This article from Cringely is kinda fun.

There are little gems throughout:

quote:

So is 64-bit really nothing to Apple? And why did they make such a big deal about it in their earlier marketing?

The way i see it now the switch is just about the only option Apple has right now.

But it's not about Intel or Microsoft, i guess the reason is that they're simply running out of features they can implement.

There are a lot of people in german mac-forums who are complaining about Tiger because it basically offers nothing really new in terms of features. Spotlight ? Could be nice if it actually worked, but hey, we were able to search for files before.

Dashboard ? Yeah, sure.

Under-the-hood-changes ? Give me a break.

Actually, a considerable number of people have switched back to 10.3.

I guess they looked at their roadmap for 10.5 and realized that the features that people want cannot be implemented because of the unstable base of OS X and the features they could implement (or buy in the form of shareware apps) are basically pathetic.

So they announced "the switch".

Hey Steve, why does font management still suck in 10.5 ? Well, we had to implement "the switch" first.

Hey Steve, why do preferences still get lost in 10.5 ? Well, we had to implement "the switch" first.

That at least buys them one more year, or maybe two and gives them another chance to cash in bigtime with the "switchers".

Lacking any evidence whatsoever, I like Cringely's theory. At least I'm not the only one saying there's more to this than meets the eye. There is some big thing that we don't know. The story as it stands doesn't hang together right. It sounds and feels incomplete. There must be more to it. Dontcha think?

Of course.

And again, it's because since the advent of OS X, Steve hasn't given us any reason whatsoever to trust him. Conspiracy theories abound, because he's demonstrated time and again he's got crap to HIDE. This is what you get when image and public perception, and hype and marketing bullshit become more important than good tools.

If Steve says: 30% FASTER!! You and I both know that the next thought in everyone's head with half a brain is gonna be "than WHAT?"

Apple needs to re-earn our trust.

.
I read so many things on all this in such a short time recently that I don't remember where this came from...but one analysis that I read said that one of the biggest things Jobs has going for him in making all these changes is the "loyalty" of the "Mac following."

In other words, the Mac zombies will swallow so much that normal people would not, that Jobs is relieved of much of the inconvenience of doing things in a better way that any NORMAL business would have to do. No other company could get away with the shit that he pulls.

Of course, on the other hand Apple's penalty for being boneheads is a 2% market share.

Markle

Um I think Cringely needs to read thalo.net to understand what is going on. Cringely is as clueless as the rest of the talkingheads.

Everyone is discussing roadmaps. Roadmaps represnt what they hope to attain in the future. How can you make a prediction on whose roadmap is better if the products do not exist yet? PowerPC's roadmap looks great too. But the PowerPC roadmap ended up having some pitfalls IBM was not expecting delaying the timeline of the roadmap. I doubt Intel's roadmap will be free from it's own pitfalls.

Job's is absolutely doing this because he can period.

There's one way out. One way. And that's the MacLash. If the Mac interface gets a true, thoughtful, and intelligent overhaul, The Mac will have a renaissance. All we need, is to get Steve to think it was his idea all along. The Mac is his birthright, his destiny. I want HIM to start asking himself how history is gonna remember him. Sleazebag or Genius. I'd vote Genius. But to get there, this dishonest con-job has gotta stop.

If I was Steve's MacCoach, the pep talk I'd give him right now would be: Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Make the GUI smarter and leaner and more minimal. Minimal has worked for the hardware, trust it. Make FINE computers with FINE interfaces. Be the shaker furniture of computers. Form, function, elegance. Think about professionals first, and trust me, all the other markets will be there.

People aren't going to remember the computer that had the most eye candy and the most interface. They're going to remember the fastest computer, the most powerful, high-performance computer. If you make and operating system that causes the Mac to be unreliable and slow, people will think the platform is stupid and uncool. Which is where anyone who knows anything about Macs is right now.

Right now we have cool hardware, and friggin' FOOLISH software.

But there's a way out. Restore greatness to the Mac by going back to your roots. Remember the Finder. Remember the desktop metaphor. Find a new way to revisit the strengths of the legacy, while moving forward.

