http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050710.ars

I have to say i believe Hannibal is right. With his contacts in the industry (especially IBM), he's the one that probably knows the score.

So it's about the iPod, which his Steveness considers to be the "next big thing". Ah, well.

You have to give credit where credit is due. Steve again managed to put so much fog up that nobody saw the elephant under the table, which is of course apple's number one priority: the iPod. Definitely not the Mac. Hey, even thalo loves his iPod !

But with so much truth out there, he's basically dead fish. They should get rid of him, quick. Maybe he can make a living selling used cars somewhere ?

.
See what happens when ONE TIME I make the mistake of taking Apple at its word (on why the CPU shift was needed)?

quote:

it always pays to remind the world that one is, after all, the Steve Jobs.

I wonder if Intel is about to discover the joyful life of dealing with "the Steve."

He is really pond scum.


Markle

quote:

Originally posted by klapauzius:
I have to say i believe Hannibal is right. With his contacts in the industry (especially IBM), he's the one that probably knows the score.

I read the article, too. It fits, everything fits together.

Steve is great, great in creating a reality-distortion field. Great in egocentrical weird decisions. He's a real Show-Man. I really hope the majority of mac-users realizes he's not a good leader for Apple. Sadly a kind of cult was created about Steve.
They simply CAN'T ditch Steve, because they would ditch a large part of their own existence.

A fact that makes me really wonder is that they optimized the code for size, instead for speed. Is this bc. OS X is even MORE bloated than we thought or because of lousy compilers or because of G5 Architecture? <scratching head>

Anyway, really great read, every Mac-User should read this article.

http://smithz.org/x/TruthAboutApple.mov
from an ancient tv-show, i think computer chronicles

.
The reason the official story was so believable to me was because the astronomical price Apple is paying for the shift indicated that such a move could only come from dire, desperate necessity, not just simple business advantage or convenience.

A year or more of collapsed PC sales, caving in the ground around its user-base's feet--again, more market share at risk, etc., etc. What contempt Jobs must have for his Mac-user zombie lemmings to think they'll all follow wherever his whims may waft. Even if he doesn't see PCs as the future of Apple, it's still the majority of revenue NOW...and that's a lot to give up--just to put your company's future in the hands of ANOTHER single vendor.

Steve Jobs is crazy. And those who hang on his every word? Well.....

Markle

What I worry about, is that the success of the iPod becoming reinforcement for the Apple idea that we're all raving idiots. That all we care about is passive entertainment, and not tools.

I'd rather Apple see the truth, and that is that simple, intuitive interfaces and minimal design sells. I believe it could certainly sell in the PC market... it's just more work to make personal computers than it is to make MP3 players.

But it's back to something I keep saying time and time again... expect the worst, you'll get it. Believe people are retards, and it'll be a self fulfilling prophecy.

The issue is not that people don't want or need good tools, it's that Apple has been lax in providing them. The marketing strategy has emphasized this facile, dumbed-down approach, and product quality has suffered. In order for the Mac to compete, product quality has to rise again. And the way to do that, as I say over and over, is remember what it means to make personal computers. Restore the primacy of the user experience via the GUI. Cut out the happy horseshit and go simple, minimal, metaphorical.

Swap nonsense and supersizing for logic and inutitiveness.

quote:

Originally posted by Markle:
.
The reason the official story was so believable to me was because the astronomical price Apple is paying for the shift indicated that such a move could only come from dire, desperate necessity, not just simple business advantage or convenience.

Markle

This is of course pure speculation, but right now the iPods are powered by chips from Texas Instruments. If Steve tried to pull the same stunts with them that he pulled with IBM/Moto, then he had the experience of riding a 200 pound gorilla. These guys are from Texas, and they ARE from Texas, if you know what i mean. So maybe they just told him to shove it and he had to sacrifice the Mac to keep his iPods going, but this is just pure speculation.

