We all wanted and thought we were getting horizontal iPod with on screen click wheel.
*WE* in this case is people who believe farfetched, unfounded rumors. People who know the difference between rumor and fantasy knew the video ipod would be a few more months.
Quote:
Originally Posted by toosday
I saw this thing and it's not horrible. It's no iPod, but it's definitely not horrible.
So you're OK with buttons instead of a wheel?
Quote:
Originally Posted by extremeskater
Apple needs to make money off ipods all MS cares about is getting into the market right now remember for them this is a gen 1 they have plenty of time to build on this and make mods.
No way. If the first release is a piece of junk, that's the reputation the Zune will have, and it will be incredibly hard to change. First impressions and first reviews are very important.
Quote:
Originally Posted by extremeskater
Microsoft unlike Apple understands they are a software company anything else they do is to gain access into the market at first and slowly gain market share like they did with the Xbox.
MS didn't gain market share on xbox with a price war. They did it by having solid exclusive content (which they got from buying other developers who had solid titles in development). That's not an option with an AV player.
Losing money on units still isn't good enough reason for people to buy Zune. The only way to get market share back from iPod is with a product that is competitive, and it sounds like the first gen is pretty lacking.
The big advantage is getting close to a monopoly position in market share. Apple has this with the iPod, they've never had it before. They're sitting in the microsoft seat right now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by palegolas
It'll sell.. They're following the exact same business model as Apple after all.. and they're probably gonna follow the plan through. And the player doesn't look ass bad as most other Microsoft products. As already said, it's gonna see some modest success.
"Same business model" isn't good enough. You need a product that's just as good, and just from the scroll wheel/button thing, Zune has a big disadvantage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wackybit
This is kinda funny! It's like a Windows person who uses a Mac and says that the 'zoom' button suck because it doesn't 'maximize' to fill the entire screen! LOL
Would you honestly say that you'd be just as happy with four buttons as you would with the wheel on the ipod? You don't see any advantage in using a wheel to scroll a huge list? Or to set volume? Or to skip to a specific part of a long program?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ajmas
Apple was smug about its position, did little good to improve its position, and then got slaughtered by Microsoft Windows.
How could apple be smug about their position when they had a tiny market share? At that point Apple had already been killed by windows. The current iPod situation has nothing in common with the past Mac situation.
Looking at the thread most people are having a laugh at Microsoft's attempt. This attitude is what burnt Apple at the end of the 80's.
Congratulations! You've just managed to totally ignore all of the posts that have pointed out, conclusively and in detail, that this is nothing like what happened to the Macintosh in the late 80's, because the Macintosh never had a market share anywhere near 75%. In fact the biggest share the Macintosh ever had was around 16%. There are no parallels to be drawn between Macintosh market share and iPod market share.
That's not to say that Apple should keep an eye on Microsoft. They should. But this first attempt from Microsoft won't do Apple any harm. It'll do Creative, iRiver and Co. all the harm. Apple need to start watching out once the Zune is the number 2 player.
Yeah, but was there any year at all where Apple was seen as having a stronghold? Fine, before the PC market existed*as a market at all, obviously Apple virtually owned it, but that's a little silly.
....
.
The Apple][ was introduced in 1976(77). It was the only personal computer in existance for the first 6 months. The only other "single board computers" that existed were hobbiest machines with hex (LED) outputs and typically no alpha-keyboards (binary switches or hex keyboards). So clearly there was a time that Apple ][ not only dominated, but was the only game in town.
Soon after Commodore introduced the PET. It was a blip. Apple still had >99% of the PC market. Not until the PC (1980/81) did Apple's market share drop below 90%, but the home/educational market share was still >99%.
In the early 80's (82-84) the pie started getting divided up to the CommodoreVic20&64, the Atari400/800, TRS-80/Color and a few more. And during this time IBM **WAS** quickly taking over the business world with the XT/AT models. Apple still had a majority of marketshare. I think Apple lost its stronghold around 1985/86. It still held the educational market until 1990, but it's home/business market had dropped below 20% by this time.
I would say it was safe to say Apple had a stronghold on the market from 1976-1984.