Think clarity, consistency, and above all, common sense. Without intuitiveness, the Mac is crap. It's crap now, and it's all OS X's fault. Bring the operating system to a greater degree of completitude, and really sit and THINK about what makes sense with an interface. Analyze how people work again, find the shortest distances between two points. Find ways to make the user experience a joy again, like it once was.

Your customers find joy in DOING. The mistake apple has made is believing that twiddling is what it's all about. It ain't.

quote:

Originally posted by RicoX:
Um I think Cringely needs to read thalo.net to understand what is going on. Cringely is as clueless as the rest of the talkingheads.

Everyone is discussing roadmaps. Roadmaps represnt what they hope to attain in the future. How can you make a prediction on whose roadmap is better if the products do not exist yet? PowerPC's roadmap looks great too. But the PowerPC roadmap ended up having some pitfalls IBM was not expecting delaying the timeline of the roadmap. I doubt Intel's roadmap will be free from it's own pitfalls.

Job's is absolutely doing this because he can period.

You know, just recently i had a look at the Freescale roadmap for their G4 chips.

If they implement their roadmap (and i don't see why they shouldn't, their roadmap has not so much to do with Apple since they mainly produce for the embedded market), then Mr. Jobs will have some tough questions to answer. In the second half of this year and going into next year, they plan to release a whole bunch of new G4-related stuff that will make PPC look pretty good again, especially versus Intel. Dual-core, higher bus speeds, dynamic frequency scaling, bigger caches, it's all there.

See

http://www.freescale.com/files/sndf/doc/reports_present...004_EUROPE_P1302.pdf Slide 41.

Conspiracy theories abound...

What conspiracy theories? Have we gotten to the point where we are suppose to deny the existence of business planning? There are no boards of directors, no Monday morning company meetings, no business plans at all because that would lead to the idea that a group of people met in a room to make plans? And, how could that be? That's conspiracy-type thinking, isn't it?

So, if a person were to believe that such meetings take place, in business, in government, in every institution, including hospitals and churches, and that person attempts to make reasonable guesses about the resultant plans he must be a crazy conspiracy nut because, well, he believes groups of people meet to make plans, often with set times and written agendas, often under terms of confidentiality. That's just crazy thinking. It's conspiracy thinking. He shouldn't be thinking about what people are planning at all. He should believe that things just happen with no planning. He certainly cannot participate in the decisions and strategies of the planning meetings because there are no such meetings. It's only his fevered, conspiracy-addled imagination that says there are.

So, there you are. If you observe some event, business, political, anything, and you find your mind wandering towards musing about the reasons and plans behind the event, stop right there. Exercise some thought discipline. Certainly, tell no one else about your lack of thought discipline. You'll become an easy target. Quick as a wink others will brand you as a crazy conspiracy nut for your strange belief in the existence of planning meetings. "What! You believe business or political elites actually confidentially met in a room and the event you see is the result of decisions and planning? What a nut! What a crazy conspiracy nut!"

For my part, whenever someone pulls the "conspiracy nut" ridicule ploy on me I have the distinct feeling that I've just been ordered to stop thinking. But, I guess that just goes to prove how lost in conspiracy madness I've become. We all know the truth, don't we? Events just happen on their own and all the information needed to understand them is freely available ---probably on TV.

I suppose "business planning" at Apple these days comes down to

"Let's see what Steve is up to today and get out of the way".

Really. We wouldn't call the business planning of companies conspiratorial if the intent wasn't to put one over on the public.

I do a lot of advertising work, and there's always a huge difference between people selling stuff that really is good, vs. those selling crap trying to make it appear something it's not. Those two types of uh, "salesmanship" are what either inspires brand loyalty, or arouses the suspicions of the public.

The bottom line with Apple is, when you start having their customers speak of their corporate strategy in terms of "conspiracy", it's beyond a simple semantic issue... it's an articulation of a pervasive sense that they're being bullshitted. Apple is gaining a reputation of being less than forthcoming with what's really going on with this development.

Of course corporations will try to dismiss ANALYSIS as "conspiracy theories" whenever they can... but the fact is, a superabundance of conspiracy theories is proof positive that the public is profoundly distrustful of them.

The OS X development is spun up the wazoo to hide its rather serious shortcomings. And the customers consequently get taken advantage of.

