"We see some pretty good things coming"
From <a href="http://www.pbzone.com/"; target="_blank">PBZone's</a> detailed account of Apple's shareholders meeting:
[quote]A professor at a local university claimed that Apple should release Mac OS X on PC and asked when that might happen. Steve said "we can answer that one...we have no plans to do so." Pushed a little further by the audience member, Jobs remained perfectly serene and civil, smiling a bit and saying "that is an opinion..." <hr></blockquote>
[quote]Admonished that this year's presentation didn't include graphs, a man asked Jobs if he used graphs in his board meetings. Jobs said "I generally show them secret new stuff" and got a large laugh. <hr></blockquote>
And,
[quote]Asked about processors coming in the future, Jobs said "we see some pretty good things coming." <hr></blockquote>
[ 04-25-2002: Message edited by: Nostradamus ]</p>
[quote]A professor at a local university claimed that Apple should release Mac OS X on PC and asked when that might happen. Steve said "we can answer that one...we have no plans to do so." Pushed a little further by the audience member, Jobs remained perfectly serene and civil, smiling a bit and saying "that is an opinion..." <hr></blockquote>
[quote]Admonished that this year's presentation didn't include graphs, a man asked Jobs if he used graphs in his board meetings. Jobs said "I generally show them secret new stuff" and got a large laugh. <hr></blockquote>
And,
[quote]Asked about processors coming in the future, Jobs said "we see some pretty good things coming." <hr></blockquote>
[ 04-25-2002: Message edited by: Nostradamus ]</p>
Comments
Guess what, Apple WILL release new products pretty regularly and they will generally be mightily disappointing to a large segment of the population that wants quad multi-core G6s with holographic memory cores and brain wave interfaces in new revolutionary case designs.
Apple makes money from hardware and if it stops making compelling updated Macs it takes it in the shorts quite badly. No one wants that, especially when your executive compensation package consists of stock options that can become quite worthless if a product flops (witness the Cube).
New, faster Macs will come. Just don't buy anything right before any Mac Expo and you will generally do fine.
"Pretty good" advances in the processor realm coupled with a truly revamped motherboard will lead to higher sales, greater user satisfaction, and renewed confidence in Apple on the hardware end. If we see modest processor speed gains WITHOUT significant motherboard transformations, Apple's pro line will continue to seem lackluster to many folks. I restate the obvious, perhaps. The more dire prognosticators among us will argue that Apple must make SIGNIFICANT processor leaps along with major motherboard revisions to stanch the blood flow in Power sales. I'm not so sure about that. Jobs's qualified response doesn't bode well for high-speed dreamers.
I spend much of my day working on Sony VAIOs running XP pro, and given XP's shortcomings and Apple's OS and its strength in video editing software, I'll be buying one of the next iteration of Power Macs this summer (assuming they actually appear). I can't wait to get a new machine, but I'll REALLY be happy if the whole package is more than just a "pretty good" upgrade.
So bring it, Apple. Bring it.
:eek:
If sales are the objective, anyone with a reasonably competent OSX machine, or a fast (and well sorted) OS9 machine has absolutely no reason to buy a new mac right now simply because they'll be getting yesterday's machine (especially the towers). Intellectually I know this, I still want an iMac, bad, the design and OSX just make it so nice, and the hardware is acceptable. If the hardware guys could do their jobs, the software and design teams would certainly put them over the top. As it stands right now the software and design teams are keeping them in the game (a testament to their brilliance) but they aren't getting the hardware foundation they need.
So the sooner Apple gets acceptable hardware, no one here was asking for multicoreG6's and holographic storage. How about some CHEAP yet INDUSTRY STANDARD and MODERN components? A PPC on an up-to-date fab process? .13u G4's will do, industry practice tells you these would ultimately be cheaper to produce, and better for all Mot's embedded products too. A MODERN RAM sub-system, nothing exotic, just DDR RAM. ATA133 (with software RAID) available on the Mobo. These are all things you can find on any mid-price components assembled into a PC for about half the price of a 933Mhz powermac.
I find your "Apple will do what it does and some people won't be pleased, and if they don't keep up then they'll suffer" commentary utterly pointless. No shit. Apple has fallen a bit off the hardware pace and they won't catch up by doing things later.
"we see some pretty good things coming." =
<strong>"beyond the roumor sites. Way beyond." = Flat screen iMac.
"we see some pretty good things coming." =
Well, to be fair, the iMac was beyond the rumour sites in terms of its design and the G4/SuperDrive ("way beyond" is a stretch, but typical of marketing hype)... its just that everybody expected they were talking about the PowerMac G5. Woops.
