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Apple's Leopard Strategy to Kill Microsoft and Dell? 661

Posted by CowboyNeal from the aiming-high dept.
RX8 writes "A Digital Trends article suggests that Apple's Leopard agenda is to get Windows users to use Apple hardware then convert them to the Apple camp and that Apple will also be directly targeting Dell by offering a better experience when it comes to media and related tasks. Lastly, they suggest that Steve Jobs held back on showing more Leopard features so people would not get too excited and stop buying in 2006. 'If you get too excited about what is supposed to be an incredibly amazing product you simply won't buy a new Apple this year.'"
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Apple's Leopard Strategy to Kill Microsoft and Dell? More

Apple's Leopard Strategy to Kill Microsoft and Dell?

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  • Why Apple will never kill Dell (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Silverlancer ( 786390 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @09:34AM (#15894113)
    Price.

    People buy Dells because they are cheap, and they work.

    They're not particularly good computers, but they do the job.

    They're not even in the same market: Apple isn't competing with Dell's primary market to begin with.

    • Missed the Memo (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @09:40AM (#15894131)
      Apparently, you missed it. Apple's new Mac Pro is cheaper than a comparatively configured Dell workstation machine.

      But, on the overall, I agree; Apple's not fighting for the bottom dollar, Apple's positioned themselves as just a tad bit more expensive than the baselines from the Big Three, but with an enormous amount of extra features that make it that "bang for the buck". That factor alone could be considered a part of the "pricing war"; for all you get with an Apple computer, it'd take you not only longer to find a way to configure a competitive machine, but it's unlikely you could do it for cheaper without a ton of rebates, mail in coupons, etc.

      So really, it is the price. Apple won't beat Dell at the bottom, but in the middle and top, Apple's already got them beat.
      • Ok ok. A Mac fanboy.

        The Windows PC is a more or less open plattform. We often blame Microsoft but have to keep in mind that real mess is created by ugly third party drivers. Apple does not aim to support the whole hardware universe. It is a interoperability hell from a competition perspective and a interoperability paradise from a plattform perspective. Happiness in proprietary slavery?

        It is technically possible to port Mac OS X in order to be executable on general cheap Intel-Computers. But they do not wan

        • Re:Missed the Memo (Score:3, Insightful)

          by tb3 ( 313150 )
          We often blame Microsoft but have to keep in mind that real mess is created by ugly third party drivers.
          Oh, bullshit. I am so tired of this lame argument. Microsoft has been dictating to the hardware vendors for years. They have a very tight relationship with Intel, telling them exactly what features they want in the next round of chips.

          And what the hell do you think WinHEC [microsoft.com] is for? The DDKs are there for anyone who wants them.

          i think the hardware guys are doing the best with what they've got. And what they'

          • Re:Missed the Memo (Score:3, Informative)

            by edwdig ( 47888 )
            i think the hardware guys are doing the best with what they've got. And what they've got is Microsoft's buggy code to work with.

            I'm sure that's true to an extent. I remember downloading the the then current DirectX SDK 6 or 7 years ago and looking at the sample programs. I randomly picked a couple of them to try running and analyzing. Every one of them I tried failed to compile due to errors in the code. I ended up learning OpenGL instead because of that.

            After all, it's up to the OS to decide if a bad drive

        • Re:Missed the Memo (Score:4, Interesting)

          by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @10:38AM (#15894369)
          Your post is only slightly more funny than it is a troll. But, we'll go through the points.

          "The Windows PC is a more or less open plattform."

          That's gotta be one of the largest trolls I've ever heard in my entire life. Remember the whole "Anti-Trust" thing we went through years ago? Remember Microsoft being convicted of abusing their monopoly powers because of the fact that crucial parts of their platforms are closed? Ever tried to use NTFS on any other platform? Windows is as open as Aqua, and that is to say: NOT AT ALL.

          "We often blame Microsoft but have to keep in mind that real mess is created by ugly third party drivers. Apple does not aim to support the whole hardware universe."

          We often blame Microsoft for the same reason we should blame Microsoft; they sat back and let this happen to them. Microsoft could have been much more proactive from drivers from the start, including vendor certification and testing, and making their kernel hell to support devices. Things have gotten much better with a much better standardized OS (simply because it hasn't changed in 6 years), but the point remains.

