I believe that info came out of the MS trial some time back that indicated that non-pro Windows licenses were in the range of $50 (maybe a little more) to OEM's.
Of course, I don't know how accurate those numbers are for today's computer market but I suspect that it isn't a whole lot different.
I came home from a meeting this evening and learned another Mac user friend of mine just switched. So every one of my friends who once used an older Mac now owns a new Windows PC. This is over a 50 percent switch rate. The ones I know with newer Macs have not switched, none of them.
I just posted something on this subject earlier, and here I am updating it already.
Well I am not sure why ppl like Stagflation Steve even come here.
I mean all they do is to tell us about how bad macintosh is. They tell us how Apple will die and that Dull and MS is the way to go.
And of course all of their friends and customers are changing to cheap pcs.
What I really don´t understand is how apple has actually been able to grow the last few years. And I don´t understand why 25% of my friends have actually switched to mac the last year. After I started using mac.
And one more thing. In norway at least the interests for macintosh is getting bigger. Thats the reason I got a new job 4 months ago together with a friend of mine.
The Computer site I work for now desperatly wanted a macenthusisat to write for them because they were not able to cower the news because they did not know anything about macs. And now thhey have even thought of changing our office computers with macintosh computers.
So say what you want Stagflation Steve but you have to understand that the trend is not always what you see for yourself. Look at the global aspect. Apple had less than 1% marketshare 5 years ago now they have more than 4,5%
I know it dooes not sound much but if this continues for 5 more years apple will actually have more 10% marketshare in 5 years. Not that I se that coming either, but at leastto say apple is dying is wrong, because they are at the time beeing actually growing.
And I don\\t blame you because you sell cheap pc systems, I have bought one myself but only because I want a gaming machine. For all my work I use my macintosh.
And hey I can´t wait to get my hands on the new TiBook it sounds great and it is coming to daddy next week.
It seems to me that the focus of this thread is slightly off. All the discussions about who wants and who is buying sub-$500 PCs is focussing on unsophisticated private users who are only interested in price and only have limited ambitions for the PCs use (ie email, web, WP).
What hasn't been mentioned much here at all (except very briefly in relation to education) is the enterprise market. For many years the enterprise marke was not interested in the cheapest of the cheap because they had more money to spend than a private customer and needed enough performance to run the latest software.
In the last few years PC performance has increased faster than software (other than games) can match it. Thus enterprise customers no longer need mid-range PCs, but can quite happily get by with very simple cut-down and cut-price PCs.
I am typing this from a work Dell Optiplex GX150 (sitting next to my own TiBook), which I think has a 866MHz or 1 GHz Pentium 3, 128MB RAM, 15GB HD, a CD player and a 15 inch screen and NOTHING else - not even a speaker (I don't count the floppy drive as a feature ). I've no idea what my employer paid for it when it was new about a year ago, but Dell are quoting $760 for a similar specced machine with a 1.7GHz Celeron (including monitor) and that is presumably without the bulk discount they would have got for buying 800 of them.
Also more and more enterprise software is moving towards the "thin client" type model. Someone above who worked for a hospital outlined how they got around M$ security holes by effectively running their desktop boxes as thin clients with applications served from UNIX servers through a telnet session or a web browser. I also know a healthcare software company in the UK which is moving its entire PRMS (Patient Record Management System) to a web-based product which will be served to browsers from a central server.
One reason why Apple may want to consider a low-end box missing from the bottom of their range is NOT to appeal to the no-loyalty price-sensitive consumers, but to the enterprise market (ie corporates, universities, schools etc) who might buy the Xserve to run the network and 100s of boxes for their users' desktops. They do not need superdrives, or even CD-Rs. They do not need 60GB hard drives, they do not need 1.2 GHz G4s. For this type of market a 700 MHz G3 with a CD drive, ethernet, the usual ports a 10/20 GB drive and a 15 inch screen will do just fine. Is this a market that Apple wants to get into? They may not make much margin on the desktop boxes, but they make up for it in selling the Xserves etc to run the network.They do not need to compromise the quality of the components or the overall user experience, but just offer something which does not include features such as superior graphics cards, high HD capacities, DVD read/write drives etc.