Jobs made this comment at a shareholders meeting, so its not marketing hype but it is intended to reassure shareholders. Lying or overstating things at a shareholders meeting can land them in really hot water, so if anything he would probably understand it instead of hyping it. I don't think we should read anything particular into this -- it doesn't change the rumours that have been circulating for a while now. My guess is still 7460/7470 with DDR RAM at MWNY, and 7500 with advanced architecture (aka G5) at MWSF. On my more optimistic days I hope that they'll skip the first step in the PowerMacs and go straight to the 7500, but that usually doesn't last too long.
Its is a stockholders meeting and SJobs isn't going to say:
Man, Moto screwed us again. Someone get me my sword so I can fall on it.
Of course there are good things ahead, when was the last time you heard a CEO say "our upcoming products suck. keep your cash in your wallet." I'm sure that Ford at some point had claimed that the Mustang II was going to be a Classic.
Good things coming is sufficiently vague to give hope to anyone who wishes to believe, and vague enough to not be forward looking and a statement of future product capabilities.
My list of good things coming soon: summer, donuts...
[ 04-26-2002: Message edited by: cowerd ]</p>
<strong>
Well, to be fair, the iMac was beyond the rumour sites in terms of its design and the G4/SuperDrive ("way beyond" is a stretch, but typical of marketing hype)... its just that everybody expected they were talking about the PowerMac G5. Woops.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Hey , you forgot another line
"Full speed ahead"
This is the one that made me think of G5
If sales are the objective, anyone with a reasonably competent OSX machine, or a fast (and well sorted) OS9 machine has absolutely no reason to buy a new mac right now simply because they'll be getting yesterday's machine (especially the towers). Intellectually I know this, I still want an iMac, bad, the design and OSX just make it so nice, and the hardware is acceptable. If the hardware guys could do their jobs, the software and design teams would certainly put them over the top. As it stands right now the software and design teams are keeping them in the game (a testament to their brilliance) but they aren't getting the hardware foundation they need.
So the sooner Apple gets acceptable hardware, no one here was asking for multicoreG6's and holographic storage. How about some CHEAP yet INDUSTRY STANDARD and MODERN components? A PPC on an up-to-date fab process? .13u G4's will do, industry practice tells you these would ultimately be cheaper to produce, and better for all Mot's embedded products too. A MODERN RAM sub-system, nothing exotic, just DDR RAM. ATA133 (with software RAID) available on the Mobo. These are all things you can find on any mid-price components assembled into a PC for about half the price of a 933Mhz powermac.
I find your "Apple will do what it does and some people won't be pleased, and if they don't keep up then they'll suffer" commentary utterly pointless. No shit. Apple has fallen a bit off the hardware pace and they won't catch up by doing things later."
Bang on. Apple are playing catch up with anything less than a 7500 aka the 'G5' come this New York Mac show.
Yeesh. I upgraded an Athlon PC to 1.6 gig, 1 Gig DDRam, Ati 8500 etc for £600. And this was the latest kit a while back! Apple hardware need to wake up and smell the coffee. I gave up using my four year old Powermac clone cos it was way too slow and sold it. But is there a worthy successor? I don't think so.
Many Mac users. Er. Well, at least me...are annoyed at 'last year's kit' for twice this year's PC prices! It's a joke.
When it comes to the Mac OS, the software and design of Apple kit, I'm a staunch evangelist. But the 'guts' of Apple's machines is damn well outta date. It's hard to defend. A four year old G3 cpu which is clearly past it's sell by date! It can barely cope with 'X' and the warmed over G3...sorry, 'G4' can barely do much better.
The current Apollo's would have been 'good' enough last year. But the Powermacs components look tired and dated bar the Graphics Card.
Gripe. Yeah. But the 'guts' stink of it.
No money of mine until the 7500 turns up.
Lemon Bon Bon
Agreed. I kinda hoped they'd drive the 7460/7470 into the iMacs and use the 7500 in the Powermacs. This is the kind of aggressive pace Apple need to become competitive again.
But Apple just don't seem up for the fight. The reputed 'closing the gap' just hasn't happened.
Unless New York has something we've missed in the smoke signals...
Lemon Bon Bon
<img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" />
<strong>
Hey , you forgot another line
"Full speed ahead"
This is the one that made me think of G5</strong><hr></blockquote>
All of them made some sense if you constrained yourself to thinking about iMac. It uses an 800 MHz G4, which was as fast as the PowerMac line. The problem was nobody on the rumour boards was thinking like the Apple marketing guys. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
I think some of us are missing a point here, what the current line of products does for us it does pretty damn well.
