Amelio, Raskin, Gassée On What Apple Means 317
John Paczkowski writes: "SiliconValley.com is currently hosting the third in its series of online Roundtable discussions. Our topic is 'Does Apple Matter?' and as you might imagine conversation has been quite spirited. Among our guests: Jean-Louis Gassée -- chairman and CEO of Be and former head of head of product development at Apple, former Apple chairman and CEO Gil Amelio, former Macintosh project manager Jef Raskin, and Mark Gonzales, a former senior Apple product manager who worked on the company's 'Star Trek' project. You'll find the introduction to the event here and the discussion itself here."
Re:Apple (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not sure how you say that the iBooks are unquestionably cheaper than the PC equivalents. This isn't something I want to spend all night on, so I just went to the Apple store and picked the cheapest iBook, then went to Sony's site and picked a VAIO that cost the same. They're both listed at $1299.
Note that I just went to Sony's site and went with the first $1299 notebook I could find (All-In-One FX series). If I wanted to hunt around, I expect that I'd be able to find a better deal than my first pick. Then again, maybe not.
I think they matter (Score:4, Informative)
Let me take some time to explain. I'm going to use os 9 for my explanation even though I use osx because the intereface design for osx is still pretty new and unrefined. One reply to the article referred negatively to the macs "flowery" interface. Although I think the interface is rather pleasing to the eye, at least on the default platinum theme, the primary force behind its design was functionality.
There is consistent well thought out design present in the interface. It is responsive and every feature present in the system software is easily accessible. The system software rarely crashes unless there is some conflict with the extensions (well os9 crashes a lot more than linux but to be fair os9 and linux were never competing on any front. osx on the other hand can hold its own ground.). Since the os vender is also the OEM all of the new hardware that runs the mac os will run it well (after a brief stint with clones apple decided that they were a bad idea for a company that makes most of its money from hardware sales).
I don't know if that made anything clear to anyone. I'm not trying to get any linux users to go buy a mac but I dislike how some linux users seem to not understand how any intelligent person could ever prefer the mac os. I mean its not like were windows users and just use it because it came with the box (although it did) and runs the latest games.
The facts are out there (Score:5, Informative)
There are a lot of myths out there about Apple, and especially about the birth of the Mac. Fortunately, today there is a great source of historical facts for those who are interested or just care about the truth:
Making the Macintosh: Technology and Culture in Silicon Valley [stanford.edu] at the Stanford Computer History Archives.
Go there to find out that Apple did not "rip off" the GUI from Xerox. For example, a large piece of the truth is that the people at PARC who invented these concepts had to leave for Apple to find a company that was interested in their ideas.
Go there to find out why the Mac mouse has one button.
Go there to find out the reality behind Jef Raskin's claims that he created the Mac. Yes, he started the project. But in his vision, it should not have a GUI, neither a mouse. But he was very much concerned about it having a "programmable calculator-like programming language". Although he did want it to essentialliy have an Internet connection (in the late 70's). Engelbart's NLS was also an important inspiration.
Or just visit that archive to find out about the genuine innovations that were made at the time when a mediocre box called the IBM PC was put together. You don't have to be an Apple zealot to appreciate it, the material there has much more general relevance. But the space of a /. comment is too small to do it all justice.
Re:Bias? (Score:4, Informative)
Amelio: Not only was he a failure of a CEO, but he went on to write one of the whiniest books around on his "tenure" at Apple and how Steve "stole" his impending success, blahblahblah...
Gassee: The Be machine was pretty sexy, but the OS was doomed from the start! All C++ and you basically had to multithread from the get go. The development docs basically said "Everything is threaded. Threading is hard. Be careful. Have a nice day!". Worse, Be made every mistake that NeXT and others made-- but 10 years after the market no longer tolerated that kind of BS. Proprietary this, closed that, etc... *yawn* Don't get me wrong-- it was really cool to look at and play with, just utterly doomed to simply not matter when the history books are written.
Raskin obviously has a serious bone to pick over the whole 10.x/NeXT thing. He consistently slams 10.x on things that are simply different than the MacOS he helped build. Quite a number of his points are valid, but saying that 10.1 is just a "face lift" with a lot of "minuses" clearly indicates that he is bitter about something. 10.1 cleans up a boatload of little details and is loads and loads faster. Clearly not just a face lift and without any minuses. Besides, Mac OS 9 is an utter joke-- for all intents and purposes, the memory and multitasking model is about as modern as DOS, but with a really pretty face.
