As I said...looks great in 2007 which is what you guys are looking at. I'm looking a couple years down the road when both the 360 and PS3 devs hit their stride and release really killer looking titles with rich content.
There will be wii like games on both the XBox and PS3. But the fact is the Wii is a revamped GameCube which means its not in the same generational class as the 360 and PS3. It will never be able to have the same games as the 360 and PS3.
The wii is and will continue to be successful in the same vein as games like Sims and web based flash games are successful (Bejeweled, etc)...wildly so. But that doesn't change the fact that in terms of the other game genres that demand more cpu and video horsepower Nintendo has bailed out of that race this go around.
Note only the sales for North America and Japan are in this chart at the moment.
Sebastian
Interesting chart, is the X axis in weeks since release? If so, what's that big spike in week 56 for the 360? Without it, they'd be getting thoroughly spanked. And oh, the poor poor PS3...
Interesting chart, is the X axis in weeks since release? If so, what's that big spike in week 56 for the 360? Without it, they'd be getting thoroughly spanked. And oh, the poor poor PS3...
I think Week 56 is about the time Gears of War came out.
The wii is and will continue to be successful in the same vein as games like Sims and web based flash games are successful (Bejeweled, etc)...wildly so. But that doesn't change the fact that in terms of the other game genres that demand more cpu and video horsepower Nintendo has bailed out of that race this go around.
Vinea
My personal reasoning is, I can build a more powerful PC (in terms of total/graphical power, not with the specialized CPU's of course) for less money than the PS3, and it will be upgradeable, multi-task capable, and more future proof than any console. I realize that takes me out of the target audience for these consoles.
That said, our library of GC/DS games is about three times a large as our library of PS2 games. Nintendo just knows how to make fun to play systems.
As I said...looks great in 2007 which is what you guys are looking at. I'm looking a couple years down the road when both the 360 and PS3 devs hit their stride and release really killer looking titles with rich content.
There will be wii like games on both the XBox and PS3. But the fact is the Wii is a revamped GameCube which means its not in the same generational class as the 360 and PS3. It will never be able to have the same games as the 360 and PS3.
The wii is and will continue to be successful in the same vein as games like Sims and web based flash games are successful (Bejeweled, etc)...wildly so. But that doesn't change the fact that in terms of the other game genres that demand more cpu and video horsepower Nintendo has bailed out of that race this go around.
Vinea
We can go back and forth about this, I can continue to tell you about Nintendo still competing in the same market and gamers will choose their preference like they always have, many of them just buying all 3 to make it simple, and you can continue to insist that the 360 and the PS3 will have games the Wii won't (this is true both ways by the way) or we can agree to disagree right here and get back to the subject: Microsoft is dead.
Man, the PS3 is rubbish. I've seen a racing game, it was pretty meh, a 7900GS could do those graphics. Not to drag this into a PC vs Console, just saying that it was a major racing title and the graphics were not one would expect for the cash you pony up for a PS3. The long-hyped boxing Fight Night or something like that, graphics are cool, but the animation is totally hosed, all jerky movements, like so obvious that you press a button then the boxer jerks a bit with a punch. Reminds me of real old school arcade (as in physical stuff) when you had two boxers (figurines) punch each other mechanically.
The newest reviews of FEAR for PS3 are going to be scathing. Early reports indicate poor graphic quality (compared to PC when it was released way back in 2005, XBOX360 more recent years), poor response time, difficult first person shooter controls with the SixAxis (I think that's what it's called) controller.
Nobody expects iWork to have a spreadsheet comparable to Excel. Surely Apple could have taken 10 minutes to code a spreadsheet in Cocoa for us AppleWorks devotees and released it as a beta by now.
If you can announce a phone in January that won't ship till June, why can't you beta a simple spreadsheet three months prior to Leopard?
Exactly! What is Apple waiting for? This should have already been done long ago. I'm not a programer, but how hard can it be to create apps that would replace Office on the Mac?
Exactly! What is Apple waiting for? This should have already been done long ago. I'm not a programer, but how hard can it be to create apps that would replace Office on the Mac?
Very hard.
Office for Mac has a code base dating back to the 80s when the original Macintosh was released, a marketing budget that's insane, and a brand in the business world that is unbeatable for businesses looking to go cross platform and enough users in the Windows World that if they were to cancel the only Mac version it would be devastating for Word/Excel/PowerPoint users looking to switch, not to mention devastating for current users that rely on Office for Mac and devastating especially for College Students that need it for class making it a very large cash cow for Microsoft. They also have a dedicated fan base, yes, even their Mac users, of people who love Entourage and Excel.
Apple meanwhile does not hire very many engineers seeking only the most talented and essentially keeping it a close knit group of people. iWork directly relates to iLife meaning it directly relates to Mac OS X meaning it's probably in the same building and probably part of Steve's Crew of Pirates which means the number of people who can get on the iWork team is filtered even more, because the number of engineers hired for that crew will already be low, and the iWork team, even lower meaning they don't have a lot of resources to throw into new applications. They've probably been working on a Spreadsheet app since iWork 05 was first released.
Nothing runs on Pixie Dust and Magic in the software world, and trying to replace Office for Mac is like trying to move the Himalaya Mountain Range with a shovel, especially if you assume the simple "If Apple builds it people will buy it" methodology.
Given that Tables is the work of one guy, I see no reason that we should have been made to wait 6 years for a replacement to the AppleWorks spreadsheet.
