The problem with Final Cut Pro was not that Apple wasn't dedicating enough resources to pro products. It was that Apple is arrogant and thinks it knows better than what people in the field know. The difficulty is that in order to make bleeding-edge products, sometimes you do have to break industry conventions, even when you're the one who created some of them, but this will get great resistance from the marketplace because people do not like to change. I remember in the 1970s when the flatbed Steenbecks came into use and were obviously far superior to the vertical Moviolas, many cutters wanted to stick with the Moviolas because it was what they knew. As a film student who was already very familiar with technology, I only wanted to edit on the Steenbeck.
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
-- Henry Ford
Arrogant? Absolutely. And no one in modern times is more awesomely arrogant than Steve Jobs.
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
-- Henry Ford
Arrogant? Absolutely. And no one in modern times is more awesomely arrogant than Steve Jobs.
That's a commonly misunderstood statement, in my opinion.
Ford was right. His customers were not forward-thinking or imaginative enough to envision the automobile. They did express what they wanted though, and Ford listened.
Customers didn't care whether or not they used horses. The operative part of the phrase was "faster." They didn't say "cars" because there was no such thing. Ford came up with a way to give them "faster horses."
The quote is often presented as evidence that customers don't know what's good for them, but that's not the lesson I take away from it at all. The way I see it, Ford was saying the successful company will be the one that can listen to what its customers are saying, find the fundamental element that matters to them, then deliver it.
Jobs considered various options before making decisions.
Why is that news to anyone?
Exactly. I'm sure he 'mulled' Catholicism, dancing on hot coals and bungie jumping at some time. I am so sick of people from that a******le Sculley to this chap, all jumping on the 'Steve told me' band wagon. I talked to Steve at Mac World once, he was with Paul Brainerd, so I am going to write a book and have a TV show about what Steve told me … :no: … actually now I think about it …
p.s. I also had dear John Sculley visit me once, so there is another book ...
You may not be aware of it -- with OSX you can toggle a magnifying loupe that moves with the cursor.
That's a right handy feature. Thanks, Dick!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
The advantage with the rMBP is that you can run it at 1680 x 1050 or 1440 x 900 and not have to worry about poor quality scaling. Oddly Apple doesn't list the optimal scaled resolutions in the spec:
The way I read that, it appears to be saying it's a high-ppi version of 1440 x 900. That means handles and other control elements should actually be slightly LARGER on the 15" then. Hmm. Still less working area than the 17' 1920 x 1200 of course, but none of the issues with small controls I was worried about.
So I guess the only trade off is a little more scrolling.
Final Cut Pro was professional software. Compared to the consumer market you are talking nickel and dime stuff. DId they ever release sales figures?
What was the context of your comment?
If it was about the FCPro X saga, (I used FCPro 7 and now have X) I just upgraded Logic Pro 9 to Logic Pro X and I have to say Apple did a wonderful job on the latter.
That's a commonly misunderstood statement, in my opinion.
Ford was right. His customers were not forward-thinking or imaginative enough to envision the automobile. They did express what they wanted though, and Ford listened.
Customers didn't care whether or not they used horses. The operative part of the phrase was "faster." They didn't say "cars" because there was no such thing. Ford came up with a way to give them "faster horses."
The quote is often presented as evidence that customers don't know what's good for them, but that's not the lesson I take away from it at all. The way I see it, Ford was saying the successful company will be the one that can listen to what its customers are saying, find the fundamental element that matters to them, then deliver it.
In the context of Steve's comment, the reference / comparison is right. People in technology do not know what they want for the most part. Most fear change and worse, folks like IT techs, don't want it if it screws with their ability to screw / control other folks. Steve was 100% right to not listen to what people wanted IMHO. Paradigm shifts baby! Oh yeah! :smokey:
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
-- Henry Ford
Arrogant? Absolutely. And no one in modern times is more awesomely arrogant than Steve Jobs.
That's a commonly misunderstood statement, in my opinion.
Ford was right. His customers were not forward-thinking or imaginative enough to envision the automobile. They did express what they wanted though, and Ford listened.