Fortt's love affair with XP's built in instant message is a good sign his is smoking whatever Ballmer was smoking before the recent Monkey Boy episode.
As for Bajarin, he is likely the only one that can stand up straight for lack of a mondo Apple related chip on his shoulder. Of course, the fact that he would agree to be on this "panel" in the first place raises a few questions...
Hell, I'm surprised they didn't pull in Spindler, Hancock, and Sculley.
What a total joke... the sad thing is that it will be completely unsurprising when CNET picks up whatever the result is as a sure sign of Apple's impending doom.
Re:geeze, give them SOME credit! (Score:2, Informative)
*ahem*, they did create FireWire from scratch.
Bias? (Score:5, Informative)
Gil Amelio was thrown out in a boardroom coup. He killed the clones, and failed as a CEO in most respects of success, losing millions. His only good thing was hiring Steve Jobs back.
Jean-Louis Gassee quit Apple, then became a big critic when they refused to buy Be, taking NeXT instead becaue it could run existing apps while Be couldn't.
Jef Raskin went on record in March Mac OS X saying that OSX 10.1 "isn't worth the upgrade, because it's just "another face-lift" with "an awful lot of minuses.""
Jon Fortt, who recently wrote an article called "Mac platform good to a point" that basically said Windows XP is going to kick Mac OS X's butt because it's got really great "built-in instant messaging capabilities." Oooooo
As for Tim Bajarin, well, I've certainly got nothing against him-- he was the one who recently wrote that once the PC price war is over, the two main contenders left in the consumer market are likely to be Sony and Apple.
Maybe more of a slanted table. Who's next? John C. Dvorak?
Trolls? (Score:1, Informative)
I hate to be hardhearted but the percentage of people here who really care about the future of apple is probably about as high as those who can't wait to see what great new ideas MicroSoft will unveil when it launches XP later this year.
IOW, how do you troll for something that's not there?
Articles like this were made for posting self-congratulatory comments which demonstrate people's skill or lack there-of to make wry and witty remarks about the topic in question
BSo please quit raining on the parade
Personally I don't think there is a great and sunny future for Apple computers. They make great imaging and publishing software from what I understand, but aside from their little niche, they have very little universal appeal. Also, having working in a computer lab with several iMacs I know that they don't network worth snot.
Apple may have their corner of the market and they may do some things very well, but I have little if any interest in whether or not they bite it in the long run
Re:Does Apple still matter? (Score:2, Informative)
Actually....Apple bought the rights to every peice of IP Xerox came up with and Apple used in MacOS. Xerox didnt think it was going anywhere and gave it to apple for a bunch of stock. That stock then went way up, so Xerox made a mint. I like Apple, sure, and I know people who dont, but if you're going to slam something, try to get your information right or someone might think you're a disinformation troll. Now you just look like a lemming. Moving right along....
Re:Bias? (Score:3, Informative)
All of these people have been big Apple supporters and recognize the dream of Apple. They've all just gone about perusing them in different ways.
Gil was the best thing that ever happened to Apple. He brought reality back to the company. He killed some popular projects that were hurting the company, got Apple's debt rolled back and refinanced, and then brought in the people necessary to make the company great again. If it wasn't for Gil's 18 months, there would be no Apple. Out of business. Kay-put! Because of him they now have 4 billion in assets instead of debt.
JLG quit a long time ago and for a myriad of reasons. Perhaps he's a bit grumpy now because Next+Apple fulfilled his dream of a next-gen media OS better than Be did. At least he's always been nice about it. You should read the letter he sent to Gil when he found out Next was chosen over Be. Very classy.
Jef Raskin was quite misquoted in the article you are thinking about. His point was about all modern OSs, not just OSX. He wants to see a radical change in the way we think about computer interfaces. Changes that I agree with and hope to see/build one day. OSX with it's full vector based 2d system actually comes closer to his vision than anything else today.
Can't comment on the other two, but they both seem
to be respectable people.
Many brilliant people can disagree about something like the Apple vision and still have their minds on the future. I think they are more than adequate to discuss Apple.