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from the have-you-tried-programming-on-a-tablet? dept.
Christopher Mims writes at the WSJ that Apple like all ambitious companies occasionally strays from its focus. According to Mims the iPhone is just coming into its prime, the iPad is an immature platform and the iWatch is in its infancy, yet Apple continues to invest in one-of-a-kind feats of engineering like the Mac Pro, which ships in volumes that are a rounding error on pretty much everything else Apple makes. "Something's got to give," writes Mims. "Showpieces like iMacs with screens that have more pixels than any PC ever (and four times the average selling price of a PC) are impressive, but what is Apple trying to prove? Is it really a good idea for Apple to continue to put resources against being king of a last-century technology?"
According to Mims the world's best tech companies can be the best at two things at once, maybe three and even a company as mighty as Apple gets to be the best at only a handful of things. "In a world in which the cloud is increasingly the hub of everything individuals and businesses do, and our mobile devices its primary avatar, what on Earth is Apple doing running victory laps around a dying PC industry? Personally, I'd rather see Apple push the envelope on what's next."
takyon: Paywall buster.
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mendax on Wednesday July 01 2015, @09:49AM
My first experience with a Mac was in 1984 or thereabouts when the university I was going to acquired two of the original 128k Macs. The screens were small, only black and white, the thing took forever to boot and you could only write eight pages or so of a MacWrite document before you ran out of memory. Yet, it was an extraordinary device, with software that was absolutely amazing for the time. But I was a mainframe guy at the time, wrote my term papers and essays in a text editor, and printed them out on the computer center line printer loaded with letter-sized white paper. I was comfortable and competent in the command-line world and preferred it. When I got my first PC, I generally used DOS instead of the GeoWorks GUI that came with it. But I eventually graduated to Windows 3.1, and even though I started to have some more experience with Macs when I took a job in grad school, I preferred working in the Windows world. When Windows 95 came out I was flabbergasted at just how good it was. Sure, it had some problems and deficiencies but compared to what Apple was producing it was obviously superior. I still think that Windows 95 was perhaps the greatest piece of software engineering in history given what Microsoft had to overcome to make it work.
Fast forward to about 2000. Windows 2000 was out and, while it was better than Windows NT, I found that it and PCs were quite uninspiring. About a year later I decided to bite the bullet and take a chance on an iMac and the relatively new Mac OS X. I spent what I thought was a small fortune and bought a second-generation iMac, one of those things with the monitor on a pedestal sticking out what looked like half of a white bowling ball. It was weird, it was bold, but it was beautiful and it worked splendidly. MacOS was equally beautiful. It was stable, it was relatively easy to use, and it worked well for me.
Now, let's move on to the present. I'm writing this using a new iMac, my fourth. I bought it for the same reason why I bought the last three. The design was bold, the OS was easy to use, and it did what I needed well enough. Yes, it was overpriced—all Apple products are overpriced—but I am convinced that you generally get what you pay for. If this were not the case I could not see so many Mac laptops at Starbucks in front of their coffee-swilling patrons.
I have an HP laptop which runs Windows 8.1. I almost never use it and I admit I hate it, both because it has Windows on it and because HP botched its design. I have yet to see Apple botch the design of anything in the hardware realm its sold since the late Steve Jobs took over the running of the company. Sure, it has had software problems (e.g., Mac OS "Yosemite" is a performance dog even on my new and speedy iMac—Linux on my old 6.5-year-old iMac is far more responsive) but its hardware is usually first rate (in my opinion).
People buy Macs because they are well-designed, well thought-out, and have software that usually is equally well-engineered. As long as people want to buy them, Apple will have no problem selling them.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:59AM
Clearly you've never experienced OS/2 Warp.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:36PM
You lost me there. Windows 95 was a major step back from Windows NT. All it had was that it looked a little better. Instead it doomed the PC to years of layered-on-dos disaster until it was fixed with Windows 2000. Win2k, with all it's bulk, might be worthy of that designation.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday July 01 2015, @05:05PM
I think he is referring to Microsoft's move from DOS/Win 3.x to a graphical OS.
