Analysts: Macworld "underwhelming", "evolutionary" - Page 2

Bravo!

I forgot about the 17" MBP... Still in awe about iLife and iWork updates.

While both Jobs and Swayze have/had Pancreatic cancer and both have undergone some form of corrective surgery, the similarities end there... Jobs has a rare form which is a lot less aggressive, he didn't have any metastasis that we know of, and didn't require chemotherapy, radiation, etc. Swayze's pancreatic cancer is aggressive and it was reported/rumored that it had already metastasized to his liver and stomach, requiring removal of the lesions and partial removal of his stomach in addition to whatever they did with his pancreas and G.I. tract. He has undergone chemotherapy, gamma radiation, and other treatments. And apparently he is doing incredibly well for the circumstances although in a lot of pain.

Anyways, I feel for both of them.. I recently lost an Uncle (an incredible man) to colon cancer. Cancer can be such a mean, brutal disease...

Your sentiments echoed many of my own (and I always enjoy the inclusion of relevant links that provide easy access to additional information).

I thought you summed it up best in your "question to Apple: How long will you wait before you build a competitively priced business and consumer desktop computer with a Core i7 processor?"

I called Apple during the latter part of last year and politely asked them when the "Late 2008" Mac Pro was going to be released. When their guy asked me what led me to believe such a product is supposed to even exist, I promptly responded by saying that their current model was named BY THEM both on the web and in their literature as the "Mac Pro Early 2008" (I still have the PDF file to back me up on that one = Mac_Pro_Early_2008.PDF) and then I briefly (though sarcastically) expounded upon how their selection of the adjective "early" by it's very nature logically implies that there's gonna be a "later" one (or else why didn't they just call it the "Mac_Pro_2008"?).

Think about it. It's 2009 and the Mac Pro they are selling right now is still the "Mac Pro Early 2008" model!

Am going to convert my PC gaming rig to a new iMac once Apple FINALLY comes to market with a desktop machine that at heart, it a desktop machine! I don't want to have a laptop grade CPU sitting inside my shiny new iMac, I want a desktop grade CPU. And to be honest, this isn't brain surgery for the engineering teams at Apple - so it must be a cost saving measure. But I suspect Apple will be running into more people like me who just aren't willing to spend money on underpowered systems.

BTW I am very hopeful on the 28 inch iMac rumor... That is the system I will lay out for.

Well, you said you had a big willy.

Now that MacWorld fell on it's face maybe it was on purpose?

Now WHEN Apple / Steve has an announcement about something NEW and EXCITING (within the next 3 weeks) - it WILL be the way Apple / Steve does it from now on, and it WILL have Apple folks jumping for joy - and folks will forget all about MacWorld and how BAD it was.

I've said it before, we Mac folks WANT to much, to often (and Apple has been doing a great "Job" of providing so far), but the well is getting a bit low.

Apple / Steve will make an announcement very soon, if for no other reason then to just re-bound from MacWorld. They've said at one time or another - that they had soe great exciting stuff they were working on, and would announce in the coming months so hold on folks.

Skip

Two things:

1- Apple needs to be competitive in order to grow its world market share beyond 5% (if only to attract and keep software developpers);

2- The Intel Core i7 quad-core desktop processor (code name: Nehalem) is available NOW with Gateway computers that sell for as little as $1250. See:

Intel unleashes Core i7, beats itself @ http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/40213/135/

Core i7 PCs launch with prices from $1250 to $13,000 @ http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/40227/135/


This Friday, January 9, 2009, Microsoft is offering a free download of a near commercial quality beta copy of its next operating system, Windows 7. Everyone is highly impressed with the speed, connectivity and ease of use of this new release. See:

CES 2009: Microsoft releases Windows 7 beta @ http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/40901/140/

Windows 7 with a quad-core Intel Core i7 desktop CPU computer is going to be HUGE, as big as Windows 95 was when it burried any hope that Mac OS would ever regain a 30% market share.

My advice to Apple: Give us a Core i7 desktop computer ASAP with Snow Leopard or else, you risk loosing it all, once again (Remember the death spiral that followed the release of Windows 95?)

I watched the Barbara Walters interview with 56 year old actor Patrick Swayze at 10 PM on the ABC network and I am glad that I did. If you missed the interview, it must be available on the ABC web site or YouTube. Just Google it.

Patrick Swayze could teach Steve Jobs a thing or two about honesty.

Just like Steve Jobs, Patrick Swayze is fiercely determined to beat his cancer, survive long enough for medicine to find a cure for pancreas cancer, and work with more energy than healthy people for as long as possible. Focusing on work and living each day fully seems to help Patrick Swayze, possibly to forget his cancer or go through a distressing chemotherapy with major side effects.

And through it all, Patrick Swayze relies on the love, help and continuing support of his wife with whom he has been married for 33 years.