This has always smelled like a forced, signed agreement with Redmond not to replace spreadsheet functionality on the Mac for a certain time period. Either that, or Steve is seriously incompetent.
Given that Tables is the work of one guy, I see no reason that we should have been made to wait 6 years for a replacement to the AppleWorks spreadsheet.
This has always smelled like a forced, signed agreement with Redmond not to replace spreadsheet functionality on the Mac for a certain time period. Either that, or Steve is seriously incompetent.
It's not impossible for a developer to write their own software singlehandedly, but it generally doesn't happen outside of Shareware, and they still have Pages and Keynote to support.
Further, I haven't used Tables (nor do I use Office for Mac) so I can't assume anything about it's quality, but last I checked, it hasn't replaced Excel for the Mac.
Nobody expects iWork to have a spreadsheet comparable to Excel. Surely Apple could have taken 10 minutes to code a spreadsheet in Cocoa for us AppleWorks devotees and released it as a beta by now.
If you can announce a phone in January that won't ship till June, why can't you beta a simple spreadsheet three months prior to Leopard?
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Originally Posted by iPeon
Exactly! What is Apple waiting for? This should have already been done long ago. I'm not a programer, but how hard can it be to create apps that would replace Office on the Mac?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slewis
Very hard.
Office for Mac has a code base dating back to the 80s when the original Macintosh was released, a marketing budget that's insane, and a brand in the business world that is unbeatable for businesses looking to go cross platform and enough users in the Windows World that if they were to cancel the only Mac version it would be devastating for Word/Excel/PowerPoint users looking to switch, not to mention devastating for current users that rely on Office for Mac and devastating especially for College Students that need it for class making it a very large cash cow for Microsoft. They also have a dedicated fan base, yes, even their Mac users, of people who love Entourage and Excel.
Apple meanwhile does not hire very many engineers seeking only the most talented and essentially keeping it a close knit group of people. iWork directly relates to iLife meaning it directly relates to Mac OS X meaning it's probably in the same building and probably part of Steve's Crew of Pirates which means the number of people who can get on the iWork team is filtered even more, because the number of engineers hired for that crew will already be low, and the iWork team, even lower meaning they don't have a lot of resources to throw into new applications. They've probably been working on a Spreadsheet app since iWork 05 was first released.
Nothing runs on Pixie Dust and Magic in the software world, and trying to replace Office for Mac is like trying to move the Himalaya Mountain Range with a shovel, especially if you assume the simple "If Apple builds it people will buy it" methodology.
Sebastian
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slewis
It's not impossible for a developer to write their own software singlehandedly, but it generally doesn't happen outside of Shareware, and they still have Pages and Keynote to support.
Further, I haven't used Tables (nor do I use Office for Mac) so I can't assume anything about it's quality, but last I checked, it hasn't replaced Excel for the Mac.
Sebastian
My gut, gut feeling is that Apple has to wait for Microsoft to deliver Office 2008 for Mac, Universal Binary, deliver it well, give it about 6 months of solid sales, then BAM! Move to annihalate Office for Mac once and bloody for all... Hopefully
We can go back and forth about this, I can continue to tell you about Nintendo still competing in the same market and gamers will choose their preference like they always have, many of them just buying all 3 to make it simple, and you can continue to insist that the 360 and the PS3 will have games the Wii won't (this is true both ways by the way) or we can agree to disagree right here and get back to the subject: Microsoft is dead.
Sebastian
Nintendo is not competing in the same market in as much as they hope that folks will buy their updated gamecube in addition to the two remaining top level consoles. The strategy is working from a combination of pricing and Sony stumbling on the PS3.
It's not about individual game titles on the 360 and PS3 and not on the Wii but about the Wii being too underpowered for certain genres to the point where its games are not going to be any better than what could run on an XBox or PS2.
As far as the "subject" Microsoft is nowhere near dead.
Triple Bollocks. Large growth in Xbox and games (unlikely) would be minuscule for MS in terms of earnings per share.
In 2002 Sony's game division was 30% of its profits (hampered by poundings in its movie division...this year is the opposite). In 2006 SCE generated $8.5B in sales. That's not miniscule.
There's a reason that Sony and MS sank so much into the PS3 and 360 and why MS invested so much into breaking into the console market with the XBox.
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Assuming they can maintain revenues at least constant in their biggest revenue generators, software OS & Office products, unless they show growth in their weakest area and the one with the largest $$$ growth potential, internet web revenue derived from search, their stock price will remain stalled as it has been since Sep., 2003 where its stock price was $30. It closed today at $30.98.
I doubt they are going to maintain constant revenues in OS and Office products...their top two revenue generators (their only two real profit generators).
Wii is doing awesome and Nintendo getting a nice financial infusion. With Sony vulnerable they might decide to get back into the game and they certainly avoided Sega's fate. But MS also picked up a lot of ground on Sony this go around. More than folks might have anticipated.
Office for Mac has a code base dating back to the 80s when the original Macintosh was released, a marketing budget that's insane, and a brand in the business world that is unbeatable for businesses looking to go cross platform and enough users in the Windows World that if they were to cancel the only Mac version it would be devastating for Word/Excel/PowerPoint users looking to switch, not to mention devastating for current users that rely on Office for Mac and devastating especially for College Students that need it for class making it a very large cash cow for Microsoft. They also have a dedicated fan base, yes, even their Mac users, of people who love Entourage and Excel.