Soon after Commodore introduced the PET. It was a blip. Apple still had >99% of the PC market. Not until the PC (1980/81) did Apple's market share drop below 90%, but the home/educational market share was still >99%.
In the early 80's (82-84) the pie started getting divided up to the CommodoreVic20&64, the Atari400/800, TRS-80/Color and a few more. And during this time IBM **WAS** quickly taking over the business world with the XT/AT models. Apple still had a majority of marketshare. I think Apple lost its stronghold around 1985/86. It still held the educational market until 1990, but it's home/business market had dropped below 20% by this time.
I would say it was safe to say Apple had a stronghold on the market from 1976-1984.
I would say it was safe to say Apple had a stronghold on the market from 1976-1984.
Your entire post is thoroughly contradicted by the link that Aegis provided (this one). For example, it puts the 1977 market share of the Apple II at 0.4% (600 Apple II Vs 100,000 TRS-80) . If the numbers in the link are flawed, please enlighten us.
I saw this thing and it's not horrible. It's no iPod, but it's definitely not horrible. I actually dig the brown (though I think it'd look much better as a brushed aluminum case instead of... whatever it's made of.)
It's pretty polarizing, though. You either love it or hate it.
You don't seem to have been polarised; do you love it or hate it?
Not as I recall, but then I'm English and we didn't see Apple II's over here much at all. http://www.pegasus3d.com/total_share.html has a nice table of sales. Apple II days here were largely taken up by PETs, BBC Micros and Sinclairs.
The damage was already done. PC sales were ten times Mac sales even before Windows 3.0. After Windows 95 they rocketed though and Mac sales plummeted. Apple now sells more Macs than they've ever sold but their market share is still tiny because the PC has become ubiquitous in markets and niches the Mac doesn't enter.
Numbers for TRS-80 seem a bit high and the Apple][ numbers seem low. Are you sure this wasn't just consumer sales?
During 1976-1982, most computers being purchased were being purchased by schools. Not many people had PC in their homes at the time. I would say less than 3% of homes had PCs in 1982.
Numbers for TRS-80 seem a bit high and the Apple][ numbers seem low. Are you sure this wasn't just consumer sales?
During 1976-1982, most computers being purchased were being purchased by schools. Not many people had PC in their homes at the time. I would say less than 3% of homes had PCs in 1982.
Something looks strange with those numbers.
It's true,. Schools almost exclusively bought Apple II's.
But Europe was different. It wasn't until just a few years a go that the Acorn stopped selling in Great Britain, for example. In Japan, NEC was the largest, provided with a non IBM/MS OS.
Numbers for TRS-80 seem a bit high and the Apple][ numbers seem low. Are you sure this wasn't just consumer sales?
During 1976-1982, most computers being purchased were being purchased by schools. Not many people had PC in their homes at the time. I would say less than 3% of homes had PCs in 1982.
Something looks strange with those numbers.
Seem about right to me. The article linked to from those numbers is on Ars Technica and it states...
"The stage was set for the a second, more professional, group of electronics companies to introduce their own products.
The holy trinity: Commodore PET, TRS-80 Model I, and the Apple ][
The first of these was a calculator firm called Commodore, which was started as a typewriter repair company in 1954 by Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel. When Texas Instruments started their price war that nearly drove MITS out of business, Tramiel realized that it was vital for his company to own semiconductor technology that could produce chips in-house, just like TI did. He found ex-Motorola engineer Chuck Peddle, who had invented a vastly cheaper 6800 clone called the 6502. Commodore bought Peddle's company, MOS Technologies, and let him continue working on his own projects. One of these projects became the PET computer, ostensibly standing for Personal Electronic Transactor, but Commodore engineers sometimes called it Peddle's Ego Trip after it wound up becoming a smash success.
The PET had its own built-in monitor, keyboard, and tape drive, giving early computer users everything they needed to start working. It even had a version of BASIC purchased from Bill Gates' tiny Micro-Soft company. The keyboard was a cheap "Chiclet" job that was replaced in later models. Commodore sold 4,000 PETs in 1978 and sales kept rising. A base model PET sold for US$795.
