What's Next At Apple 368
pinqkandi writes "Business 2.0 is running a fascinating article on what might be coming up in Apple's future. Besides speculation, some interesting statistics are included, such as how the iPod should create equal revenue to the Mac for Apple in 2006, if not surpassing it. A good read for the Apple lover or loather."
Apple and Orange (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Apple and Orange (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apple and Orange (Score:2)
EU? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:EU? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:EU? (Score:4, Interesting)
Once Apple makes a significant marketshare in the European Union, Microsoft won't be a monopoly anymore.
The cheapest PowerBook on the US site it's $1499. On the Dutch version of the same site is €1519. That's living in the past, the dollar is €0.77 or thereabouts now. As long as they don't change that, they'll never become big here (and they're practically non-existant as it is, in the last 10 years I've met exactly 1 person owning a mac, the only time I ever saw one).
In short, fat chance.
Re:EU? (Score:2, Insightful)
Given that Apple themselves are currently the subject of anti-trust proceedings in the EU, I wouldn't be so sure.
They're being investigated over allegations of price-fixing in the iTunes store: they're charging 30% more per track in continental Europe than the USA, and 50% more in Britain.
Let's just say this is not a company I'm eager to business with. I'll consid
Re:EU? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it has something to do with the UK not using the Euro like everyone else.
Maybe it is because of the higher cost of running a different store for each country.
If you think the price is to high the don't use it. There are plenty of M$ alternatives. Take your pick.
Re:EU? (Score:3, Funny)
This has been proven in a court of law of multiple continents.
Re:EU? (Score:3)
The decision by the ECJ in Virgin v BA pegged an undertaking capable of being subject to the anti-competition laws of Articles 81 and 82 at 37% marketshare. That was in the Aerospace industry where there are about as many key players as in Tech.
Irrespective of any (here's hoping) mass Apple success, Microsoft will still be of requisite size to be regarded as being in a dominant position at law.
PVR is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PVR is... (Score:2, Interesting)
The Mac Mini would be perfect... They could throw in a beefy 400GB Seagate hard drive... 7200 RPM of course. Maybe 512~1024MB of RAM and it'd be set.
Re:PVR is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:PVR is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:PVR is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:PVR is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:PVR is... (Score:2)
Built-in wireless keyboard and mouse??? kinda defeats the purpose methinks.
Re:PVR is... (Score:2)
Re:PVR is... (Score:3)
I see a market niche for a new type of NAS, that doesn't need 100% reliability, and only needs to be fast enough to stream a movie to one device, but should have tons of storage. Could we make cheap, slow, huge hard drives for such a device?
Is piracy a barrier? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is piracy a barrier? (Score:5, Insightful)
That must be why iPods are never used for playing pirated music.
Re:Is piracy a barrier? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't steal? (Score:2)
Or were you mistyping "don't listen to metal"
Re:Is piracy a barrier? (Score:5, Insightful)
That must be because iPods are the most popular digital music players for accessing the most popular "legal" digital music store.
Re:Mine's all legal! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is piracy a barrier? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:PVR is... (Score:5, Informative)
Mac Mini? (Score:2)
Duplicate! (Score:5, Funny)
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/
It's true, Slashdot has turned into another Apple rumour site.
Re:Duplicate! (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Duplicate! (Score:2, Funny)
Not sure if the "First Post!" guys would appretiate it though...
Re:Duplicate! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually my friend just got a Mac, his first, and he actually likes the mac bashers. Thanks to them he is forced to learn about his computer because they constantly want him to look like a sub-tech with his Mac by asking rethorical questions and passing comments like the one in the parent, because he wants to answer those questions, because he wants to know if what they told him is true and he actually has been had and bought the wrong machine. Each and every time he comes back and laugh at all the bullshit he is told and feels good about himself, he finally understands computers...
Re:Duplicate! (Score:2)
Re:Duplicate! (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously guys, shut up already.
Now some mac fanboy's gonna come along and mod this down anyway, in fear that other
Re:Duplicate! (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a few anti-Apple people that I actually respect, and respect their reasons. For example, Lord Kano has made it clear that his dislike is personal, and that he feels that Apple screwed him over once-upon-a-time. I've teased him about the grudge, but the truth is, it's a perfectly valid grudge.