Sebastian
I'm not speaking from a brand recognition viewpoint, nor the amount of marking this product has, nor how popular it is. In other words, I'm not asking for opinions as to why Office should live or die nor as to why it's a good idea or bad idea to create a competitive product to Office. I'm speaking from a technical reality. How difficult is it, programing wise, to create apps that do what Word/Excel does?
Bill Gates is the reason behind this mess to begin with, and he hasn't even stepped down yet (he's saving that for 2008 if you recall) meaning he is still very influential to his company. If he's Microsoft's only hope then Microsoft is toast.
He's stepped back a lot...while he still has massive influence and power within the company you can sorta tell his mind is on other stuff. Like his foundation.
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OK so let me get this straight, Microsoft just got through with a years worth of Betas and Release Candidates, and the released version is a Beta? I guess it really hasn't been launched yet.
OS's are complex and MS has a different strategy than Apple. It goes for a big bang and lives with an OS platform that is more or less static for years. Apple has a more evolutionary process. So Vista today is a lot like OSX 10.0 Cheetah. It will never see Tiger or Leopard level of changes but end at Jaguar like level. Then after a longish break BANG. New OS.
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I admit I don't know about DR-DOS's internal affairs, but I do know that Microsoft is to fault for their death. First a link to the text document of the Court Transcript I was citing: Comes vs Microsoft in Iowa, December 1st 2006 Transcript. Printed as a PDF it's about 144 Pages. In that PDF, the Digital Research dilemma begins on page 43 and continues for pretty much the rest of the transcript, and Novell comes in on page 79.
Digital Research's dilemma was that of a moderate sized fish in a really small pond that thought it was a big fish. They never recovered from their initial stupidity and never needed to have been a competitor to MS AT ALL.
Bill Gates suggested IBM go talk to DRI to license CP/M-86. It wasn't until DRI fumbled the ball on the 1 yard line did MS have the opportunity for a 99 yard TD with a $50K purchase of QDOS from Seattle Computer Products.
DRI screwed up three things. One: CP/M-86 was late (DRI was always slow to keep up with hardware)...making SCP build QDOS because they needed SOMETHING to run on their x86 kit, Two: Pissing off IBM over a NDA and never closing the deal on selling them CP/M-86 for the PC, Three: After forcing IBM to also sell CP/M-86 they decided that $240 was the right price when MS and IBM went with $60 for PC-DOS.
DR-DOS was first released in 1988. Novell bought out DRI in 1991.
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The final death blow to DR-DOS was Windows 95, which glued the Windows GUI on top of MS-DOS essentially turning the 2 into one product. DR-DOS was officially toast. Even worse, in their onslaught to destroy DRI, they made it even more difficult for the struggling NeXT, and IBM.
The "death blow" was that MS finally stopped with a frankenstein OS and integrated the GUI with the OS? My god...what infamous cads.
Struggling IBM? Come off it. IBM had the world by the short curlies and charged accordingly. Had Compaq NOT been able to reverse engineer the BIOS we'd STILL be stuck with $3000 PCs.
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No matter how slow NeXTstep might have run, or how much OS/2 might have sucked compared to MS-DOS/Windows, the fact is Microsoft still prevented even one OEM from taking interest in either.
Given that IBM is an OEM this is false out of the gate AND IBM's objective with OS/2 was to sell more IBM hardware...not resell their competitive advantage to other OEMs.
With NeXTStep it was never a possibility until NeXT hardware failed to sell. Which means that it wasn't until 1993 that NeXTStep was even available on the x86 platform and in 1996 it was sold to Apple. In any case Sun was interested in NeXTStep to the point where it started up OpenStep.
Another company that had the opportunity to stop MS and categorically failed to take advantage of wonderous opportunities that had presented itself.
NeXTStep was obviously the best desktop OS in 1993. OBVIOUSLY. Whether or not Sun and Jobs could stand each other it certainly could have afforded to spend the millions to buy exclusive rights to NeXTStep desktop and tell the rest of the unix world (and the hugely craptasic CDE) to go hang.
It did not. It went with the unsuccessful OpenSTEP idea which died a miserable death when Apple spent the millions to have OSX.
Sun ALSO had Solaris X86 in 1993. For $700 (incredibly cheap for a unix. incredibly expensive for a PC OS). Had it released it for $70 (which arguably would have trashed it's low end ipc/ipx lines) with NeXTStep on the X86 platform and went for entry level market share then both Linux and Microsoft Server would have suffered infant mortality and Sun would have had great upsell potential for their heavy iron.
Box MS Server into a tiny corner and no enterprise dominance.
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1st Sentence: True
2nd Sentence: Bull
3rd Sentence: So they have a choice in a free market filled with competition, and partially because too many people are getting to be too lazy and not doing their own research, but mostly so they have a choice in a free market filled with competition.
You mean like being so lazy as to not research how many opportunities that other companies had to stop MS at various junctures?
And you're going to have to do more than just assert "bull" to make any points. Folks don't buy just "computers" but a system to actually DO something. The OS is so far below the radar that it really is almost meaningless.
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When someone walks into Best Buy or CompUSA, they are generally not thinking about Solaris (I know it doesn't exist in either of those places) vs Windows vs Mac OS X. Chances are they are trying to decide between a Dell, an HP, or a Mac, or another brand name. They buy the computer and use whatever OS comes on it after that, and thus aren't really choosing their OS (unless they believe the FUD and Myths about Macs) but really just their computer.
Exactly. The OS is a commodity item. It's not some massive differentiator unless it truely sucks. Windows sucked for a long time. XP sucks less enough that its not a big deal anymore.
