That's difficult to grasp by PC users used to building up PCs out of bits and constantly upgrading parts.
Is there anyone except hobbyists (and hard core gamers) that do this?
It seems there probably aren't many.
Expansion slots in PCs made much more sense 20 years ago when you need one for:
- sound card
- graphics card
- network card
- mouse card
- modem card
etc.
These days...memory and HD are about it...everything else is a USB peripheral...and there really aren't that many of those that most users use (printer, iPod, keyboard, mouse, thumb drive)...and these will never be built-in to the main computer anyway.
One area I'd agree with Louzer over is in rejecting Apple as small. Sure, designing CPUs for a company that only needs a few million of them a year might be a punt too far but I can't imagine Intel (or anyone really) refusing to design custom hardware for Apple because they're too 'niche'.
If a few million parts a year is too 'niche' then there's something seriously wrong with a fab and a company if they can't turn a profit on that.
How many CPUs do VIA ship a year? How many ULV Pentiums do Intel reckon they'll sell? Surely that's more niche?
These days...memory and HD are about it...everything else is a USB peripheral...and there really aren't that many of those that most users use (printer, iPod, keyboard, mouse, thumb drive)...and these will never be built-in to the main computer anyway.
Totally. Gamers and geeks. That's who complain about expandability.
The last desktop office PC I bought had absolutely no cards in it at all. Even the graphics were on the motherboard. It's been running a year without an upgrade. The owner has no need to upgrade it. It's just an empty large air filled box that takes up lots of space yet has less features than an iMac.
When it needs replacing, it'll get replaced with whatever Dell are offering for the least money and the user will probably be amazed at how much quicker it is compared to the old one - partly because it will be much faster and partly because the old one will be so full of Windows cruft that it'll be slower than when she got it.
Then again, maybe I'll have persuaded her that a Mac worth it by then.
One area I'd agree with Louzer over is in rejecting Apple as small. Sure, designing CPUs for a company that only needs a few million of them a year might be a punt too far but I can't imagine Intel (or anyone really) refusing to design custom hardware for Apple because they're too 'niche'.
If a few million parts a year is too 'niche' then there's something seriously wrong with a fab and a company if they can't turn a profit on that.
How many CPUs do VIA ship a year? How many ULV Pentiums do Intel reckon they'll sell? Surely that's more niche?
When I said "small", I meant that they couldn't develop and build their own hardware peripheral designs. An example of what I meant is the 3 1/2" floppy. That was invented by Sony. Sony is set up to do that sort of thing. There was no way that a company such as Apple could have spent the R&D to come up with such a device.
The same thing is true for other technologies. The cdrom. would be another example.
These require large electronics companies to develop them.
Apple's attempts to get HD manufacturers build native Firewire drives is another example of what I mean. They could help develop the concept and specs, but they need TI to work with, and to build the chips. Since Apple could never hope to build their own drives, there was no way to get the "standard" manufactured. If Apple was bigger, they could have bought a smaller manufacturer and done it them selves.
Totally. Gamers and geeks. That's who complain about expandability.
The last desktop office PC I bought had absolutely no cards in it at all. Even the graphics were on the motherboard. It's been running a year without an upgrade. The owner has no need to upgrade it. It's just an empty large air filled box that takes up lots of space yet has less features than an iMac.
When it needs replacing, it'll get replaced with whatever Dell are offering for the least money and the user will probably be amazed at how much quicker it is compared to the old one - partly because it will be much faster and partly because the old one will be so full of Windows cruft that it'll be slower than when she got it.
Then again, maybe I'll have persuaded her that a Mac worth it by then.
Th other people who upgrade are those of us who need pro cards, such as video and audio, or instrumentation cards, and such.
But generally, three slots free is enough, though I would still like more. But, this is true only for high end machines. Most workstations don't have much expandability either.
Apple has helped that situation by adding a second GHz ethernet port.
Totally. Gamers and geeks. That's who complain about expandability.
Absolutely agreed. I keep getting into disagreements with a friend about this. He used to be a Mac advocate back in the 90s, but now he's a total gamer geek PC-head. (Mostly because he hasn't had a job in years, so his poverty leads him to complain that Macs are too expensive. It's also the only reason he wasn't waiting outside a store for an Xbox 360.) He keeps saying Macs aren't expandable, that he wouldn't be able to put 2 terabytes of storage in a Mac without "expensive" Firewire enclosures. I ask him if he has 2 terabytes now. Nope, he can't afford the drives. I ask him just how many PC owners tweak and expand systems the way he claims to. He dodges by saying it doesn't matter. He just wants the potential to expand if he wants to. Even if he and most users will never need to do so. He also complains that Apple "treats its users like children" by requiring root login to mess with the system library. Dude, that's good Unix security procedure! You want to talk about an OS treating its users like children, look at the kindergarten-flavored default theme for XP and the stupid way it buries control panels unless you switch to the classic interface.