As far as I can see, it is pointless getting into the enterprise server market today unless you are also willing to offer a simple, almost "thin client" desktop for the users. And that will have to sell for around $700.
You know Steve, you really are starting to make even me... agree with you.
Steve Jobs' esteem in the computing industry is one of those things you can't really explain if you sit down and think about for more than a few minutes. He's like the star athlete who never really wins the big one, and come to think of it, isn't much more than average apart from a highlight reel dunk now and again.
He has a beautiful vision of computing, but a shaky grasp on the realities of the computing business. Computers will be commodities whether he likes it or not, and he's taking Apple the long way around warming up to this reality...
We'll see what happens. Just note, that he sits on two of the worst boards, and has either run a company into the ground or been run out before he could, on two occasions. NeXT was a horrible failure and he was lucky Apple bought them. It could only be seen as a success in that it got him back into Apple, which may be what he was after all along, but the company failed to make any significant penetration, was soon caught back-pedaling, and would have folded or been swallowed up in short order if not for Apple's buy-out. Do we need to into his first stint at Apple? Will we, years hence, be going into his second?
<strong>One reason why Apple may want to consider a low-end box missing from the bottom of their range is NOT to appeal to the no-loyalty price-sensitive consumers, but to the enterprise market (ie corporates, universities, schools etc) who might buy the Xserve to run the network and 100s of boxes for their users' desktops. They do not need superdrives, or even CD-Rs. They do not need 60GB hard drives, they do not need 1.2 GHz G4s. For this type of market a 700 MHz G3 with a CD drive, ethernet, the usual ports a 10/20 GB drive and a 15 inch screen will do just fine. Is this a market that Apple wants to get into? They may not make much margin on the desktop boxes, but they make up for it in selling the Xserves etc to run the network.They do not need to compromise the quality of the components or the overall user experience, but just offer something which does not include features such as superior graphics cards, high HD capacities, DVD read/write drives etc.
As far as I can see, it is pointless getting into the enterprise server market today unless you are also willing to offer a simple, almost "thin client" desktop for the users. And that will have to sell for around $700.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Good post.
You might recall a MacWorld some years ago where Steve demonstrated 50 iMacs booting from a NetBoot server. Steve mentioned not long afterward that early prototypes of the iMac didn't have a hard drive, but one was added after it was decided that the diskless model was "too radical" (read: Sun got its ass kicked by its customers when it rolled out what an engineer friend of mine calls "dickless workstations"). Now, however, things are different. I save and load files to a SAN over fast Ethernet at work, and it's like working on a notebook hard drive: Not fast, but perfectly transparent and usable. A diskless workstation - at least, in the sense that it would only need a local HDD for caching and virtual memory - is viable now, and Apple is building a scalable server architecture that could NetBoot a whole lot of these machines, and store all of their files and accounts. Apple's been looking at this since 1997 or so, and I think they're just waiting for the pieces to fall into place before they roll it out. This arrangement could also work in education, I think.
It doesn't address the consumer market, of course, but then, Apple seems to be doing OK in the consumer market. It's among the customers who buy machines in big lots, and among some power users, that Apple is not doing well.
5 years ago apple had 6% marketshare, today they have 2.7% and falling,
Apple marketshare has been in virtual freefall since Steve Jobs returned, opposed to relative stability while apple was in it's little death spiral
I don't hate the Macintosh, I love it.
But I think Apple is being run into the ground by an idiot manchild who couldn't run a sucessful liquor store located between two frat houses</strong><hr></blockquote>
I agree. Let's get Amelio or Spindler back! Or better, Stagflation Steve! SJ and the current clowns are stupid! <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
5 years ago apple had 6% marketshare, today they have 2.7% and falling,</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not globally.
Apple's marketshare outside the US was worse than pitiful (with the possible exception of Japan), and it's actually been recovering well - it's still nothing to holler about, but at least it's growing. Note that Nilka is posting from Norway.
