How long will Apple survive?
This is a simple question for those who air an opinion.
We all know that the most recent profitable quarters have been largely due to Apple's cash reserve earning interest. Apple's PowerMac, iMac, and PowerBook sales have steadily declined over the past two years. The new iMac is mediocre at best and is plagued by shortages. The PowerMacs and PowerBooks have remained essentially stagnant in terms of architecture for over 14 months. iBook sales have recently declined due to the fact that it is still using a processor that is essentially 4 years old. The situation so dire that the competition's mobile P4 laptops outperform Apple's top-of-the-line PowerMacs at most tasks.
Apple's "solutions", such as the iPod, iDVD, iMovie, iTunes, and iPhoto are no longer unique, inevitably emulated by Windows counterparts within a few short weeks.
Perhaps must damaging of all, Apple will be 2GHz behind in clockspeed by this summer by Intel, and utterly killed by AMD's 64bit Hammer.
Giving the current state of lackadaisical efforts in terms of hardware by Apple along with fierce competition from the x86 market, and the upcoming expiration of the Microsoft pact, how long do you think Apple will survive?
I think by the year 2006, Apple will no longer exist. They will likely go the way of Be, bought out by a larger comporation such as Sony or IBM.
[ 03-10-2002: Message edited by: Nostradamus ]</p>
We all know that the most recent profitable quarters have been largely due to Apple's cash reserve earning interest. Apple's PowerMac, iMac, and PowerBook sales have steadily declined over the past two years. The new iMac is mediocre at best and is plagued by shortages. The PowerMacs and PowerBooks have remained essentially stagnant in terms of architecture for over 14 months. iBook sales have recently declined due to the fact that it is still using a processor that is essentially 4 years old. The situation so dire that the competition's mobile P4 laptops outperform Apple's top-of-the-line PowerMacs at most tasks.
Apple's "solutions", such as the iPod, iDVD, iMovie, iTunes, and iPhoto are no longer unique, inevitably emulated by Windows counterparts within a few short weeks.
Perhaps must damaging of all, Apple will be 2GHz behind in clockspeed by this summer by Intel, and utterly killed by AMD's 64bit Hammer.
Giving the current state of lackadaisical efforts in terms of hardware by Apple along with fierce competition from the x86 market, and the upcoming expiration of the Microsoft pact, how long do you think Apple will survive?
I think by the year 2006, Apple will no longer exist. They will likely go the way of Be, bought out by a larger comporation such as Sony or IBM.
[ 03-10-2002: Message edited by: Nostradamus ]</p>
Comments
Lack of sales could be attributed to the recession.
It's true that the MHz gap is becoming a serious issue for Apple, but you assume that nothing will be done about it. I think MWNY may bring some interesting developments, but if not you are right, Apple is tempting fate by offering such low-performance hardware.
But the new iMac is a hit, and supply problems will be worked out soon. In a few months everything will be chugging along fine and most people will have forgotten about the early supply hiccups.
I agree, that without some jaw-dropping developments in PPC MHz, Apple is in a precarious position. If the current trend continues with Apple falling further and further behind in MHz, then I give them until 2005 before drastic measures are taken.
Before Apple goes under, they will scrap their hardware division and port OS X to x86, and plunge into direct competition with M$. After this I give Apple 9 months before M$ eats them alive.
As far as sales go, it hasn't been a good couple of years for every PC vendor.
They have $4.4 billion in the bank as of the last quarter. They have just refreshed the whole line up in the past quarter. The iMac is selling huge, production issues aside.
As far as the processor speed, this is the biggest issue for Apple in the pro sector with memory bandwidth. I think Moto and Apple have been working hard on taking care of this in the past year and it's starting to bear fruit. They still have a ways to go. I don't think they will ever be equal in clock speed, but they don't have to with the right chip (do more with less). The key is to update the speeds more constantly. The 500 MHZ issue hurt a lot.
<strong>
It's true that the MHz gap is becoming a serious issue for Apple, but you assume that nothing will be done about it. I think MWNY may bring some interesting developments, but if not you are right, Apple is tempting fate by offering such low-performance hardware.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
how long are going to keep making believe this is remotely possible? we have been doing it for 2 years now. and say it before every major apple event.
Apple isn't going anywhere. 500Mhz since August 1999. 500.
it's pathetic. and the situation isn't looking any better. Apollo was suppose to be 1.2Ghz by most reports. sure it could still reach that, but its definitely going to be MWNY at the earliest. and even then we'll still be 1000 behind.
the laptop situtaion is even worse. the advantages of powerpc and low power is nearly lost with these new chips. the fastest low power one is 800Mhz. PCs have Pentium 4s at 1.7Ghz and DDR RAM in their laptops now. we don't have that in our desktops.
and to make things worse... Apple still charges top dollar for this stuff.
Apple has only one, but major problem the speed of his chips. He has to do something in order to stay competitive. However in the past the 68XXX chips where slower than the x86 chips and Apple has a huge portion of the market than today.