Absolutely agreed. I keep getting into disagreements with a friend about this. He used to be a Mac advocate back in the 90s, but now he's a total gamer geek PC-head. (Mostly because he hasn't had a job in years, so his poverty leads him to complain that Macs are too expensive. It's also the only reason he wasn't waiting outside a store for an Xbox 360.) He keeps saying Macs aren't expandable, that he wouldn't be able to put 2 terabytes of storage in a Mac without "expensive" Firewire enclosures. I ask him if he has 2 terabytes now. Nope, he can't afford the drives. I ask him just how many PC owners tweak and expand systems the way he claims to. He dodges by saying it doesn't matter. He just wants the potential to expand if he wants to. Even if he and most users will never need to do so. He also complains that Apple "treats its users like children" by requiring root login to mess with the system library. Dude, that's good Unix security procedure! You want to talk about an OS treating its users like children, look at the kindergarten-flavored default theme for XP and the stupid way it buries control panels unless you switch to the classic interface.
I have friends, engineers, who have bought a Powerbook over the past two years (somehow they mostly seem to like the 12" version, who would think).
At first, they told me that constantly having to enter their password was a pain for them. But after a while they came to appreciate the extra bit of security is gives them, and they not only don't complain any more, but extol its advantages to PC people we talk to.
When I said "small", I meant that they couldn't develop and build their own hardware peripheral designs. An example of what I meant is the 3 1/2" floppy. That was invented by Sony. Sony is set up to do that sort of thing. There was no way that a company such as Apple could have spent the R&D to come up with such a device.
The same thing is true for other technologies. The cdrom. would be another example.
These require large electronics companies to develop them.
What about the Zip drive? Iomega was a lot smaller than Apple before they designed and sold it (and remains so), but for a few years there, it was nearly ubiquitous. I'd say Iomega qualifies as "small" but they still managed to build and develop lots of devices. Ditto for their competitor, Syquest. There were plenty of competing designs for Microfloppies. I seem to remember there were 3" and 2.5" designs at the time. The only reason Sony won out was because Apple chose the format for the first Mac. Wikipedia has a good list of failed floppy formats, most of which weren't designed by corporate giants.
Apple is a designer not a builder. If the deal with Intel can help them, lewaraging the costs it will be nice.
Apple love to use new tech, and Intel love to make them, but is not always followed by it's customers.
One of the best example is SSE. With Apple, if Intel make a SSE4, you can be almost sure, that Apple will try to implement the best way they can. Same for EFI and many others forthcoming technologies.
They're not so small now, thankfully. But they were hovering around the $6 billion mark for a while. In this industry, that small for a leading company.
Hovering around the 6 billion still doesn't rank a company as small. At least not in my book.
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Inso far as cutting their models down, that was almost forced upon them. Apple had a lot more models than they have now. It was said publicly by many in the industry that one of Apple's biggest problems was that they had too many models, thus confusing customers. S, they cut it down.
Every time they come out with another model, Apple is criticized as going back to the bad old days of too many models. You should learn about this issue.
I know all about this issue. But they went from one extreme to the other. Back in the day, they had like 12 different versions of some 6300 computer ("Man, do I want the 6335 or the 6336 or the 6336CD?"). But now they've got 5 product lines to cover their entire user base. And two of those are portables. So you've got basically three mainstream desktops. That's it. And one (the mini) is an underpowered, slow, design over function computer.
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The all in one units are the biggest sellers that Apple makes. You complain about that? Obviously, people want an all in one unit. Of course, if you are a PC user, then the idea of this is upsetting. But as almost no PC users ever upgrade their machines, it's a ridiculous attitude to have.
Of course they're the biggest sellers. The towers are so expensive, you'd have to really, really, really want a tower to get one of those. So people SETTLE for the all-in-ones.
And what do you mean that no PC user ever upgrades? They never buy a new computer? They never want to keep their monitor to save themselves the money?
Its not a dumb argument. Its a valid argument. If you look at entertainment systems, the basic principle is "buy it in pieces, don't get all-in-ones". Most TVs don't come with VCRs and DVD players built-in. Why? Because when one piece fails, you either replace the whole thing, or you go out, buy a replacement piece and still have to plug it in. Yet with computers its considered a good thing? I don't think so.
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And it's dumb to also complain about Apple going to Express without adding a second PCI bus as well. Only some PC makers who have gone to Express are doing that. Not letting go of ISA is what screwed plug n play for PC's. When they finally dropped it, everything started to work.
Completely false. Most vendors went Express for video and leaving PCI for the rest, since there isn't a great deal of PCI-Express cards out there (plus, again, PC makers tend to keep backward compatible so that you don't have to buy new cards). No one was clamoring for PCI-Express to replace PCI, they wanted it to replace AGP!
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Yes, I would prefer to have a couple of extra slots on my towers, but it's not as big a deal as you are making it out to be.
I can't imagine why you are even here if you hate Apple and Mac's that much. Just stick to PC's. They obviously have everything you want.
Yes, how dare I ask a company for what I want in a product. Damn! What was I thinking? Next time I go to spend $2000, I'll be sure just to take whatever is offered to me. No sense trying to find something that I might want.
I'm sure I'll be accused of drinking the Apple Kool-Aid or something like that or equally trite but All-in-One computers aren't the big problem for most people. You'll find most Mac users buy a new Mac every 3-4 years and guess what - that's about how long display technology lasts before you want a better one too.
...
That's difficult to grasp by PC users used to building up PCs out of bits and constantly upgrading parts.
Kool-Aid Drinker! Kool-Aid Drinker!
I love this. Nothing like the great disposable society talking. Why get just a piece when I can just buy everything again and again.