Elsewhere, the electronics chain Radio Shack decided that they should get into the personal computer business. Their Tandy-Radio Shack 80, or TRS-80 (known to some computer hobbyists as a "Trash-80," in the first of many platform flamewars to come) was available in modular form, with the keyboard and computer selling for US$399, the black and white display for US$199, and a cassette storage system for US$49. The main advantage that Radio Shack had over the others was their built-in distribution system. Each of their 3,000 stores was given a single TRS-80 to sell, but within a month the company had over 10,000 orders. The lowly TRS-80 quickly became the top-selling personal computer of the trinity, as new models enhanced its capabilities.
The final computer of the trinity was made by the only company to survive into the modern age as a computer company. The Apple ][ was a refined version of the Apple I motherboard, with added color, memory capacity, eight expansion slots, and an attractive beige case with a built-in brown keyboard. It retailed for US$1,298 with 4k of RAM, or US$1,698 with 16k. Initial sales were sluggish as Apple sold only 600 machines in 1977, mostly due to the high price compared to the PET and TRS-80. However, with the addition of the fast and relatively inexpensive Disk ][ floppy drive accessory, made possible by an ingenious disk controller using only eight chips that Wozniak designed, the Apple ][ sold 7,600 units in the following year and 35,000 in 1979. It was still a distant third compared to the other two machines in the trinity, however.
Apple's response to being in third place involved the genius of Regis McKenna, the former Intel PR executive who had spearheaded "Operation Crush," the predecessor of the "Intel Inside" campaign. McKenna decided that what the company needed was great marketing, so all advertising for the Apple ][ was glossy and rich, and some ads even claimed that the Apple ][ was the "best-selling personal computer." It had nowhere near such status at the time.
What really turned the company around, however, was the release of the first ever "killer app." This was VisiCalc, the original spreadsheet application, which was released in 1979. The author, Dan Bricklin, wrote it for the Apple ][ simply because that machine, borrowed from his publisher Dan Fylstra, was the only one he had available. A combination of great marketing and even better luck propelled the Apple ][ from an also-ran to a serious contender. In 1981 the company sold 210,000 units, leaving the PET in the dust and nearly equaling the TRS-80's numbers."
So, I'd guess that helped by educational sales and Visicalc, the Apple II pulled ahead eventually, at least in the US. In the UK we had early Apricots and of course in 81 the IBM PC landed too. On the cheaper end of the market, we had BBC Micros in all schools (not Apples), PETs, VIC20, C64, Atari, Sinclair ZX80/81 and Spectrum, Dragon, Oric, Lynx, Amstrad, Research Machines RM80Z and a zillion others I've forgotten. I actually built a Nascom-1 in about 1980 too (aged 11!) with my physics teacher. I've never, ever, seen an Apple II here in the UK.
Come on, this article is a load of crap. "Photo, Music, Video and Community" Menus? "No scroll wheel because Microsoft doesn't have patents", "Sources in the Far East", "Not Quite Plastic", and other winning lines make this one a real stinker.
Congratulations on possibly the most vague "Insider report" to come along in quite a while. Was the correspondent blind and wearing thick wool gloves? I mean, really, if you actually held the unit in your hand and used it, couldn't you come up with a slightly more detailed report on it? This reads like some of the Zune rumors we saw about 6 months ago... And the bit about the battery is a nice touch, fanboy.
I have to agree.
We all know that most certainly the iPod will be superior with whatever Microsoft comes up with in the portable media player/mp3 player arena, but this insider's review is just lazy, fanboyist, biased and tries to hard to make the Zune worse than what it already is. Too vague, more than what it really needs to be.
We all know that most certainly the iPod will be superior with whatever Microsoft comes up with in the portable media player/mp3 player arena, but this insider's review is just lazy, fanboyist, biased and tries to hard to make the Zune worse than what it already is.
What specificially? It seems pretty even handed to me since most of the comments aren't negative. The battery died, is there some bias in reporting that? As widely reported, it uses buttons instead of a wheel - personally that sounds pretty bad, do you really think that's not a disadvantage? And there were specifics listed about the horizontal/vertical layout of menus.
This article seems like way more fact than opinion, whining about it seems lazy, fanboyist, and biased, and tries hard to make the Zune better than what it already is.
