Apple's ego

Do you think it a measure of Appel's corporate ego that has thus far kept them from incorporating rudimentary cool features in the Macbook line? Unless they can be first (e.g. force sensors, backlit keys), they don't want to be second. So, we are the ones who lose.

Why else have we not seen Blu-ray or GPS location awareness yet?

 

They would have to play royalties for blu-ray, and they want to push their own iTunes HD videos. GPS location awareness? What do you mean, putting a GPS in every notebook?

 

Yes, like the iphone and the Dell Adamo.

Oh, and the Blu-ray royalty is around $4.00 per drive. Hardly a valid reason for making it at least an option.

 

Well, The iPhone uses a A-GPS, and from what I will assume, the Adamo XPS will too. Witch means you will need a wireless contract with a company for them to work. Witch probably wont appeal to the average user.

 

As cool as it is to watch BluRays, it isn't a market mover atm. DVD sales are looking like they will be overtaken by BluRays anytime soon.

IMO, until Sony stops being retarded and eases up on the Bluray licensing terms, DVD sales will continue to dominate the market.

BluRay players and disc are just too expensive to make atm.

 

"Cool features" is a bit subjective. I don't care about Blu Ray or GPS in my notebook. If I need GPS I have it in my phone and in my truck and don't care for Blu Ray when I can download HD. A more "cool" feature to me is the multi-touch track pad on my MBP. Other companies are finally following Apple with similar designs.

 

I made my own GPS unit for my Toughbook. There is no licensing for GPS at all. (It uses free signal from satellites, no subscription required).

It does add to cost though.... My hardware cost over $100 to add to my laptop.


Why doesn't the average laptop need it? Because it's not the standard yet. No real reason to have GPS in your laptop yet, since most people don't carry around a laptop with them whenever they go places.

 

Yet, at the same time there was no demand for multi touch gestures and backlit keyboards. Apple adds them and all the sudden it is the coolest thing since sliced bread. You won't care about them now........

 

Given how much room a optical disk drive takes up in a notebook, and that I have used mine about 5 times in the past 4 years, I would much prefer to have that space go to faster gpu/cpu/cooling/extra memory/ssd drive etc etc.
Optical is dead, the future is downloading/streaming... it may still be 10 years away but its still coming
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ps funny how one of the products used to complain about lack of gps is an iphone...

 

I know GPS doesn't needs subscriptions but A-GPS systems like in the iPhone use cell towers, so a A-GPS system won't usually work with out a subscription to a cell carrier.

When I was looking for a notebook, I wanted a backlit keyboard with it. But I think most people don't demand something they don't really know about like a big multi touch trackpad, so when they see one company with it, they want to see more.

 

Boo-ray is easy, They refuse to pay the royalties to Sony to have the drives in their systems, and it gives them a good excuse to push their HD content from iTunes.

 

I don't know if "ego" is the right word for it. Apple has a very clear design esthetic: keep it simple, "less is more," whatever you want to call it. They also have a cost headwind that they have to take into account: while most here think the price differential is worth it (obviously, or you wouldn't be here) Apple is more aware than anyone that theirs is a premium priced product. So put those two things together and you have strong motivation to only incorporate into a machine those features most users will find the most useful or necessary.

Add to that the design objectives of USB: a fast plug and play interface that can "daisy chain" a large number of external devices. So why should EVERY MacBook user, for example, pay for a Blu-Ray drive when those few who want or need them can buy an external USB BR drive easily and fairly cheaply? Even offering the option adds to cost in that you have to engineer it into the design, and as another poster here remarked optical media is dying - Apple would prefer you buy your HD movies online (from them via iTunes), and in a few years that will be the only option.