[quote]<strong>Apple marketshare has been in virtual freefall since Steve Jobs returned, opposed to relative stability while apple was in it's little death spiral</strong><hr></blockquote>
A 40% to 6% plunge in market share is not "relative stability," and it doesn't matter anyway if Apple goes bankrupt, does it?
[quote]<strong>
But I think Apple is being run into the ground by an idiot manchild who couldn't run a sucessful liquor store located between two frat houses</strong><hr></blockquote>
I share your lack of faith in Steve's own ability to run a corporation, but at least he's learned that he can't run a corporation. He knows that he's good at coming up with - or recognizing - ways to make really good personal computers, and he seems to be sticking to that, more or less. While he tried to be a hands-on manager, there were all kinds of tales of terrible management coming out of Cupertino, such as workers on the Mac assembly line being treated much better than workers on the Apple ][ assembly line (the two lines were right across from each other!) because Steve liked the Mac better.
But now, look what he's done with the two companies he runs: At Pixar, apart from building a really cool building for the employees to romp around in and providing some general direction, he lets the company run itself, and it's doing well, and employee morale is high. At Apple, he's assembled a crackerjack team of VPs to run the place, and at least at the executive level not one of them has resigned in frustration. Apple executes efficiently, manages money and resources well, etc., and unlike the days of the "death spiral" when it was bleeding talent, Apple has been hiring steadily, and it has talent like Jordan Hubbard begging to be hired. And then staying. Obviously, something changed.
Apple's worst enemy right now, besides the economy, is the network effect. The more people switch to Windows, the more people switch to Windows because it's the safe choice. That's a hard trend to buck, but I have more confidence in this executive team's ability to tackle it than I have had in any prior Apple management - certainly including Steve Mark I.
I think the comments about a networked thin client for enterprise are very good. What I question is Apple's capability to make this viable and successful. There are two factors against which Apple must swim upstream:
1) This is a risky market concept and one that has been predicted to take off before. Those that jumped in earlier lost money.
2) It's unclear how this fits with Apple's current capabilities. By that I mean is OS X (as it exists today) a good platform for a thin client? I think not because the hardware requirements for good OS X performance are high enough that it almost rules out low-cost machines. Do you really want to build a thin client that for the most part requires a 32MB graphics card? Now if OS X can be modified for this mission (like removing much of Quartz) then it becomes a greater possibility. That would likely be a big effort and of course the payback would have to be there to justify doing so.
They have had a thin client sitting on their face and moaning for the last 2 years, they just haven't ever decided to price it as such.
iMac CRT, eMac, hello? The former could be going out the door for 500 right now, the latter, with a minor tweak or two could be sold for 750, fo sho.
Add Xservers and fully M$ compliant Office suites (hoping.), not 'works' but full featured mailing (paper and electronic), presentation, spread-sheet and database facilities, and you have a winner. No mo' M$ licensing weirdness for anybody -- 750, all the hardware and software you need to be 'standards' compliant all in one box, take it out plug it in, never pay a site licence again. Oh yeah, forget iApps, and video, that's a killer right there -- Office. Let M$ go ahead and pull their Office, who cares?
Can you imagine? I got a mid-size/largish office with 50-100 seats, I need everything. I can call Dell and get a good price on machines and servers. Then I can call M$ and get taxed throughout the life of my machines and beyond (if M$ gets there way). OR, I can call Apple, order 1 server with as much storage as I need, and 50-100 boxes ready to go. Open box, plug in power and network, all Office apps pre-installed and at the ready, Server ready to dole out all the appropriate permissions. The whole Office is ready to go in one day, and ALL my licencing is taken care of for the life of the machines.
IT guys might not like it. But it seems to me the single greatest advantage of selling the hardware the way Apple does, would be that it could allow them to be very generous with their software licences, something M$ would have great difficulty matching.
Come on Apple, lets have 'Pro'AppleWorks, iOffice, iWork, whatever you wanna call it, let's have it, soon...
<strong>I think the comments about a networked thin client for enterprise are very good. What I question is Apple's capability to make this viable and successful. There are two factors against which Apple must swim upstream:
1) This is a risky market concept and one that has been predicted to take off before. Those that jumped in earlier lost money.</strong><hr></blockquote>
True, and this is why Apple's been sitting on the idea for at least 5 years. No point releasing a product when the supporting technologies aren't there yet.