The road to NT was a long one that was carefully planned out. Even though NT was technically superior to Windows 95/98/Me, Microsoft could not tell an entire industry running on DOS/Win3.x to suddenly switch. If Windows NT was their only offering as a successor to DOS/Win 3.x and lacked compatibility, it almost certainly would have flopped.
So they developed a common UI and API, Win32, that would work on both a hybrid DOS/32bit OS (Win 95) and their fancy 32bit hybrid NT kernel (NT 4.0). So as time progressed, more and more Win32 software was developed which was (almost) able to run on either OS architecture. Eventually win32 displaced DOS and Win 3.x. to the point where MS could safely switch to NT without disrupting the software ecosystem. That was around the time of Windows 2000 when they finally merged the Direct X multimedia ability of Win 9x into NT. Prior to 2k, NT had very limited direct X support making it unsuitable for PC gaming which was starting to really take off. But there were still two classes of OS: Consumer oriented 98/Me and the NT powered 2k which was aimed at commercial users. Finally MS released XP which bought NT to all users eliminating the legacy 9x code.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday July 01 2015, @08:04PM
I find it strange to be arguing for Microsoft here given how much I generally loathe their products but I must. While I agree with you that Windows NT was a superior operating system on the whole when compared to Windows 95, Windows NT required a computer with vastly more memory and was about as unfulfilling to use as Windows 3.1.
Windows 95 was very different. Under the hood, was not much different from Windows 3.1 where it mattered. It was essentially a 32-bit multitasking version of DOS (and pretty awful at that) which ran a GUI. The GUI was completely redesigned and far, far much easier and more intuitively easier to use than that of Windows 3.1. However, the graphics code that ran it was the same 16-bit code was was used with Windows 3.1. What made Windows 95 (and 98 and ME) very different from Windows NT was its support for plug and play, the idea that you can shut the machine, swap out hardware, and the operating system would not only detect the change but would identify what changed and look for a driver that would work. What was remarkable about this feature was not so much the difficulty in making that work was the fact that Microsoft had to test just about every conceivable hardware configuration from just about every manufacturer. It wasn't until the release of Windows 2000 that NT had advanced to this point.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Skittles on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:44PM
I've worked in support at several companies over the years and always loved to hear how awesome Apple hardware is from my users. Having actually worked on them on a daily basis I can say that they're *far* from perfect. Drink spills are the worst on Macs, the curved bottom panel holds the beer/curry/chicken soup/durian smoothie (yes, that happened. no, I didn't try to clean it) right against the motherboard. I know drain holes aren't pretty but they work wonders on laptops that have them. Even water spills that would normally be fine after 24 hours under a fan sometimes aren't repairable due to all the nooks and crannies where water can hide.
My favorite is how often the sata connector ribbon in the pre-retina Macbook Pro fails. Just look at how ridiculously over-engineered this thing is:
http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Cable-MacBook-Unibody/dp/B00456S0IO [amazon.com]
And who the fuck glues a battery into a laptop? But hey, as long as you're cool with your shiny hunk of aluminum becoming a paperweight when the soldered in RAM starts flipping bits on you then go for it. Also, this isn't a defense of your forlorned HP. They haven't made a product worth buying since the LaserJet 4 series was retired.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday July 01 2015, @03:37PM
I had my first experience with a Mac in college in 1987, got my own PC in 1990 but went DOS (DR-DOS) because I wanted a color screen for games. I actually liked GEO-Works for its word processor. During grad school I used Windows 3.1 on an early-ish laptop (486-sx with 16 shades of gray and a clip on trackball which I actually liked a lot). My first job after grad school was at a place which used Macs -- they sucked, were slow, crashed all the freakin time (late 90s, pre-OSX). At home I was still using 3.1 but was also struggling with Linux. By 2000 I was in a new job and using Windows there, not sure what (95, 98?), at home I got a new computer with Windows ME (!) but I was also getting proficient enough on Linux (Red Hat at the time) to be a dual booter. By 2003, I was 100% Linux. Then I got married in about 2005, and my wife wanted to be able to do a lot of the stuff Linux didn't do well, and I didn't really want Windows on my home network, so I got her an iBook. When I saw how awesome OSX was, I got myself a macbook. Then I switched over my whole small business to using macs on the frontend of things.