But I don't know what displays you're using. But so far, I'm on my third monitor (bought this year) and fifth mac. My 17" Sony lasted 7 years, my 19" Samsung lasted 5. And I easily was able to get a new monitor without having to replace my computer (and vice versa). Easily able to set up dual-monitor setups as needed.
Oh, and while dispay technology might improve over time, there's no saying how long it will be before Apple implements said changes.
And I think the thing difficult to grasp by those PC users is how Apple users don't mind throwing good money away having to rebuy pieces of their hardware, then being restricted to how you can use it.
Is there anyone except hobbyists (and hard core gamers) that do this?
It seems there probably aren't many.
Expansion slots in PCs made much more sense 20 years ago when you need one for:
- sound card
- graphics card
- network card
- mouse card
- modem card
etc.
Yeah, great. Except what about all those poor Mac owners who want a new iPod, but don't have USB2 ports on their computers. PC owners, no problem. Slap in a $20 USB card (hell, spend $40, get firewire 800 as well!). Boom, they're good. Mac owners? Damn, they've got to sync the really, really, really slow route. Plus, I believe, no charging while connected (could be wrong, didn't think charging was available via USB 1.1).
And no one seems to mention the other wonderful thing we know about computers. They break. That's right. All of a sudden, your sound might go south. The modem no longer works. The video dies. You own anything buy a high-end mac, you better hope you got Applecare (anyone buying a mac not getting this is really risking it). Otherwise you're spending $800 on a new motherboard, or just spending twice that to get a new computer.
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These days...memory and HD are about it...everything else is a USB peripheral...and there really aren't that many of those that most users use (printer, iPod, keyboard, mouse, thumb drive)...and these will never be built-in to the main computer anyway.
OK, what do you have here. Printer, iPod, keyboard. Assume mouse is plugged into keyboard. Great. Except that this fills all of the macs USB slots (yes, I know, Apple says it has 5 USB ports, but that's such a lie I can't believe they get away with it - keyboard needs to plug into one just to get the keyboard ports available, then the mouse takes a second one).
So, hopefully you don't want to plug in a scanner, or digital camera, or gaming device, or Wacom tablet, or PDA, or a UPS, or anything else. Then you're either swapping cables or buying a USB hub.
The only PCs I've seen that come with just 3 ports on them are either laptops or servers. The rest tend to have 6-8 or more. (And just remember Apple still doesn't believe in putting easy-to-access ports on the front of their computers, except the really expensive towers).
Absolutely agreed. I keep getting into disagreements with a friend about this. He used to be a Mac advocate back in the 90s, but now he's a total gamer geek PC-head. (Mostly because he hasn't had a job in years, so his poverty leads him to complain that Macs are too expensive. It's also the only reason he wasn't waiting outside a store for an Xbox 360.) He keeps saying Macs aren't expandable, that he wouldn't be able to put 2 terabytes of storage in a Mac without "expensive" Firewire enclosures. I ask him if he has 2 terabytes now. Nope, he can't afford the drives.
Well, right now I've got three firewire drives sitting on my desk, mainly because I can't put them in my computer, where they should be, not taking up my deskspace. Would be nice to be able to stick a TB or 2 of storage in my G5 without having to buy a large add-on to let me do that. In fact, I overspent on my last external purchase to get a case and disk separate, just so I could have the flexibility of flipping disks within the firewire case. Wow, if I only had that flexibility in the computer...
Apple a SMALL company? OK, I guess if your definition of small is any company that has revenues less then $10 Billion a year. Apple's one of the top-5 computer makers. They always have been (OK, they've always been top-10, I think they dropped to 7th a couple of years). Calling them small is kind of stretching things as well. The OS X marketshare is small, but as a company, Apple is large.
For one, keep in mind that a significant fraction of the company is iPod, none of which really helps the Mac line. Last quarter, Apple was 4th in market share placement for computers, but Dell still sells maybe 8x as many computers as Apple does, HewPaq sells almost as many as Dell does.
What about the Zip drive? Iomega was a lot smaller than Apple before they designed and sold it (and remains so), but for a few years there, it was nearly ubiquitous. I'd say Iomega qualifies as "small" but they still managed to build and develop lots of devices. Ditto for their competitor, Syquest. There were plenty of competing designs for Microfloppies.
You have a point. I think it might be different for a company like Iomega whose entire business was mostly just drives (I think it still is), and a computer company, for which a drive would be just a small portion of the larger product that they sell.
Well, right now I've got three firewire drives sitting on my desk, mainly because I can't put them in my computer, where they should be, not taking up my deskspace. Would be nice to be able to stick a TB or 2 of storage in my G5 without having to buy a large add-on to let me do that.
I would partly blame that on the thermal inefficiencies of the G5 chip, as well as the weird handles and feet. The G5 case is about as large as that of a large, solid workstation and is less expandable.
There are unusual kits that place spare drives in the forward part of the PCI cage that rarely gets used (most cards are half-length or shorter), or in front of the forward CPU fans, most of the kits are too expensive. I wouldn't mind designing and selling a less expensive kit, I just have to do it.
Adding more drives increases your chances of failure. It increases the thermals of the case and draw on the power supply and before SATA took 'hold it slowed the bus down.
We might see more drives added in future casing but Apple will likely seek a more efficient method of internal storage like using 2.5in drives.