I've never trusted Apple less than I do right now. DGMW, I'm still a FAN, I still worship Ive and marvel at the legacy UI team's work. I still believe the original AHIGs are like the Magna Carta of the personal computer age...

but at the same time, I've lived long enough now to see the decline and fall and soul-selling of Apple Computer. Seen them dumb down the product and seen the quality slip. Seen the marketeers take over and hype the hell out of third-rate crap, and try to convince pros that it's worth way more than it is.

Con, conspiracy, sham, bullshit... doesn't matter what you call it. All you need to do is use the product to see that what Apple says, isn't always--or sometimes even close to being--true.

The biggest and most important question is of course: If OS X runs on standard PC hardware (and i guess the Mactels or intac's will be standard PC hardware), then how do you keep people from just installing it on a DELL or Gateway PC ?

Forget about fancy registration schemes, that's what Microsoft is doing and it doesn't work. You can get registration keys for XP on the net. They don't care because they make their money with big professional customers, of which Apple has about zero right now.

And any kind of dongle, hardware or software can and will be broken IMHO. They tried it in iTunes and are playing catch-me-if-you-can with the hackers, if they want to do the same thing with OS X, well, good luck.

The moment the first hacked, "code-free" version of OS X is put on a server somewhere will be the death knell for Apple.

Ironically, it's the switch to OS X and the UNIX-geek, digi-kid culture that is the base for that. In the days of OS9, if a pirated, hacked OS 9 (there was nothing to pirate or hack anyway) had appeared on the Net, would anybody have even cared ? I don't think so. You got quality and you were ready and willing to pay for it, because you knew that made the high level of quality possible. it was a win-win-situation for everybody. But if you switch to conning people, lying to them, delivering beta-quality untested software, breaking your promises, well, if you can get that for free you will, even if it involves a little cheating. They cheat on you, you cheat on them.

Apple R.I.P.

quote:

Originally posted by klapauzius:
The biggest and most important question is of course: If OS X runs on standard PC hardware....how do you keep people from just installing it on a DELL or Gateway PC ?

Yup! You are right on the mark. The other side to this question is will Windows run on the Intel O' Macs? If both Windows and OS X are running equally well (or in my view, equally badly) on the same computer there will always be reasons to use Windows rather than OS X. Users will find software for Windows that isn't available for OS X, or simply a greater selections for a certain task. They will find hardware they require that have Windows only drivers. Even presently owned printers and scanners may work better because Window drivers have more or better features. After a while there will be fewer and fewer reasons to use OS X and no reason at all to buy Apple branded Intel boxes.

This seems like the bigger question to me also. The issue of merely running OS X on Intel chips seems a smaller matter. Both X-critics and X-men alike seem to agree that apart from the expense and inconvenience of the transition it doesn't make a whole lot of difference what chip OS X is running on. Most likely the considerable inconvenience will result in no loss or gain for users other than the transition money we must pony up.

The question of whether OS X is more suited to the PPC or the Intel chip doesn't seem like a issue that much matters. The issue of Windows running on Intel O' Macs or OS X hacked to run on standard Intel hardware is much bigger with very much bigger consequences.

At the very least Apple moving its user base over to Intel hardware has large business consequences for Apple. Cringely is already trying to guess which company Apple is going to sell us out to. The fact that Apple customers will be all Intel users, like everyone else, enhances the value of that user base to others in the industry. As noted, the switch to Intel probably won't benefit users or developers, especially since Apple is foisting the transition costs off on us, but it has the potential of benefitting Apple. When all is said and done it has raised the cash value of its user base.

It does seem Apple users are being encouraged to jabber amongst themselves about the relatively minor issue of which chip is better than which chip while larger questions that will very much affect us all are kept off the discussion agenda. Apple insists the only reason they are making the switch is because in its intrinsic corporate goodness its corporate heart bleeds for us and all it wants in the world is for us to have really good computers. The Intel chip is a better chip. That's the only reason given for the change. Don't even think about others. There are none. There is nothing to talk about and besides you have no say in the matter. The Intel chip is a better chip than the PPC. Jabber about that.