There is a knee jerk response from some Mac Defenders, you must admit. In a submission yesterday, Hacking Mac OS X [slashdot.org], there was a serious discussion on the shortcomings of the finder. Near as I can tell, most of those engaged in the discussion were Mac users, and those that weren't had at least had some exposure to Mac OS X. Still, there was one outraged Mac fan who accused another poster of never having used OS X. Of course, there was also the usual trolling by Mac bashers, but those really are easily recognizable and just as easy to dismiss.
What's next on /. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What's next on /. (Score:2)
Re:What's next on /. (Score:2)
Next for Apple? (Score:5, Funny)
Kinda like Slashdot [slashdot.org].
Re:Next for Apple? (Score:2)
Made up percentages? (Score:2, Interesting)
They seem completely overshot. For instance, they have iPhone down as 50%. Personally, I see this more as 5-10%.
Re:Made up percentages? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple makes some expensive stuff, and often overcharges, but they don't try and screw customers over anywhere near as hard as the cell phone carriers do.
Add in the fact that, in the US at least, almost all cell phone services are subscription or pay per use based. You spend a chunk of change up front for this phone with all these cool features, but then you have to pay a little extra for each one of those features you use every month. That goes totally against Apple's ease-of-use, integrated design philosophy.
the iTMS has some DRM restrictions on how you can use the songs you purchase, but it doesn't hold a candle to the cell phone crap. $1 for a song that you can put on multiple computers/iPods/CDs vs. a $3.50 midi ringtone of the same song that expires in 90 days? Good luck finding a quality compromise there.
Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
same in UK (Score:2)
Re:Advertising (Score:2)
Apple spent 20 years trying to tell people how great the Mac OS was. It's old hat. No one needs to be told anymore what Macs are like. I had a friend who recently upgraded to a new laptop. His old one was ancient. He knew all the things I did on my computer. He got another PC and constantly asks me how he can do what
Re:Advertising (Score:2)
Re:Advertising (Score:2)
They are doing this to get people to see them and say "what's that?" or get others to assume that is what all computers look like.
It's all about recognition. A newbie can pick the Mac out before a Dell or other plain PC.
Personally... (Score:5, Insightful)
A video iPod is completely plausible, especially if they bundle the xVid codec or some licensed variant of VLC with it - anime fanboys with money'll snap them right up to watch fansubs on the go (about 150MB an episode on average - take three or four series - at 26 episodes apiece - with you plus your tunes). The only concern might be battery life, and whether they would use a passive-matrix or active-matrix screen in addition to how the movies would get on there; presumably, iTunes would figure in, which would imply that it would eventually evolve into a video store in addition to a music venue.
This may not concern Apple directly, but especially in regards to yesterday's "World's Smallest Linux Box" story, with a few revisions to iPodLinux, it could be possible to use the iPod as a server (plug the Firewire cable into a Cisco switch; they have Firewire expansion cards). It would be interesting to see if Apple could develop software to turn the iPod into a NAS device as well, but an iPod server would just be a cool toy.
Re:Personally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, have you not ever heard of QuickTime? Your statement makes zero sense in the scheme of things.
If people want to watch TV shows so bad on the go, why haven't pocket TVs been more popular?
Re:Personally... (Score:2)
Re:Personally... (Score:4, Interesting)
Because pocket TV's have typically been limited to over-the-air VHF reception, and anyone who's ever owned a set of tabbit-ear TV antennae can tell you how hard it is to get a good signal even from a stationary device. Nevermind zooming across town on a city bus.
There is a nascent market for portable video players -- witness the marketing campaign for the PSP, the variety of battery-powered DVD players, toys such as VideoNow, etc.
The market will never be as large as the one for portable audio players, but it will be significant. I fully expect an "iPod video" to follow on the heels of the iPod photo in a year or two. It's simply the logical progression. (And obviously, it will use Quicktime's implementation of MPEG-4 over XviD.)
And like the iPod photo, Apple will not force you to buy features you don't want; audio-only iPod models will be around forever.
Re:Personally... (Score:2)
1) Apple has serious time and money invested in H.264. Why would they bundle the XVid codec?
2) Apple has no real interest in going after the "anime fanboys" who (illegally?) want to watch fansubs (I don't even know what that means). Apple sold 10 million+ iPods not by targeting elite niche markets with the iPod, but by making it simple and chic enough for the average person to want to use.
Slashotters tend to hold the belief that
Re:Personally... (Score:2)
This is what apple should be seriously considering. Unlike a mini it should have a normal, not laptop, disk drive. It should have an AGP slot and PCI slots. It should have PS2 connectors and more than two USB connectors. It doesnt have to be as powerful as a G5 (hell, they could get away with a g4), but if they really want to court the PC world, they have to do better than what the mini has
next up a new iApp (Score:4, Funny)
Re:next up a new iApp (Score:2)
WiPod (Score:5, Interesting)
The Wireless iPod is a certainty. I can't wait. Looks like Apple has filed patents for wireless podjacking support; sharing playlists over WiFi.