Mac is : a well built machine with a good design,easy accessability, the best OS avalaible and the more reliable with mac OS X, the lower cost of maintenance.
It's a lot of qualities indeed.
So don't expect the deat of Apple for tomorrow. 2003 will be a fantastic year for Apple with the release of the G5 and the full maturity of OS X.
in all seriousness, what exactly is a 4 Ghz x86 chip good for other than gaming really, really fast?
there are a few high end applications that benefit, but at this point, hadware is accelerating much faster than software can take advantage of.
apple needs to pick up the pace on chip speed, but it's not all that terrible. at some point, you start getting dimishing returns for all that speed you throw in your machine.
i have yet to see a 1.6 athlon choke on anything. what am i going to need a 1.8 for? nothing.
PC's are plauged more with problems of transfer speed on the Motherboard than by chip speed.
apple could take a 1.2 Ghz G4 and clean the clock of a 2.5 Ghz P4 if they had some new throughput on their mainboards, IMO.
...quote me on that
did someone set the wayback machine? to 1995?
[ 03-11-2002: Message edited by: janitor ]</p>
I think whenever Jobs or the like says Apple is trying to dominate the computing market is really just more of a rallying of the troops. He's a smart man, and I think he knows he isn't going to do that. I think he is perfectly happy with where Apple is right now; it's allowing him to profitably do what he wants. Besides, if Apple broke out of their niche market, and everyone was using a Mac, we wouldn't feel so 'special' anymore...
I think Apple needs to have a stronger hardware lineup just like the rest of you.
But even if they don't do anything about it I think it would take a long time for them to die.
For the record I still think they will do something about this hardware situation.
Oh and Applenut, two years is a very brief period of time in the scheme of things. Say they ( Apple ) do bring their hardware line up to an acceptable level. You could be looking at this eight or nine years from now and think it really wasn't so long.
[quote]
By Matt Loney
PC manufacturers have failed to learn the lessons dealt out by Apple--a failure that could lead them to obscurity--according to a U.K. finalist in the International Forum Design awards, Alloy Total Design.
The IF awards, which are to be presented at CeBIT this week, have been running since 1954 and feature high on the international design community calendar. But designers of PCs are unlikely to feature, according to Gus Desbarats, managing director of Alloy, because manufacturers have singularly failed to grasp the idea of using design to create a brand. As result, said Desbarats in an interview with ZDNet U.K. prior to the awards, PCs as we know them deserve to disappear from sight.
"The trouble with PCs is that there is no emotional attachment," said Desparats. "You buy Dell perhaps because they have faster processors than their competitors offer for the same price. But what happens when you no longer need faster processors? There is nothing in the Dell box that communicates the Dell brand. If they could do something different they might open up new horizons." But few PC manufacturers are doing anything different, and through such inaction are only tempting the inevitable, said Desbarats.
"PC manufacturers need to keep a clear eye on the desktop--this is what people touch. You have Microsoft on the screen, and Logitech at your fingers. Where does this leave the PC maker? Throw in some wireless, and the box could end up stuck in a cupboard."
The demise of the PC will only be hastened once people start to think of the PC as more of a vending machine for service, he believes. "The telephone is a vending machine for network time--your choice of telephone is voluntary, so you choose a phone that provides a good experience. With Microsoft you buy the software, they take your money and then a year or two later you have to upgrade. It is not a voluntary thing, and it's the same with PCs."
The exception to the rule is, of course, Apple. Apple's achievement, according to Gus Desbarats, is in taking care of the details. "People like details, and Apple understands that. Companies that try to copy the look of an Apple case without understanding the Apple ethos always fail," said Desbarats. "All the translucent PC case designs failed. Why? Because they did not understand how to add value to the brand."
And contrary to popular belief, the success of Apple is not all about the operating system, Desbarats added. "Loyalty is much more about detail." Getting the details right requires proper design and proper branding. Those PC manufacturers that do manage to sort out their design, he believes, will be the ones that survive. Sadly, few have so far managed to do so. "I can't understand why better design does not happen. All I read about is margin cutting, but only one supply can be cheapest."
"The problem is that the PC business still does not understand branding. What PC makers need to understand is that a brand is not a name on a building in big letters. It is a set of attributes. For instance, Apple has character, and has used that to help build loyalty in the graphics and design industry."
A few lessons could be learned from the auto industry, reckons Desbarats. "It will be interesting to see if PC makers can create brands in the same way the car makers do," he said. "The technologies are very similar--you take the same basic elements but create a very different feel and brand around them."
<hr></blockquote>
This is a very good point. The new iMac ads are great at showing this. If you want a computer that you will actually be proud to showcase, go no farther than a Mac. "Dude, You've got a Dell" is only humerous for so long....
