Apple can never truly meet/beat expectations of Mac-ophiles, or convince others that it is a worthwhile platform. If the hardware was better in every way; speed, perepherals, drives, expandability, etc., the cost would be too high. If Apple could beat the competition in both capability and price, the gripe would be Apple's continued low market share. When market share finally passed 50%, Apple would then be an evil monopoly!
They could fix Photoshop and DVD encoding bake offs.
They could make their computer extra pretty.
They could charge so much for their equipment that people convince THEMSELVES it's worth it. Shiny TV commercials can help with buyers remorse... Nike does it.
They could be tight lipped about future releases. This will tank business sales as no IT manger could buy into a solution that has a "we don't comment future releases" path. But it will help in short term sales and make stock holders happy.
Wait a minute.. they're already DOING these things!
Ok, kidding aside I think Apple needs to continue what's it's doing. Attacking WinTel where it's weakest.
You NEVER attack an enemy's strong point. Turn their weakness into your stength.
Wireless, Digital Hub, and integrated solutions (like iPhoto and iTunes) are great examples of this.
Intel will have MEM based wireless on every chip they sell very soon. That means from Xscale to Banius to Pentium to all the other non brand name chips they make will have broadband wireless built right in. These MEM chips will be reconfigurable to act as 802.11a/b/g/x GPRS 3G, EDGE, GSM, 1XCDMA, FM, AM, GPS, anything you need. This is a big threat to Apple I think. Apple can't continue to sell a $500 Airport solution when Intel's will be free or only a few dollars extra.
its all about psychology (perceived is the key word) so the following might help
a large number associated with the processor e.g. the G5000. Like the Athlons this doesn't have to be related to any real measure.
instead of producing software that does things that you simply can't do on PCs Apple should spend time making TextEdit the fastest goddamned RTF editor on the planet and use it for bake-offs and benchmarks.
add a whatsit with a capacitance of 9.12 trillion picoFarads and make this measurement the largest single element of your adverts.
cripple the multitasking capabilities of OS X so that single application benchmarks run faster (and keeping the mouse depressed freezes the entire machine = snappy!)
put four G4s and a top of the range GPU in the iBook to make it the fastest portable in its class (that class being portables that aren't portable and would give you third degree burns on your legs and deafen you with their cooling fans if the battery lasted for more than 3 seconds)
let slashdot readers build their own kit and upgrade their processors even when you know that they are simply worsening the second worst bottleneck in your beautifully engineered and well balanced system. The main bottleneck is of course the moron at the keyboard.
sell low quality products at near cost like all the PC box shifters then charge a small fortune for the software and support so that people who don't know what TCO means are bamboozled (then go out of business because your entire strategy stinks).
there are plenty more of these idiotic ideas, I'll be posting them over the next few years under a variety of usernames. You'll recognize my posts from the apparent inability to grasp the idea of a computer as a holistic system that is greater than the sum of its parts and whose worth can never be captured in a single number.
Apple can never be accepted by Joe Business because they are viewed as the "Kids computer".
Apple markets to school kids. They started out that way and will probably always be that way. Yeah some of the kids are in graduate school, but once they go into the real world they have to convert to UNIX or MS.
Apple only started to fail when they forgot this. As soon as they started to remarket to the 0-25 group with the iMacs they came back to life.
Thats why the iStuff works so well for Apple. Most business people have no need for cute, colorful, or God-forbid Fun. They just want a system that can do the basics ( very quickly of course ).
In comparison MS completely separated their game system from the PC, keeping the two worlds completely apart. You will probably never see a card version of their game system to plug into a PC for this reason.
The real gap that Apple has to close is the distance from being a complete business system. Because if you take away the MS apps there isn't anything for a business person to want. Why should they buy a ported version of a program when they can get the original platform.
Well I've bashed on my poor Emate keys long enough.
Simple-all Apple's machines need to be at least 1 Ghz. That is the psychological barrier to most people. "Its 1 Ghz, how freaking fast do we need it to be-so what if that ones 1.6 Ghz".