Actually, they aren't quite there right now: When OS X Server gets kernel level clustering, one of the last pieces will have fallen into place, because then Apple's servers really do scale up that easily. Plug and play.
[quote]<strong>2) It's unclear how this fits with Apple's current capabilities. By that I mean is OS X (as it exists today) a good platform for a thin client? I think not because the hardware requirements for good OS X performance are high enough that it almost rules out low-cost machines. Do you really want to build a thin client that for the most part requires a 32MB graphics card? Now if OS X can be modified for this mission (like removing much of Quartz) then it becomes a greater possibility.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I think you're overestimating both the overhead of Quartz and the importance of Quartz Extreme - which for the most part enables high-end compositing capabilities, which most office applications have no use for. A 16MB Radeon Mobility would work fine (QE would be supported, if not optimally), and it's cheap. Even a 32MB RADEON is cheap at this point. Remember, you only need the chip, not a whole AGP card.
Apple could offer a machine with the above graphics chipset, a 700MHz G3 or G4, 128MB or 256MB of RAM, no HDD (BTO HDDs optional), a CD-ROM, 10/100 base-T ethernet, USB and FireWire for a song. If they only sold it as part of a package with the profitable stuff (software, servers and support) they wouldn't have to make a dime on them. They could even offer them at a loss, because the whole package would net a profit.
[quote]<strong>That would likely be a big effort and of course the payback would have to be there to justify doing so.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There's a risk, but considering that their current strategy is costing them the education market, the certainty of eventual failure probably makes it more palatable. The fact that, by some measures, 40% of enterprise customers are fed up enough with MS to actively seek out alternatives means that Apple should hurry up and pretty themselves up for that crowd. They could pick up some new customers pretty quickly. Now that MS is free to do whatever they want, laws notwithstanding, their window of opportunity is closing.
<strong>They have had a thin client sitting on their face and moaning for the last 2 years, they just haven't ever decided to price it as such.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Interesting idea. I suppose the Sun Java Station or IBM Netvista are synonymous with corporations these days huh? I can find them o'plenty on eBay for next to d!ck. Thin clients just never quite panned out in most offices.
<strong>...more like affordable no frills business desktop.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Gotcha. We have bought Compaq and Dells in the past for most of our corporate users and even the lowest end Evos and Dimensions were around a $1000 for the desktop (with proper amount of memory) and monitor - add an lcd which we've been doing a lot of, and your into the $1200-1300 range. Not very basic anymore. I can buy an LCD iMac for the same price.
<strong>You're paying way too much for business desktops then, LCD's aside. We get decent business machines for 1000 Canadian with a 17" CRT.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Ok, so you are paying for less machine than we are probably getting; either way, a CRT iMac's nearly the same price right now ($799 us, single, not quantity so it's probably even less).
Ok, so you are paying for less machine than we are probably getting; either way, a CRT iMac's nearly the same price right now ($799 us, single, not quantity so it's probably even less).</strong><hr></blockquote>
You are forgetting an important business consideration.
Maintenance.
A Matsu type cheap computer can trash its cheap 17" monitor and replace it easily and cheaply.
We have at least one monitor a day die here ( about 600 PCs over 8 buildings ). Do you know how much time and cost it would be to get that many iMac screens fixed. It's not a pretty thought. :eek:
[[[They have had a thin client sitting on their face and moaning for the last 2 years, they just haven't ever decided to price it as such.iMac CRT, eMac, hello? The former could be going out the door for 500 right now, the latter, with a minor tweak or two could be sold for 750, fo sho.Add Xservers and fully M$ compliant Office suites (hoping.), not 'works' but full featured mailing (paper and electronic), presentation, spread-sheet and database facilities, and you have a winner. ......... cont.]]]
Good point. Too bad you failed to mention that even at the CURRENT PRICES this argument would still be true. The only thing that would be missing would be the M$ Office licenses, but then again that can be worked out and probably STILL be cheaper.