Anyway, his credibility - if he ever had any - is below zero now with IBM announcing the chips he said they would never be able to build, with the net buzzing with stories like this on ars technica. He's probably the hot potato of the IT industry now, and for the mac, well R.I.P. If there were any "professional" customers left, they are definitely gone by now.

Sad to see the fine technology (and i'm not talkin about OS X) go that way.

quote:

Originally posted by smithz:
A fact that makes me really wonder is that they optimized the code for size, instead for speed. Is this bc. OS X is even MORE bloated than we thought or because of lousy compilers or because of G5 Architecture? <scratching head>

As i wrote in a different post, the reason why Tiger/OS X isn't full 64 bits is because the pointers/adresses (which double in size with 64 bit addressing) make the caches in the G5 burst and the whole thing becomes unusable, even on a G5. I guess if they optimized for speed instead of size (which is always a tradeoff: optimizing for size means the code runs slower, optimizing for speed means additional memory usage) that behaviour would show with 32-bit-addressing, too. Therefore, optimizing for speed would make the thing even slower because the additional code would make the caches run over.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: klapauzius,

It's all about the iPod, that seems to be clear.

I just hope a little rally in the computer market stimulates Apple to improve the high end. I still worry that pros are getting left way behind. Since Apple really doesn't need us anymore, why should they bother making the high end pro capable? Shudder.

I have to say that business-wise, Steve has no other choice but to concentrate on the iPod. I mean, come on, the little gizmos are selling like crazy.

Anybody running a company like Apple (and success-addicts like Steve) would draw the logical conclusion: Forget about the rest for now, keep selling iPods.

Unfortunately, that means the Mac is getting left behind. Ah, well.

Apple is not abandoning the high end nor is the Mac being left behind. The entire switch over to Intel is to ensure that Apple Macintosh's remain competittive.

Apple just had its best quarter ever: http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/07/13/apple.earns.320m/
They didn't get there without growing Mac sales. 35% more mac sales this quarter from a year ago.

All of your fears are unfounded, and spring from an unhealthy and wrong dislike of Mac OS X.

I think it's abundantly clear that the Mac, as it relatest to the high end and pro users, is being left behind. And not just a little bit.

It's clear that Apple is cleaning up in the casual use/passive entertainment digikid market. But MP3-playing GADGETS are much easier to make, sell, and market than personal computers. And the personal computers that are selling, are nothing more than iPod docks. Digital hubs a-la the Steve Jobs master plan.

The high end, however, has suffered greatly. I hate to break the news to brother NDPTAL, but my dislike of OS X is anything BUT unhealthy. It's based entirely on how poorly it has functioned. And while it's BETTER since I spent a shitload of money on the most powerful Mac in the lineup, it's still unfortunately NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

I really laugh when I hear crap like that. Because the last four years have shown, that EVERY SINGLE TIME there have been improvements in OS X that X-Critics have had to fight for and complain about, X-Men always embrace them, and in so doing always acknowledge that they didn't know what they were talking about when they sung praises BEFORE the bug was fixed, or whatever.

It's the same thing now. You guys are talking about how fast OS X is on the developer machines, which is nothing more than them finally admitting that Mac OS X has always been too slow.

I just think X-men are really much too easy to dupe. Forget how popular iPods are, the REALLY scary thing is how fucking WIDGETS are taking off. These are basically nothing more than overdesigned browser bookmarks, and people are acting as though they are fully developed commercially viable apps. Proving to me that Apple is reading some of you dead-on right. All you want is distraction and eye candy from your personal computers. For you guys, happy horseshit makes the world go round. There must be this unbelievable JOY in seeing a widget pop up, then (slowly) load its content... it must be FUN to spin it around, configure it, and just um, look at it. Maybe it makes you feel like you're using a computer competently.

That's gotta be it. Apple is evolving the perfect slacker machines. They want the go-gurt slurping digikids with the squirrel attention spans, the twiddlers; and they really don't care anymore about the people who work for a living.

