I was desperately looking for something to write about when I happened to chance upon Apple’s new shipping system – a dual 1.42GHz Power Mac G4. A new system, a faster system, but does it mean a brighter future for Apple?Editorial Notice: All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of osnews.com
Everyone who has a little knowledge of computing will know that Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were the founders of Apple, a garage start-up that came up with the first personal computer. They could also be considered the starters of the personal computer revolution which started some twenty years ago. A revolution that has changed the way people do things. But luck does not seem to be on this company’s side. It was not so long ago that their market share far encompasses their competitors. It was also not so long ago that they boasted of a group of followers, people who would never abandon the Mac platform. Now, they are left with a 3% market share and a fellow software company from Redmond breathing down their necks every now and then.
But that does not signal the end of this computing giant. For the second coming of Steve Jobs has certainly moved this sleeping Goliath in the right direction. Firstly, they were able to change their vision. Now, everyone knows they want everyone to own a Mac, and that Mac is supposed to be the digital hub of everyone’s life. Statistics already show that one out of every two household in America owns a digital camera. And there is an increasing amount of people who own cellphones. In the near future, it will no longer be about a single computer in every house. Instead, it will be about plasma tvs, networked computers, cell phones, digital cameras, camcorders, pdas and even game consoles. If Apple can convince consumers that the Mac is the most ideal machine for connecting all such devices, they are going to make a lot of money and at the same time, attract a lot more devoted followers.
But the digital hub concept is but a single piece of jigsaw that is required to complete the whole puzzle. Another bigger piece would be the software that is available for the Macintosh platform. In this area, Apple is doing a fine job. One fine example would be Mac OS X. It brings together two of the finest operating system(s). One is widely-regarded as the OS with the most user-friendly graphical user interface. The other is considered by many as the most stable of all operating systems. And now the equation is finally formed:
Mac OS + Unix = Mac OS X
Suddenly, we have a totally revamped operating system. Combining the stability of BSD and the quality of Quartz, it presents to users a totally new experience. At the same time, it means that Mac developers, Unix developers and even Java developers can write programs and port programs to the Mac platform.
But this new solution has its problems. The lack of native applications is one big problem. Adobe has ported most of its flagship programs to the platform. So has Macromedia. But QuarkXPress 6.0 is still not out. And that presents a problem to desktop editors all over the whole. They just do not have enough incentive to upgrade their operating systems, even if it means a better user experience and more stability.
Apple do have some great software products as well. iDVD, iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, iSync and iCal. They represent the future of software development. At the same time, they also represent consumers’ desires. Simplicity, beauty is not lacking, but at the same time, consumers can get the work done. That is what I call a totally awesome experience! At the same time, Apple is further contributing to its desire to let the Mac platform be the whole world’s digital hub.
Now, we have the software. We have a vision and plan. We just need the hardware. In this area, Apple’s is just not performing as well as expected. The fastest machine in Apple’s arsenal is a dual 1.42Ghz system. Intel has a 3.06Ghz Pentium 4 with hyperthreading enabled. AMD is going to release their 64bit solution, named Opteron in a few months’ time. What does Apple have? A 64bit PowerPC 970 solution from IBM that may be introduced in Apple systems.
But thats not all. Their new ‘sunflower’ iMac, with its hyped-up promotion and initial interest, is not generating the kind of sales the original iMac generated. And not everyone is interested in replacing their server farms with a XServ. It may seem compact and to a certain extent, cool, but it is produced by Apple, a company that just does not have the reputation that Dell and Sun enjoys in the server field.
Apple does have its merits though. The iPod’s small form factor, cool design and massive storage capacity had enabled it to establish itself as the leader in the field of MP3 players. It is the new WalkMan of the digital age, the essential gadget if you want to show off to your friend.
Twenty years. That is how long ago the first personal computer was manufactured. That is how long it took for Microsoft to gain the reputation of a monopoly and at the same time, gain a foothold in every computer market out there. It is also the time Apple took to fall from its leadership in the software market and become struggling competitor. It is doing a lot of right things now. It is innovating and most importantly, marketing its products. I just hope it is not too late…
About the Author:
I have been in the computer field for over 5 years now. Throughout these five years, my articles have been published at ActiveWin and ExtremeTech amongst others. I currently live in Singapore.
Mac OS X in itself is not the best server….But if you are willing to pay serveral thousand dollars….Then you can get Mac OS X server….WHICH i have used and YES it is VERY GOOD..
So you really can’t say that Mac OS X is bad for serving….
But you do know that in order to run a big site from your mac….you know with PHP and stuff like that…then you have to use the terminal and make some changes in to config file…
So Mac OS X can be good if you know what you are doing…Which you must not.
You do knw that Apples latest Xserver is a 3U…right?
I hope you would…
about the 3U nope hadn’t checked. I’m currently shopping for a new 1U server for 24×7 work. (small website) need scsi…
Yes I do know what I’m doing. I have been an Unix administrator for 15+ years, My point wasn’t what Mac OS-X
may do, it’s an unix it’s the fact.