You the go onto post:
[[[You're paying way too much for business desktops then, LCD's aside. We get decent business machines for 1000 Canadian with a 17" CRT. ]]]
But then there are all those M$ licensing fees that extend for as long as you are using M$ wares. :-\\
Again, this rig can be had right now without Apple advertising it.\t
Comments
Of course, I don't know how accurate those numbers are for today's computer market but I suspect that it isn't a whole lot different.
I just posted something on this subject earlier, and here I am updating it already.
I mean all they do is to tell us about how bad macintosh is. They tell us how Apple will die and that Dull and MS is the way to go.
And of course all of their friends and customers are changing to cheap pcs.
What I really don´t understand is how apple has actually been able to grow the last few years. And I don´t understand why 25% of my friends have actually switched to mac the last year. After I started using mac.
And one more thing. In norway at least the interests for macintosh is getting bigger. Thats the reason I got a new job 4 months ago together with a friend of mine.
The Computer site I work for now desperatly wanted a macenthusisat to write for them because they were not able to cower the news because they did not know anything about macs. And now thhey have even thought of changing our office computers with macintosh computers.
So say what you want Stagflation Steve but you have to understand that the trend is not always what you see for yourself. Look at the global aspect. Apple had less than 1% marketshare 5 years ago now they have more than 4,5%
I know it dooes not sound much but if this continues for 5 more years apple will actually have more 10% marketshare in 5 years. Not that I se that coming either, but at leastto say apple is dying is wrong, because they are at the time beeing actually growing.
And I don\\t blame you because you sell cheap pc systems, I have bought one myself but only because I want a gaming machine. For all my work I use my macintosh.
And hey I can´t wait to get my hands on the new TiBook it sounds great and it is coming to daddy next week.
What hasn't been mentioned much here at all (except very briefly in relation to education) is the enterprise market. For many years the enterprise marke was not interested in the cheapest of the cheap because they had more money to spend than a private customer and needed enough performance to run the latest software.
In the last few years PC performance has increased faster than software (other than games) can match it. Thus enterprise customers no longer need mid-range PCs, but can quite happily get by with very simple cut-down and cut-price PCs.
I am typing this from a work Dell Optiplex GX150 (sitting next to my own TiBook), which I think has a 866MHz or 1 GHz Pentium 3, 128MB RAM, 15GB HD, a CD player and a 15 inch screen and NOTHING else - not even a speaker (I don't count the floppy drive as a feature
Also more and more enterprise software is moving towards the "thin client" type model. Someone above who worked for a hospital outlined how they got around M$ security holes by effectively running their desktop boxes as thin clients with applications served from UNIX servers through a telnet session or a web browser. I also know a healthcare software company in the UK which is moving its entire PRMS (Patient Record Management System) to a web-based product which will be served to browsers from a central server.
One reason why Apple may want to consider a low-end box missing from the bottom of their range is NOT to appeal to the no-loyalty price-sensitive consumers, but to the enterprise market (ie corporates, universities, schools etc) who might buy the Xserve to run the network and 100s of boxes for their users' desktops. They do not need superdrives, or even CD-Rs. They do not need 60GB hard drives, they do not need 1.2 GHz G4s. For this type of market a 700 MHz G3 with a CD drive, ethernet, the usual ports a 10/20 GB drive and a 15 inch screen will do just fine. Is this a market that Apple wants to get into? They may not make much margin on the desktop boxes, but they make up for it in selling the Xserves etc to run the network.They do not need to compromise the quality of the components or the overall user experience, but just offer something which does not include features such as superior graphics cards, high HD capacities, DVD read/write drives etc.
As far as I can see, it is pointless getting into the enterprise server market today unless you are also willing to offer a simple, almost "thin client" desktop for the users. And that will have to sell for around $700.
<strong>What I really don´t understand is how apple has actually been able to grow the last few years.
(snip)
Look at the global aspect. Apple had less than 1% marketshare 5 years ago now they have more than 4,5%
</strong><hr></blockquote>
5 years ago apple had 6% marketshare, today they have 2.7% and falling,
Apple marketshare has been in virtual freefall since Steve Jobs returned, opposed to relative stability while apple was in it's little death spiral
I don't hate the Macintosh, I love it.