The parallels with billionnaire legend Steve Jobs are obvious. Both the actor and the CEO could retire and face nothing but the chemotherapy they must go through to survive. But they keep a full schedule to keep their mind busy with something other than cancer and chemotherapy. And they share the same fierce determination to beat their cancer.

You would benefit from some education or learning to disagree without being disagreeable. And if you state the specific reasons why you think that your opinion is better than mine, you could actually help the readers of AppleInsider who are kind enough to read your comment.

AppleInsider is not a trash column. Try to keep that in mind.

Dude, why can you not get it through your thick head that their cancers are extremely, extremely, different, and involved vastly different treatment and survival rates. Odds are high that Swayze is dead a year or two, and odds are Jobs will not see his form of pancreatic cancer return.

Jobs no longer has cancer. Swayze most certainly does.

Marketshare is not Apple's primary goal (margins are). Apple only needs to sell a fraction of the number of computers when compared to e.g. Dell or HP to make more money. In the US Apple sells the lion share of notebooks costing more than 1k - other manufacturers would kill for that. There is almost nothing Apple could learn from the competition (Ok, maybe how to make good laptop keyboards from Lenovo, I have to admit). Desktop computers are a market without any significant growth and in the current climate a lot of people and businesses do keep their machines even longer... there is no merit here. Actually most laptop manufacturers (not including Apple) are begging Intel to delay the Nehamlem laptop CPUs from July into autumn/winter '09 because they cannot get rid of their stock - and you want to tell Apple what to do? They can barely keep up with the orders. Apple's "world market share" will always be limited - they simply do not offer price points that would stick in developing countries, and nobody will invest in expanding support coverage into these countries at this very point either. OS X developers should be doing fine - actually the amount of software and companies is growing daily, even more big guns like IBM jump on the wagon now (just reviewing the new Symphony beta and Lotus client)... so, this point does not stick either. OS X users do pay for software, most Windows users are busy enough fighting the crap that came pre-installed on their machines and Linux users do not want to pay for anything (Ok, this was a gross over-simplification, but the direction is correct).

Sure, the Core i7 DESKTOP CPU is available now. But whoever cares about the OS and design will not buy a Gateway computer ever. Apple currently does not build computers with desktop CPUs at all. The Mac Pro uses server class CPUs and all other machines use laptop class CPUs. There is nothing on the market that would deliver any significant improvement now. The Mac Pro will get the next generation Xeons when they are available (my bet would be around/before NAB) and the iMac may get an intermediate bump, but they could also wait for the Nehalem notebook CPUs in late summer... I have no idea what they will do with the Mini - it never followed regular update patterns.


Normally Windows never reaches "commercial quality" before service pack 2 or 3... so Apple has about 2-3 years to react. From all comments I have seen, Windows 7 does not deliver anything special. They have finally copied the OS X Dock (must have been hard) and removed some Vista annoyances. It is more a Vista service Pack - and an attempt to bury the fated Vista name as soon as possible. Windows 7 will not match Snow Leopard or even Leopard in multi-core support and GPU acceleration. MS always depends on CPU makers to make up for their performance problems. Nothing new to see here. OS X does not need 30% market share, and we will likely/hopefully never see that. If the economy recovers and they keep up innovating, 20% may be feasible. Having 20% marketshare at these margins... would be like printing money.

Perhaps you can explain why you virtually trash everything from Apple.

Would love to hear their comment on Balmer's CES 2009 Keynote: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...t-keynote.html

Balmer:

Well, it is Apple. What's a year between updates? Sure, several latest gen' gpus have been updated...but that's not an excuse for Apple to offer them.


Does he?


All facts. And he's asking a fair question. APPLE, WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO PULL YOUR FINGER OUT AND UPDATE YOUR LANGUISHING DESKTOP LINE?

PULL YER IPHONE OUTTA YER...(FILL IN BLANK.)

LEMON BON BON.

Also legitimate. While this isn't the Apple of 1995...there is no room for complacency. One thing the launch of Mobile Me showed me was that maybe Apple needs to hire some workers? Are they battling on too many fronts with too small a work force?

Quad cores have been out ages and Apple don't have a consumer desktop line that offers them. And i7 is nowhere to be seen, even on a Mac Pro. And if they're waiting on server class i7s? Then why not offer the i7 on the 'consumer' Macs? Oh. One is laptop on a stand. And the other is a portable hard drive. ie we don't have a consumer desktop line.

Call it as I see it.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Well, yes, Abster2Core has a point here, though he didn't need to resort to one of the recent outbursts.

I don't remember a single positive thing that ouragan has said about Apple, even ragging on Apple and Jobs about settled issues, no less, though maybe not as much lately. Looking at the previous twenty five posts, all of them are at least somewhat critical, most of them are very or totally critical.