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They don't really have to choose their OS, Microsoft decided for them, and only a fraction of these people will end up wiping the HDD and installing Linux or some other OS.
The MARKET decided for them when other computer manufacturers squandered opportunities to keep MS from becoming a dominant force. Good damn thing too as far as the OS is concerned. That we have such a massive dominance means that folks can develop for one platform and reach the majority of the users.
Personally I'd have wished that this common platform had been a little more elegant but today the .NET platform is simple enough and hides much of the ugliness of Windows.
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You're right, MS-DOS was cheap (remember those exclusivity deals mentioned above?) and it helped that OEMs could easily hide the real price tag of the OS it has on their hardware.
Cheap at $40-$60 where it STARTED from with IBM. Your DR-DOS was $240 also offered on the original PC. Had IBM and DRI made the connection I'm sure computers today would be far more expensive and the computing world as fragmented as the late 80s. Wonderful and exciting time if you could AFFORD computing.
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Bullshit. I never claimed one thing or another about .NET other than the fact that people are going to develop where the majority of the market is no matter what, and chances are they are going to do it with the default set of tools available to them, nor does it matter to me how much of an improvement it is over the previous tools available on a platform I despise from a company I despise even more.
EDIT: I made a stinker here. I went and reread the first sentence in my post of the paragraph you were replying to. I apparently said "...that doesn't make it any better" when referring to .NET. In truth by being the default set of tools that doesn't make it any better, nor does it make it any better than Xcode. Just thought I'd clear that up.
A platform you've never seem to have developed for.
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Compete hard, not unfair, and not to the point where you end up destroying any possible competition in a supposedly free market locking other OS vendors out because it would be too expensive to use a competing OS because each and every Intel chip an OEM under their strict licensing shipped out the door meant another royalty to Microsoft.
Oh come off it. Every OTHER OS of the period was tied to flipping hardware. Flipping EXPENSIVE hardware. Did you perhaps try to PRICE unix operating systems of the era? Do you think that DRI would have been a better corporate citizen interested in bringing computing to the masses?
Kildall was an amazing guy...kinda like Jobs in that he liked elegance (not that you could really tell from CP/M IMHO). But making sure grandma could use computers (or afford it) was not on his agenda (and you COULD tell that from CP/M).
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It's a factor in a fraction of the market where it's only growth has been eating what's left of Palm OS' market share (no thanks to Palm themselves) alive. Symbian is still the most widely used, and Linux is the second most widely used, leaving the rest of the market to Microsoft, Palm, and RIM.
Symbian. ugh...talk about something with no elegance. The OS is a pig to develop on. Linux, Windows CE and OSX (guessing on OSX) are vastly superior. Linux I've done some embedded work on but not on handhelds.
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I've been typing this post on and off over the course of the past 24 hours, a few sentences here, a paragraph here, and so on, and normally I would be pissed and just let you agonize with OOo when you maybe eventually play around with it... but for the sake of your sanity and mine, just don't bother OpenOffice at all... in fact stay as far away from it as possible. If you're interested, try Nisus Writer Pro Public Beta 1, I've been enjoying it since the beta first came out.
Pissed? Because someone deigns to disagree? Whatever. In any case, given our tastes diverge so much I doubt your opinion on OOO is worth all that much to me.
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They should have never had the Desktop market under their hand either for so many years, and IBM is the root of the problem, not having ever thought about licensing DOS exclusively until it was too late. But it is nice that Linux is taking the server market from Microsoft.
Had IBM locked up DOS exclusively then IBM would STILL control the computing world. Long ago one of my girlfriends purchased an overpriced and underpowered IBM PS2 for the lofty sum of $3K when the equivalent Dell was maybe...$1500.
THAT is your alternate universe without MS dominance and with IBM dominance in its place.
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Microsoft is irrelevant, has very few new products to offer that are worth using,
I doubt you have much insight into what MS is working and building. Not that I'm all that plugged in either but I at least read enough literature to know that MS still has an assload of really smart folks building really cool stuff.
I'm not speaking from a brand recognition viewpoint, nor the amount of marking this product has, nor how popular it is. In other words, I'm not asking for opinions as to why Office should live or die nor as to why it's a good idea or bad idea to create a competitive product to Office. I'm speaking from a technical reality. How difficult is it, programing wise, to create apps that do what Word/Excel does?
Hard because of the number of features in Word and Excel. Not THAT hard though...just a lot of effort. Apple certainly has enough money to be able to make a complete MS Office like package.
But the point isn't to replicate every little thing that word and excel does but come up with an elegant solution like Keynote. That's a LOT less work and not even that hard to accomplish (the bar isn't that high). Especially since there are great alternatives to Excel that Apple could aquire or replicate. Pages needs a bit or work to make it my everyday document editor over Word...I don't want Pagemaker Lite, I want to write ye old reports and memos and the like.
A Lotus Improv like spreadsheet would be a great addition to iWork. One of the remaining knock-off of Improv is Quantrix.
Play with it and you see it kills Excel. Given that Jobs gave the Lotus guys NeXT boxes to develop Improv he's not unaware of the superiority...Improv was killer on the NeXT.
Quantrix runs on OSX already. Can't imagine Quantrix would be that expensive to simply acquire.
Comments
Too bad 'hard-core' gamers are an insignificant fraction of the market:
Wii Tracker 12 of 15 Sold Out
360 Tracker 2 of 13 Sold Out
PS3 Tracker 1 of 13 Sold Out
These are the numbers I'm using.