But I think Apple is being run into the ground by an idiot manchild who couldn't run a sucessful liquor store located between two frat houses
Steve Jobs' esteem in the computing industry is one of those things you can't really explain if you sit down and think about for more than a few minutes. He's like the star athlete who never really wins the big one, and come to think of it, isn't much more than average apart from a highlight reel dunk now and again.
He has a beautiful vision of computing, but a shaky grasp on the realities of the computing business. Computers will be commodities whether he likes it or not, and he's taking Apple the long way around warming up to this reality...
We'll see what happens. Just note, that he sits on two of the worst boards, and has either run a company into the ground or been run out before he could, on two occasions. NeXT was a horrible failure and he was lucky Apple bought them. It could only be seen as a success in that it got him back into Apple, which may be what he was after all along, but the company failed to make any significant penetration, was soon caught back-pedaling, and would have folded or been swallowed up in short order if not for Apple's buy-out. Do we need to into his first stint at Apple? Will we, years hence, be going into his second?
<strong>One reason why Apple may want to consider a low-end box missing from the bottom of their range is NOT to appeal to the no-loyalty price-sensitive consumers, but to the enterprise market (ie corporates, universities, schools etc) who might buy the Xserve to run the network and 100s of boxes for their users' desktops. They do not need superdrives, or even CD-Rs. They do not need 60GB hard drives, they do not need 1.2 GHz G4s. For this type of market a 700 MHz G3 with a CD drive, ethernet, the usual ports a 10/20 GB drive and a 15 inch screen will do just fine. Is this a market that Apple wants to get into? They may not make much margin on the desktop boxes, but they make up for it in selling the Xserves etc to run the network.They do not need to compromise the quality of the components or the overall user experience, but just offer something which does not include features such as superior graphics cards, high HD capacities, DVD read/write drives etc.
As far as I can see, it is pointless getting into the enterprise server market today unless you are also willing to offer a simple, almost "thin client" desktop for the users. And that will have to sell for around $700.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Good post.
You might recall a MacWorld some years ago where Steve demonstrated 50 iMacs booting from a NetBoot server. Steve mentioned not long afterward that early prototypes of the iMac didn't have a hard drive, but one was added after it was decided that the diskless model was "too radical" (read: Sun got its ass kicked by its customers when it rolled out what an engineer friend of mine calls "dickless workstations"). Now, however, things are different. I save and load files to a SAN over fast Ethernet at work, and it's like working on a notebook hard drive: Not fast, but perfectly transparent and usable. A diskless workstation - at least, in the sense that it would only need a local HDD for caching and virtual memory - is viable now, and Apple is building a scalable server architecture that could NetBoot a whole lot of these machines, and store all of their files and accounts. Apple's been looking at this since 1997 or so, and I think they're just waiting for the pieces to fall into place before they roll it out. This arrangement could also work in education, I think.
It doesn't address the consumer market, of course, but then, Apple seems to be doing OK in the consumer market. It's among the customers who buy machines in big lots, and among some power users, that Apple is not doing well.
<strong>
5 years ago apple had 6% marketshare, today they have 2.7% and falling,
Apple marketshare has been in virtual freefall since Steve Jobs returned, opposed to relative stability while apple was in it's little death spiral
I don't hate the Macintosh, I love it.
But I think Apple is being run into the ground by an idiot manchild who couldn't run a sucessful liquor store located between two frat houses</strong><hr></blockquote>
I agree. Let's get Amelio or Spindler back! Or better, Stagflation Steve! SJ and the current clowns are stupid! <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
<strong>
5 years ago apple had 6% marketshare, today they have 2.7% and falling,</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not globally.
Apple's marketshare outside the US was worse than pitiful (with the possible exception of Japan), and it's actually been recovering well - it's still nothing to holler about, but at least it's growing. Note that Nilka is posting from Norway.
[quote]<strong>Apple marketshare has been in virtual freefall since Steve Jobs returned, opposed to relative stability while apple was in it's little death spiral</strong><hr></blockquote>
A 40% to 6% plunge in market share is not "relative stability," and it doesn't matter anyway if Apple goes bankrupt, does it?