What specificially? It seems pretty even handed to me since most of the comments aren't negative. The battery died, is there some bias in reporting that? As widely reported, it uses buttons instead of a wheel - personally that sounds pretty bad, do you really think that's not a disadvantage? And there were specifics listed about the horizontal/vertical layout of menus.
This article seems like way more fact than opinion, whining about it seems lazy, fanboyist, and biased, and tries hard to make the Zune better than what it already is.
Well, quite honestly, if I wanted to make a fair review I would first and foremost make sure I have enough battery life to conduct all the tests and then report the amount of time the battery lasted. Kind of like iLounge reviews where they tell you know long can you expect a full iPod charge to last. But saying "oh, the battery went out. can't do much about it" I know they may have not had a Zune unit for a long while, but just sounds lazy.
This just in as well: Apple will up the ante on the engraving of iPods in response to the ingenius, almost scintillating brilliance of "Hello from Seattle":
.......
how do you come up with this stuff? hehehe. so funny.
one of my favorite iPod engravings is "this device is a bomb" and "leave me here. save my ipod"
Yeah, but was there any year at all where Apple was seen as having a stronghold? Fine, before the PC market existed*as a market at all, obviously Apple virtually owned it, but that's a little silly.
Arguments such as "If Apple had licensed the Macintosh, they would have retained their high market share" are made a lot, but the Macintosh never had much market share to begin with. Arguments such as "If the Macintosh hadn't competed with Apple's own Apple II, which was completely incompatible, Apple could have transitioned the Apple II's success over to the Macintosh" are a lot more intelligent. But even the Apple II, before the Macintosh was introduced, did not, to my knowledge, have a market share anywhere close to even being a majority, let alone a dominant one.
So my original point was, and still is: Apple was never at this point before. The iPod's success is not "history repeating itself", because, while certainly successful, the Apple II never had such an extremely huge market share. So to argue that they're repeating past mistakes is doubly false, because, not only do we know nothing about their strategy regarding Zune (and analyzing it only starts becoming useful once the Zune actually ships), but there is no "repetition" at all.
Arguably, Apple should have added some sort of compatibility layer to the Macintosh, or perhaps done what they later did with the IIgs. Instead, they took the huge risk (and didn't do particularly well at it) of creating a wholly new, incompatible, closed system.
The iPod is yet another wholly new, incompatible and closed system, but it's hugely successful. That's quite a difference.
So what about the education market? At one time, Apple owned that, now it seems like it's mainly Dell. Apple tried for the business market, but other than the Lisa, they seemed not to make much of a go at it.
Apple does well at marketing Macbooks and iPods, and to the graphical market. Probably 1/4 of every laptop I see is an Apple, and the white earbuds are hard to miss. As for the Zune, I saw a video demo of one, and liked the GUI, it was clean and a bit different from the rest of the DAP's, If Microsoft can get the player/PC integration down, like iTunes/iPod, then many aspects are equal - the software synchronization with iTunes is key for me, but sometimes I wish the iPod did a bit more, and offered more customization. There is iPodWizard, but it is awfully convoluted. Screw the iPod games, Apple should offer iPod themes though ITMS.
Isn't getting a Zune going to be the adolescent/young adult equivalent of getting a pair of Nyke's or Adeedas's, since your parents tried to save money by trying to convince you that it's actually cooler to be different than all those other "non-cool" kids wearing real Nike's and Adidas's.
Except now instead of getting beat up you won't hook up with the chick eyeing you on the subway.
Isn't getting a Zune going to be the adolescent/young adult equivalent of getting a pair of Nyke's or Adeedas's, since your parents tried to save money by trying to convince you that it's actually cooler to be different than all those other "non-cool" kids wearing real Nike's and Adidas's.
Except now instead of getting beat up you won't hook up with the chick eyeing you on the subway.
only they wouldn't be saving money....
which means a normal parent will see an ipod, have an ipod commercial/sign/billboard pop up in their mind, and buy that. They wouldn't buy their kid a Zune unless s/he asked for one, was cheaper, or was recently advertised/suggested to them.
Comments
We all wanted and thought we were getting horizontal iPod with on screen click wheel.