As for the quality of Apple hardware, I'm a cheapskate so I usually buy from the Apple's refurb store. I'm typing this out on a refurb machine I bought in 2009 for $1600ish. I have a new one I just bought (also refurb) for $1600 sitting here waiting for me to do a manual migration. The only reason I got the new computer was because Snow Leopard is end-of-lifed and Yosemite will murder this perfectly good but older laptop. Even so, this machine has only cost me $22.25 per month and I could sell it for $300 to 400 (which would bring that down to about $17.50/mo), and it has helped me earn tons of money. It is one the absolute least expensive things about my business, and at the same time, one of the most valuable tools. It is true that I could do my work on $300 windows laptop, but I'd probably have to replace that every two to three years -- roughly $10/mo. Doing that would save $7.50/mo over the cost of my mac. That's 1.5 lattes or one meal at McDonalds. It's such a small amount of money, it's irrelevant, and when compared to the hit or miss nature of cheap crappy laptops, which might be reliable or might not, going with a craptop is penny wise and pound foolish.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:37PM
Oh, yes! You have reminded me. I did use its word processor. It worked quite well. However, at that time I was out of school and therefore when I needed to write something I generally did it by hand or in a text editor. Incidentally, I still prefer to write things in longhand 25 years since that time.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday July 01 2015, @09:08PM
For whatever reason, I grip my pens or pencils like I'm trying to choke them to death. If couldn't have used a keyboard most my entire life, I'd have a totally useless writing hand by now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by enigma32 on Wednesday July 01 2015, @05:07PM
I'm pretty sure the experience varies from person to person.
Personally, when I sit down at a mac, I find it impossible to get anything done because the UI doesn't work the way I want it to and I can't tweak it to work as such. (It's impossible. I've really, really tried.)
My macbook air works great for hangouts in Chrome, but when I try to do anything with xcode I deal with error messages and crashes.
For these sorts of reasons I've bought exclusively Sony laptops for over a decade and installed linux on them.
The sony machines I've had have been beautiful (always a step *above* apple in design) and extremely resilient despite abuse. Linux, of course, always just works as long as the hardware is properly supported on the initial install-- something I find increasingly more common now.
You'll find that a fair amount of Apple's design details originated with Sony-- Chiclet keys being the biggest example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiclet_keyboard).
I can't find a link right now, but I remember reading an article about a partnership between Apple and Sony at some point where Sony provided much-needed advice to Apple about manufacturing for the consumer space. Wish I could find that.
At any rate, Apple may be three steps ahead of most PC manufacturers, but their UI is a toy and they were always behind Sony in product design. (You should my Air next to my VAIO. It's appalling.)
Too bad they won the war; I'm holding on to my last VAIO laptop until it completely falls apart, since nobody in the PC industry stepped in to fill the void when Sony dropped out.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:03PM
System76? I've never used one but their computers do look nice and are reputably well made.
As for chicklet keyboards, I've gotten used to them, but my TRS-80 Color Computer (16 extended color basic) had those back in the mid 80s, though it was much harder to type on than the current chicklet systems.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:05PM
preview dammit. That was a "16k extended color basic" version. Like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer#/media/File:TRS-80_Color_Computer_1_front_right.jpg [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:34PM
Xcode is an exception to what I wrote about Apple software. Its authors must be in league with Satan (or Microsoft's current Windows team) to produce such awful software. Over the years I've tried to use it and given up on ever being productive. Fortunately, I've never developed stuff for Mac OSes exclusively, so having to use Xcode was never a requirement. I do have it installed on my new iMac, but only because it's the fastest way to get the command-line GNU compilers and runtime libraries so I can be productive in other ways.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.