Sad.

But guess what, there can be so much more to computers than what OS X can do. Sure, you can let Apple design your world FOR you, or you can ask for tools where you design it yourself. I vote for the latter. The personal computer as a creative tool is tougher to carry off well, and people who demand quality are tougher to please... but hey, they spend more money.

A digi will whine to mommy and daddy until they buy them an iPod. Then there are only so many iPod accessories and nonsense to buy, most of it is small potatoes.

Computers are bigger ticket items. Trust me, I know. My unhealthy and wrong dislike of OS X didn't stop me from buying systems that X-Men really never do. You don't hear about many with even a G5 TOWER. And even if they get a tower, it's never the all-out top end tower that a pro will tend to need.

I'm talking all the really vocal X-Men and Apple apologists. More and more, I'm beginning to think they're all young kids. I don't see how they can comment on the high end, when almost to a person, they never really buy hardware in that range.

Nope. It's always "waaaa, I don't care what thalo says, I wuv my iMac/iBook/eMac" well, more power to them. The high end isn't breaking sales records. I should have been on my THIRD G5 tower by now. But because of OS X being crap, I've been really reluctant to fund its development, and not get any significant performance or usability improvements out of it.

But to be honest, I'm happy for Apple. I think the iPod miracle is that they are so overpriced, and still sell like hotcakes. I think that has everything to do with them being simple and easy to use. But they're ALREADY getting goofed up. I can see it coming. Functionality splits and does this baroque dance. What was just a music player, then becomes a photo... um, looker. Then it'll be a fucking PHONE. Then who the hell knows, a personal game player for the button mashers? But Apple will start bloating the iPod to the point where people will forget why they were a success: clean, minimal, simple, functionality.

I only hope that Apple can REALLY be inspired by that kind of thing and bring it to the operating system and their personal computers. Because for me, AS SOON as they go minimal, no hard feelings, I'm back to being an evangelist rather than a Mac heretic.

All of your fears are unfounded, and spring from an unhealthy and wrong dislike of Mac OS X.

Now, that would be mentally unhealthy I take it. As in mentally ill. To you, customers that aren't fully praising this particular commercial product are mentally ill. But, we are in luck. We have you and your thought processes to point the way to full mental health. Isn't that just special!

Yeah right. You're a serious person whose comments have meaning.

thalo, the high end has stalled because IBM doesn't have any great CPU's to offer Apple. After the switch to Intel the high end will explode just as well as the rest of the Mac lineup has.

HighHopes, Mac OS X is the greatest operating system ever created. While some reasonable persons could make a case for selecting the excellent Windows XP OS over it, no sane case can ever be made for preferring the quite horrible Mac OS 9 or older over Mac OS X. The only conclusion is said person is insane.

Well, that's not likely to be true. There may be plenty of valid reasons why a person may prefer an older OS over a newer one. A number of people use a particular OS for specific tasks. Most on this forum use OS X, but you don't know that because you never read this forum, do you? You don't have a clue and your comments and responses are worthless because of it. Who the hell cares about OS 9? Just you, I guess.

Do you have anything remotely sensible to say about the Mac or operating systems? I've pretty much lost interest in the Mac and its OSs as a topic, but thalo always seems to be up to the task. Have some fun responding to his points. Or is playing the fool pretty much your whole act these days?

quote:

thalo, the high end has stalled because IBM doesn't have any great CPU's to offer Apple. After the switch to Intel the high end will explode just as well as the rest of the Mac lineup has.

Hey, I hope so, brother NDP! I'd like nothing better. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I just want stuff to WORK. When it doesn't, it's absolutely frustrating and awful.
Like now. I really wish OS X would run commercial design apps WAAYYYYY better than it currently does. If that means Intel, yeah I'll piss and moan about spending even MORE of my hard-earned dollars, but if it's actually true for once, I will. I've just become jaded because of Apple's recent quality issues.