Note only the sales for North America and Japan are in this chart at the moment.
Sebastian
The Wii has no legs. Fun for 2007 but Nintendo effectively conceeded the hard-core gamer market to Sony and MS
Vinea
Yeah right.
http://www.thestreet.com/_htmlbtb/ne.../10357600.html
There will be wii like games on both the XBox and PS3. But the fact is the Wii is a revamped GameCube which means its not in the same generational class as the 360 and PS3. It will never be able to have the same games as the 360 and PS3.
The wii is and will continue to be successful in the same vein as games like Sims and web based flash games are successful (Bejeweled, etc)...wildly so. But that doesn't change the fact that in terms of the other game genres that demand more cpu and video horsepower Nintendo has bailed out of that race this go around.
Vinea
http://www.mushygushy.com/VWPG49
These are the numbers I'm using.
Note only the sales for North America and Japan are in this chart at the moment.
Sebastian
Interesting chart, is the X axis in weeks since release? If so, what's that big spike in week 56 for the 360? Without it, they'd be getting thoroughly spanked. And oh, the poor poor PS3...
Interesting chart, is the X axis in weeks since release? If so, what's that big spike in week 56 for the 360? Without it, they'd be getting thoroughly spanked. And oh, the poor poor PS3...
I think Week 56 is about the time Gears of War came out.
And yes it's in weeks.
Sebastian
The wii is and will continue to be successful in the same vein as games like Sims and web based flash games are successful (Bejeweled, etc)...wildly so. But that doesn't change the fact that in terms of the other game genres that demand more cpu and video horsepower Nintendo has bailed out of that race this go around.
Vinea
My personal reasoning is, I can build a more powerful PC (in terms of total/graphical power, not with the specialized CPU's of course) for less money than the PS3, and it will be upgradeable, multi-task capable, and more future proof than any console. I realize that takes me out of the target audience for these consoles.
That said, our library of GC/DS games is about three times a large as our library of PS2 games. Nintendo just knows how to make fun to play systems.
As I said...looks great in 2007 which is what you guys are looking at. I'm looking a couple years down the road when both the 360 and PS3 devs hit their stride and release really killer looking titles with rich content.
There will be wii like games on both the XBox and PS3. But the fact is the Wii is a revamped GameCube which means its not in the same generational class as the 360 and PS3. It will never be able to have the same games as the 360 and PS3.
The wii is and will continue to be successful in the same vein as games like Sims and web based flash games are successful (Bejeweled, etc)...wildly so. But that doesn't change the fact that in terms of the other game genres that demand more cpu and video horsepower Nintendo has bailed out of that race this go around.
Vinea
We can go back and forth about this, I can continue to tell you about Nintendo still competing in the same market and gamers will choose their preference like they always have, many of them just buying all 3 to make it simple, and you can continue to insist that the 360 and the PS3 will have games the Wii won't (this is true both ways by the way) or we can agree to disagree right here and get back to the subject: Microsoft is dead.
Sebastian
The newest reviews of FEAR for PS3 are going to be scathing. Early reports indicate poor graphic quality (compared to PC when it was released way back in 2005, XBOX360 more recent years), poor response time, difficult first person shooter controls with the SixAxis (I think that's what it's called) controller.
Overall, it is not looking good for the PS3.
What I still can't understand is how Apple can seriously try to pitch iWork as a solution to business without a spreadsheet component.
It's just perplexing.
Nobody expects iWork to have a spreadsheet comparable to Excel. Surely Apple could have taken 10 minutes to code a spreadsheet in Cocoa for us AppleWorks devotees and released it as a beta by now.
If you can announce a phone in January that won't ship till June, why can't you beta a simple spreadsheet three months prior to Leopard?
We could have saved a lot of time and trouble if we had named this thread "The Fear of Microsoft is Dead"
What I still can't understand is how Apple can seriously try to pitch iWork as a solution to business without a spreadsheet component.
Exactly! What is Apple waiting for? This should have already been done long ago. I'm not a programer, but how hard can it be to create apps that would replace Office on the Mac?
Exactly! What is Apple waiting for? This should have already been done long ago. I'm not a programer, but how hard can it be to create apps that would replace Office on the Mac?
Very hard.
Office for Mac has a code base dating back to the 80s when the original Macintosh was released, a marketing budget that's insane, and a brand in the business world that is unbeatable for businesses looking to go cross platform and enough users in the Windows World that if they were to cancel the only Mac version it would be devastating for Word/Excel/PowerPoint users looking to switch, not to mention devastating for current users that rely on Office for Mac and devastating especially for College Students that need it for class making it a very large cash cow for Microsoft. They also have a dedicated fan base, yes, even their Mac users, of people who love Entourage and Excel.
Apple meanwhile does not hire very many engineers seeking only the most talented and essentially keeping it a close knit group of people. iWork directly relates to iLife meaning it directly relates to Mac OS X meaning it's probably in the same building and probably part of Steve's Crew of Pirates which means the number of people who can get on the iWork team is filtered even more, because the number of engineers hired for that crew will already be low, and the iWork team, even lower meaning they don't have a lot of resources to throw into new applications. They've probably been working on a Spreadsheet app since iWork 05 was first released.
Nothing runs on Pixie Dust and Magic in the software world, and trying to replace Office for Mac is like trying to move the Himalaya Mountain Range with a shovel, especially if you assume the simple "If Apple builds it people will buy it" methodology.