I can't see any reason on earth why anyone would want to run OS X on a Dell. It's really the operating system that's the weak link in ALL this. Chips schmips. OS X running on any PC would be the whole courting of the OpenSource movement coming back to bite Apple in the ass. They'd lose the exclusivity thing, the yuppie appeal... and god, it really would stay beta forever. It would also get hacked to pieces. Because it's software for chimps and casual users, evil hacker-geeks will use it in more or less the way it was intended: to take advantage of people they (and Apple) thinks are stupid. To make the casual user a victim, and them the predators.

In that scenario, the one thing I see OS X never doing, is improving. Never getting enough quality to really and truly be a commercial grade operating system.

And then you look at what it would mean for Windows to run on Mac hardware. 100% of corporate america runs on Windows. With sexy, really well designed hardware, Apple might finally become the Mercedes or BMW they always style themselves. I can easily see the executive elite going for Cinema Displays, or all-in-ones with cases like the current iMac G5. If the computer is desk-space saving like that, they'll sell a lot of them.

And if they lower the price enough, purchasing departments will be all over them. Apple's stronger wireless capabilities might even be a plus in the corporate market.

What the business world will have absolutely no need to do, is run OS X. Not while it's so heavily leaning to casual use, or geek aristocrat developer FOR taking advantage of casual users.

However, there's a scenario swami thalo sees, where if Apple does make inroads into corporate America, there'd be the need to make the operating system more productivity-friendly. More business professional friendly. And that might lean-and-mean it up a bit. But the Aqua interface is just too home-user for that market.

Lord knows it's so irritating to my industry that it's almost unbearable. All things being equal, with OS X and Windows running on any hardware... on interface alone I'd pick Windows. Why? Because Windows is more responsive, the fonts are clearer, it's more customizable, and it's still so much a legacy Mac ripoff, that I'd probably prefer it.

And yet, if OS X were customizable with a PLATINUM interface, even if it were still dog slow, my emotional gut reaction would be to stay with the Mac. Because THAT interface was excellent. Would that it could be made as fast and responsive and consistent as the old days, though.

To me, it all keeps coming back to the strength (or in our case the weakness) of the operating system. That's the make or break of Apple. If this transition is about making OS X work, it's still gonna fail, because OS X is fundamentally crappy. If it's about making better hardware for us, like Steve says, (and which my spidey sense tells me is a total lie) but if that is somehow true, then they've got a shot to compete.

But the lynchpin is usability. I don't know how many times or how many ways I can say this, but Apple's decline began when they traded the AHIGs for OpenSource style seat-of-the-pants spinning gear intellectual everest development model.

When the OS became a rubics cube for geeks showing off, we lost quality and gained complexity. We lost usability and gained confusion and unbelievable bloat. Apple started doing crap BECAUSE IT COULD BE DONE. Not because it was USEFUL. OS X is nothing more than one very overdone PowerPoint presentation of an operating system. It's makes all kinds of promises, sells what it's going to do someday, but does very little of it in the here and now.

That's what pisses me off about this "roadmap" bullshit. All this looking forward gives us crap in the here and now.

The way out, is to look at the legacy. Create a Mac renaissance. To realize that when it comes to GUIs, Apple had the secret. They were THE GUI guys bar none. They invented what Windows went on to dominate the world with. And if they just remember that, they can go them one better.

.
It's been said that there are some hardware differences between Mac and Windows PCs that will prevent them from being interchangeable even when Apple starts using Intel chips. Does anyone have any insight into that?


Markle

Different memory, perhaps?

The motherboard has boot rom chipsets. It is what is Zapped in a PRAM Zap. Apple motherboards will have a rom chip the OS will recognize as legitimate for install.

I am not sure if you could easily bypass such hardware limit of a rom chip.

Right, the companies involved would have to make a conscious choice to LET either or both operating systems run on the hardware. If they make them completely interchangable, it opens up the clonegates.

That would be great for us, with prices that would soon bottom out... but it would be bad for Apple, who wants to charge more and keep up the mystique of a luxury item.

I really don't think it'll ever happen. They will cut some kind of a deal, and Windows will run in VPC or some other kind of emulation... but I doubt OS X will run on your basic Intel box.