[quote]<strong>
But I think Apple is being run into the ground by an idiot manchild who couldn't run a sucessful liquor store located between two frat houses</strong><hr></blockquote>
I share your lack of faith in Steve's own ability to run a corporation, but at least he's learned that he can't run a corporation. He knows that he's good at coming up with - or recognizing - ways to make really good personal computers, and he seems to be sticking to that, more or less. While he tried to be a hands-on manager, there were all kinds of tales of terrible management coming out of Cupertino, such as workers on the Mac assembly line being treated much better than workers on the Apple ][ assembly line (the two lines were right across from each other!) because Steve liked the Mac better.
But now, look what he's done with the two companies he runs: At Pixar, apart from building a really cool building for the employees to romp around in and providing some general direction, he lets the company run itself, and it's doing well, and employee morale is high. At Apple, he's assembled a crackerjack team of VPs to run the place, and at least at the executive level not one of them has resigned in frustration. Apple executes efficiently, manages money and resources well, etc., and unlike the days of the "death spiral" when it was bleeding talent, Apple has been hiring steadily, and it has talent like Jordan Hubbard begging to be hired. And then staying. Obviously, something changed.
Apple's worst enemy right now, besides the economy, is the network effect. The more people switch to Windows, the more people switch to Windows because it's the safe choice. That's a hard trend to buck, but I have more confidence in this executive team's ability to tackle it than I have had in any prior Apple management - certainly including Steve Mark I.
1) This is a risky market concept and one that has been predicted to take off before. Those that jumped in earlier lost money.
2) It's unclear how this fits with Apple's current capabilities. By that I mean is OS X (as it exists today) a good platform for a thin client? I think not because the hardware requirements for good OS X performance are high enough that it almost rules out low-cost machines. Do you really want to build a thin client that for the most part requires a 32MB graphics card? Now if OS X can be modified for this mission (like removing much of Quartz) then it becomes a greater possibility. That would likely be a big effort and of course the payback would have to be there to justify doing so.
iMac CRT, eMac, hello? The former could be going out the door for 500 right now, the latter, with a minor tweak or two could be sold for 750, fo sho.
Add Xservers and fully M$ compliant Office suites (hoping.), not 'works' but full featured mailing (paper and electronic), presentation, spread-sheet and database facilities, and you have a winner. No mo' M$ licensing weirdness for anybody -- 750, all the hardware and software you need to be 'standards' compliant all in one box, take it out plug it in, never pay a site licence again. Oh yeah, forget iApps, and video, that's a killer right there -- Office. Let M$ go ahead and pull their Office, who cares?
Can you imagine? I got a mid-size/largish office with 50-100 seats, I need everything. I can call Dell and get a good price on machines and servers. Then I can call M$ and get taxed throughout the life of my machines and beyond (if M$ gets there way). OR, I can call Apple, order 1 server with as much storage as I need, and 50-100 boxes ready to go. Open box, plug in power and network, all Office apps pre-installed and at the ready, Server ready to dole out all the appropriate permissions. The whole Office is ready to go in one day, and ALL my licencing is taken care of for the life of the machines.
IT guys might not like it. But it seems to me the single greatest advantage of selling the hardware the way Apple does, would be that it could allow them to be very generous with their software licences, something M$ would have great difficulty matching.
Come on Apple, lets have 'Pro'AppleWorks, iOffice, iWork, whatever you wanna call it, let's have it, soon...
<strong>I think the comments about a networked thin client for enterprise are very good. What I question is Apple's capability to make this viable and successful. There are two factors against which Apple must swim upstream:
1) This is a risky market concept and one that has been predicted to take off before. Those that jumped in earlier lost money.</strong><hr></blockquote>
True, and this is why Apple's been sitting on the idea for at least 5 years. No point releasing a product when the supporting technologies aren't there yet.
Actually, they aren't quite there right now: When OS X Server gets kernel level clustering, one of the last pieces will have fallen into place, because then Apple's servers really do scale up that easily. Plug and play.