What's Next At Apple (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What's Next At Apple (Score:2, Informative)
Um.... [slashdot.org]
Tightening the DRM noose (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Tightening the DRM noose (Score:2, Insightful)
with people attacking their DRM constantly (psymusique, hymm, etc), they have no choice but to tighten it more and more. yes, they could "loosen" their control, but i honestly believe they were able to find harmony between DRM and users rights with what they have in iTunes.
the real way to stick it to them if you don't agree with DRM is not to use/buy their product. no one's forcing people to buy from iTunes or to even buy an iPod. yet, people bitch and moan about Apple's DRM. the mainstream music indus
Re:Tightening the DRM noose (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an interesting paradox I'm not sure the "hack to free the music" crowd has entirely thought through. You may feel that any DRM is too much DRM, and I respect that, but I may feel that a given DRM is livable enough for my purposes--like Apple's scheme for iTunes. I do own my music (unlike, say, Napster's subscription model), and I don't consider the restrictions on burning and sharing sufficiently onerous.
However, if you--in this case, "you" being "DVD Jon," or people with similar mindsets--decide that because you don't like that restriction, the proper response is not to simply avoid iTunes but to break iTunes' DRM, you put Apple in a position where they have to slap duct tape over the hole you've made. The chances are that the "duct tape" they're using makes their DRM scheme fractionally more restrictive. And if you keep at it, eventually Apple's countermeasures will leave me with a product which no longer meets my needs. You will at that point have forced me to either stop using the iTunes store, or to join you in the DRM arms race. Your attempts to "protect my freedom" will, from my point of view, have had the opposite effect.
I understand the philosophical objection to DRM, and I'd prefer it if the iTMS was closer to Magnatune (in both lack of restriction and choice of downloadable music formats). But I'm not convinced that monkeywrenching is the ideal response -- or ultimately, even a very good one.
Re:Tightening the DRM noose (Score:5, Insightful)
> 4.7.1 only allows streaming to 5 unique users per day,
> it used to support any 5 simultaniuse users.
Yes, you are right - you can thank DVD Jon, and others, for that, for a) complaining about DRM (yet doing absolutely NOTHING about Windows DRM), and b) complaining that them hacking it is Apple's fault, for making it too easy.
Please, lay blame where it belongs, and it's not at Apple's feet!
Re:Tightening the DRM noose (Score:2, Insightful)
You are nuts. Sorry but it had to be said
a) complaining about DRM (yet doing absolutely NOTHING about Windows DRM),
WMV10 DRM is cracked. You need a valid license to remove the encryption but afaik it's the same with iTMS
and b) complaining that them hacking it is Apple's fault, for making it too easy. ...and then you're worried that Apple is forced to tighten their DRM (yet, still maintaining it as open for the consumer as they can)
Wow, by that measure... (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact what other players do let you share? They are all terrible!
Ban media players now!
Why vPod won't succeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Whereas large numbers of people can imagine themselves using an iPod everyday and at many times of day, much fewer people can see themselves using a vPod and for much fewer hours per day.
I would not mind buying music videos... (Score:2)
Some videos actually make the music make more sense, then again a few make your head shake in bewilderment too.
As for when to watch the video and such... riding a stationary bike (I already read while I use one) to using a treadmill.
You could also expand the education impact by using vidoes as well. From pay for courses off the net to having sc
iGame (Score:2)
I am intereszted in developing games on the platform.
It's a dup but... (Score:4, Informative)
Games? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully and probably, I am not the only person contacted by Apple's HR for job "feeler" ("Do you want to work for Apple?").
Because I only post my resume's on Gamasutra, I'm speculating that Apple is beginning to search for programmers and developers specific to games.
Could Apple be jumping onto the bandwagon towards game softwares?
Re:Games? (Score:4, Interesting)
There were a couple of recent stories on the rumor sites about Apple looking to hire engineers to improve their OpenGL support, with speculation that this could be in response to Doom 3's relatively poor performance on OS X.