1.) It’s considered an new unix and Stev Jobs has a bad history with NeXT. (Considering he hated mach I still wonder)
2.) No big iron for Mac means that A lot of shops will not bother.
3.) Their (mac) choice of hardware is bad. Server need real hardware. Some consumer level is real some is, well, consumer level.
Leslie D
Actually dude,
Microsoft had Luna out in 1998 back with the old, old Whistler Alphas, Apple didnt put out Aqua until 1999 with Mac OS X Developer Preview and then Public Beta, So in this case I think MS had the upper hand,
In 1998 Microsoft was still working on the Windows NT5
beta (that later became Windows2000)which still had the Windows 95 look. The first Whistler alphas did not come out until after Windows 2000 and they did not have the “Luna” theme, in fact they were just slightly modified versions of Win2000, go here to see it…(http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/whistler_preview.asp)
The “Luna” Theme did not appear until windows XP was announced, and that was over a year after the first OSX beta’s with Aqua came out.
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/4q00/macosx-pb1/macos-x-beta-1.h…
So in other words Apple was way ahead of Microsoft on this
I hate to tell you this, but Apple’s stealing of Xerox’s PARC and their use of BSD does not exactly make me think they’re much better than MS in the innovation sector. Apple is just as guilty as MS… well, maybe not, but they sure as hell ain’t innocent.
It’s not exactly fair to say that Apple stole the GUI concept from Xerox. Apple paid Xerox for it in Apple stock, and hired the original researchers from the PARC to help continue developing the GUI concept at Apple.
Most of Apple’s innovation has been in GUI design itself. Some of the newest innovations include OS X’s use of animation to draw attention to certain important dialogs, and have them “pop out” of the parent document’s title bar, so you’re certain which document a dialog pertains to.
There is, of course, the shared menu bar, and the concept that it’s “mile high” (that is, a user can push the mouse as far up as the want and they’ll still hit the menu bar) thus making it easier to click. There’s also some fairly common metaphors which are seen on virtually every desktop today, including things like the “Trash can”, call it whatever you want.
That’s something I really do not understand. For years I have been hearing that Macs do run better than PCs with the same clock. I work mainly with number-crunching. I’ve tryed hard to make an iMac G3 400MHz (at work, using MPW, which is a compiller supplyed by Apple) run as fast as possible my code and it was easy to surpass it with a home assembled Celeron 300MHz using gcc.
I had people crazy fo Macs helping me and they were as surprised as nervous with the comparison. It is a fine machine but performance IS BAD, specially compared with the old “twice as fast” propaganda. It is a lie.
Leslie D,
So you are trying to say that iron means most biger shops will not bother with them?
Am i understanding right…
I would not say apple is trying to make a all new Unix…
I think they are adding Unix into mac…
But not creating a whole new Unix…that would be very hard…
“3.) Their (mac) choice of hardware is bad. Server need real hardware. Some consumer level is real some is, well, consumer level.”
I don’t understand what you mean here…
Could yoy explain more…?
Apple didn’t make the first PC / home computer. That was Altair.
The computer revolution didn’t start 20 years ago – 20 years ago, I wrote my first assembler, aged 12. And that was on my second home computer (a Dragon32 – I’d had a ZX81 for a year or two before that).
Apple were never the market leader outside the US – in the UK, they were hardly a blip on the computing Radar until the Mac came along – and even then, they didn’t make much of a commercial impact (Sinclair, Atari and Commodore were all much more influential in Europe in the early days – a fact that comtinued right through to the PC takeover in the mid 90’s).
Don’t know why people obsess over Apple so much – all they really did was rip off Xerox, and cripple competing platforms (through the courts) that tried to do anything similar back in the day, leading directly to the situation we have with Microsoft now (does anybody REALLY believe that Microsoft would have caught up with Digital Research in the field of PC GUI’s if Apple hadn’t sue’d their nuts off and made them cripple GEM in it’s later releases?).
All you PC users are trying to say that Macs suck at gaming and that you need to have 200fps. That’s nice, but your monitor’s refresh rate doesn’t even refresh that fast at a high resolution so there is basically no point to that. Macs have a stronger more powerful technology for doing real stuff such as creating a cinematic movie or making audio productional sh!t, They’re not for people to get on an play around. Over the long years of constantly downloading i have not gotten any virus or spyware. My friend’s PC is constantly breaking itself and corrupting data. The saddest thing was when it stopped working because of directX because it had nothing to back it up. Looking over the internet i looked at the comparasins done by pc users tampering with a mac, Comparing a 3.06ghz intel to a 1.42ghz g4 without even having the dual g4s running and trying to say the pc won by doing simple tasks faster. w/e i forgot what i was saying =P But i know that macs don’t superior pc’s and on the money factor= it’s not my fault you’re poor