          Apple doesn't need to support all of the hardware under the sun; they're Apple, they sell Computing Platforms, not Computers and Operating Systems alone. Furthermore, other companies write drivers for Apple's operating system, and it honestly couldn't be much easier, as the Operating System is extremely friendly to driver writers (and there's extensive documentation on it). And of course, at the end of things, supporting every piece of obscure hardware in the world isn't the end of the world. We've got Linux for that.

          "It is a interoperability hell from a competition perspective and a interoperability paradise from a plattform perspective. Happiness in proprietary slavery?"

          Hypocrite much? Microsoft pushes Trusted Computing on you, is threatening to lock users out of hardware space altogether, and you're going to talk to us about Open Standards and Proprietary Slavery?

          It is technically possible to port Mac OS X in order to be executable on general cheap Intel-Computers. But they do not want it. You know that GNUstep aimed at creating a runtime platform for Linux, Windows and Mac. So it should not be a problem for Apple to provide software which makes OS X apps run on Windows but they just don't want it.

          It's technically possible to make monkeys fly out of people's asses too. But most people don't want that either. Apple could port the rest of Carbon and all of Cocoa to Windows for supporting Mac OS X applications to run on Windows if they cared to, but they're not caring to because, even though there are plenty of applications being written, they want to re-enforce the behavior, not restrict it. Maybe in the future when we have applications on the Mac that we absolutely "cannot live without", would Apple consider it again. In fact, there's rumors going around that Apple's had the code for ages, and that they're just waiting for the right moment to spring it on us, and it makes perfect sense.

          What are the advantages of Apple? - a strong, often specialised, user community, esp. in media and design - many commercial applications esp. Video, graphic and Microsoft Office. Earlier IE was an argument. - a fame of good usability - some well designed applications such as iTunes - marketing

          You forgot "an extremely flexible API", a great set of Open Tools and Open Standards, and extremely reliable hardware/software integration. Then again you have the disadvantage of being limited to one segment of the market, but that really hasn't stopped any programmers nor purchasers. And now that you can run Windows on your Mac, there's a lot less reason not to buy it.

          On the long run I do not think Apple's Operating Systems will survive. If the Open source community chose GNUstep instead of GNOME Apple would be history or liberated today.

          On the long run, I don't think Microsoft's OS will survive, and I'm basing my point on the same crazy speculation as you are. That is, of course, if Apple got an injunction on Microsoft from selling Windows.
      • How many people do you know that use (or need) a Dell Precision or any other Xeon-based system? They are an incredibly niche type of computer that's of little significance to the overall market.

        Before anyone jumps on me, I do want the Mac Pro, I might even consider getting it. But I'm just saying that the Stevenote comparison to the Dell Precision 690 is bunk, or at best greatly overstates the difference because the machines aren't comparable.

        One thing to keep in mind is that Apple is offing a consumer vi

        • But I'm just saying that the Stevenote comparison to the Dell Precision 690 is bunk, or at best greatly overstates the difference because the machines aren't comparable.

          Que ?

          One thing to keep in mind is that Apple is offing a consumer video card in their base price vs. Dell's Quadro offering across the Precision line (a few hundred dollars minimum price difference)

          Interesting. When I go to the 'customise' page on Dell's website, the default card is a 128 MB Quadro, without even a DVI socket on it (it's

      • Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by sheldon ( 2322 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @02:24PM (#15895243)
        Wait a minute...

        Mac Pro
        dual 3.0Ghz Xeon woodcrests
        16 Gigs RAM
        nVidia Quadro FX 4500
        23" cinema display
        Mac OSX
        $11,648

        Dell Precision Workstation 690
        dual 3.0Ghz Xeon woodcrests
        16 Gigs RAM
        nVidia Quadro FX 4500
        24" widescreen flat panel
        Windows XP x64 edition
        $9,908

        Guess it depends on how you configure them, doesn't it?

    • Re:Why Apple will never kill Dell (Score:5, Insightful)

      by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @09:49AM (#15894167)

      They're not even in the same market: Apple isn't competing with Dell's primary market to begin with.