Customers didn't care whether or not they used horses. The operative part of the phrase was "faster." They didn't say "cars" because there was no such thing. Ford came up with a way to give them "faster horses."
The quote is often presented as evidence that customers don't know what's good for them, but that's not the lesson I take away from it at all. The way I see it, Ford was saying the successful company will be the one that can listen to what its customers are saying, find the fundamental element that matters to them, then deliver it.
I think you are somewhat incorrect... there were plenty of "cars" [automobiles] that predated Ford's cars -- some by more than a century. (steam, electric), So that part of your interpretations of the quote fails.
Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, built the first steam-powered vehicle around 1672 as a toy for the Chinese Emperor. It was of small enough scale that it could not carry a driver but it was, quite possibly, the first working steam-powered vehicle ('auto-mobile').[2][3]
Steam-powered self-propelled vehicles large enough to transport people and cargo were first devised in the late 18th century. Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot demonstrated his fardier à vapeur ("steam dray"), an experimental steam-driven artillery tractor, in 1770 and 1771. As Cugnot's design proved to be impractical, his invention was not developed in his native France. The centre of innovation shifted to Great Britain. By 1784, William Murdoch had built a working model of a steam carriage in Redruth, and in 1801 Richard Trevithick was running a full-sized vehicle on the road in Camborne.[4] Such vehicles were in vogue for a time, and over the next decades such innovations as hand brakes, multi-speed transmissions, and better steering developed. Some were commercially successful in providing mass transit, until a backlash against these large speedy vehicles resulted in the passage of the Locomotive Act (1865), which required self-propelled vehicles on public roads in the United Kingdom to be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag and blowing a horn. This effectively killed road auto development in the UK for most of the rest of the 19th century; inventors and engineers shifted their efforts to improvements in railway locomotives. (The law was not repealed until 1896, although the need for the red flag was removed in 1878.)
The first automobile patent in the United States was granted to Oliver Evans in 1789.
Lack of roads limited the speed and distance of early cars and they were expensive.
What Ford did do is make a sturdy, reliable car that did not require a road, was faster than a horse (over a long distance) -- and was affordable to the common man.
Ford's arrogance was that he thought he knew better what his customers needed than they did... He was right.
Likely, Apple releasing FCPX and soon the new Mac Pro -- are, partially, the result of similar arrogance. I think they will be proven right, too.
The first Mac in 1984 cost the equivalent of $5,000 in today's dollars. I suspect that lots of prosumers will consider the new Mac Pro at a $5K or below price point... I know I will.
Jobs considered various options before making decisions.
Why is that news to anyone?
Exactly. I'm sure he 'mulled' Catholicism, dancing on hot coals and bungie jumping at some time. I am so sick of people from that a******le Sculley to this chap, all jumping on the 'Steve told me' band wagon. I talked to Steve at Mac World once, he was with Paul Brainerd, so I am going to write a book and have a TV show about what Steve told me … :no: … actually now I think about it …
p.s. I also had dear John Sculley visit me once, so there is another book ...
I rode around Cupertino/Sunnyvale with Woz in his just tuned Porsche with a [then] top speed of 13 mph...
I smoked a cigarette in front of John Draper AKA Cap'n Crunch -- and got screamed at (in my own store)...
you really need PCI-E and other expansion modules for running Pro Tools and Avid. Studios aren't going to throw out hundreds of thousands of dollars of hardware just because Apple decided the professionals wanted the desktop computer tower to be more compact. It's a bad move if you ask me...
Avid Pro Tools and other Avid products work on Thunderbolt as Avid themselves have been demonstrating.
"With ExpressBox 7 you can continue using your Mac Pro with confidence that your Pro Tools configuration is officially supported by Avid."
Avid's professional product revenue last year was $136m, split fairly evenly between audio and video products and includes software sales. This has been roughly the same for the past 3 years. Apple has a 5% worldwide PC marketshare but even if you assume that Avid's sales are 50/50 Mac/PC, it works out that they can't be selling more than 10,000 AV hardware devices to Mac Pro buyers a year and it can't be near that because their revenue includes software sales. This is a small fraction of Mac Pro buyers. Even if Mac Pro buyers were only 50k per quarter, this would be 5% of Mac Pro buyers using Avid PCIe hardware.
