any kind of app that I would think about running, I've seen a number of open alternatives. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, sometimes just different. OpenOffice is a pretty massive project that is a slick, usable alternative to Office. So is Firefox. Bittorrent is a small project but has had increasing impact on large file distribution.

My company has an internal sourceforge that also hosts 400+ open projects.

Mac OS X- it's based on BSD Unix, it looks awesome, that's about all I need to know. I'm also surpised an opinion that places Microsoft above Apple in terms of marketing...that's your opinion, I guess.

[Vykromond]

if your market share doesn't grow, your marketing isn't effective

[Sarien]

Sarien,
I was simply joking.

Microsoft is a marketing machine.

I know it is fashionable to be ABM (Anything but Microsoft), but everyone should at least give them credit for marketing machine they are and the fact that we can buy software at dirt cheap prices.

I know it was a joke man, that's why I compared Windows to being in Windows State Penitentiary, ie Prison.

Microsoft is certainly not a marketing machine. They want people and companies to believe that they are, but they're not. What they had was some luck and some serious fast and loose business ethics. If they were such a great marketing giant, why is it that Microsoft stock, isn't going anywhere and hasn't in a long while? Longhorn is referred to as vaporware and a joke now in most cases. They managed to push Xbox (which was failing) off the ground not through marketing brilliance or any sort of genius. They used brute force: money. They bought entire companies with good upcoming titles and forced them to change to run on Xbox only for a long time. (Halo and Bungie for instance). They're a bully, not a marketing wizard. Now they simply maintain their place because all these prefab machines sold, gotta come with something, and Linux is gonna be a bit more work than the most basic computer user is willing to go through.

Last, the Anything but Microsoft. I've been pretty much anti windows since the first version I laid my hands on as a step up from DOS, Windows 3.11, while my Mac Classic II was running MacOS Sytem 7. Long, Long before it was fashionable.

[Sarien]

But Linux clusters are used to create supercomputers that rival Crays, etc. That's pretty cool.

http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/colsa/

25 teraflops. 1,566 G5 Xserves. What more needs to be said?

[Ephemeral]

Yay, let's talk about OSes.

I'd agree that Linux is average overall on a x86 desktop. But there are many other applications- how about a server running Linux+Apache compared to a Windows solution?

Linux is not technically outstanding? Perhaps you meant in terms of hardware support, etc. on a x86 PC? I'll give that it has more than BSD or others but less than Windows. But Linux clusters are used to create supercomputers that rival Crays, etc. That's pretty cool. They are also stripped down and used in embedded systems. Modified and used in Real-Time systems. All technically cool stuff.

As for open source- go to sourceforge and you'll see the proliferation of open projects. Almost any kind of app that I would think about running, I've seen a number of open alternatives. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, sometimes just different. OpenOffice is a pretty massive project that is a slick, usable alternative to Office. So is Firefox. Bittorrent is a small project but has had increasing impact on large file distribution.

My company has an internal sourceforge that also hosts 400+ open projects.

Mac OS X- it's based on BSD Unix, it looks awesome, that's about all I need to know. I'm also surpised an opinion that places Microsoft above Apple in terms of marketing...that's your opinion, I guess.

Geek,
Well, I was the VP of Engineering at a technology company for a decade, although now I am Executive VP and a partner of the company. We design and manufacture embedded devices, so please note that I am not some teenager sitting in my bedroom mouthing off. (BTW, I started as an entry level programmer and worked my way up through the ranks. I went to college for 4 years back in the 70’s but for a different career.) The following is nothing but my opinion based upon my experience.
My company has developed our own 32-bit real-time operating system and used it in many of devices. We have developed and sold our own TCP/IP stack. On the hardware side, we design and spin our own boards, everything from lowly Mot68000 processors up to 1GHz X86 stuff. We have a very experienced staff of industrial designers, EE’s and software engineers.
When the Linux hype started, we jumped on the bandwagon as did many other companies. I can honesty say that not a single piece of open source code has worked for us. Every single thing that we have taken from the ‘community’ has ended up turning into a very large rewrite effort. The latest example was a driver for a Cyprus USB part. After spending 5 weeks trying to make it work we ended up rewriting the entire thing from the ground up. Cyprus now has our driver posted on their web site. The original scope of work counted on open source as a starting point. Our experience is that the vast majority of low level open source code will just barely make a part function. Turning on a part is not the same thing as making it function correctly, to say nothing about optimizing for performance.

I have a whole staff of people who used to be ABM and embraced Linux like it was their firstborn. Now, when I go to get a scope of work from them they tell me that they would just as soon write it from the ground up then screw around with other people’s half-assed code. This is coming from people who have been very active in the open source movement, several of them are listed as “Regular Maintainers for U-Boot board support” and “Regular Maintainers for PPCBoot board support” in the open source community.

And legal issues? As of a few months ago, most Linux modules were considered outside of GPL. Now, they are being included in the GPL. WTF? Basically anything that now touches the kernel is now considered GPL. So we, and every other company, that has patented algorithms in a module does what? Rewrite everything? The whole GPL situation is a minefield from a corporate legal standpoint. Nothing has been upheld in courts, and even worse the whole GPL cluster is going to end up in international courts (read as expensive and will take years to resolve).

Additionally, building enterprise value into a company is important. In other words, developing intellectual property is important to the total value of the company. Open source does NOT add anything in this respect.

None of these issues bodes well for the future of open source, hence, my opinion on the value of open source, particularly in the embedded world. If your company has not felt the effects of these issues, I would be interested to hear how it was done.
Eph

[Ephemeral]

Sarien,
I thought my earlier thread made it clear that I have no preference for any particular OS. They all have a place in today's world, they all are contributing in some ways.
I make sure that my posts always say that these are my opinions, not facts. Reread your post. It comes across like you are stating facts. This, along with your inability to at least see some value in all sides of the arguement tends to give your opinion less weight than it should have.

As for marketing, according to the report, "Worldwide Client and Server Operating Environment Market Forecast and Analysis, 2002-2007," Windows desktop OS sales worldwide increased from 93.2 percent of the market in 2001 to 93.8 percent in 2002, accounting for more than $9.75 billion in sales. Various Mac OS versions stalled in second place, with just 2.9 percent of the market (and 2.2 percent of the revenues), although IDC noted that Apple will soon relinquish second place to Linux, which saw desktop growth to 2.3 percent of the market.
For me, those marketing numbers speak for themselves.