The missing piece is going to be Longhorn. If actually good, it could stomp Apple's best laid plans. So far it shows no sign of being "Less is More" either, but holy crap, if it were ever to do that... it'd really spice everything up. I think the next CLEARLY SUPERIOR operating system that puts the user first, is likely to take all the marbles.

I don't know about ROMs as a barrier. Aren't ROMs reproduced all the time, especially for gaming systems?

Maybe we are looking at this thing wrong. We, of course, are looking at it from our point of view. We know OS X is crap compared to the Mac OS, but Windows users don't know that. They have a different image of Apple altogether. To them Apple means high-end, premium quality. After all, doesn't Apple charge a premium price?

Many Windows users hate Windows and despise Microsoft. Hell, you may be one of them. Windows is highhanded crap that has been strong-armed on them. There is lots of dissatisfaction with Microsoft both in the end user and corporate worlds. It's just that they don't see a viable alternative. Many such as IBM and others have tried to jump ship to Linux. But, let's face it, Linux is perpetual betaware.

Enter OS X running on Intel hardware. In a battle of the really crappy for the hearts and minds of the clueless OS X-Intel has a real chance. It has everything they could want. A cheesy, off-the-shelf Chinese-made computer with a confusing OS that not even the experts know how it works and a brightly colored, overblown, insulting cartoon interface that fights you every step of the way. Perfect! It's just like what they already have and it's not Microsoft. If that weren't enough, this piece of crap will have the "Macintosh" name on it, a sure sign of excellence in computing. It could just be the dream alternative they've been longing for.

Although many Windows users, both corporate and end users, are locked in and captive, it wouldn't take many of them to double Apple's computer sales, or quadruple it for that matter. Some users, happy as a lark, would jump at the chance to get out from under the oppressive corporate boot of Microsoft and gleefully leap under the oppressive corporate boot of Apple. They're idiots I know, but it isn't their fault. Their standards have been lowered. They expect crap and abuse. They don't know it ever worked any other way.

If OS X-Intel is the dream alternative for some Widows users, these users are Apple's dream customers. Hell, they would be nearly any corporation's dream customers. They are beat down and fully expecting to be abused and manipulated. They have rock bottom standards for the product. And, they have shown they are ready to pay again and again for pretty much the same product which is purposely built mainly to benefit the corporation and not them. How can you not love them? More than that, if you are in the business, how can you not lech after them? Don't think Apple doesn't.

More than four years ago Apple thought it held the key to attracting these customers. It released OS X, a crappy OS just like Windows, billed it as the worlds most advanced operating system, launched a full-blown 'switch' campaign, and waited for the clueless to rush in like dogs to their own vomit. This didn't work. After more than four years Apple has only, what, 2% or so of the market? By now Apple must be rethinking this strategy. Something must be wrong. They have the crappy Windows-like OS, so that can't be it. It must be the hardware. It's true Apple has been lowering it's standards for hardware year after year by using cheesy PC drives, peripherals, and such in its systems, but there is still something not quite right with these FrankenMacs. Apple knows it already has right brain for the beast, OS X, complete with embedded shards of broken glass, and it has the sewn-on cheesy PC hardware. There is only one thing left to do --- rip out its heart and replace it with one from a lifeless Intel box. Lo and behold, FrankenMac lives! IT LIVES!

Well, this beast doesn't really rate the status of a FrankenMac. If it's using PC hardware with an Intel microprocessor there is already a perfectly good name for such a machine; it's a PC. There is nothing else to call it, is there? Didn't think you would ever buy a PC for your main machine? Think again. It's your choice. You can go to Dell where you can choose a PC or you can go to Apple where you can choose a PC. What do you like better, the PC or the PC?

If Apple plays its business cards skillfully it may be able to attract some of the clueless that it has long slobbered and lusted after. You must admit it now has just the right combination of hardware and OS to do it. If it screws up this opportunity, then it has least completed the move of its trusting customers into the Intel PC world, lowered expectations and all, all ready to sell them out to an interested party in the industry. Maybe to Intel like Cringely theorizes or maybe to whatever Chinese firm making Apple's Intel boxes who may be looking for a brand name to enter the US market. The real key to the outcome of this situation is how much corporations and end users detest Microsoft and how good OS X-Intel PCs look to them. This final once and for all death blow to what was once the Macintosh could work out well for Apple. We're fucked. No doubt about that. All we get are PCs running a Windows knock-off OS, but Apple might just make it work for them this time.