Adding more drives increases your chances of failure. It increases the thermals of the case and draw on the power supply and before SATA took 'hold it slowed the bus down.
We might see more drives added in future casing but Apple will likely seek a more efficient method of internal storage like using 2.5in drives.
If Apple can't make a power supply that can handle four standard desktop drives, then they don't deserve their accolades.
There is absolutely no fiscal justification to going down to laptop drives on a high-end desktop (or workstation) just for power considerations, because it drives up the cost per GB by more than 3x.
I have few Xeon workstations that are designed to handle 5x 15k RPM drives and two processors at full load without problem on a 500W power supply. Apple's PMG5 dualie power supply is supposed to handle 600W and you are telling me that adding a couple 10 to 12W 7.2kRPM drives are going to be an issue?
What about the Zip drive? Iomega was a lot smaller than Apple before they designed and sold it (and remains so), but for a few years there, it was nearly ubiquitous. I'd say Iomega qualifies as "small" but they still managed to build and develop lots of devices. Ditto for their competitor, Syquest. There were plenty of competing designs for Microfloppies. I seem to remember there were 3" and 2.5" designs at the time. The only reason Sony won out was because Apple chose the format for the first Mac. Wikipedia has a good list of failed floppy formats, most of which weren't designed by corporate giants.
I'm trying to make the point, which some don't seem to be getting , that Apple is not a manufacturer of devices like that.
A specialized company such as Iomega can do it, because that's all they do. They were founded for that very purpose. But when the small product line that they have flounders, as it has, they are in deep trouble. Iomega has invented very few products. Syquest was the same.
Companies like Apple look at technology that's already been invented, and figure out how best to use it, to take advantage of whatever unique nature that technology has to improve the viability of their own products.
There was one other serious competitor to the Sony. It was a 3" drive made by Amdek. The others weren't real possibilities. Hp also selected the Sony floppy, before Apple did, by a year. But it was for engineering workstations that started, for the basic mono version, at $35,000. Shortly after Apple put them in the Mac, Hp put them into their PC's.
Hovering around the 6 billion still doesn't rank a company as small. At least not in my book.
Apple spends all of their R&D on their software and hardware. for them to get into coming up with basic technologies would require a totally different culture, as well as much larger investments in labs and personnel. They aren't so small these days, at almost $14 billion, but it would still cost billions for them to get into that kind of heavy duty design and develop work. They would have to buy a company that already has the labs and staff in the area they are interested in. And then they would have to sell these products to other OEM's to make it pay.
[QUOTE]
I know all about this issue. But they went from one extreme to the other. Back in the day, they had like 12 different versions of some 6300 computer ("Man, do I want the 6335 or the 6336 or the 6336CD?"). But now they've got 5 product lines to cover their entire user base. And two of those are portables. So you've got basically three mainstream desktops. That's it. And one (the mini) is an underpowered, slow, design over function computer.[?QUOTE]
True, but this is what they were told they would have to do. And so Jobs did it when he came back. He even got rif of their very profitable printer lines.
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Of course they're the biggest sellers. The towers are so expensive, you'd have to really, really, really want a tower to get one of those. So people SETTLE for the all-in-ones.
No they don't. People who buy those things like them. They take up little room, and are powerful enough to do whatever a consumer needs them to do. And they are considered to be attractive.
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And what do you mean that no PC user ever upgrades? They never buy a new computer? They never want to keep their monitor to save themselves the money?
Check what I said. I never said that *NO* PC user ever upgrades. But very few consumer purchasers do. This is well known from many surveys over the years. Sometimes some more memory, or a rare harddrive. Fewer buy new video cards.
The obsession with slots, slots, slots, is just that. When people come to ask me what camera to buy, I ask them if they've already got some brand in mind. When Nikon was king, almost everyone would say Nikon. Why? The answer was that the pro's used it, and that there were many lenses available. None of these people were ever going to get more than a 35 and a 128. But it made them feel good to get something a pro had, so they could show it off.
The same thing for big cases with 6 or 8 slots. The big thing now is SLI or Crossfire. People will get machines with those dual (and now quad!) slots, and NEVER get the second board.
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Its not a dumb argument. Its a valid argument. If you look at entertainment systems, the basic principle is "buy it in pieces, don't get all-in-ones". Most TVs don't come with VCRs and DVD players built-in. Why? Because when one piece fails, you either replace the whole thing, or you go out, buy a replacement piece and still have to plug it in. Yet with computers its considered a good thing? I don't think so.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't get seperates, but most people don't need them. Recievers are by far more popular in audio then seperate tuners, pre-amps, and power amps. Even though that's what I have.
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Completely false. Most vendors went Express for video and leaving PCI for the rest, since there isn't a great deal of PCI-Express cards out there (plus, again, PC makers tend to keep backward compatible so that you don't have to buy new cards). No one was clamoring for PCI-Express to replace PCI, they wanted it to replace AGP!
That's not true at all. They have at least two Express slots with two PCI slots. More than half the vendors have four Express slots with NO PCI slots.
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Yes, how dare I ask a company for what I want in a product. Damn! What was I thinking? Next time I go to spend $2000, I'll be sure just to take whatever is offered to me. No sense trying to find something that I might want.
Sure, everyone wants something different. So I quess that Apple will just have to go back making 40 different models, and lose money on most of them.