*WE* in this case is people who believe farfetched, unfounded rumors. People who know the difference between rumor and fantasy knew the video ipod would be a few more months.
I saw this thing and it's not horrible. It's no iPod, but it's definitely not horrible.
So you're OK with buttons instead of a wheel?
Apple needs to make money off ipods all MS cares about is getting into the market right now remember for them this is a gen 1 they have plenty of time to build on this and make mods.
No way. If the first release is a piece of junk, that's the reputation the Zune will have, and it will be incredibly hard to change. First impressions and first reviews are very important.
Microsoft unlike Apple understands they are a software company anything else they do is to gain access into the market at first and slowly gain market share like they did with the Xbox.
MS didn't gain market share on xbox with a price war. They did it by having solid exclusive content (which they got from buying other developers who had solid titles in development). That's not an option with an AV player.
Losing money on units still isn't good enough reason for people to buy Zune. The only way to get market share back from iPod is with a product that is competitive, and it sounds like the first gen is pretty lacking.
The big advantage is getting close to a monopoly position in market share. Apple has this with the iPod, they've never had it before. They're sitting in the microsoft seat right now.
It'll sell.. They're following the exact same business model as Apple after all.. and they're probably gonna follow the plan through. And the player doesn't look ass bad as most other Microsoft products. As already said, it's gonna see some modest success.
"Same business model" isn't good enough. You need a product that's just as good, and just from the scroll wheel/button thing, Zune has a big disadvantage.
This is kinda funny! It's like a Windows person who uses a Mac and says that the 'zoom' button suck because it doesn't 'maximize' to fill the entire screen! LOL
Would you honestly say that you'd be just as happy with four buttons as you would with the wheel on the ipod? You don't see any advantage in using a wheel to scroll a huge list? Or to set volume? Or to skip to a specific part of a long program?
Apple was smug about its position, did little good to improve its position, and then got slaughtered by Microsoft Windows.
How could apple be smug about their position when they had a tiny market share? At that point Apple had already been killed by windows. The current iPod situation has nothing in common with the past Mac situation.
Looking at the thread most people are having a laugh at Microsoft's attempt. This attitude is what burnt Apple at the end of the 80's.
Congratulations! You've just managed to totally ignore all of the posts that have pointed out, conclusively and in detail, that this is nothing like what happened to the Macintosh in the late 80's, because the Macintosh never had a market share anywhere near 75%. In fact the biggest share the Macintosh ever had was around 16%. There are no parallels to be drawn between Macintosh market share and iPod market share.
That's not to say that Apple should keep an eye on Microsoft. They should. But this first attempt from Microsoft won't do Apple any harm. It'll do Creative, iRiver and Co. all the harm. Apple need to start watching out once the Zune is the number 2 player.
In other words, they're hoping to lose $150 million by Christmas
OMFG!
Yeah, but was there any year at all where Apple was seen as having a stronghold? Fine, before the PC market existed*as a market at all, obviously Apple virtually owned it, but that's a little silly.
....
.
The Apple][ was introduced in 1976(77). It was the only personal computer in existance for the first 6 months. The only other "single board computers" that existed were hobbiest machines with hex (LED) outputs and typically no alpha-keyboards (binary switches or hex keyboards). So clearly there was a time that Apple ][ not only dominated, but was the only game in town.
Soon after Commodore introduced the PET. It was a blip. Apple still had >99% of the PC market. Not until the PC (1980/81) did Apple's market share drop below 90%, but the home/educational market share was still >99%.
In the early 80's (82-84) the pie started getting divided up to the CommodoreVic20&64, the Atari400/800, TRS-80/Color and a few more. And during this time IBM **WAS** quickly taking over the business world with the XT/AT models. Apple still had a majority of marketshare. I think Apple lost its stronghold around 1985/86. It still held the educational market until 1990, but it's home/business market had dropped below 20% by this time.
I would say it was safe to say Apple had a stronghold on the market from 1976-1984.
Soon after Commodore introduced the PET. It was a blip. Apple still had >99% of the PC market. Not until the PC (1980/81) did Apple's market share drop below 90%, but the home/educational market share was still >99%.