Sebastian
This has always smelled like a forced, signed agreement with Redmond not to replace spreadsheet functionality on the Mac for a certain time period. Either that, or Steve is seriously incompetent.
Given that Tables is the work of one guy, I see no reason that we should have been made to wait 6 years for a replacement to the AppleWorks spreadsheet.
This has always smelled like a forced, signed agreement with Redmond not to replace spreadsheet functionality on the Mac for a certain time period. Either that, or Steve is seriously incompetent.
It's not impossible for a developer to write their own software singlehandedly, but it generally doesn't happen outside of Shareware, and they still have Pages and Keynote to support.
Further, I haven't used Tables (nor do I use Office for Mac) so I can't assume anything about it's quality, but last I checked, it hasn't replaced Excel for the Mac.
Sebastian
We could have saved a lot of time and trouble if we had named this thread "The Fear of Microsoft is Dead"
What I still can't understand is how Apple can seriously try to pitch iWork as a solution to business without a spreadsheet component.
It's just perplexing.
Nobody expects iWork to have a spreadsheet comparable to Excel. Surely Apple could have taken 10 minutes to code a spreadsheet in Cocoa for us AppleWorks devotees and released it as a beta by now.
If you can announce a phone in January that won't ship till June, why can't you beta a simple spreadsheet three months prior to Leopard?
Exactly! What is Apple waiting for? This should have already been done long ago. I'm not a programer, but how hard can it be to create apps that would replace Office on the Mac?
Very hard.
Office for Mac has a code base dating back to the 80s when the original Macintosh was released, a marketing budget that's insane, and a brand in the business world that is unbeatable for businesses looking to go cross platform and enough users in the Windows World that if they were to cancel the only Mac version it would be devastating for Word/Excel/PowerPoint users looking to switch, not to mention devastating for current users that rely on Office for Mac and devastating especially for College Students that need it for class making it a very large cash cow for Microsoft. They also have a dedicated fan base, yes, even their Mac users, of people who love Entourage and Excel.
Apple meanwhile does not hire very many engineers seeking only the most talented and essentially keeping it a close knit group of people. iWork directly relates to iLife meaning it directly relates to Mac OS X meaning it's probably in the same building and probably part of Steve's Crew of Pirates which means the number of people who can get on the iWork team is filtered even more, because the number of engineers hired for that crew will already be low, and the iWork team, even lower meaning they don't have a lot of resources to throw into new applications. They've probably been working on a Spreadsheet app since iWork 05 was first released.
Nothing runs on Pixie Dust and Magic in the software world, and trying to replace Office for Mac is like trying to move the Himalaya Mountain Range with a shovel, especially if you assume the simple "If Apple builds it people will buy it" methodology.
Sebastian
It's not impossible for a developer to write their own software singlehandedly, but it generally doesn't happen outside of Shareware, and they still have Pages and Keynote to support.
Further, I haven't used Tables (nor do I use Office for Mac) so I can't assume anything about it's quality, but last I checked, it hasn't replaced Excel for the Mac.
Sebastian
My gut, gut feeling is that Apple has to wait for Microsoft to deliver Office 2008 for Mac, Universal Binary, deliver it well, give it about 6 months of solid sales, then BAM! Move to annihalate Office for Mac once and bloody for all... Hopefully
We can go back and forth about this, I can continue to tell you about Nintendo still competing in the same market and gamers will choose their preference like they always have, many of them just buying all 3 to make it simple, and you can continue to insist that the 360 and the PS3 will have games the Wii won't (this is true both ways by the way) or we can agree to disagree right here and get back to the subject: Microsoft is dead.
Sebastian
Nintendo is not competing in the same market in as much as they hope that folks will buy their updated gamecube in addition to the two remaining top level consoles. The strategy is working from a combination of pricing and Sony stumbling on the PS3.
It's not about individual game titles on the 360 and PS3 and not on the Wii but about the Wii being too underpowered for certain genres to the point where its games are not going to be any better than what could run on an XBox or PS2.
As far as the "subject" Microsoft is nowhere near dead.
Vinea
Triple Bollocks. Large growth in Xbox and games (unlikely) would be minuscule for MS in terms of earnings per share.
In 2002 Sony's game division was 30% of its profits (hampered by poundings in its movie division...this year is the opposite). In 2006 SCE generated $8.5B in sales. That's not miniscule.
There's a reason that Sony and MS sank so much into the PS3 and 360 and why MS invested so much into breaking into the console market with the XBox.
Assuming they can maintain revenues at least constant in their biggest revenue generators, software OS & Office products, unless they show growth in their weakest area and the one with the largest $$$ growth potential, internet web revenue derived from search, their stock price will remain stalled as it has been since Sep., 2003 where its stock price was $30. It closed today at $30.98.
I doubt they are going to maintain constant revenues in OS and Office products...their top two revenue generators (their only two real profit generators).
Wii is doing awesome and Nintendo getting a nice financial infusion. With Sony vulnerable they might decide to get back into the game and they certainly avoided Sega's fate. But MS also picked up a lot of ground on Sony this go around. More than folks might have anticipated.
Vinea
Very hard.
Office for Mac has a code base dating back to the 80s when the original Macintosh was released, a marketing budget that's insane, and a brand in the business world that is unbeatable for businesses looking to go cross platform and enough users in the Windows World that if they were to cancel the only Mac version it would be devastating for Word/Excel/PowerPoint users looking to switch, not to mention devastating for current users that rely on Office for Mac and devastating especially for College Students that need it for class making it a very large cash cow for Microsoft. They also have a dedicated fan base, yes, even their Mac users, of people who love Entourage and Excel.