Comments
Originally posted by aegisdesign
That's difficult to grasp by PC users used to building up PCs out of bits and constantly upgrading parts.
Is there anyone except hobbyists (and hard core gamers) that do this?
It seems there probably aren't many.
Expansion slots in PCs made much more sense 20 years ago when you need one for:
- sound card
- graphics card
- network card
- mouse card
- modem card
etc.
These days...memory and HD are about it...everything else is a USB peripheral...and there really aren't that many of those that most users use (printer, iPod, keyboard, mouse, thumb drive)...and these will never be built-in to the main computer anyway.
If a few million parts a year is too 'niche' then there's something seriously wrong with a fab and a company if they can't turn a profit on that.
How many CPUs do VIA ship a year? How many ULV Pentiums do Intel reckon they'll sell? Surely that's more niche?
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
These days...memory and HD are about it...everything else is a USB peripheral...and there really aren't that many of those that most users use (printer, iPod, keyboard, mouse, thumb drive)...and these will never be built-in to the main computer anyway.
Totally. Gamers and geeks. That's who complain about expandability.
The last desktop office PC I bought had absolutely no cards in it at all. Even the graphics were on the motherboard. It's been running a year without an upgrade. The owner has no need to upgrade it. It's just an empty large air filled box that takes up lots of space yet has less features than an iMac.
When it needs replacing, it'll get replaced with whatever Dell are offering for the least money and the user will probably be amazed at how much quicker it is compared to the old one - partly because it will be much faster and partly because the old one will be so full of Windows cruft that it'll be slower than when she got it.
Then again, maybe I'll have persuaded her that a Mac worth it by then.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
One area I'd agree with Louzer over is in rejecting Apple as small. Sure, designing CPUs for a company that only needs a few million of them a year might be a punt too far but I can't imagine Intel (or anyone really) refusing to design custom hardware for Apple because they're too 'niche'.
If a few million parts a year is too 'niche' then there's something seriously wrong with a fab and a company if they can't turn a profit on that.
How many CPUs do VIA ship a year? How many ULV Pentiums do Intel reckon they'll sell? Surely that's more niche?
When I said "small", I meant that they couldn't develop and build their own hardware peripheral designs. An example of what I meant is the 3 1/2" floppy. That was invented by Sony. Sony is set up to do that sort of thing. There was no way that a company such as Apple could have spent the R&D to come up with such a device.
The same thing is true for other technologies. The cdrom. would be another example.
These require large electronics companies to develop them.
Apple's attempts to get HD manufacturers build native Firewire drives is another example of what I mean. They could help develop the concept and specs, but they need TI to work with, and to build the chips. Since Apple could never hope to build their own drives, there was no way to get the "standard" manufactured. If Apple was bigger, they could have bought a smaller manufacturer and done it them selves.
That's what I mean by "small".
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Totally. Gamers and geeks. That's who complain about expandability.
The last desktop office PC I bought had absolutely no cards in it at all. Even the graphics were on the motherboard. It's been running a year without an upgrade. The owner has no need to upgrade it. It's just an empty large air filled box that takes up lots of space yet has less features than an iMac.
When it needs replacing, it'll get replaced with whatever Dell are offering for the least money and the user will probably be amazed at how much quicker it is compared to the old one - partly because it will be much faster and partly because the old one will be so full of Windows cruft that it'll be slower than when she got it.
Then again, maybe I'll have persuaded her that a Mac worth it by then.
Th other people who upgrade are those of us who need pro cards, such as video and audio, or instrumentation cards, and such.
But generally, three slots free is enough, though I would still like more. But, this is true only for high end machines. Most workstations don't have much expandability either.
Apple has helped that situation by adding a second GHz ethernet port.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Totally. Gamers and geeks. That's who complain about expandability.
Absolutely agreed. I keep getting into disagreements with a friend about this. He used to be a Mac advocate back in the 90s, but now he's a total gamer geek PC-head. (Mostly because he hasn't had a job in years, so his poverty leads him to complain that Macs are too expensive. It's also the only reason he wasn't waiting outside a store for an Xbox 360.) He keeps saying Macs aren't expandable, that he wouldn't be able to put 2 terabytes of storage in a Mac without "expensive" Firewire enclosures. I ask him if he has 2 terabytes now. Nope, he can't afford the drives. I ask him just how many PC owners tweak and expand systems the way he claims to. He dodges by saying it doesn't matter. He just wants the potential to expand if he wants to. Even if he and most users will never need to do so. He also complains that Apple "treats its users like children" by requiring root login to mess with the system library. Dude, that's good Unix security procedure! You want to talk about an OS treating its users like children, look at the kindergarten-flavored default theme for XP and the stupid way it buries control panels unless you switch to the classic interface.
Originally posted by Kolchak
Absolutely agreed. I keep getting into disagreements with a friend about this. He used to be a Mac advocate back in the 90s, but now he's a total gamer geek PC-head. (Mostly because he hasn't had a job in years, so his poverty leads him to complain that Macs are too expensive. It's also the only reason he wasn't waiting outside a store for an Xbox 360.) He keeps saying Macs aren't expandable, that he wouldn't be able to put 2 terabytes of storage in a Mac without "expensive" Firewire enclosures. I ask him if he has 2 terabytes now. Nope, he can't afford the drives. I ask him just how many PC owners tweak and expand systems the way he claims to. He dodges by saying it doesn't matter. He just wants the potential to expand if he wants to. Even if he and most users will never need to do so. He also complains that Apple "treats its users like children" by requiring root login to mess with the system library. Dude, that's good Unix security procedure! You want to talk about an OS treating its users like children, look at the kindergarten-flavored default theme for XP and the stupid way it buries control panels unless you switch to the classic interface.