As paraphrased from my post in the last thread... (Score:4, Funny)
Why Apple users are so loyal... (Score:3, Interesting)
apple and sony (Score:2)
Re:apple and sony (Score:2, Interesting)
What apple should do next... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not having the ITMS in australia is almost certainly hurting iPod sales since people are more inclined to buy an MP3 player that works with the australian music services (which as far as I am aware all use Windows Media DRM) instead of an iPod which doesnt play any music you can legally buy from an online music store in australia.
If they can offer the ITMS to the US, the UK and all the other countries where it is offered, what is so !@#$#@!@# hard about offering it to us aussies?
Next... (Score:2, Funny)
Next year - PlayStation 3 and Blue-Ray (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Next year - PlayStation 3 and Blue-Ray (Score:3, Insightful)
Now. . . If Apple were to produce something like a Mac Mini that had PS3 hardware built-in and used the PS3's GPU as its one-and-only display system, then the economics might add up. It could be manufactured cheaply.
Problem
Re:Next year - PlayStation 3 and Blue-Ray (Score:2)
I guarantee that Sony won't make that mistake. What do you think BluRay is afterall?
Bryan
Re:Next year - PlayStation 3 and Blue-Ray (Score:2)
Also remember, we're talking about a computer here. So even if I were to grudgingly accept that interlace is acceptable on a TV set, surely we can all agree that you don't want it on your computer monitor. (Remember people making fun of Amiga "jitters" back in the 1980s?)
Re:Next year - PlayStation 3 and Blue-Ray (Score:2)
The key to the iPod success is capacity (Score:3, Insightful)
Once you start having to delete songs to make room for other songs, you're into the realm of trying to predict what you'll want to listen to later. It's a much better user experience to just have it all with you. The interface and ID is nice, but the capacity is what really makes it convenient.
To replicate that in video is the next frontier. Jobs would need to convince the industry to allow him to build a device that decodes CSS and allows storage of movies on a HD. Then he would need to source huge-capacity drives at very low prices. Then he would need to squeeze it all into a stereo-rack-size component with great ID and a clean interface.
Imagine the convenience of having all your DVDs available at the touch of a button whenever you sit down on your couch. Even better, imagine having a nice clean easy-to-use interface to download DVDs (through the iTMS).
He is in a very good position to do it. He has a good record of protecting DRM for the music industry (or at least trying hard to). He is already a movie industry player. And he runs a studio, giving him a sympathetic connection to other studio heads trying to protect their movies. They're all in it together--he's one they can trust.
Downloading movies will be a much harder deal for several reasons. Obviously there is a bandwidth issue. But possibly worse, it is in direct competition with the on-demand services that many TV service providers are rolling out. Since cable modems outnumber DSL 2 to 1, a large portion of the delivery network would be under the control of what is essentially a competitor to the video iTMS. Plus, many DSL providers have long-running plans to offer TV over DSL. And Jobs does not have any existing or special relationships with network service providers. He would likely need to develop them to make it work.
While I don't know if it'll be next, (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple should have a QtVS (Quicktime Video Store) where you can browse through thousands of films, TV shows, recorded speeches, documentaries, and videos. You could preview them much like you can with the iTMS and its music selections. Then, for a price comparable to a DVD, you could download these videos and burn your own DVDs. And now with H.264 coming in full force during the next few months, these videos could have very high quality with rather small file sizes.
In the next decade, the movie industry is going to find itself in the same position as the music industry was a few years ago, and it will have to change and adapt. Apple should be ready, and be able to offer a viable solution.
Think Secret (Score:2, Interesting)
Open letter to Steve Jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
Last week had two events of significance for me. One was the digitizer on my Palm Tungsten T died and the other was the Sony PSP was released. The problem is that I don't want either of them. There is nothing that I want to replace my TT with and I don't want a PSP.
What I want is the Apple Newton II!
Here is my recipe for the new Newton:
One Tapwave Zodiac (gaming but Palm compatability)
One PSP (screen aspect ratio and quality, build quality, 802.11/USB, and a (soon) real game library)
one Zaurus SL-C3000 (modern CPU hardware, form factor with keyboard and touchscreen (twistable), open source OS (linux or xBSD), hard drive, CF slots), real I/O
Add iPod mini functionality and storage >= 10Gb
Add Newton HWR(inkwell?) and general Newton goodness
Add replacable AA batteries that will last a FULL day so I'm never stuck
Vendor support of an active development community
MS Outlook sync for PDA functions (calendar and contacts) (my job requires it, what can I say....)
Stir to make it all cool and integrated and still be work meeting/date/wife safe
I would pay $699 tomorrow for all of this and even pay $50 a year for a software subscription for the basics.