In the early 80's (82-84) the pie started getting divided up to the CommodoreVic20&64, the Atari400/800, TRS-80/Color and a few more. And during this time IBM **WAS** quickly taking over the business world with the XT/AT models. Apple still had a majority of marketshare. I think Apple lost its stronghold around 1985/86. It still held the educational market until 1990, but it's home/business market had dropped below 20% by this time.
I would say it was safe to say Apple had a stronghold on the market from 1976-1984.
Do you have hard data on this?
I would say it was safe to say Apple had a stronghold on the market from 1976-1984.
Your entire post is thoroughly contradicted by the link that Aegis provided (this one). For example, it puts the 1977 market share of the Apple II at 0.4% (600 Apple II Vs 100,000 TRS-80) . If the numbers in the link are flawed, please enlighten us.
"Hello from Seattle."
Gotta give it to them: That's freakin' cute!
I saw this thing and it's not horrible. It's no iPod, but it's definitely not horrible. I actually dig the brown (though I think it'd look much better as a brushed aluminum case instead of... whatever it's made of.)
It's pretty polarizing, though. You either love it or hate it.
You don't seem to have been polarised; do you love it or hate it?
Not as I recall, but then I'm English and we didn't see Apple II's over here much at all. http://www.pegasus3d.com/total_share.html has a nice table of sales. Apple II days here were largely taken up by PETs, BBC Micros and Sinclairs.
The damage was already done. PC sales were ten times Mac sales even before Windows 3.0. After Windows 95 they rocketed though and Mac sales plummeted. Apple now sells more Macs than they've ever sold but their market share is still tiny because the PC has become ubiquitous in markets and niches the Mac doesn't enter.
Numbers for TRS-80 seem a bit high and the Apple][ numbers seem low. Are you sure this wasn't just consumer sales?
During 1976-1982, most computers being purchased were being purchased by schools. Not many people had PC in their homes at the time. I would say less than 3% of homes had PCs in 1982.
Something looks strange with those numbers.
Numbers for TRS-80 seem a bit high and the Apple][ numbers seem low. Are you sure this wasn't just consumer sales?
During 1976-1982, most computers being purchased were being purchased by schools. Not many people had PC in their homes at the time. I would say less than 3% of homes had PCs in 1982.
Something looks strange with those numbers.
It's true,. Schools almost exclusively bought Apple II's.
But Europe was different. It wasn't until just a few years a go that the Acorn stopped selling in Great Britain, for example. In Japan, NEC was the largest, provided with a non IBM/MS OS.
Numbers for TRS-80 seem a bit high and the Apple][ numbers seem low. Are you sure this wasn't just consumer sales?
During 1976-1982, most computers being purchased were being purchased by schools. Not many people had PC in their homes at the time. I would say less than 3% of homes had PCs in 1982.
Something looks strange with those numbers.
Seem about right to me. The article linked to from those numbers is on Ars Technica and it states...
"The stage was set for the a second, more professional, group of electronics companies to introduce their own products.
The holy trinity: Commodore PET, TRS-80 Model I, and the Apple ][
The first of these was a calculator firm called Commodore, which was started as a typewriter repair company in 1954 by Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel. When Texas Instruments started their price war that nearly drove MITS out of business, Tramiel realized that it was vital for his company to own semiconductor technology that could produce chips in-house, just like TI did. He found ex-Motorola engineer Chuck Peddle, who had invented a vastly cheaper 6800 clone called the 6502. Commodore bought Peddle's company, MOS Technologies, and let him continue working on his own projects. One of these projects became the PET computer, ostensibly standing for Personal Electronic Transactor, but Commodore engineers sometimes called it Peddle's Ego Trip after it wound up becoming a smash success.
The PET had its own built-in monitor, keyboard, and tape drive, giving early computer users everything they needed to start working. It even had a version of BASIC purchased from Bill Gates' tiny Micro-Soft company. The keyboard was a cheap "Chiclet" job that was replaced in later models. Commodore sold 4,000 PETs in 1978 and sales kept rising. A base model PET sold for US$795.