Sure, some of you will always yearn for more speed, more capability, more more.
But even the superdrive iMac can cope very well with power apps such as Photoshop and up until a year or so ago even design professionals were using Macs with a lot less grunt all day every day, they coped.
Lets look at it this way, what do you do with your Mac on a day to day basis?
Internet, music, scanning, printing, video editing with iMovie...for most of us this is the most we ask of our beloved machines and they do it pretty well I think.
Apple have built us a "digital hub" to connect all our techno crap to and have given us a damn good looking one to boot! Not one wintel user can say this much
Lets have a bit of a survey among Mac fans and find out exactly what they demand of their machines on a day to day basis, I'm hazarding a guess here but I think we could see that a mega percentage will only do what I've just mentioned, maybe throwing a power app or two its way now and again.
remember the days of MacPaint and Mac Write? Publishers used to design magazines with this shit :eek: Some still do
But you get my meaning, whats the point of having all this power when you can only type so fast and think so fast. Anyone....?
<strong>The Superdrive iMac - a design classic in years to come no doubt.
I think some of us are missing a point here, what the current line of products does for us it does pretty damn well.
Sure, some of you will always yearn for more speed, more capability, more more.
But even the superdrive iMac can cope very well with power apps such as Photoshop and up until a year or so ago even design professionals were using Macs with a lot less grunt all day every day, they coped.
Lets look at it this way, what do you do with your Mac on a day to day basis?
Internet, music, scanning, printing, video editing with iMovie...for most of us this is the most we ask of our beloved machines and they do it pretty well I think.
Apple have built us a "digital hub" to connect all our techno crap to and have given us a damn good looking one to boot! Not one wintel user can say this much
Lets have a bit of a survey among Mac fans and find out exactly what they demand of their machines on a day to day basis, I'm hazarding a guess here but I think we could see that a mega percentage will only do what I've just mentioned, maybe throwing a power app or two its way now and again.
remember the days of MacPaint and Mac Write? Publishers used to design magazines with this shit :eek: Some still do
But you get my meaning, whats the point of having all this power when you can only type so fast and think so fast. Anyone....?
Speaking for myself, yes I do alot of web surfing, gaming etc. But I also do design work on the Mac, and would like to get into Maya work on it as well, but I haven't been able to yet (waiting for the MoBo to be revised). So speed of processing ... yes, I'd like to have it to run Maya on the Mac. Now granted the current crop of Pro Line Macs can handle it, but why drop some cold, hard earned cash on an underpowered "new" machine, when the technology available is much better (I'm talkin MoBo design). The latest released designs at CeBit, this last March, showed preview Mobos from Asus and Soyo using DDR400/ AGP8X/ 533MHz FSB (for P4s)/ USB 2.0/ and Firewire capabilities (thanks to SiS <mdl. Sis648> and Via <mdls. P4X400, KT400>
Man, you guys are some whiners.. Especially you, Matsu. You were much more tolerable before this bitchy streak came about.
[end unrelated, offtopic, possibly inflammatory side note]
The Superdrive iMac - a design classic in years to come no doubt.
...
Sure, some of you will always yearn for more speed, more capability, more more.
But even the superdrive iMac can cope very well with power apps such as Photoshop and up until a year or so ago even design professionals were using Macs with a lot less grunt all day every day, they coped.
Lets look at it this way, what do you do with your Mac on a day to day basis?
Internet, music, scanning, printing, video editing with iMovie...for most of us this is the most we ask of our beloved machines and they do it pretty well I think.
...
<hr></blockquote>
For the most part, I agree with you. However, someone's sig says it most succinctly (and I'm paraphrasing a bit):
Give us your best, and we'll ask for more.
Americans don't need 150+mph cars, and yet there they are. We don't need 200+ cable channels (on second thought, we do. ummm... same with the car thing).
But there's one thing to think about when demanding higher performance-- this could lead to new technologies for the consumer.
Think about it-- why aren't we talking to computers like in Star Trek? And not like ViaVoice. I mean like: "Computer-- give me the formula for <a href="http://www.theverylastpageoftheinternet.com/newclaims/aluminum/transparent_aluminum.htm"; target="_blank">transparent aluminum.</a>"
Because we can't yet.
Give us more power, and we'll figure out what to do with it. Otherwise, the Wintel side will be figuring this out for us, instead of the other way around.
<strong>
Man, you guys are some whiners.. Especially you, Matsu. You were much more tolerable before this bitchy streak came about.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well I wasn't going to be bitchy untill I got that little 'utterly worthless' quip. I don't see how anything I said was wrong. Now don't bother me when I'm menstruating!