What do you say Steve, can I have one?
Bad idea (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Open letter to Steve Jobs (Score:3, Funny)
There next morning, there was a small black cube resembling in size the 2001 obelisk sized like the stonehenge in Spinal Tap.
I tried airsnort but the cube just sits there... Any suggestions?
What's NeXT at Apple? (Score:5, Funny)
Why Apple will never make a Portable Video Player (Score:4, Interesting)
...because they're too intelligent to do so, and here's why:
As a composer, as much as I hate to admit it: for most people, music is no more than a background to their day to day lives. If you think about it, you could, feasibly, listen to music about 80% of your waking life, and still remain productive in most individual activities (most jobs, driving, walking/exercising). Most humans only need their hearing for communication, but solitary activity--which takes up most people's time--requires little to no communication, meaning the aural senses are free to do other things, like listen to music. However, most tasks, individual or cooperative, require constant usage of the visual senses, making video far less attractive as a background activity while doing other things. Think about your day to day life, how much time, do you think, you could spend, while not at home or at a computer, watching video? It requires a time in which both the visual or auditory senses are free. For a huge majority of people, that period of time is extremely small. The only market for a portable video player is for those that use mass transit, this may seem substantial in some cities, but it's still a very small percentage of the American population. Also consider that the smallest unit of video is 30 minutes, so a video player is only reasonable for a person who can find time on the go for 30 minutes or more of visual distraction. People do not have to change their day to day routines for portable audio, but they would have to "find time" for portable video.
Apple have always seen themselves as a champion of the common people, in a similar fashion to Ford Motor Company when it first began. Their original intention was to create a computer which everyone (at least a large majority of people) could use... their only mistake (as opposed to Henry Ford's success) was that they didn't create a computer which everyone could afford. Apple have never been, and never will be, intentionally a provider of hardware products for niche markets. The iPod built on a mainstream market that was already there: portable audio, something that's been around since Sony's "Walkman" in the early 80s. There is to date, no mainstream market for portable video, and there isn't nearly enough public outcry to create one.
The only mainstream market for portable entertainment devices other than purely auditory hardware is video games. The unit of measurement in playing a video game is one level, usually around 2-4 minutes tops for most portable games, a chunk of time that's much more manageable while on the go. Also, consider that a huge majority of school age children are either driven or take a bus to school every morning, so having a portable video game unit aimed at children has a huge market. Playing games is also, obviously, an offshoot of solitary play, something that children have always done on busses, or when they have free time. Being entertained, however, is not something that children have done on a regular basis while away from a house. Even so, don't expect Apple to get in on the portable video game market any time soon. Nintendo's Gameboy Advance SP is already the iPod of the industry, and arguably does everything that it needs to in a simplistic and portable form which seems uncannily similar to Apple's line of development. This is also the same reason why I believe, without question, that the Sony PSP will fail as a mainstream device, it does far more and is far more complicated than the average child (the bulk of the market) has use for during transit, but that's another topic.
To sum things up, the only way Apple will ever make anything close to a portable video device is that in the next year or two they will undoubtedly add video support to the iPod Photo. Like video confrencing in iChat, it will be a gimmick, and no one will ever use it, but it won't matter anyway because that isn't the reason people buy an iPod in the first place.
Re:Top 5 : What's Next At Apple (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, please. Smugness 2.0 was out ages ago. Followed by Smugness X, Smugness '04, and more recently Smugness HD. You really should try to keep up.
Re:Top 5 : What's Next At Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
However, your point 3 take issue with do I:
3. Continuing victory of Form Over Function
On the contrary, there is a tremendous depth of functionality that I think we're only scratching the surface of with macs, that isn't even available on PCs.
Example: Applescript and iTunes.
Most OS X apps are to some extent scriptable, with every new release of iTunes its become more and more scriptable. I really do miss not having that degree of control over my music that I have at home. Such as being able to skip the long rambling monologue the 'artist' decided to record at the end of my favourite music track, or being able to tell it to play at a lower volume if I kick the script off after 10pm but before 6am.
I'm on holiday and I've recently had the 'privilege' of using a 'low end' PC (1+ Ghz) with both Linux off a CD (two different flavours of Knoppix), and XP. The winner for speed of browsing was DarnSmallLinux with Firefox...
But neither of them holds a candle to my 1Ghz eMac at home. And the reason isn't how pretty they are, or how fast they are (though OS X beats the undead crap out of both of them on that count), but rather the reason is that OS X provides a system wide scripting language.