Same goes for Red with the Red Rocket products. The numbers are in the low thousands per year because of the price. And this also works over Thunderbolt - it won't work over USB 3 though because USB 3 is not PCIe. Thunderbolt is a form of PCIe.
For the minority that need PCIe hardware, the important peripherals work over Thunderbolt. For the majority, there's no downside at all. They now get dual GPUs so Adobe software and Blackmagic software runs faster and every machine will have fast PCIe storage.
The way I read that, it appears to be saying it's a high-ppi version of 1440 x 900. That means handles and other control elements should actually be slightly LARGER on the 15" then. Hmm. Still less working area than the 17' 1920 x 1200 of course, but none of the issues with small controls I was worried about.
It can do 1920x1200 too though or even higher if you want more workspace than a 27" Cinema display:
[VIDEO]
1680x1050 would be a good balance between workspace and UI size. That used to be the resolution on the 17" and some found the 1920x1200 too small:
"So I just purchased a new 17" Macbook Pro. Before anyone yells at me for not going to a store, the closest Apple store is 2 hours away.
The 1920X1200 resolution is really killing my eyes. Is there enough difference in size (increase of font size) to drop down to the 15" 1680X1050 hi res display to matter? I came from a 15" Macbook Pro with 1440X900 resolution.
To me when I switch my 17" to 1680X1050 the text is bigger and more readable, but blurry.
I've tried adjusting resolutions and fonts in certain programs, but it makes things blurry."
The Retina Macbook Pro lets you pick what resolution you prefer. If you like the UI big, drop to 1440x900, if you like more workspace, bump it to 1920x1200 or for a balance, go with 1680x1050.
But Apple did kill the Xserve and let the Mac Pro languish for years, with the recently disclosed Mac Pro re-design hardly being a high-end product*... except for FCPX users.
*e.g., the new Mac Pro is only single processor, has only 4 DIMM slots and no expansion options.
What part of "up to 12 cores" slipped past you? Just how big do you expect the next two generations of DIMMs to max out to?
It's not like we're going to be limited to 1GB memory parts, right?
Oh, really? Every expansion option for the new Mac Pro involves external devices with their own messy cables and enclosures, just as you suggest. And this is a completely different situation from all other professional workstations of the past and present, including the original Mac Pro design, which provides numerous internal expansion options from the OEM and several third parties.
So? You said the new Mac Pro had no expansion options. That is clearly false.
Sure, some of the options will require an external box. So? These are professional boxes that will be sitting under a desk. You connect the expansion device and forget it - just like internal expansion. The only difference is that you don't risk damaging the internals of your computer when you use Thunderbolt.
[The only hope is for Apple to offer configuration options that ditch one of the unnecessary GPUs for a second Xeon and a whopping 4 more DIMM slots.
Yeah, I'm sure you know more about computer design and the market than Apple does. They should simply fire everybody in their engineering departments and ask you what to do. :no:
If developers have to use non-Apple machines to create content, won't apps become more and more PC-like? One of the great advantages of having a Pro line is that it helps developers "get it," and pass the Zen of Mac on to the end-user. As for Apple producing a retina 17" MacBook Pro, it is the only way I will give up my 2009 model. :-)
These are professional boxes that will be sitting under a desk. You connect the expansion device and forget it - just like internal expansion. The only difference is that you don't risk damaging the internals of your computer when you use Thunderbolt.
A few people seem to have damaged their Mac Pros with upgrades or had other issues with PCIe slots:
Pushing it all external makes it largely someone else's problem and lowers the potential cost of damage. Apple only has to support the issues caused by their own hardware/software. Having it plug and play also makes it easier to resolve issues because you don't have to shut down the machine, unplug it, open it, reseat things and put it all back to see if it'll work properly. You can even use an online help guide and just unplug the box.
It's not ideal that the external boxes are so expensive but it affects a small portion of Mac Pro buyers and if they're the kind that spends $5000 on a PCIe card, $1000 on a box isn't the end of the world.