[quote]<strong>2) It's unclear how this fits with Apple's current capabilities. By that I mean is OS X (as it exists today) a good platform for a thin client? I think not because the hardware requirements for good OS X performance are high enough that it almost rules out low-cost machines. Do you really want to build a thin client that for the most part requires a 32MB graphics card? Now if OS X can be modified for this mission (like removing much of Quartz) then it becomes a greater possibility.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I think you're overestimating both the overhead of Quartz and the importance of Quartz Extreme - which for the most part enables high-end compositing capabilities, which most office applications have no use for. A 16MB Radeon Mobility would work fine (QE would be supported, if not optimally), and it's cheap. Even a 32MB RADEON is cheap at this point. Remember, you only need the chip, not a whole AGP card.
Apple could offer a machine with the above graphics chipset, a 700MHz G3 or G4, 128MB or 256MB of RAM, no HDD (BTO HDDs optional), a CD-ROM, 10/100 base-T ethernet, USB and FireWire for a song. If they only sold it as part of a package with the profitable stuff (software, servers and support) they wouldn't have to make a dime on them. They could even offer them at a loss, because the whole package would net a profit.
[quote]<strong>That would likely be a big effort and of course the payback would have to be there to justify doing so.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There's a risk, but considering that their current strategy is costing them the education market, the certainty of eventual failure probably makes it more palatable. The fact that, by some measures, 40% of enterprise customers are fed up enough with MS to actively seek out alternatives means that Apple should hurry up and pretty themselves up for that crowd. They could pick up some new customers pretty quickly. Now that MS is free to do whatever they want, laws notwithstanding, their window of opportunity is closing.
<strong>They have had a thin client sitting on their face and moaning for the last 2 years, they just haven't ever decided to price it as such.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Interesting idea. I suppose the Sun Java Station or IBM Netvista are synonymous with corporations these days huh? I can find them o'plenty on eBay for next to d!ck. Thin clients just never quite panned out in most offices.
<strong>...more like affordable no frills business desktop.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Gotcha. We have bought Compaq and Dells in the past for most of our corporate users and even the lowest end Evos and Dimensions were around a $1000 for the desktop (with proper amount of memory) and monitor - add an lcd which we've been doing a lot of, and your into the $1200-1300 range. Not very basic anymore. I can buy an LCD iMac for the same price.
<strong>You're paying way too much for business desktops then, LCD's aside. We get decent business machines for 1000 Canadian with a 17" CRT.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Ok, so you are paying for less machine than we are probably getting; either way, a CRT iMac's nearly the same price right now ($799 us, single, not quantity so it's probably even less).
<strong>
Ok, so you are paying for less machine than we are probably getting; either way, a CRT iMac's nearly the same price right now ($799 us, single, not quantity so it's probably even less).</strong><hr></blockquote>
You are forgetting an important business consideration.
Maintenance.
A Matsu type cheap computer can trash its cheap 17" monitor and replace it easily and cheaply.
We have at least one monitor a day die here ( about 600 PCs over 8 buildings ). Do you know how much time and cost it would be to get that many iMac screens fixed. It's not a pretty thought. :eek:
[[[They have had a thin client sitting on their face and moaning for the last 2 years, they just haven't ever decided to price it as such.iMac CRT, eMac, hello? The former could be going out the door for 500 right now, the latter, with a minor tweak or two could be sold for 750, fo sho.Add Xservers and fully M$ compliant Office suites (hoping.), not 'works' but full featured mailing (paper and electronic), presentation, spread-sheet and database facilities, and you have a winner. ......... cont.]]]
Good point. Too bad you failed to mention that even at the CURRENT PRICES this argument would still be true. The only thing that would be missing would be the M$ Office licenses, but then again that can be worked out and probably STILL be cheaper.
You the go onto post:
[[[You're paying way too much for business desktops then, LCD's aside. We get decent business machines for 1000 Canadian with a 17" CRT. ]]]
But then there are all those M$ licensing fees that extend for as long as you are using M$ wares. :-\\
Again, this rig can be had right now without Apple advertising it.\t
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Ed