      Exactly. Every time new Apple hardware comes out, there's always someone griping about how they can get a Dell for much cheaper. That's like comparing a Toyota Corolla and an Acura TL on price alone. When you compare actual specifications, the two cars are not in the same league. A more fair assessment woule be a Lexus ES vs an Acura TL or a Honda Civic vs a Toyota Coroll"

      Imagine how silly this sounds:
      "Bah, XP Pro is $199? I can get XP Home for $99. XP Pro is way too pricey compared to XP Home."

      • Re:Why Apple will never kill Dell (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Speare ( 84249 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @10:14AM (#15894275) Homepage Journal
        Imagine how silly this sounds:
        "Bah, XP Pro is $199? I can get XP Home for $99. XP Pro is way too pricey compared to XP Home."

        Silly to you, but it happens EVERY day, among the group of people who don't really use their computers for everything a computer can do.

        Most people just want to download their AIM smileys and play the Sims. Why spend an extra hundred bucks for that? And why spend over $1000 for a machine that's cute, when it's just going to sit on the shitboard-n-glue Wal*Mart computadesk, get clogged with cat hair and peanut butter, when there are perfectly good smiley-downloading-Sims-playing computers with labels like Dell, Acer, or Daewoo for much less?

      • Re:Why Apple will never kill Dell (Score:4, Funny)

        by TomHandy ( 578620 ) <(tomhandy) (at) (gmail.com)> on Saturday August 12, 2006 @11:10AM (#15894518)
        As a Corolla owner, I don't appreciate the comparison between my car and a Dell...:)

    • Re:Why Apple will never kill Dell (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ltbarcly ( 398259 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @10:14AM (#15894279)
      Stop repeating the same crap people say every day. This 'conventional wisdom' that 'dells are good enough' is total crap.

      What constitutes 'good enough'? Did their previous computer completely break, or are thy looking for something better? Wasn't there previous computer 'good enough' for 90% of possible tasks?

      My 486 was 'good enough' to run netscape in 1995. It was 'good enough' to connect to the internet and run any programming language, windows 2000 or linux. However, I upgraded, not because my computer wasn't 'good enough' but because for X dollars I could get an (X+?) better experience, and since used the computer many hours a day, this improved my life. I wasn't looking for the least possible computer which would fit my set of requirements, I was looking for the computer that was the best computer I could get for the money I thought was reasonable to spend.

      People like to buy things which they will enjoy using, whether it's a Dell or an Apple. That is why people buy leather couches (who could possibly say that cloth isn't 'good enough') and wide screen plasma TV's. That's why my wife picked out the Ethan Allen furniture instead of the stuff at Walmart. Nobody can say that a walmart bookshelf isn't 'good enough' to hold books. It does the job exactly as well as any other bookshelf. I'm probably a little stupid for spending orders of magnitude more. But I'm not dirt poor (anymore) and when I look at the furniture I got I am much happier sitting next to it day after day than I would be watching walmart pressboard slowly melt and chip away.

      That is why I do much of my work on a powerbook. Sure, I could still be using my $1000 dollar Toshiba Satilite I bought in 2003. In every way it is 'good enough' to do everything I wanted to do. But it was hot, the screen resolution was low, and unlike my powerbook, it wasn't a joy to use. I find myself using the powerbook differently than I would have used the Toshiba (I gave it to a friend). I pull it out and am not as resistant to stopping work for short intervals. I can put it away without a lengthy shutdown procedure (close the lid and it is instantly in standby). I can pull it out and actually work from battery if I want to show someone something. It doesn't weight nearly as much, and it is far more durable.

      That doesn't even take OS-X into account. It is fantastic. I now have the power of Bash and a unix environment, with python built in as well, with the ease of use and multimedia integration of Windows (although it is really several times better than Windows). And everyone in my family can use it without being taught to do every little thing.

      I just 'sold' my mac mini to my father at a big loss (family discount?), but now he will actually be able to use his computer. He is the person you describe in your posting. His beige box duron I built for him before I knew better is 'good enough' to check email. He runs outlook express, and occasionally gets massive virus infections that i have to clean off (even though he has up to date virus scan). Despite this necessary expert help every few months, and the maintenance tasks it requires he considers it 'good enough'. He can't buy a digital camera because he wouldn't know how to set it up (he could easily do this with a mac) but that is 'good enough'. He can't accomplish anything on the computer besides pga.com and outlook express. That isn't good enough.