The thing that affects some people the most is lack of GPU upgrades. People who buy older/cheaper Mac Pros and then upgrade the GPUs to brand new ones or just extend the life of their machine by buying a GPU themselves can't do this any more. This is better from Apple's point of view because it means that people who want a new GPU have to buy a new Mac Pro instead of doing a DIY upgrade where they make no money at all.
So a $2500 pro computer is way expensive and only a very small niche market purchases it, resulting in a product with little profits, while a $600 phone is so cheap, cheap, cheap, that it sells better than toilet paper.
It's obvious what it makes it a niche isn't the price. Otherwise the iPhone would have a niche market.
I smoked a cigarette in front of John Draper AKA Cap'n Crunch -- and got screamed at (in my own store)...
I had a wonderful time hanging around in your store, and watching some of the, um, interesting characters that wandered through was icing on the cake.
I knew most of our customers by name... PM me if we ever met.
Here, from an Apple video shoot in our Sunnyvale Store in late November 1983 When they filmed this they taped all the windows so no one could see into the store:
So a $2500 pro computer is way expensive and only a very small niche market purchases it, resulting in a product with little profits, while a $600 phone is so cheap, cheap, cheap, that it sells better than toilet paper.
It's obvious what it makes it a niche isn't the price. Otherwise the iPhone would have a niche market.
It is interesting that the original 1984 Mac was priced at $2,495.
In today's dollars that would be over $5K.
Based on what it can do, and the price points -- I don't believe that this will be a niche product.
Here'a some more 1984 data -- to help put things into perspective:
The first Mac in 1984 cost the equivalent of $5,000 in today's dollars. I suspect that lots of prosumers will consider the new Mac Pro at a $5K or below price point... I know I will.
In 1984 we really only had two choices: A Mac or a 286. The Mac did layout well with minimum fuss and cost a lot. The 286 did the same task but not as well and with more hassle but cost much less.
The new Mac Pro doesn't exist in a world in which there's only one other choice. We now have a whole spectrum of choices with varying degrees of capability, ease-of-use and price, so people won't necessarily line up in droves for an expensive device, even if it IS very, very powerful. Some will, but others will simply choose compromise alternatives because in 2013 the alternatives tend to pretty capable themselves.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by zoetmb
The problem with Final Cut Pro was not that Apple wasn't dedicating enough resources to pro products. It was that Apple is arrogant and thinks it knows better than what people in the field know. The difficulty is that in order to make bleeding-edge products, sometimes you do have to break industry conventions, even when you're the one who created some of them, but this will get great resistance from the marketplace because people do not like to change. I remember in the 1970s when the flatbed Steenbecks came into use and were obviously far superior to the vertical Moviolas, many cutters wanted to stick with the Moviolas because it was what they knew. As a film student who was already very familiar with technology, I only wanted to edit on the Steenbeck.
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
-- Henry Ford
Arrogant? Absolutely. And no one in modern times is more awesomely arrogant than Steve Jobs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
-- Henry Ford
Arrogant? Absolutely. And no one in modern times is more awesomely arrogant than Steve Jobs.
That's a commonly misunderstood statement, in my opinion.
Ford was right. His customers were not forward-thinking or imaginative enough to envision the automobile. They did express what they wanted though, and Ford listened.
Customers didn't care whether or not they used horses. The operative part of the phrase was "faster." They didn't say "cars" because there was no such thing. Ford came up with a way to give them "faster horses."
The quote is often presented as evidence that customers don't know what's good for them, but that's not the lesson I take away from it at all. The way I see it, Ford was saying the successful company will be the one that can listen to what its customers are saying, find the fundamental element that matters to them, then deliver it.
Exactly. I'm sure he 'mulled' Catholicism, dancing on hot coals and bungie jumping at some time. I am so sick of people from that a******le Sculley to this chap, all jumping on the 'Steve told me' band wagon. I talked to Steve at Mac World once, he was with Paul Brainerd, so I am going to write a book and have a TV show about what Steve told me … :no: … actually now I think about it …
p.s. I also had dear John Sculley visit me once, so there is another book ...
Compared to the consumer market you are talking nickel and dime stuff.