Very interesting, brother double-H...

It's very logical to see the disdain for Microsoft in a world dominated by Microsoft, and wonder what will happen because of that. Likewise, you also point to the same aristocratic downlooking and underestimating that all computer companies do to their users. A lot of time we get crap, not because Apple or Microsoft aren't CAPABLE of giving us software that works... but because THEY THINK WE WANT CRAP. Or they simply know we'll SETTLE FOR CRAP, and still buy. I believe that if they truly thought we were smarter, there'd be less crap out there.

I think there's one point you make that bears further discussion. This idea of a splinter group of the captive audience of the Microsoft corporate world, going over to Apple, and actually standing up and being counted as the first true "switchers".

And yet, when I look at any of the possible MOTIVATIONS for that, it reminds me of our past election. The campaign is not so much highlighting the positive of either candidate, but trying to harness hatred for one of them, and hoping to ride that to victory. I think you're right. If switchers arise in any significant number, it might not have as much to do with Apple, as it would with just being friggin' fed up with Microsoft.

But then I start thinking of my own situation. Right now I'm fed up with Apple. Frustrated by them. For the first time in my long history as a Mac evangelist and loyal fan, I'm disappointed with their operating system in a serious way. So what keeps me from being a "reverse switcher"? Infrastructure. The same kind of captivity that keeps Microsoft customers coming back. It's more EXPENSIVE to switch. What's involved with a hardcore Mac person switching to Windows is daunting... and I'm sure it's equally, if not more daunting the other way around.

If you're a casual user, you probably don't have enough apps licensed, or enough hardware to make switching that big a deal. For digikids and home users, buying a new computer is a lot like buying a TV or gaming console. Shitcanning one for another and disposing of the old isn't as big a deal.

But in Corporate America, crap like that is a big deal. If a whole company uses a particular type of hardware and software, change comes very slowly, if at all. I've seen this first hand. I've seen it with slight UPGRADES of simple utilities, where a crappy buggy version of something sticks around for a year after a new version is available, because upgrading threatens the status quo and brings down a bureaucratic tsunami of support issues, testing, and red tape. Meanwhile, the users suffer. They end up working with broken software, because switching is so much of a headache.

They're so jaded and fearful of change, so convinced that changing the software lineup on a file server will cause a cascade failure, flood the tech support lines, that they just don't bother.

In my industry, where change and innovation are sought-after... even I look at the prospect of changing over, and it's like accidentally tuning to a spanish radio station... I can't turn the channel fast enough. I don't want to even think about it, it's so horrifying. It means buying lots of new hardware, that's actually not the worst of it. It's buying all the new SOFTWARE that's killer.

But I'm hedging my bets. When OS X turned out to be terrible, I went out and bought my first PC. Something that would have been unthinkable back in the 1980s. Hey, I don't own much software for it, but I've been using it long enough now to see that the user experience is very often better and faster for things that COUNT. Web surfing, interface performance and clarity/readability, day to day operation of applications. All better. If I did nothing but hang out in Office or on the web all day, there'd be no reason to use a Mac other than I hated Microsoft. And for most people, I'm guessing that that ain't a good enough reason.

Yeah, maybe for teens and rebels, but not average users who buy computers "because it's what I use at work"... if you ask people why they choose one platform over another, that has to be the #1 answer. And as much as Apple tries to be the digital hub, the passive entertainment/home-and-casual use platform of choice, they are never going to climb that "it's what I use at work" wall. Not without offering something more capable to Corporate America.

The only way, I think, to make inroads there, is to SURPASS Windows... and I mean by a big margin. Corporate America understands the bottom line. They'll rip out their entire infrastructure, why, because OS X has bigger icons? Because it's a cool MP3 Player or home DVD burner? Nah-ah. They'd only do something like that, if another platform were SO much faster, better, and increased productivity so dramatically, that it became financially worth it. The so-called "security" issue is a big plum, and that might sway some to the Mac side, but I honestly don't think the Mac is any more secure. It's simply such a eensy weensy market, that the bad guys don't bother with it.