I have friends, engineers, who have bought a Powerbook over the past two years (somehow they mostly seem to like the 12" version, who would think).
At first, they told me that constantly having to enter their password was a pain for them. But after a while they came to appreciate the extra bit of security is gives them, and they not only don't complain any more, but extol its advantages to PC people we talk to.
Originally posted by melgross
When I said "small", I meant that they couldn't develop and build their own hardware peripheral designs. An example of what I meant is the 3 1/2" floppy. That was invented by Sony. Sony is set up to do that sort of thing. There was no way that a company such as Apple could have spent the R&D to come up with such a device.
The same thing is true for other technologies. The cdrom. would be another example.
These require large electronics companies to develop them.
What about the Zip drive? Iomega was a lot smaller than Apple before they designed and sold it (and remains so), but for a few years there, it was nearly ubiquitous. I'd say Iomega qualifies as "small" but they still managed to build and develop lots of devices. Ditto for their competitor, Syquest. There were plenty of competing designs for Microfloppies. I seem to remember there were 3" and 2.5" designs at the time. The only reason Sony won out was because Apple chose the format for the first Mac. Wikipedia has a good list of failed floppy formats, most of which weren't designed by corporate giants.
Apple is a designer not a builder. If the deal with Intel can help them, lewaraging the costs it will be nice.
Apple love to use new tech, and Intel love to make them, but is not always followed by it's customers.
One of the best example is SSE. With Apple, if Intel make a SSE4, you can be almost sure, that Apple will try to implement the best way they can. Same for EFI and many others forthcoming technologies.
Apple will be the vitrine of Intel.
Originally posted by melgross
They're not so small now, thankfully. But they were hovering around the $6 billion mark for a while. In this industry, that small for a leading company.
Hovering around the 6 billion still doesn't rank a company as small. At least not in my book.
Inso far as cutting their models down, that was almost forced upon them. Apple had a lot more models than they have now. It was said publicly by many in the industry that one of Apple's biggest problems was that they had too many models, thus confusing customers. S, they cut it down.
Every time they come out with another model, Apple is criticized as going back to the bad old days of too many models. You should learn about this issue.
I know all about this issue. But they went from one extreme to the other. Back in the day, they had like 12 different versions of some 6300 computer ("Man, do I want the 6335 or the 6336 or the 6336CD?"). But now they've got 5 product lines to cover their entire user base. And two of those are portables. So you've got basically three mainstream desktops. That's it. And one (the mini) is an underpowered, slow, design over function computer.
The all in one units are the biggest sellers that Apple makes. You complain about that? Obviously, people want an all in one unit. Of course, if you are a PC user, then the idea of this is upsetting. But as almost no PC users ever upgrade their machines, it's a ridiculous attitude to have.
Of course they're the biggest sellers. The towers are so expensive, you'd have to really, really, really want a tower to get one of those. So people SETTLE for the all-in-ones.
And what do you mean that no PC user ever upgrades? They never buy a new computer? They never want to keep their monitor to save themselves the money?
Its not a dumb argument. Its a valid argument. If you look at entertainment systems, the basic principle is "buy it in pieces, don't get all-in-ones". Most TVs don't come with VCRs and DVD players built-in. Why? Because when one piece fails, you either replace the whole thing, or you go out, buy a replacement piece and still have to plug it in. Yet with computers its considered a good thing? I don't think so.
And it's dumb to also complain about Apple going to Express without adding a second PCI bus as well. Only some PC makers who have gone to Express are doing that. Not letting go of ISA is what screwed plug n play for PC's. When they finally dropped it, everything started to work.
Completely false. Most vendors went Express for video and leaving PCI for the rest, since there isn't a great deal of PCI-Express cards out there (plus, again, PC makers tend to keep backward compatible so that you don't have to buy new cards). No one was clamoring for PCI-Express to replace PCI, they wanted it to replace AGP!
Yes, I would prefer to have a couple of extra slots on my towers, but it's not as big a deal as you are making it out to be.
I can't imagine why you are even here if you hate Apple and Mac's that much. Just stick to PC's. They obviously have everything you want.
Yes, how dare I ask a company for what I want in a product. Damn! What was I thinking? Next time I go to spend $2000, I'll be sure just to take whatever is offered to me. No sense trying to find something that I might want.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
I'm sure I'll be accused of drinking the Apple Kool-Aid or something like that or equally trite but All-in-One computers aren't the big problem for most people. You'll find most Mac users buy a new Mac every 3-4 years and guess what - that's about how long display technology lasts before you want a better one too.
...
That's difficult to grasp by PC users used to building up PCs out of bits and constantly upgrading parts.
Kool-Aid Drinker! Kool-Aid Drinker!
I love this. Nothing like the great disposable society talking. Why get just a piece when I can just buy everything again and again.