[ 03-11-2002: Message edited by: MacGP ]</p>
<strong>i do have to wonder at what point the speed of the processor is no longer a factor.
in all seriousness, what exactly is a 4 Ghz x86 chip good for other than gaming really, really fast?
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I don't know man, I thought the same thing about storage. When I got my first 2 gig HD I said "wow, when will I ever use all this space? My web pages are supposed to be small, my graphics are small because I make them for the web. I'll never fill this up!" Then along came MP3s and suddenly 20 gigs was about right. Now my 20gig is small because of something called "iMovies"!!
Same thing goes with my processer. My G4 450 seemed just dandy until I suddenly realized that I NEED to burn DVDs (thanks Steve).
My point is: I think there will always be some app or technology that will push the limits of your computer. Sure you won't need it, but you'll want it.
<strong>Style is fluff. Apple's machines are regarded as toys by most in the scientific community.</strong><hr></blockquote>
scientific community use PC under Linux.
Guess what? It doesn't matter to me. My PowerBook is over two years old now. By all standards in the PC world, my computer should have been totally obsolete by now, but it isn't. In fact, I do not forsee buying a new computer for quite some time.
As for the new iMac having 'issues', well, I think that's a bunch of baloney. The machines are flying off of the shelves when they are in stock. Just because Apple can't keep up with the demand doesn't mean that people won't keep buying them either. I read an article from boston.com today that said this:
[quote]consumers steadily bought cars, houses, and even nonessential items. No one really needs a $299 Xbox gaming system from Microsoft or a $1,500 iMac personal computer from Apple, yet both items were generating big sales even before Greenspan said Thursday that an economic expansion appeared to be ''well underway''.<hr></blockquote>
Now that says something.
then there's the obsession with FPS. i really don't get why it matters as long as it never drops below whatever you have your monitor refresh at. i have yet to own a monitor with something higher than 120Khz for a refresh, and most run around 85Khz at high rez. settings.
as long as your video card doesn't drop below 85FPS, there is NO difference between the two.
not only that, but if you want you machine to seem twice as fast, toss a RAID into it. all of the sudden stuff just flies. but upgrading that processor does dick for copying speeds.
i'm sure that eventually i'll come up with something that really taxes my processor, but what's happening is that chip speeds are increasing leaps and bounds over what is necessary.
<strong>true true. what i'm trying to get at is that there is so much room for speed increases outside of just the processor. at this stage, you can throw a 20Ghz chip in a machine and it will be basically as fast as a 2 Ghz machine. why? beause you start filling up the pipeline for data to transfer along. </strong><hr></blockquote>
That's unless you're doing any sort of rendering or other cpu intensive operations. If your application is demanding more cpu power than you can give it, you're not filling up that pipeline quick enough for the bottleneck to be there. As long as we keep making faster processors, we will continue to make applications that will demand even more power.
[quote]<strong>then there's the obsession with FPS. i really don't get why it matters as long as it never drops below whatever you have your monitor refresh at. i have yet to own a monitor with something higher than 120Khz for a refresh, and most run around 85Khz at high rez. settings.
as long as your video card doesn't drop below 85FPS, there is NO difference between the two.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Visually, you're correct. However, from the way I heard it from someone once, it isn't about that with the hardcore gamers. If I was really into it I could explain it better, but it went something like... they need the extra FPS for an edge over their opponent in net games because if the net game starts lagging a bunch, or too many people enter a huge area or something... they'll have the extra FPS to drop to be able to keep playing at an acceptably high framerate, and thus having an advantage over their opponents.
[quote]<strong>not only that, but if you want you machine to seem twice as fast, toss a RAID into it. all of the sudden stuff just flies. but upgrading that processor does dick for copying speeds.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well if your main concern is copying speeds, I'd imagine you would have bought your computer with an expensive disk array. The problem with hard drives is that they aren't terribly scalable. You can only spin the platters so fast, and have the heads access them so fast. Until some form of affordable and scalable solid state architecture becomes available, hard disks are always going to be limited by this. Sure, you can get enough of a speed bump by moving into a striped array, but these pipelines you mentioned before are capable of carrying a lot more than what your array will dish out. I think the largest bottleneck is the hard disk, but we can't increase that speed as easily we can CPU speeds.
[quote]<strong>i'm sure that eventually i'll come up with something that really taxes my processor, but what's happening is that chip speeds are increasing leaps and bounds over what is necessary.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, how do you define what is necessary? Sure, a lot of people probably don't *need* the speed of computers they are buying. But a higher megahertz rating does sell, and some people out there do take advantage of it. This is the natural evolution of technology. We continue to make things bigger, better, and faster so long as people continue to buy them. CPUs just end up being one of those things that are easily marketable and easily scalable... and there is a lot of money in that, and money is what drives this world.
Honestly though, I think your frustration over this is really being misplaced over something else that is aggrevating you, and thus you're taking out your frustration on this... but I'm no shrink
What the f*ck can't apple bring out a killer pro tower? Everyone else seems able to do it.