Elsewhere, the electronics chain Radio Shack decided that they should get into the personal computer business. Their Tandy-Radio Shack 80, or TRS-80 (known to some computer hobbyists as a "Trash-80," in the first of many platform flamewars to come) was available in modular form, with the keyboard and computer selling for US$399, the black and white display for US$199, and a cassette storage system for US$49. The main advantage that Radio Shack had over the others was their built-in distribution system. Each of their 3,000 stores was given a single TRS-80 to sell, but within a month the company had over 10,000 orders. The lowly TRS-80 quickly became the top-selling personal computer of the trinity, as new models enhanced its capabilities.
The final computer of the trinity was made by the only company to survive into the modern age as a computer company. The Apple ][ was a refined version of the Apple I motherboard, with added color, memory capacity, eight expansion slots, and an attractive beige case with a built-in brown keyboard. It retailed for US$1,298 with 4k of RAM, or US$1,698 with 16k. Initial sales were sluggish as Apple sold only 600 machines in 1977, mostly due to the high price compared to the PET and TRS-80. However, with the addition of the fast and relatively inexpensive Disk ][ floppy drive accessory, made possible by an ingenious disk controller using only eight chips that Wozniak designed, the Apple ][ sold 7,600 units in the following year and 35,000 in 1979. It was still a distant third compared to the other two machines in the trinity, however.
Apple's response to being in third place involved the genius of Regis McKenna, the former Intel PR executive who had spearheaded "Operation Crush," the predecessor of the "Intel Inside" campaign. McKenna decided that what the company needed was great marketing, so all advertising for the Apple ][ was glossy and rich, and some ads even claimed that the Apple ][ was the "best-selling personal computer." It had nowhere near such status at the time.
What really turned the company around, however, was the release of the first ever "killer app." This was VisiCalc, the original spreadsheet application, which was released in 1979. The author, Dan Bricklin, wrote it for the Apple ][ simply because that machine, borrowed from his publisher Dan Fylstra, was the only one he had available. A combination of great marketing and even better luck propelled the Apple ][ from an also-ran to a serious contender. In 1981 the company sold 210,000 units, leaving the PET in the dust and nearly equaling the TRS-80's numbers."
http://arstechnica.com/articles/cult...al-share.ars/3
So, I'd guess that helped by educational sales and Visicalc, the Apple II pulled ahead eventually, at least in the US. In the UK we had early Apricots and of course in 81 the IBM PC landed too. On the cheaper end of the market, we had BBC Micros in all schools (not Apples), PETs, VIC20, C64, Atari, Sinclair ZX80/81 and Spectrum, Dragon, Oric, Lynx, Amstrad, Research Machines RM80Z and a zillion others I've forgotten. I actually built a Nascom-1 in about 1980 too (aged 11!) with my physics teacher. I've never, ever, seen an Apple II here in the UK.
You got the price wrong! It costs 20,000 Microsoft points not $250 dollars.
LMFAO....
GTFOHWTBS!
LOL
WHANJOPXY!! UVYQKLDO!!
scientists believe that by 2009 all on-line communication will be emoticon and acronym based.
Come on, this article is a load of crap. "Photo, Music, Video and Community" Menus? "No scroll wheel because Microsoft doesn't have patents", "Sources in the Far East", "Not Quite Plastic", and other winning lines make this one a real stinker.
Congratulations on possibly the most vague "Insider report" to come along in quite a while. Was the correspondent blind and wearing thick wool gloves? I mean, really, if you actually held the unit in your hand and used it, couldn't you come up with a slightly more detailed report on it? This reads like some of the Zune rumors we saw about 6 months ago... And the bit about the battery is a nice touch, fanboy.
I have to agree.
We all know that most certainly the iPod will be superior with whatever Microsoft comes up with in the portable media player/mp3 player arena, but this insider's review is just lazy, fanboyist, biased and tries to hard to make the Zune worse than what it already is. Too vague, more than what it really needs to be.
We all know that most certainly the iPod will be superior with whatever Microsoft comes up with in the portable media player/mp3 player arena, but this insider's review is just lazy, fanboyist, biased and tries to hard to make the Zune worse than what it already is.