I took a look a Schiller's keynote this year vs. a similar keynote by Jobs in 06, taking a look at the language they used.
To my surprise, Schiller uses more superlatives by a 2:1 ratio.

I find most Analysts to be "underwhelming" and "de-evolutionary".

Yep. Some of his best are:

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...93#post1285093

• This is yet another way for Steve Jobs to dismiss his responsabilities. Given that he appropriated more than $1 billion for himself in illegal, backdated stock options, and another $1 billion to reward his hand picked Vice-Presidents, one would think that Steve Jobs could feel a duty to obey the law and show some respect to the shareholders who made the dreams of a high school graduate possible.
  
  But, apparently not.
  
  Steve Jobs is the same man who was so deluded that he truly believed that a special diet could be the cure for pancreatic cancer. Would you trust such a man to tell you the truth?

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...03#post1211603

• Apple is run by a tyrannical, irrational CEO who doesn't have what it takes to study beyond high school.
  
  What else did you expect with overpriced products, outdated parts, a demented obsession for thinness in iMacs, MacBook Airs and iPods, and a looming recession?

But he continues to berate Jobs, Apple and its products, but he uses a PC

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...61#post1101161

• Safari for Windows 3.0 was a big disappointment as I couldn't create any bookmarks on Windows XP nor import existing Firefox bookmarks.

He says on the other hand that he is a 20 year veteran of the Mac platform (whatever that means), but than again, he is a lawyer.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...er#post1285989

Apple's simply not going to go Nehalem in their consumer lineup before the Mac Pro. I know that AI forum dwellers are enthusiasts but the reality is consumers are generally replacing computers that are 4 years old likely on the average. They read the buzz words but they don't understand. Core i7 means nothing to most of them. If Apple offers a Quad Core iMac model it won't matter if it's Core i7 or not it's going to be so much faster than the incumbent computer.

I see the iMac as going QC but not Core i7 with a Feb 09 update. The Mac Pro goes Nehalem Xeon and the next iMac refresh goes Core i7 with either desktop or mobile product.

There really is no rush. The economy should be healthier by summer going into the fall and Nehalem mobile product should be warming up nicely in the oven.

Apple has already taken the steps they need to prepare. Snow Leopard..getting rid of PPC support and standardizing on Cocoa.

At least you're consistent, but I think you are quite incorrect. Both that it was a sucky keynote and that it wasn't intentionally non-Earthshattering.

It merely wasn't Earth-shattering, but was overall good to very good from a business perspective. No reason to get all riled up about that.

Apple did a sucky keynote because they had nothing mind-blowing ready. If they had something great ready they would have used the event, but they didn't. I think it really is that simple. I see your point, but I just thinking you are reading into things too much. I'm taking the situation at hand at face value. Sometimes a spade is just a spade.

Whenever consumers are shopping for a new computer in a store like Best Buy, Comp USA, etc., they see different brands side by side and listen to what the salespersons are saying about the benefits of a specific brand.

That's when price, CPU and features are compared before a buying decision is made. That's when and where Apple has to shine.

MacPros use 2 server class Xeon processors and server class error correcting RAM memory. Intel is selling Core i7 desktop CPUs right now, but won't sell Core i7 Xeons until March 2009, I believe.

Because an update to the iMac is already late, a Core i7 desktop CPU variant could be offered at the same time as brand new MacPros.

By the way, I look forward to and hope for a Core i7 iMac with a 20, 21 or 24 inch monitor, not a 28 inch monitor which would be an overkill (so typical of Apple). The goal is to offer a competitively priced computer, with a competitive CPU and features, not to offer the most expensive desktop computer on the market.

This in my view is exactly why Apple is severing ties with the Macworld Expo. They want to be able to make product introductions on their schedule, not IDG's.

I agree they didn't have anything Earth-shattering ready. But I think if they hadn't decided to cut the cord on MW they would have announced something which they would say would ship in late Feb or Early Mar as they have before. Then Apple would have been in full out panic mode when they face the inevitable 3-4 week glitch in production/shipping. Now they just announce a press event when they are 90% sure they will make a shipping target and then at the press event put out a shipping date they are 99%+ happy with at the event.

I'd rather have them present something for immediate release (or very near future, ie, within a month) than announce something that is still a couple of months down the road and then could still be delayed.

With the Box Set, they are also really trying to get people to go for Leopard.

Wish they would make an iApp Box set for both iLife and iWork... It's Leopard that's getting discounted.

I like Munster and Wu, but along with many they are missing the point.

Apple pushes the technology envelope, but not in the obvious places. When you make commodity hardware with no control over the OS, you have only one choice which is to be competitive by adopting the latest chips and gigaherz whether or not they make a material difference. We all know there is no real difference between a 1.8GHz and a 2.0GHz chip as the rest of the system (software included) dominates. Get more memory.