But I don't know what displays you're using. But so far, I'm on my third monitor (bought this year) and fifth mac. My 17" Sony lasted 7 years, my 19" Samsung lasted 5. And I easily was able to get a new monitor without having to replace my computer (and vice versa). Easily able to set up dual-monitor setups as needed.
Oh, and while dispay technology might improve over time, there's no saying how long it will be before Apple implements said changes.
And I think the thing difficult to grasp by those PC users is how Apple users don't mind throwing good money away having to rebuy pieces of their hardware, then being restricted to how you can use it.
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
Is there anyone except hobbyists (and hard core gamers) that do this?
It seems there probably aren't many.
Expansion slots in PCs made much more sense 20 years ago when you need one for:
- sound card
- graphics card
- network card
- mouse card
- modem card
etc.
Yeah, great. Except what about all those poor Mac owners who want a new iPod, but don't have USB2 ports on their computers. PC owners, no problem. Slap in a $20 USB card (hell, spend $40, get firewire 800 as well!). Boom, they're good. Mac owners? Damn, they've got to sync the really, really, really slow route. Plus, I believe, no charging while connected (could be wrong, didn't think charging was available via USB 1.1).
And no one seems to mention the other wonderful thing we know about computers. They break. That's right. All of a sudden, your sound might go south. The modem no longer works. The video dies. You own anything buy a high-end mac, you better hope you got Applecare (anyone buying a mac not getting this is really risking it). Otherwise you're spending $800 on a new motherboard, or just spending twice that to get a new computer.
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These days...memory and HD are about it...everything else is a USB peripheral...and there really aren't that many of those that most users use (printer, iPod, keyboard, mouse, thumb drive)...and these will never be built-in to the main computer anyway.
OK, what do you have here. Printer, iPod, keyboard. Assume mouse is plugged into keyboard. Great. Except that this fills all of the macs USB slots (yes, I know, Apple says it has 5 USB ports, but that's such a lie I can't believe they get away with it - keyboard needs to plug into one just to get the keyboard ports available, then the mouse takes a second one).
So, hopefully you don't want to plug in a scanner, or digital camera, or gaming device, or Wacom tablet, or PDA, or a UPS, or anything else. Then you're either swapping cables or buying a USB hub.
The only PCs I've seen that come with just 3 ports on them are either laptops or servers. The rest tend to have 6-8 or more. (And just remember Apple still doesn't believe in putting easy-to-access ports on the front of their computers, except the really expensive towers).
Originally posted by Kolchak
Absolutely agreed. I keep getting into disagreements with a friend about this. He used to be a Mac advocate back in the 90s, but now he's a total gamer geek PC-head. (Mostly because he hasn't had a job in years, so his poverty leads him to complain that Macs are too expensive. It's also the only reason he wasn't waiting outside a store for an Xbox 360.) He keeps saying Macs aren't expandable, that he wouldn't be able to put 2 terabytes of storage in a Mac without "expensive" Firewire enclosures. I ask him if he has 2 terabytes now. Nope, he can't afford the drives.
Well, right now I've got three firewire drives sitting on my desk, mainly because I can't put them in my computer, where they should be, not taking up my deskspace. Would be nice to be able to stick a TB or 2 of storage in my G5 without having to buy a large add-on to let me do that. In fact, I overspent on my last external purchase to get a case and disk separate, just so I could have the flexibility of flipping disks within the firewire case. Wow, if I only had that flexibility in the computer...
Originally posted by Louzer
Apple a SMALL company? OK, I guess if your definition of small is any company that has revenues less then $10 Billion a year. Apple's one of the top-5 computer makers. They always have been (OK, they've always been top-10, I think they dropped to 7th a couple of years). Calling them small is kind of stretching things as well. The OS X marketshare is small, but as a company, Apple is large.
For one, keep in mind that a significant fraction of the company is iPod, none of which really helps the Mac line. Last quarter, Apple was 4th in market share placement for computers, but Dell still sells maybe 8x as many computers as Apple does, HewPaq sells almost as many as Dell does.
Originally posted by Kolchak
What about the Zip drive? Iomega was a lot smaller than Apple before they designed and sold it (and remains so), but for a few years there, it was nearly ubiquitous. I'd say Iomega qualifies as "small" but they still managed to build and develop lots of devices. Ditto for their competitor, Syquest. There were plenty of competing designs for Microfloppies.
You have a point. I think it might be different for a company like Iomega whose entire business was mostly just drives (I think it still is), and a computer company, for which a drive would be just a small portion of the larger product that they sell.
Originally posted by Louzer
Well, right now I've got three firewire drives sitting on my desk, mainly because I can't put them in my computer, where they should be, not taking up my deskspace. Would be nice to be able to stick a TB or 2 of storage in my G5 without having to buy a large add-on to let me do that.
I would partly blame that on the thermal inefficiencies of the G5 chip, as well as the weird handles and feet. The G5 case is about as large as that of a large, solid workstation and is less expandable.
There are unusual kits that place spare drives in the forward part of the PCI cage that rarely gets used (most cards are half-length or shorter), or in front of the forward CPU fans, most of the kits are too expensive. I wouldn't mind designing and selling a less expensive kit, I just have to do it.
We might see more drives added in future casing but Apple will likely seek a more efficient method of internal storage like using 2.5in drives.
Originally posted by hmurchison
Adding more drives increases your chances of failure. It increases the thermals of the case and draw on the power supply and before SATA took 'hold it slowed the bus down.