DId they ever release sales figures?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
You may not be aware of it -- with OSX you can toggle a magnifying loupe that moves with the cursor.
That's a right handy feature. Thanks, Dick!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
The advantage with the rMBP is that you can run it at 1680 x 1050 or 1440 x 900 and not have to worry about poor quality scaling. Oddly Apple doesn't list the optimal scaled resolutions in the spec:
http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/
The way I read that, it appears to be saying it's a high-ppi version of 1440 x 900. That means handles and other control elements should actually be slightly LARGER on the 15" then. Hmm. Still less working area than the 17' 1920 x 1200 of course, but none of the issues with small controls I was worried about.
So I guess the only trade off is a little more scrolling.
What was the context of your comment?
If it was about the FCPro X saga, (I used FCPro 7 and now have X) I just upgraded Logic Pro 9 to Logic Pro X and I have to say Apple did a wonderful job on the latter.
In the context of Steve's comment, the reference / comparison is right. People in technology do not know what they want for the most part. Most fear change and worse, folks like IT techs, don't want it if it screws with their ability to screw / control other folks. Steve was 100% right to not listen to what people wanted IMHO. Paradigm shifts baby! Oh yeah! :smokey:
I think you are somewhat incorrect... there were plenty of "cars" [automobiles] that predated Ford's cars -- some by more than a century. (steam, electric), So that part of your interpretations of the quote fails.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile
Lack of roads limited the speed and distance of early cars and they were expensive.
What Ford did do is make a sturdy, reliable car that did not require a road, was faster than a horse (over a long distance) -- and was affordable to the common man.
Ford's arrogance was that he thought he knew better what his customers needed than they did... He was right.
Likely, Apple releasing FCPX and soon the new Mac Pro -- are, partially, the result of similar arrogance. I think they will be proven right, too.
The first Mac in 1984 cost the equivalent of $5,000 in today's dollars. I suspect that lots of prosumers will consider the new Mac Pro at a $5K or below price point... I know I will.
I rode around Cupertino/Sunnyvale with Woz in his just tuned Porsche with a [then] top speed of 13 mph...
I smoked a cigarette in front of John Draper AKA Cap'n Crunch -- and got screamed at (in my own store)...
Avid Pro Tools and other Avid products work on Thunderbolt as Avid themselves have been demonstrating.
http://www.magma.com/blog/avid-approves-magma-eb3t-eb7-pro-tools
"With ExpressBox 7 you can continue using your Mac Pro with confidence that your Pro Tools configuration is officially supported by Avid."
Avid's professional product revenue last year was $136m, split fairly evenly between audio and video products and includes software sales. This has been roughly the same for the past 3 years. Apple has a 5% worldwide PC marketshare but even if you assume that Avid's sales are 50/50 Mac/PC, it works out that they can't be selling more than 10,000 AV hardware devices to Mac Pro buyers a year and it can't be near that because their revenue includes software sales. This is a small fraction of Mac Pro buyers. Even if Mac Pro buyers were only 50k per quarter, this would be 5% of Mac Pro buyers using Avid PCIe hardware.
Same goes for Red with the Red Rocket products. The numbers are in the low thousands per year because of the price. And this also works over Thunderbolt - it won't work over USB 3 though because USB 3 is not PCIe. Thunderbolt is a form of PCIe.
For the minority that need PCIe hardware, the important peripherals work over Thunderbolt. For the majority, there's no downside at all. They now get dual GPUs so Adobe software and Blackmagic software runs faster and every machine will have fast PCIe storage.
It can do 1920x1200 too though or even higher if you want more workspace than a 27" Cinema display:
[VIDEO]
1680x1050 would be a good balance between workspace and UI size. That used to be the resolution on the 17" and some found the 1920x1200 too small:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3821831?start=0&tstart=0
"So I just purchased a new 17" Macbook Pro. Before anyone yells at me for not going to a store, the closest Apple store is 2 hours away.
The 1920X1200 resolution is really killing my eyes. Is there enough difference in size (increase of font size) to drop down to the 15" 1680X1050 hi res display to matter? I came from a 15" Macbook Pro with 1440X900 resolution.