What specificially? It seems pretty even handed to me since most of the comments aren't negative. The battery died, is there some bias in reporting that? As widely reported, it uses buttons instead of a wheel - personally that sounds pretty bad, do you really think that's not a disadvantage? And there were specifics listed about the horizontal/vertical layout of menus.
This article seems like way more fact than opinion, whining about it seems lazy, fanboyist, and biased, and tries hard to make the Zune better than what it already is.
What specificially? It seems pretty even handed to me since most of the comments aren't negative. The battery died, is there some bias in reporting that? As widely reported, it uses buttons instead of a wheel - personally that sounds pretty bad, do you really think that's not a disadvantage? And there were specifics listed about the horizontal/vertical layout of menus.
This article seems like way more fact than opinion, whining about it seems lazy, fanboyist, and biased, and tries hard to make the Zune better than what it already is.
Well, quite honestly, if I wanted to make a fair review I would first and foremost make sure I have enough battery life to conduct all the tests and then report the amount of time the battery lasted. Kind of like iLounge reviews where they tell you know long can you expect a full iPod charge to last. But saying "oh, the battery went out. can't do much about it" I know they may have not had a Zune unit for a long while, but just sounds lazy.
This just in as well: Apple will up the ante on the engraving of iPods in response to the ingenius, almost scintillating brilliance of "Hello from Seattle":
.......
how do you come up with this stuff? hehehe. so funny.
one of my favorite iPod engravings is "this device is a bomb" and "leave me here. save my ipod"
Yeah, but was there any year at all where Apple was seen as having a stronghold? Fine, before the PC market existed*as a market at all, obviously Apple virtually owned it, but that's a little silly.
Arguments such as "If Apple had licensed the Macintosh, they would have retained their high market share" are made a lot, but the Macintosh never had much market share to begin with. Arguments such as "If the Macintosh hadn't competed with Apple's own Apple II, which was completely incompatible, Apple could have transitioned the Apple II's success over to the Macintosh" are a lot more intelligent. But even the Apple II, before the Macintosh was introduced, did not, to my knowledge, have a market share anywhere close to even being a majority, let alone a dominant one.
So my original point was, and still is: Apple was never at this point before. The iPod's success is not "history repeating itself", because, while certainly successful, the Apple II never had such an extremely huge market share. So to argue that they're repeating past mistakes is doubly false, because, not only do we know nothing about their strategy regarding Zune (and analyzing it only starts becoming useful once the Zune actually ships), but there is no "repetition" at all.
Arguably, Apple should have added some sort of compatibility layer to the Macintosh, or perhaps done what they later did with the IIgs. Instead, they took the huge risk (and didn't do particularly well at it) of creating a wholly new, incompatible, closed system.
The iPod is yet another wholly new, incompatible and closed system, but it's hugely successful. That's quite a difference.
So what about the education market? At one time, Apple owned that, now it seems like it's mainly Dell. Apple tried for the business market, but other than the Lisa, they seemed not to make much of a go at it.
Apple does well at marketing Macbooks and iPods, and to the graphical market. Probably 1/4 of every laptop I see is an Apple, and the white earbuds are hard to miss. As for the Zune, I saw a video demo of one, and liked the GUI, it was clean and a bit different from the rest of the DAP's, If Microsoft can get the player/PC integration down, like iTunes/iPod, then many aspects are equal - the software synchronization with iTunes is key for me, but sometimes I wish the iPod did a bit more, and offered more customization. There is iPodWizard, but it is awfully convoluted. Screw the iPod games, Apple should offer iPod themes though ITMS.
Except now instead of getting beat up you won't hook up with the chick eyeing you on the subway.
Isn't getting a Zune going to be the adolescent/young adult equivalent of getting a pair of Nyke's or Adeedas's, since your parents tried to save money by trying to convince you that it's actually cooler to be different than all those other "non-cool" kids wearing real Nike's and Adidas's.
Except now instead of getting beat up you won't hook up with the chick eyeing you on the subway.
only they wouldn't be saving money....
which means a normal parent will see an ipod, have an ipod commercial/sign/billboard pop up in their mind, and buy that. They wouldn't buy their kid a Zune unless s/he asked for one, was cheaper, or was recently advertised/suggested to them.