      When people say that a dell is 'good enough' what they are really saying is a dell is 'good enough for what I know how to do on a computer'. Since the vast majority of people have only used windows, they only know how to do things they can already do on windows. My father is going to be very happy with his Mac Mini, because now he can use a digital camera, now he can avoid massive virus infections, now he can manage his computer without constant outside assistance. So although the old computer wasn't very good for him at all, he thought it was ok, because it allowed him to act within the bounds of computer use as he understood him.

      Those bounds are about to be pushed way out.
    • People buy Dells because they are cheap, and they work.

      Sure, for a very lax definition of "work".

  • Doh! (Score:2, Funny)

    by sugapablo ( 600023 )
    And here I just purchased my first Mac (MacBook, black) and now you tell me it'll be obselete 2 weeks after I just bought it?

    Too bad the warranty doesn't cover that!
    • That's just amazing considering that most technologies are obsolete when you get it home and/or break the shrink wrap.
      • I know, I was thrilled that my new macbook still had some cool factor a month later! Although I do sometimes wish I could have waited for merom processors or had a reason to pay the extra $200 for the black paint job...Still, i love my new toy and other people drool over it
      • Apple tends to keep the same configurations for quite a while though.

    • Re:Doh! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by masklinn ( 823351 )

      You can upgrade your mac to the next version of OSX, and the one beyond that, etc etc...

      Granted it's definitely not free (Jaguar, Panther and Tiger were $129 each, 10.1 "Puma" was a free upgrade over 10.0 because the latter sucked ass so badly you could definitely not make people pay to finally have a working system), but you'll be able to upgrade without any problem (in fact, John Siracusa from Ars Technica tested OSX 10.0 to 10.3 on the same G3/400 machines that was originally running MacOS9, the system

  • This is a pretty stupid article... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by decadre ( 980513 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @09:43AM (#15894142)
    Of course apple is trying to convert users away.. However, why would they expect people to run Windows on Apple hardware? People switch to a Mac mostly for OSX (Altho the hardware is nice looking).. In addition, Dells market is very different from Apples, Dell is cheap to the masses, Apple is for the few...

    Apple has made forrays into the cheaper market (the mini) and Dell takes a poke at the top end (thier quad graphics solutions/purchase of Alienware), but they both have primarily differnt markets.

    People shouldn't assume that Apple want's to be the dominant controller, just because other companies think that way, there is much profit to be made by being select too (I would imagine Apples profit per unit sold is much greater then Dells, much like Nintendos standard "make a profit not control the market" stance grants them)
    • People want to run Windows on Apple hardware for the saftey net it provides. You can now buy a Mac and know that with either Boot Camp (free) or Parallels ($40) you can still run Windows applications if you need to. It's a perfect fit for someone who is thinking about switching but is worried that they may still need to run Windows applications from time to time.
    • I would imagine Apples profit per unit sold is much greater then Dells

      Dell still gets a pretty big profit margin though. From information in a recent financial report, something like 17%. Apple was around 25%.

  • 'If you get too excited about what is supposed to be an incredibly amazing product you simply won't buy a new Apple this year.'

    It really is very delicious Eve, I promise you, after you take a byte, well, just a nybble perhaps, you'll know everything about We . Then you'll know everything about good and evil and never be allowed into the garden again. We will make sure the angels put up some fiery walls so you cannot enter again.

    There are Apples and oranges and pears and pl

  • Enderle, briliant as ever (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12, 2006 @09:51AM (#15894177)
    So, uhm, Apple is, uhm, trying to compete, uhm, with, uhm,their competitors.

    Thanks a lot for this insightful article Mr. Enderle....

  • The author... (Score:5, Informative)

    by ratboot ( 721595 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @09:51AM (#15894178)
    Don't forget that the author is Rob Enderle, who tends to defend Microsoft and SCO with all his heart and bitches regularly on Apple and Linux... Do a quick Google on him...

  • Remember - This is Not Apple Speaking! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GaryPatterson ( 852699 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @09:51AM (#15894180)
    This is an article written by pundits, not Apple. If you disbelieve the premise, attack the pundits, not Apple.

    Like a lot of these types of articles, it's all supposition and theorising. Nothing concrete, just ideas. These are the same people who confidently predict the iPhone is coming soon, or for years predicted the imminent demise of Apple (any day now!) so they've got little to no credibility in my eyes.