I think if you really took a hard look at OS 9, and compared it to OS X for design and usability, you'd see that the legacy is actually much more brilliant. OS X still comes off as beta and half-assed to me. Because I use it every day. I remember when the Mac interface was smooth and intuitive. It just ain't anymore. Sorry, I know you want the new thing to be the cool thing, but in my world the truth is, the user experience of the legacy is so much better.

Now, that is not to say I think OS X should end up on the scrap heap--actually it's AQUA that should be there, lol--I'm ALL FOR the ideas of protected memory, multitasking, stability... I just don't believe we got any of that yet. Hell, there are still glaring bugs that haven't been fixed since Jaguar. Like the scrambled text bug, the repeating text bug... And now there's the new Tiger cursor bug, all kinds of bullshit. This development has gone on too long for the OS to be this sloppy still. It's really disappointing.

I think Apple, if they really want to go places, needs to get off its ass. There is too much out there that can crush it, unless they rely on more than widgets and eye candy to carry the day. We need to get back simplicity, economy, and effective--rather than wasteful--uses of computing resources.

Too much of OS X is like big fat trailer trash scarfing down junk food and producing nothing of value but natural gas. It's a pig. When it trims down and gets serious it will be worthy. Until then, it's certainly not fooling ME. I mean come on, I use it. Every. freakin'. Day. And say what you will about me, I don't miss much. Not when it comes to stuff working right and doing what it's supposed to do.

You want to talk about performance? I first ran Mac OS X on a Powerbook G3 Wallstreet that originally had a 233Mhz CPU, 100Mhz bus and 128mb of ram. I upgraded it to a 500Mhz G3 and 512mb of ram. I was still stuck with the 100Mhz bus however.

I still loved OS X on that machine. I had a faster Dell running XP that went virtually unused for years until my Powerbook finally died of long overdue old age. I did not have the benefit of graphics card accerleration because OS X didn't support the extremely old video card in that Powerbook.

So now here we are and you're telling me that on a top of the line current PowerMac that OS X runs unacceptably slow. I'm sorry but I don't buy it. And don't throw the "well I'm a pro and use my Mac harder than anyone else" line at me again because you're not the only power user in the world. I'm not saying the performance of OS X is equal to XP on recent PC hardware, it won't be till we switch over to Intel, but there's no way its like molasses either.

As for design and usability, those are subjective matters and the overwhelming majority of the Mac user base prefers Aqua to the Classic UI. The Aqua UI is so loved that tens of thousands of PC users use various programs from TweakXP, StyleXP and others to add an Aqua UI to their Windows based computers. You are not alone in your sentiments on the PC side either. There are those who feel that Windows XP's current theme is "just eye candy" and revert back to the "Classic" Windows 2000/98 UI. But again, the majority of users prefer the XP UI as do the majority of Mac users prefer Aqua. Progress has arrived, the train has left the station, and you're still bitching about your seating arraingments.

quote:

So now here we are and you're telling me that on a top of the line current PowerMac that OS X runs unacceptably slow

Wait, actually I'm saying that on the top of the line current power Mac, OS X certainly runs better for me than it's ever run... but there are still sudden and annoying slowdowns and work stoppages... which I think are directly related to pro use. Furthermore, I also am saying that MANY of the user-experience problems are a direct result of terrible, overdone interface design.

Where OS 9 was clean, simple, and minimal... OS X is a three ring circus of happy horseshit. Special effects and nonsense not tied to any logical semiotic program, which creates a COUNTERINTIUTIVE experience, rather than an intuitive one. Frankly, the Aqua interface not only doesn't work (forces you to burn extra clicks, doesn't do what you tell it, is very squirrely about remembering prefs), but it's also visually just a terrible design. It has NEVER hung together as one Mac interface... it's now a scabbed together mixture of phony brushed aluminum and crystal/stripe Aqua. Twenty different button styles, too many feedback states, inconsistent icon programs and behavior... AWFUL inconsistencies in dock, dashboard, command-tab array, toolbars, etc.