Sebastian
I'm not speaking from a brand recognition viewpoint, nor the amount of marking this product has, nor how popular it is. In other words, I'm not asking for opinions as to why Office should live or die nor as to why it's a good idea or bad idea to create a competitive product to Office. I'm speaking from a technical reality. How difficult is it, programing wise, to create apps that do what Word/Excel does?
Bill Gates is the reason behind this mess to begin with, and he hasn't even stepped down yet (he's saving that for 2008 if you recall) meaning he is still very influential to his company. If he's Microsoft's only hope then Microsoft is toast.
He's stepped back a lot...while he still has massive influence and power within the company you can sorta tell his mind is on other stuff. Like his foundation.
OK so let me get this straight, Microsoft just got through with a years worth of Betas and Release Candidates, and the released version is a Beta? I guess it really hasn't been launched yet.
OS's are complex and MS has a different strategy than Apple. It goes for a big bang and lives with an OS platform that is more or less static for years. Apple has a more evolutionary process. So Vista today is a lot like OSX 10.0 Cheetah. It will never see Tiger or Leopard level of changes but end at Jaguar like level. Then after a longish break BANG. New OS.
I admit I don't know about DR-DOS's internal affairs, but I do know that Microsoft is to fault for their death. First a link to the text document of the Court Transcript I was citing: Comes vs Microsoft in Iowa, December 1st 2006 Transcript. Printed as a PDF it's about 144 Pages. In that PDF, the Digital Research dilemma begins on page 43 and continues for pretty much the rest of the transcript, and Novell comes in on page 79.
Digital Research's dilemma was that of a moderate sized fish in a really small pond that thought it was a big fish. They never recovered from their initial stupidity and never needed to have been a competitor to MS AT ALL.
Bill Gates suggested IBM go talk to DRI to license CP/M-86. It wasn't until DRI fumbled the ball on the 1 yard line did MS have the opportunity for a 99 yard TD with a $50K purchase of QDOS from Seattle Computer Products.
DRI screwed up three things. One: CP/M-86 was late (DRI was always slow to keep up with hardware)...making SCP build QDOS because they needed SOMETHING to run on their x86 kit, Two: Pissing off IBM over a NDA and never closing the deal on selling them CP/M-86 for the PC, Three: After forcing IBM to also sell CP/M-86 they decided that $240 was the right price when MS and IBM went with $60 for PC-DOS.
DR-DOS was first released in 1988. Novell bought out DRI in 1991.
The final death blow to DR-DOS was Windows 95, which glued the Windows GUI on top of MS-DOS essentially turning the 2 into one product. DR-DOS was officially toast. Even worse, in their onslaught to destroy DRI, they made it even more difficult for the struggling NeXT, and IBM.
The "death blow" was that MS finally stopped with a frankenstein OS and integrated the GUI with the OS? My god...what infamous cads.
Struggling IBM? Come off it. IBM had the world by the short curlies and charged accordingly. Had Compaq NOT been able to reverse engineer the BIOS we'd STILL be stuck with $3000 PCs.
No matter how slow NeXTstep might have run, or how much OS/2 might have sucked compared to MS-DOS/Windows, the fact is Microsoft still prevented even one OEM from taking interest in either.
Given that IBM is an OEM this is false out of the gate AND IBM's objective with OS/2 was to sell more IBM hardware...not resell their competitive advantage to other OEMs.
With NeXTStep it was never a possibility until NeXT hardware failed to sell. Which means that it wasn't until 1993 that NeXTStep was even available on the x86 platform and in 1996 it was sold to Apple. In any case Sun was interested in NeXTStep to the point where it started up OpenStep.
Another company that had the opportunity to stop MS and categorically failed to take advantage of wonderous opportunities that had presented itself.
NeXTStep was obviously the best desktop OS in 1993. OBVIOUSLY. Whether or not Sun and Jobs could stand each other it certainly could have afforded to spend the millions to buy exclusive rights to NeXTStep desktop and tell the rest of the unix world (and the hugely craptasic CDE) to go hang.
It did not. It went with the unsuccessful OpenSTEP idea which died a miserable death when Apple spent the millions to have OSX.
Sun ALSO had Solaris X86 in 1993. For $700 (incredibly cheap for a unix. incredibly expensive for a PC OS). Had it released it for $70 (which arguably would have trashed it's low end ipc/ipx lines) with NeXTStep on the X86 platform and went for entry level market share then both Linux and Microsoft Server would have suffered infant mortality and Sun would have had great upsell potential for their heavy iron.
Box MS Server into a tiny corner and no enterprise dominance.
1st Sentence: True
2nd Sentence: Bull
3rd Sentence: So they have a choice in a free market filled with competition, and partially because too many people are getting to be too lazy and not doing their own research, but mostly so they have a choice in a free market filled with competition.
You mean like being so lazy as to not research how many opportunities that other companies had to stop MS at various junctures?
And you're going to have to do more than just assert "bull" to make any points. Folks don't buy just "computers" but a system to actually DO something. The OS is so far below the radar that it really is almost meaningless.
When someone walks into Best Buy or CompUSA, they are generally not thinking about Solaris (I know it doesn't exist in either of those places) vs Windows vs Mac OS X. Chances are they are trying to decide between a Dell, an HP, or a Mac, or another brand name. They buy the computer and use whatever OS comes on it after that, and thus aren't really choosing their OS (unless they believe the FUD and Myths about Macs) but really just their computer.