  • More nonsense from Enderle (Score:5, Informative)

    by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot.stango@org> on Saturday August 12, 2006 @09:53AM (#15894189) Homepage Journal
    FTFA:
    "However, Steve Jobs is the master of being your best buddy while planning to stab you in the back. His biographies are filled with stories that do more than suggest that if he wants what you have, you'd better grab it and run for the hills."

    Please. History is littered with the corpses of companies with which Microsoft formed a "strategic partnership"-- The MS people stick around and play nice for a while, then one day the other company gets notified that Microsoft wants to go in another direction so the partnership is over. Then a couple months later Microsoft unveils a competing product and kills the company with which they partnered.

    The best historical example I can think of is Go Corp in the late 80s/early 90s-- Microsoft partnered with them, stole their stuff and created Pen Windows to crush them. You can get accounts of it from both sides if you read these two [amazon.com] books. [amazon.com] However, Microsoft is doing the exact same thing right now: They are desperate to take marketshare from iPod/iTunes. To that end, their partnerships to make portable players and sell music under the "PlaysForSure" moniker have been miserable failures-- so now, they are screwing their partners and rolling their own solution in-house, Zune, which is stated incompatible with all the PlaysForSure stuff.

    ~Philly
    • I know, but the article is presenting it as a compliment. As far as backstabbing your business partners, Steve Jobs has nothing on Bill Gates and I'm not even sure that he used a good example. I would suspect that HP simply realized that reselling the iPod wasn't helpful to their business.

  • No, no....not quite yet (Score:5, Funny)

    by gearmonger ( 672422 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @09:54AM (#15894195)
    Leopard isn't designed to kill Microsoft or Dell.

    That's the job of Puma.

    Then Ocelot will take out HP.

    Marmoset, once released, will end IBM.

    Finally, Mr. Whiskers Boddington (the name of Jobs' childhood cat) will make Google irrelevant.

    Then we'll get those full-screen iPods everyone's been wanting. wheeee

  • Don't bother reading article - it's by Enderle (Score:5, Informative)

    by CCW ( 125740 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @09:56AM (#15894203)
    Could you please flag articles by this unmitigated idiot so I don't wast the click. Reading his drivel is not worth anybodys time.

  • Consider the source... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pensacola Tiger ( 538962 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @10:00AM (#15894223)
    The article is written by none other than Rob (I wannabe John Dvorak) Enderle, the same clown who supported SCO's claims in their ongoing lawsuit against IBM. He now appears to be trying to get page hits by trolling the user communities of both Microsoft and Apple with outlandish opinions.

    The whole idea that Apple could 'kill' Microsoft or Dell is too far-fetched to even consider. The only way either company could die is by suicide.
  • Most users simply hate changes on their system or the way the work - so they will stick to what they have known for years. XP and Office will do the trick for most, so will a 'normal' laptop from 'traditional' PC vendors.

    A dual boot option would confuse most users and create unnecessary work / something new to understand. Tech people don't seem to understand that Mr. or Ms. Office just wants her work done - and they don't give a damn about fancy designs, Mac OS or any new geekery.

  • Two problems:

    (1) I don't want to buy a 32-bit processor. Yes, I know that 32-bit is good enough for a long time now. But 64-bit is just what I want. It'll make me feel better.

    (2) First-release Mac products are often rife with problems. The first-release aren't out yet. So I'm going to end up waiting at least 6 months for Apple to get most of the bugs worked out of the hardware.

    Once that's all taken care of, I'll be getting a light Mac notebook.
  • First: What is the actual differences with a Dell notebook? I have a E1705, and it's basically a Powerbook. The differences are so minor, they are superficial (in my opinion) Second: Everyone says Apple is a hardware company. Then why is Apple not releasing their OS as open source? They are actually a software company. Apple should sell the OS as a competator to Microsoft, and then they would have a large market to grow into. Anyone can make a Intel box. Geez.
  • Apple's Leopard Strategy to Kill Microsoft and Dell?

    Yeah, that's their strategy. I was talking about it with Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa over breakfast from the alien spaceship this morning. The next thing I knew, the cow had jumped over the moon and Mao Zedong was trumping up capitalism.

    Then I woke up and swore never to eat pizza before bed again.