We might see more drives added in future casing but Apple will likely seek a more efficient method of internal storage like using 2.5in drives.
If Apple can't make a power supply that can handle four standard desktop drives, then they don't deserve their accolades.
There is absolutely no fiscal justification to going down to laptop drives on a high-end desktop (or workstation) just for power considerations, because it drives up the cost per GB by more than 3x.
I have few Xeon workstations that are designed to handle 5x 15k RPM drives and two processors at full load without problem on a 500W power supply. Apple's PMG5 dualie power supply is supposed to handle 600W and you are telling me that adding a couple 10 to 12W 7.2kRPM drives are going to be an issue?
Originally posted by Kolchak
What about the Zip drive? Iomega was a lot smaller than Apple before they designed and sold it (and remains so), but for a few years there, it was nearly ubiquitous. I'd say Iomega qualifies as "small" but they still managed to build and develop lots of devices. Ditto for their competitor, Syquest. There were plenty of competing designs for Microfloppies. I seem to remember there were 3" and 2.5" designs at the time. The only reason Sony won out was because Apple chose the format for the first Mac. Wikipedia has a good list of failed floppy formats, most of which weren't designed by corporate giants.
I'm trying to make the point, which some don't seem to be getting , that Apple is not a manufacturer of devices like that.
A specialized company such as Iomega can do it, because that's all they do. They were founded for that very purpose. But when the small product line that they have flounders, as it has, they are in deep trouble. Iomega has invented very few products. Syquest was the same.
Companies like Apple look at technology that's already been invented, and figure out how best to use it, to take advantage of whatever unique nature that technology has to improve the viability of their own products.
There was one other serious competitor to the Sony. It was a 3" drive made by Amdek. The others weren't real possibilities. Hp also selected the Sony floppy, before Apple did, by a year. But it was for engineering workstations that started, for the basic mono version, at $35,000. Shortly after Apple put them in the Mac, Hp put them into their PC's.
Originally posted by Louzer
Hovering around the 6 billion still doesn't rank a company as small. At least not in my book.
Apple spends all of their R&D on their software and hardware. for them to get into coming up with basic technologies would require a totally different culture, as well as much larger investments in labs and personnel. They aren't so small these days, at almost $14 billion, but it would still cost billions for them to get into that kind of heavy duty design and develop work. They would have to buy a company that already has the labs and staff in the area they are interested in. And then they would have to sell these products to other OEM's to make it pay.
[QUOTE]
I know all about this issue. But they went from one extreme to the other. Back in the day, they had like 12 different versions of some 6300 computer ("Man, do I want the 6335 or the 6336 or the 6336CD?"). But now they've got 5 product lines to cover their entire user base. And two of those are portables. So you've got basically three mainstream desktops. That's it. And one (the mini) is an underpowered, slow, design over function computer.[?QUOTE]
True, but this is what they were told they would have to do. And so Jobs did it when he came back. He even got rif of their very profitable printer lines.
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Of course they're the biggest sellers. The towers are so expensive, you'd have to really, really, really want a tower to get one of those. So people SETTLE for the all-in-ones.
No they don't. People who buy those things like them. They take up little room, and are powerful enough to do whatever a consumer needs them to do. And they are considered to be attractive.
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And what do you mean that no PC user ever upgrades? They never buy a new computer? They never want to keep their monitor to save themselves the money?
Check what I said. I never said that *NO* PC user ever upgrades. But very few consumer purchasers do. This is well known from many surveys over the years. Sometimes some more memory, or a rare harddrive. Fewer buy new video cards.
The obsession with slots, slots, slots, is just that. When people come to ask me what camera to buy, I ask them if they've already got some brand in mind. When Nikon was king, almost everyone would say Nikon. Why? The answer was that the pro's used it, and that there were many lenses available. None of these people were ever going to get more than a 35 and a 128. But it made them feel good to get something a pro had, so they could show it off.
The same thing for big cases with 6 or 8 slots. The big thing now is SLI or Crossfire. People will get machines with those dual (and now quad!) slots, and NEVER get the second board.
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Its not a dumb argument. Its a valid argument. If you look at entertainment systems, the basic principle is "buy it in pieces, don't get all-in-ones". Most TVs don't come with VCRs and DVD players built-in. Why? Because when one piece fails, you either replace the whole thing, or you go out, buy a replacement piece and still have to plug it in. Yet with computers its considered a good thing? I don't think so.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't get seperates, but most people don't need them. Recievers are by far more popular in audio then seperate tuners, pre-amps, and power amps. Even though that's what I have.
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Completely false. Most vendors went Express for video and leaving PCI for the rest, since there isn't a great deal of PCI-Express cards out there (plus, again, PC makers tend to keep backward compatible so that you don't have to buy new cards). No one was clamoring for PCI-Express to replace PCI, they wanted it to replace AGP!
That's not true at all. They have at least two Express slots with two PCI slots. More than half the vendors have four Express slots with NO PCI slots.
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Yes, how dare I ask a company for what I want in a product. Damn! What was I thinking? Next time I go to spend $2000, I'll be sure just to take whatever is offered to me. No sense trying to find something that I might want.
Sure, everyone wants something different. So I quess that Apple will just have to go back making 40 different models, and lose money on most of them.