To me when I switch my 17" to 1680X1050 the text is bigger and more readable, but blurry.
I've tried adjusting resolutions and fonts in certain programs, but it makes things blurry."
The Retina Macbook Pro lets you pick what resolution you prefer. If you like the UI big, drop to 1440x900, if you like more workspace, bump it to 1920x1200 or for a balance, go with 1680x1050.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cpsro
But Apple did kill the Xserve and let the Mac Pro languish for years, with the recently disclosed Mac Pro re-design hardly being a high-end product*... except for FCPX users.
*e.g., the new Mac Pro is only single processor, has only 4 DIMM slots and no expansion options.
What part of "up to 12 cores" slipped past you? Just how big do you expect the next two generations of DIMMs to max out to?
It's not like we're going to be limited to 1GB memory parts, right?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
I smoked a cigarette in front of John Draper AKA Cap'n Crunch -- and got screamed at (in my own store)...
I had a wonderful time hanging around in your store, and watching some of the, um, interesting characters that wandered through was icing on the cake.
So? You said the new Mac Pro had no expansion options. That is clearly false.
Sure, some of the options will require an external box. So? These are professional boxes that will be sitting under a desk. You connect the expansion device and forget it - just like internal expansion. The only difference is that you don't risk damaging the internals of your computer when you use Thunderbolt.
Yeah, I'm sure you know more about computer design and the market than Apple does. They should simply fire everybody in their engineering departments and ask you what to do. :no:
A few people seem to have damaged their Mac Pros with upgrades or had other issues with PCIe slots:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4307547?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4679468?start=0&tstart=0
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1119266
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=539221
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=695027
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3968273?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3920268?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5024555?start=0&tstart=0
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-desktops/92157-broken-thing-pci-slot.html
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/124/881185
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?48452-Red-rocket-pci-slots-problem
Pushing it all external makes it largely someone else's problem and lowers the potential cost of damage. Apple only has to support the issues caused by their own hardware/software. Having it plug and play also makes it easier to resolve issues because you don't have to shut down the machine, unplug it, open it, reseat things and put it all back to see if it'll work properly. You can even use an online help guide and just unplug the box.
It's not ideal that the external boxes are so expensive but it affects a small portion of Mac Pro buyers and if they're the kind that spends $5000 on a PCIe card, $1000 on a box isn't the end of the world.
The thing that affects some people the most is lack of GPU upgrades. People who buy older/cheaper Mac Pros and then upgrade the GPUs to brand new ones or just extend the life of their machine by buying a GPU themselves can't do this any more. This is better from Apple's point of view because it means that people who want a new GPU have to buy a new Mac Pro instead of doing a DIY upgrade where they make no money at all.
[SIZE=5][B]13.6" x 9.6" x 10.9" 9.9" x .6.6" 9.9" x 7.7" x 7.3"[/B][/SIZE]
Not quite to scale... but close enough!
It's obvious what it makes it a niche isn't the price. Otherwise the iPhone would have a niche market.
I knew most of our customers by name... PM me if we ever met.
Here, from an Apple video shoot in our Sunnyvale Store in late November 1983 When they filmed this they taped all the windows so no one could see into the store:
[VIDEO]
It is interesting that the original 1984 Mac was priced at $2,495.
In today's dollars that would be over $5K.
Based on what it can do, and the price points -- I don't believe that this will be a niche product.
Here'a some more 1984 data -- to help put things into perspective:
http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1984.html
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
The first Mac in 1984 cost the equivalent of $5,000 in today's dollars. I suspect that lots of prosumers will consider the new Mac Pro at a $5K or below price point... I know I will.
In 1984 we really only had two choices: A Mac or a 286. The Mac did layout well with minimum fuss and cost a lot. The 286 did the same task but not as well and with more hassle but cost much less.
The new Mac Pro doesn't exist in a world in which there's only one other choice. We now have a whole spectrum of choices with varying degrees of capability, ease-of-use and price, so people won't necessarily line up in droves for an expensive device, even if it IS very, very powerful. Some will, but others will simply choose compromise alternatives because in 2013 the alternatives tend to pretty capable themselves.