  • Wow, he really is clueless (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot.stango@org> on Saturday August 12, 2006 @10:09AM (#15894263) Homepage Journal
    FTFA:
    Another of the primary reasons Apple isn't being forthcoming about Leopard is the fear that if people get too excited about a product coming early in 2007 they will stop buying in 2006"

    Uh, yeah, that might apply when you're talking about an expensive product. Mac OS X costs $129, and Leopard will run on any Mac sold in 2006 (and probably several years previous). Anyone who is paying attention to what's coming out of WWDC knows that and can likely afford $129 to upgrade. Everyone else who's interested in a Mac now will happily buy a Tiger system and probably not even notice when Leopard ships.

    Furthermore, Microsoft has been talking up Vista for five years. You didn't see Dell or HP go out of business for lack of sales because people are waiting for Vista, did you?

    ~Philly
  • Still waiting to buy my first Mac.

    I want something between a Mac Mini and Mac Pro. There is an extemely large gulf between these that really needs a mainstream model that will at minimum accept a video card and regular size HD.

    I am not interested in a built in monitor mac. I am picky about screen types and run dual screens, so this doesn't fly for me. Fine for my Mom when I get her a new computer, but not for me.

    I suspect Leopard will be here before Apple build me a mid range mac. Someone at Apple must see

  • Apple doesn't get it...it's not about the HW or OS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @10:36AM (#15894363) Journal
    It's about the applications. I've played around with Knoppix, and set up a RedHat box a couple of years ago. And you know what...I can't do productive shit on them. Apple is the same way.

    You see, it has nothing to do with the 10-30% price difference in an Apple, or the fact that Apple (C)Won't compete in the entry level systems (my small office runs on a $200 dell server that's three years old an hasn't so much as sneezed in all that time). I can't use Apple (or Linux) because I can't afford to (a) relearn how to manage the OS, (b) relearn all new applications for my technical work, (c) force all my clients to figure out how to interact with my non-industry-standard applications. Most of that stuff is MS only. Oh, sure, I suppose I could spend a few months figuring out if every single one of my dedicated engineering apps works with Wine, or (um, shoot, can't remember the Apple one... /. just covered it). Or I could pay someone (who is reliable) five figures to come in and do the testing for me. Sad part is, I can't afford either. I can't imagine a system so legacy-burdened and OS-entangled as (for example) AutoCAD running reliably, every day, without a possible hiccup, with all the little goofy add-on shit it needs to be functional, on something other than native MS. Hell, it's not completely stable in it's native environment. Is it worth losing a client worth 20% of my gross income just so I can have a pretty machine on my desktop that is slightly less likely to be totally wiped out by a virus? In 25 years of using IBM PC systems, I have yet to have an unrecoverable failure due to virus. Sorry, betting my salary, plus guaranteed loss of two years of company profits to re-buy and retrain me and my employees in new apps, against something that hasn't happened in that long doesn't make financial sense.

    I'm stuck with MS at work because most of the vendors only write for MS. I use MS at home because I use MS at work. I can't afford to re-buy my apps for home. I use the same apps both places (mostly in conformance with the EULAs, by god damned fair use if not). When that changes, we'll re-evaluate.

    Tell Steve he has more work to do.
    • ...since their ads focus on everything you can do with a Mac with just its included applications: Buy it, take it home, spend five minutes hooking it up, and then make a movie. Or burn a CD. Or create a song. Or make a web site. Or write a paper. Part of the message of the ads are: If that's what you can do with just what ships on the machine, imagine what else must be out there!

      As for your argument that you have Windows-only stuff, part of the reason Apple is playing up virtualization is because it lets yo

  • Wild attribution of genius (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rjamestaylor ( 117847 ) <rjamestaylor@gmail.com> on Saturday August 12, 2006 @11:02AM (#15894474) Journal
    'If you get too excited about what is supposed to be an incredibly amazing product you simply won't buy a new Apple this year.'

    The writer of that statement, in explaining why Apple must have dumbed-down their product announcements of late, attributes strategic genius to Steve beyond the pale. The suppositions behind such a statement is that

    1. Apple could never release a dud
    2. Steve is incapable of a less-than-stellar product introduction
    Therefore, the thinking goes, it is master strategy to sell more this year so that people won't tank the stock (*ahem*) this year by not buying current inventory. Problem with this is that Apple has always led with its best foot forward: they announced the move to Intel before there was an Intel-based product offering, as a case in point.