The iMac, PowerMac, Powerbook all need to be at least 1Ghz G4's. The new ibook should have been at least 800 mhz G3 and the next rev should have been 1 Ghz G3...............................................
Comments
They could make their computer extra pretty.
They could charge so much for their equipment that people convince THEMSELVES it's worth it. Shiny TV commercials can help with buyers remorse... Nike does it.
They could be tight lipped about future releases. This will tank business sales as no IT manger could buy into a solution that has a "we don't comment future releases" path. But it will help in short term sales and make stock holders happy.
Wait a minute.. they're already DOING these things!
Ok, kidding aside I think Apple needs to continue what's it's doing. Attacking WinTel where it's weakest.
You NEVER attack an enemy's strong point. Turn their weakness into your stength.
Wireless, Digital Hub, and integrated solutions (like iPhoto and iTunes) are great examples of this.
Intel will have MEM based wireless on every chip they sell very soon. That means from Xscale to Banius to Pentium to all the other non brand name chips they make will have broadband wireless built right in. These MEM chips will be reconfigurable to act as 802.11a/b/g/x GPRS 3G, EDGE, GSM, 1XCDMA, FM, AM, GPS, anything you need. This is a big threat to Apple I think. Apple can't continue to sell a $500 Airport solution when Intel's will be free or only a few dollars extra.
a large number associated with the processor e.g. the G5000. Like the Athlons this doesn't have to be related to any real measure.
instead of producing software that does things that you simply can't do on PCs Apple should spend time making TextEdit the fastest goddamned RTF editor on the planet and use it for bake-offs and benchmarks.
add a whatsit with a capacitance of 9.12 trillion picoFarads and make this measurement the largest single element of your adverts.
cripple the multitasking capabilities of OS X so that single application benchmarks run faster (and keeping the mouse depressed freezes the entire machine = snappy!)
put four G4s and a top of the range GPU in the iBook to make it the fastest portable in its class (that class being portables that aren't portable and would give you third degree burns on your legs and deafen you with their cooling fans if the battery lasted for more than 3 seconds)
let slashdot readers build their own kit and upgrade their processors even when you know that they are simply worsening the second worst bottleneck in your beautifully engineered and well balanced system. The main bottleneck is of course the moron at the keyboard.
sell low quality products at near cost like all the PC box shifters then charge a small fortune for the software and support so that people who don't know what TCO means are bamboozled (then go out of business because your entire strategy stinks).
there are plenty more of these idiotic ideas, I'll be posting them over the next few years under a variety of usernames. You'll recognize my posts from the apparent inability to grasp the idea of a computer as a holistic system that is greater than the sum of its parts and whose worth can never be captured in a single number.
Apple markets to school kids. They started out that way and will probably always be that way. Yeah some of the kids are in graduate school, but once they go into the real world they have to convert to UNIX or MS.
Apple only started to fail when they forgot this. As soon as they started to remarket to the 0-25 group with the iMacs they came back to life.
Thats why the iStuff works so well for Apple. Most business people have no need for cute, colorful, or God-forbid Fun. They just want a system that can do the basics ( very quickly of course ).
In comparison MS completely separated their game system from the PC, keeping the two worlds completely apart. You will probably never see a card version of their game system to plug into a PC for this reason.
The real gap that Apple has to close is the distance from being a complete business system. Because if you take away the MS apps there isn't anything for a business person to want. Why should they buy a ported version of a program when they can get the original platform.
Well I've bashed on my poor Emate keys long enough.
The iMac, PowerMac, Powerbook all need to be at least 1Ghz G4's. The new ibook should have been at least 800 mhz G3 and the next rev should have been 1 Ghz G3...............................................
<strong>..to close the 'perceived ' performance gap?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Release the G5 now before AMD and/or Intel has a next generation chip ready that can match or exceed its performance.
-val1s