Exactly. The OS is a commodity item. It's not some massive differentiator unless it truely sucks. Windows sucked for a long time. XP sucks less enough that its not a big deal anymore.
They don't really have to choose their OS, Microsoft decided for them, and only a fraction of these people will end up wiping the HDD and installing Linux or some other OS.
The MARKET decided for them when other computer manufacturers squandered opportunities to keep MS from becoming a dominant force. Good damn thing too as far as the OS is concerned. That we have such a massive dominance means that folks can develop for one platform and reach the majority of the users.
Personally I'd have wished that this common platform had been a little more elegant but today the .NET platform is simple enough and hides much of the ugliness of Windows.
You're right, MS-DOS was cheap (remember those exclusivity deals mentioned above?) and it helped that OEMs could easily hide the real price tag of the OS it has on their hardware.
Cheap at $40-$60 where it STARTED from with IBM. Your DR-DOS was $240 also offered on the original PC. Had IBM and DRI made the connection I'm sure computers today would be far more expensive and the computing world as fragmented as the late 80s. Wonderful and exciting time if you could AFFORD computing.
Bullshit. I never claimed one thing or another about .NET other than the fact that people are going to develop where the majority of the market is no matter what, and chances are they are going to do it with the default set of tools available to them, nor does it matter to me how much of an improvement it is over the previous tools available on a platform I despise from a company I despise even more.
EDIT: I made a stinker here. I went and reread the first sentence in my post of the paragraph you were replying to. I apparently said "...that doesn't make it any better" when referring to .NET. In truth by being the default set of tools that doesn't make it any better, nor does it make it any better than Xcode. Just thought I'd clear that up.
A platform you've never seem to have developed for.
Compete hard, not unfair, and not to the point where you end up destroying any possible competition in a supposedly free market locking other OS vendors out because it would be too expensive to use a competing OS because each and every Intel chip an OEM under their strict licensing shipped out the door meant another royalty to Microsoft.
Oh come off it. Every OTHER OS of the period was tied to flipping hardware. Flipping EXPENSIVE hardware. Did you perhaps try to PRICE unix operating systems of the era? Do you think that DRI would have been a better corporate citizen interested in bringing computing to the masses?
Kildall was an amazing guy...kinda like Jobs in that he liked elegance (not that you could really tell from CP/M IMHO). But making sure grandma could use computers (or afford it) was not on his agenda (and you COULD tell that from CP/M).
It's a factor in a fraction of the market where it's only growth has been eating what's left of Palm OS' market share (no thanks to Palm themselves) alive. Symbian is still the most widely used, and Linux is the second most widely used, leaving the rest of the market to Microsoft, Palm, and RIM.
Symbian. ugh...talk about something with no elegance. The OS is a pig to develop on. Linux, Windows CE and OSX (guessing on OSX) are vastly superior. Linux I've done some embedded work on but not on handhelds.
I've been typing this post on and off over the course of the past 24 hours, a few sentences here, a paragraph here, and so on, and normally I would be pissed and just let you agonize with OOo when you maybe eventually play around with it... but for the sake of your sanity and mine, just don't bother OpenOffice at all... in fact stay as far away from it as possible. If you're interested, try Nisus Writer Pro Public Beta 1, I've been enjoying it since the beta first came out.
Pissed? Because someone deigns to disagree? Whatever. In any case, given our tastes diverge so much I doubt your opinion on OOO is worth all that much to me.
They should have never had the Desktop market under their hand either for so many years, and IBM is the root of the problem, not having ever thought about licensing DOS exclusively until it was too late. But it is nice that Linux is taking the server market from Microsoft.
Had IBM locked up DOS exclusively then IBM would STILL control the computing world. Long ago one of my girlfriends purchased an overpriced and underpowered IBM PS2 for the lofty sum of $3K when the equivalent Dell was maybe...$1500.
THAT is your alternate universe without MS dominance and with IBM dominance in its place.
Microsoft is irrelevant, has very few new products to offer that are worth using,
I doubt you have much insight into what MS is working and building. Not that I'm all that plugged in either but I at least read enough literature to know that MS still has an assload of really smart folks building really cool stuff.
Vinea
I'm not speaking from a brand recognition viewpoint, nor the amount of marking this product has, nor how popular it is. In other words, I'm not asking for opinions as to why Office should live or die nor as to why it's a good idea or bad idea to create a competitive product to Office. I'm speaking from a technical reality. How difficult is it, programing wise, to create apps that do what Word/Excel does?
Hard because of the number of features in Word and Excel. Not THAT hard though...just a lot of effort. Apple certainly has enough money to be able to make a complete MS Office like package.
But the point isn't to replicate every little thing that word and excel does but come up with an elegant solution like Keynote. That's a LOT less work and not even that hard to accomplish (the bar isn't that high). Especially since there are great alternatives to Excel that Apple could aquire or replicate. Pages needs a bit or work to make it my everyday document editor over Word...I don't want Pagemaker Lite, I want to write ye old reports and memos and the like.
A Lotus Improv like spreadsheet would be a great addition to iWork. One of the remaining knock-off of Improv is Quantrix.
http://www.quantrix.com/
Play with it and you see it kills Excel. Given that Jobs gave the Lotus guys NeXT boxes to develop Improv he's not unaware of the superiority...Improv was killer on the NeXT.
Quantrix runs on OSX already. Can't imagine Quantrix would be that expensive to simply acquire.
Vinea
PS IMHO entourage sucks vs outlook.