Too many behaviors isn't frikkin' FUN... it's ridiculous and makes for a more confusing user experience.

Sorry, but the "overwhelming majority" of the Mac user base, if it's true that they prefer Aqua, doesn't know what it's talking about.

And even if they do, I'd be perfectly willing to let them keep it. And have an alternate theme for pros. Because I've been over and over it again, The Aqua interface is not suited for pro use. I can go point by point with you (again) why it's not. But the simple fact is, this was designed with newbie/digikid/casual users in mind. You can tell by the scale and wasted screen real estate, and totally overdesigned distracting crap. This is interface as marketing tool, not as something designed to increase productivity. If you like it, fine, but that preference won't convince me you're a pro user.

I take the stand that pros don't need all that crap. If they like it, they're not pros. Ga head and be insulted by that, I don't care. I know that to be true. Last time I checked, pros like controls that are intuitive and efficient. Try for a second to argue that Aqua has any of that and I'll laugh in your face.

quote:

Originally posted by NDPTAL85:
You want to talk about performance? I first ran Mac OS X on a Powerbook G3 Wallstreet that originally had a 233Mhz CPU, 100Mhz bus and 128mb of ram. I upgraded it to a 500Mhz G3 and 512mb of ram. I was still stuck with the 100Mhz bus however.

I still loved OS X on that machine. I had a faster Dell running XP that went virtually unused for years until my Powerbook finally died of long overdue old age. I did not have the benefit of graphics card accerleration because OS X didn't support the extremely old video card in that Powerbook.

So now here we are and you're telling me that on a top of the line current PowerMac that OS X runs unacceptably slow. I'm sorry but I don't buy it. And don't throw the "well I'm a pro and use my Mac harder than anyone else" line at me again because you're not the only power user in the world. I'm not saying the performance of OS X is equal to XP on recent PC hardware, it won't be till we switch over to Intel, but there's no way its like molasses either.

As for design and usability, those are subjective matters and the overwhelming majority of the Mac user base prefers Aqua to the Classic UI. The Aqua UI is so loved that tens of thousands of PC users use various programs from TweakXP, StyleXP and others to add an Aqua UI to their Windows based computers. You are not alone in your sentiments on the PC side either. There are those who feel that Windows XP's current theme is "just eye candy" and revert back to the "Classic" Windows 2000/98 UI. But again, the majority of users prefer the XP UI as do the majority of Mac users prefer Aqua. Progress has arrived, the train has left the station, and you're still bitching about your seating arraingments.

Since you seem to be an expert on the Aqua UI, i'd like to ask you a very simple question concerning the UI. I've asked other people before (many times, actually), but never got an answer. Maybe you can help:

The first thing i noticed looking at Aqua was that the widgets for the windows are in the upper left corner, while the scrollbars are on the right. Which means that, if i want to scroll and then minimize/maximize a window (or the other way around), i have to move the mouse pointer diagonally across the whole window, which can be quite a loooooooong way.

Could you explain to me what sense it makes to put the window widgets in the UPPER LEFT corner, while the scrollbars are on the RIGHT side instead of putting them in the upper right corner close to the scrollbar (MacOS 9 puts the close button in the upper left corner which makes sense because a.) you click it only once and then the window's gone and b.) you don't want to click it by accident since then the window's gone) ?

Thank you very much !

quote:

Originally posted by NDPTAL85:
The Aqua UI is so loved that tens of thousands of PC users use various programs from TweakXP, StyleXP and others to add an Aqua UI to their Windows based computers.

gazillion of flies like fresh poo, but does this make the poo any better? i doubt it.

quote:

I'm not saying the performance of OS X is equal to XP on recent PC hardware, it won't be till we switch over to Intel

This may be true or not. "We" don't know. How do you know that now? Are you just taking Steve's always unreliable word for it?

.