    Attributing a master strategy as the reviewer in question has done is akin to Coca Cola aficionados who attribute New Coke as a masterful ploy to boost "Classic Coke" sales and loyalty over Pepsi Cola. Yeah, it turned out that CC pulled their butts out of a tight spot with the re-introduction of Coke Classic to appease the revolt, but calling it master strategy is revisionist history at best.

    Let's just leave it at this: Apple has broken its string of amazing announcements (amazing in the marketing buzz generation sense) with a slight dud; expect more goodness in the future as Apple redoubles its efforts to overwhelm us with goodness.

  • Why not buy a Mac npw, then upgrade the OS? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @11:32AM (#15894609)
    'If you get too excited about what is supposed to be an incredibly amazing product you simply won't buy a new Apple this year.'

    What a strange comment. Are there features of Leopard that need special hardware support, features that prevent Leopard from showing it's true potential on all Macs except 2007 models? I seriously doubt it. So buy a Mac whenever you want, then upgrade the OS when the next version is available. Sure, it will cost you $129, but that's little compared to the cost of a new Mac notebook (plus AppleCare, which is a requirement these days).

  • It's the Software Stupid-New Frameworks in Leopard (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aristotle-dude ( 626586 ) on Saturday August 12, 2006 @04:00PM (#15895578)
    Did you guys notice the growth in the number of developers for the OS X platform during the keynote? Look at the frameworks introduced in Tiger and the new ones previewed in Leopard. Doesn't anyone look at those developer features and dream of what types of cool apps that could be created with them?

    There has been talk of the elusive "killer app" for years on the internet but I believe that these new frameworks (Core Animation), existing frameworks (Core Image/Video, Data and Audio) will usher in a true "killer app" that developers will struggle in vain to reproduce on windows and other linux. Some may manage to create a pale copy of it but it will not be so tightly integrated into the OS and you will not be able to easily share data with other apps. I would also venture that it would take 10X as much time, money and manpower to develop.

    We can all "oooh and ahhh" all we we want about the flashy features in OS X or Vista how easy it is to implement innovative applications in a particular OS will determine which one has the attention of the public and media IMO.

    I think the keynote only scratched the surface of the power the collaboration features in Leopard will have on the development landscape.

  • To the "Dell sells a sub $500 computer" crowd (Score:3, Interesting)

    by amichalo ( 132545 ) on Sunday August 13, 2006 @08:44AM (#15897948)
    We have Vista Beta in our office. The OS is a memory and processor hog. Now I know "but it's beta" and all that MS appologist crap, but the same box it is on screams with Linux and is quite capable with XP. All the computer pros in our office who have messed with this Vista Beta are already looking at their existing systems and deciding what all they will have to upgrade to make it Vista compatible.

    Bottom line is, a > $500 desktop from Dell isn't going to run Vista for crap where as today you can buy and old Apple iMac on eBay for the same money and you can run Tiger.

  • People on Slashdot are sorely mislead. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by i41Overlord ( 829913 ) on Sunday August 13, 2006 @09:37AM (#15898111)
    Whenever I see threads like this on Slashdot, I can't help but think how sorely mislead the average Slashdot user is. The forum is overwhelmingly pro-Apple and pro-Linux, and they let their emotions cloud their vision.

    Often, you see trollish headlines that state "will Apple kill Microsoft?", "Will Apple kill Dell?", "is this the iPod killer?", etc. People here seem to be a little on the artsy/emotional side rather than on the purely logical side. They can't seem to grasp the gravity of a situation; instead they get lost in the details and forget the scale of things. For a forum that loves Star Trek, they sure don't think like Spock.

    First of all, people underestimate the massive advantage of being the much larger company. Dell has a huge marketshare advantage over Apple. They have $55 billion a year in revenue vs. $14 billion a year. If worst came to worst, Dell could simply buy Apple. Microsoft could also easily buy Apple, but the US Gov wouldn't allow that. Still, if it were a fight to the death, they could afford to take losses to sap away Apple's marketshare.

    I think people should stop to think for a moment before they post these unrealistic headlines, because if it came down to it, the larger company would simply gobble up the smaller company. It's business 101.

    I'm not trying to troll here, I'm trying to inject a dose of reality into another one of these irrational threads.

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