Brother double-H mentions that Linux is likely to remain in a perpetual beta state. And what, OS X isn't? I think that's the price you pay for trying to harness the great unwashed OpenSource movement. Court geeks, and you take on the fact that they're easily BORED. They're addicted to innovation for its own sake, and have more interest in scaling intellectual everests, problem solving, than they do producing useful products.

They're like high end mathematicians... they gain chops by figuring stuff out, visualizing... but they almost never--and I mean never--bring anything to a point where it's useful or has a practical application. They groove on the fact that their ideas HAVE practical applications, but they don't want to be the ones to explore them.

And so what we get is proposals, attempts, and too-many-cooks development. OS X stays perma-beta because nobody is willing to take any of these ideas and make them practical. It's too much fun for engineers to stay on the cutting edge... too much work for them to bring anything to resolution. And so they never will.

This dynamic is what's destroying the Mac platform. Why everything comes off as half-assed. We have an operating system right now, where the appearance of the dock icons, and slow genie suck, and stupid widgets, are more important than the way the software performs. Where keeping the UI alive, even if it does squat, is more important than allowing the user to keep WORKING. That's Franken-Mac to me. Keeping bullshit alive, while important stuff is allowed to crash, or underperform.

Anyway, Apple might be AFTER these switchers, but until they change their "mission" to include real people doing real work, I think they won't get any. Somehow, the energy and creativity of geek aristocrats has to be HARNESSED. They can't be allowed to run free, naked, and war-painted up with cheetos dust. In order for OS X to become anything significant, you have to get geeks to think of US, and not themselves. They can't always be jonesing for the next friggin' PUZZLE... the next intellectual everest to scale. No. They have to be given A JOB. They have to stop thinking of their own fun, and start thinking about making a difference in the world.

This is a tough sell, because if they ever did create an operating system with a UI that unleashed the power of the personal computer for the average joe, some might think it'd put them out of a job. They could be all: "why should we give up our position of power over chimps? We're intellectually superior! Shouldn't they be SERVING us? Why the hell should we break our backs and make tools for them when it will stop them from NEEDING us?"

And there's the rub.

To make better tools for the rest of us, using OpenSource talent, you're basically asking geek aristocrats to be ALTRUISTIC instead of self serving. You're asking Apple to turn its back on marketeers who make a living off of putting the customer down, and highlighting how retarded they are, rather than putting them up on a pedestal a-la the 19th century view of "the customer is always right." This is the 21st century, where the customer is a rube.

In order for Apple to really compete, these are the fundamental philosophical things that need to change. For the MacLash to really take root, the vison, and mission of Apple can't be to take advantage, it has to be to provide tools. Creating the best, most creatively liberating experience for the end user, has to be more important than keeping geeks and marketeers at the top of the food chain. And EXCELLENCE and quality have to be more important than an effective con-job. Apple has to EARN its way into a position to compete with Microsoft. To beat them, they have to play by fairer rules than those that governed Gates. The little angel-Steve on Job's shoulder has to kick the ass of the little devil-Steve.

What's best for customers is going to be what's best for Apple. And that can't happen if the entire corporate strategy is about putting one over on them. It has to be about real tools, real function, real quality, real performance. And my sense right now, with the switch to Intel, is that Apple still doesn't get it. The chip thing is not the real problem. It's just something to forestall having to DEAL with the real problem. As Apple paints itself more and more into a corner, it's like they're doing everything NOT to deal with the fundamentally flawed philosophy. Christ, they'll change the hardware architecture before that. That's what's happening right now, brothers. Saying everything is changing over is just buying time so Apple can spend two more years not delivering. If anything goes wrong, they figure we'll shrug our shoulders and go "oh well, Apple is in a period of major transition!" And so we'll keep crap-settling. My only advice to you is, don't. Keep demanding better from Apple. If the OS isn't working for you, you have to say so. You can't keep cutting slack.

We all recognize where OS X is basically a sham. We see through the BS. Notice the broken promises and over-hyped nonsense. The only way out is to make it a Mac again. Bring it to solid, stable, intelligent, commercial-quality completion. That's the foundation of the Mac renaissance.

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