Now I don't know if one or two M$ apps have their own scripting languages, I do remember programming the different flavours of VB for Applications (of which VB for Excel was hands down the best until they tried to make VBA more consistent, and hobbled it with a whole bunch of horrible syntax from Access' VBA).
And Linux being Linux, I suspect that each app has not just one, but *ten* different scripting languages! (But wait, there's more! Send no money now and you'll receive a full set of Ubuntu steak knives at no extra cost!) The problem is that they will be a different ten for the next app, and the next app.
Whereas with OS X because its the same scripting language across the apps, you can do a lot of funky things.
Also, although it looks like a 'form' thing, the massive amount of keyboard shortcuts, with an unusually high degree of consistency across all apps... is *actually* a 'function' thing. Why? Because some of those things which are obviously to do with 'form' speed you up... and increases in speed means higher productivity, and productivity is definitely a functionality thing.
I guess there is a high degree of developer B&D required to make it like that across most of the apps. XCode and Interface Builder help a lot though, firstly by providing you with a lot of that up front anyway, and you can enable most of the common stuff simply by control dragging from the menu item to the first responder and viola! just pick the appropriate method from first responder and it does what you'd expect.
You may think I'm a rabid Mac fan, but quite the opposite, I'm a raving Java fan, and for years I've believed that the operating system is (or should be) irrelevant.
Ironically, Java suffers from the same problem that Linux does when it comes to scripting - everybody and their dog have their own different ideas about how this should be done, so you end up with 50 squillion different implementations, most of which are utterly incompatible with each other.
As an aside, DarnSmallLinux was a lot nicer to work with than my previous experiences with Linux, which had all been excruciatingly painful. The thing which I most appreciated was that it 'just worked' out of the box (well, cd in this case). Sure some things didn't work very well (egs apps crashing after coming back from the screen saver kicking in) - so I wouldn't use it as a main system, but over all I was impressed with it (compared to the horrible experiences with RH 7 et al).
As for the Safari vs Firefox debate - I think Safari clearly wins on one point, if no other... that it is scriptable, and that scripting language is the one I can also use to script iTunes.
Re:Top 5 : What's Next At Apple (Score:2)
As a recent "switcher", what attracted me to the deviant lifestyle is the fact that the form is designed around the function in many Apple hardware and software products. This makes using a Mac (or an iPod) an enjoyable experience.
Re:Top 5 : What's Next At Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just so stunningly wrong. The secret of Apples success is that they are devoted to the proposition that Form FOLLOWS function.
Whether form is considered or not by the person producing it technology products HAVE form. By NOT thinking about it at all most tech companies produce forms that don't relate well to function, get in the way or hide function. Certainly they don't produce forms that enhance function in any way. Ironically by ignoring form altogether they produce products that put "form over function"
On the few occasions that they consider form at all they think of it as something decorative, divorced from function and just make things worse.
An example: Look at Microsoft's approach to icons compared to Apple's. Apple popularized the GUI, and the use of icons. They thought about function first and then thought about forms to access those functions. They used icons where it made sense. I'm convinced that Microsoft looked at that success and without understanding it AT ALL decided to emulate it. But to Microsoft it boiled down to: "icons are pretty" and "I hear they make computers easier". As a result of that "thinking" they made EVERYTHING an icon. Rows upon rows of completely meaningless icons that don't help anything and make finding the function you seek an exercise in frustration. THAT is form over function, people just fail to recognize it as such because it manages to be UGLY as well.
Re:Top 5 : What's Next At Apple (Score:2, Funny)
Clearly "slavering fanboy devotion" should have been #1.
And mind your language, or you'll look like a juvenile little fanboy in the midst of throwing all his toys out of the pram.
Re:Top 5 : What's Next At Apple (Score:2)
I realise perhaps you were joking , but look at it from an apple Hardware users point of view
I use apple hardware and im no fanboi(im a unix fan though) , i love the products quality and design . I myself felt a bit offended by what you had to say.
Do you know why , well i have invested a great deal of money into Apple hardware not to mention time in learnings the system , you just basicaly said i had wasted my money and also called me a slavering
Re:Top 5 : What's Next At Apple (Score:2)
Why, the iPunch boxing gloves for fanboys, of course.
Re:Top 5 : What's Next At Apple (Score:5, Funny)
Oooh! I know: most of us wouldn't stick our cocks in a fanboy?
What do I win?
Re:Top 5 : What's Next At Apple (Score:3, Funny)
A one-button mouse!
Re:How about... (Score:2)