Apple's direction is different, and it's all there to see. They announced face recognition software in iPhoto. Computationally intensive and begging for 64 bit and OpenCL. That is their direction - make the applications do innovative things using technologies which can't be matched easily on other platforms. The second GPU in the MacBook Pro just as a low power option? What a thin disguise! It's obviously there to give a quantum jump in computationally expensive operations for new applications we are only starting to get a glimpse of.

Bravo and hope you are more on AppleInsider. That Venn diagram. I don't think it's ever been applied, ever, to an Apple Keynote. I'm linking it down here, because I think it's pretty good.

(Steve in blue, Phil in grey)


"With his demo of iMovie ‘09, Randy Ubillos struck me as the guy who needs to be Apple’s Chief Architect of Keynotes. I really wanted to use that application halfway through the demo.
Ubillos was natural, comfortable and appeared proud of the product he was using that he had a hand in created. Just compare Schiller’s distracting manner of looking back and talking at the audience during his demos vs. Ubillos’ (and Jobs’) natural way of narrating a user experience. Schiller is trying to convince you. Ubillos already has."

Agreed, even though Randy was talking mostly about video stuff, his demo feel was pretty good. Only at Apple, can you have some head developer (read: coder, project manager) step up to the f*king plate in front of thousands for the first time and give an excellent presentation and demo. He got the dress code down a bit better than Phil too. If Phil's armpits had been sweaty, shades of Ballmer could have crept in.

"If we put the vocabulary aside, you see Jobs is visibly delighted to let the products sell themselves. In the case of the iLife demos, Schiller wants to tell you what the software can do; Jobs tells you can do with the software. That’s a slight twist, but an important one. Jobs sells software as empowerment. You can do this. A typical Jobsian demo has the cadence of “you can click here” + “boom” + computer magic happens = you are the next Ansel Adams, Stanley Kubrick, etc."

That's very interesting. Jobs appears then to have more impact while using less superlatives. I think Phil did a good job but he needs to speak a little slower, and leave more spaces for dramatic pause.

IMO, Apple didn't have anything mind-blowing ready because they didn't feel compelled to have anything mind-blowing ready. In the space of just one year, clearly Apple's stance towards IDG/Macworld has taken a dramatic turn. I don't think it's just the economy...

second that

For Apple, the desktop is dead. Long live anything bigger than 24" or smaller than 13"...

Don't forget the 15 and 17 inch MBPs...

Has anybody here besides myself has every seem the Mac Pro 8 Core in action?

For most, the entry level Mac Pro Quad-Core at @2299 is entry level for any graphic agency.

Connect a 3.2 Ghz Mac Pro 8-Core fully loaded (at $22,000 or more) to a couple of 30" Cinema displays, now that is something to experience in super high-end video editing.

And wait until Snow Leopard comes and software companies finally start developing applications to take advantage of the multi-core processors, these babies will really sing.

• 3.5 hours later and no one yet.
• Now 5 hours and counting.
• 25 hours and counting.

That's Phil's biggest weakness. He has a nervousness about presenting that is evident to many and he tends to rush along like he's rehearsed too much and is on a path that offers no flexibility. A Jobs keynote (at it's best) is so surreal it's as if Jobs left the local Starbucks and decided to hop on stage and talk about cool Apple products. It rarely feels rehearsed. Jobs knows how to setup his transitions as well. Go back and watch him "sell" the iPod shuffle after knowing that less than a year before he panned flash mp3 players. He's a master.


Mind blowing stuff is for youngsters. If you're nigh 40 and your mind is getting blown by computer products Lord help you. If our imagination cannot easily outdo Apple on products then we've got no right to complain or be underwhelmed about anything. Like i'm supposed to get titillated over the announcement of a Mac mini or iMac lol.

Most thing are evolutionary to me. I only reserve revolutionary for the BIG things

Mind blowing or not, Schiller announcements at Macworld definitely overwhelmed Balmer's offerings at the CES.

But as we get to see and try what the components of iWorks 09 and iLife 09 can do now, perhaps it is.

Dumb analysts as usual. No one ever claimed the keynote would be revolutionary, so why do they seem surprised at the result?

I watched several keynotes online from both macworld and ces 2009. And I examined articles about a lot of products from both shows.

The only thing I'm going to remember out of all of them is the Palm Pre.
I hope this lights a fire under Jobs' behind and gets him into Apple headquarters so he and his team can get some work done.
Is the Christmas vacation over yet Steve?

Let's see...

Apple keynote: new apps, some already installed on my computers, money well spent, more coming soon.

Palm presentation: not interested in a sliding keyboard, and have more apps available for my iPhone. Some nice features like charging, and, and, well, and... Zzzz.

There is one more thing: yep, most of these posts are negative about Apple; add another to my Ignore List. Two in one day!