Apple spends an incredible amount of time and R & D on the interface items you use every minute you use the machine: the trackpad, the screen, and the keyboard. The innovation is there: who else offers the ultra-smooth "grit-free" scrolling of Apple's glass trackpads, for example? The screens are among the best, if not the best, available in a laptop in terms of both brightness and color accuracy; Apple pioneered LED backlighting. Same with the keyboards; every "Pro" model has a backlit keyboard, which is still a rarity in PC world. In other words the stuff that HAS to be there is the best they can make it, and if you need some other device or capability that's what the expansion ports are for (not to mention Bluetooth, another inclusion Apple pioneered).

So it's not ego, it's their business model - concentrate on the essentials - and looked at from Apple's perspective it makes a ton of sense.

 

I agree completely on optical drives... I already took mine out of my Macbook Pro and put in a second hard drive... much more useful of the space.

 

Panasonic has had backlit keyboards for over 10 years. Of course, there is more legitimate reason for having them in some of the applications they are used in (ie; Night shift in a police car).

 

only thing Apple came up with AFIK is the glass touchpad and that was a collaboration with Synaptics

Screen quality ... I dont know I call all of mine average at best for current machines

and Yes, I have OLD backlight keyboards in some of my TB's as well that date back atleast 7 years. Multitouch has been in some summa and Wacom tablets for along time as well.

They DID excel at marketing these old features in a new package though

 

Exactly.. Apple have a great way of making people think they are the pioneers of it all. And that isn't true. Who knows what will happen to apple down the road. But I strongly feel you can call it Apple Ego.

It seems that so many Apple user forget how close apple came to going belly up. And it's even funnier how fast Apple forgot who bailed them out, and it wasn't the feds. It was MICROSOFT, now how about that.

 

Think about it, without Apple Microsoft would really be a monopoly. They did it to save themselves. Plus if Apple went away who would MS steal ideas from? (mostly joking here except the monopoly thing)

Apple doesn't pioneer new ideas as much as they refine them. I had several opportunities to buy GPS in a PC but couldn't justify the cost because I had GPS in my phone. If Apple found an interesting way to incorporate GPS that would make it more useful, I might change my mind. Apple offering something doesn't make it cool its how they incorporate its use that does.

 

You need to check your facts. Your statement shows you have no clue what you're talking about concerning that particular subject.

Back on topic. Just a little FYI. Apple was one of the original hardware manufacturers that SUPPORTED Blu-Ray. The simple reason Apple does not sell BR hardware is that the format goes against their current and future business models. Has anyone noticed that everything is going towards direct digital distribution via the internet? Supporting BR would be supporting a competing format. IMHO, BR is a still born format. It's only a stop gap measure until full digital content download is available.

 

Just because you're a pioneer of something that doesn't mean that you are given the right to be successful.

Execution is just as important as coming up with the idea you know.

You are one person out of millions, thus it is not a valid reason for doing away with the optical drive.

Optical is not dead, and 10 years is a crap long time in the tech world. CD's and DVD's may be replaced but there's nothing that can really hold a blu ray. Streaming HD right now isn't feasible on our current connections.

 

I think Blu Ray has nothing to do with "being first" - if I remember correctly Apple was one of the first to sign onto Blu-ray, it just never put it into its computers. But it had the capability to and was one of the early backers of Blu-ray. I think Apple is not pushing Blu-ray because its pushing iTunes for its movie download stuff.

As for GPS...I think its nifty and wouldn't hurt but at the same time not very useful, at least not in every Mac. I think its great in a cellphone, definitely. Maybe a netbook, but not on every Mac.

And being second? Apple was totally late on Copy & Paste .

 

Where is hdmi seriously?

 

That I accept as a relatively valid argument . However its a bit odd because Apple is following the standard with their new video port...but yeah HDMI I wouldn't mind.

 

Heck I would even be happier if they managed audio output throught the DP port, adaptors are a pain, but no audio out of a digital multimedia port is STUPID, especially when the spec is written into the DP standard

 

And what do you mean by that. I believe it whent something like this: M$ was investing 150 Million in non-voting stock. In return Apple was making Internet Explorer the default browser on the Mac, it would also drop the outstanding patent infringement lawsuit against M$. Apple was losing up to $60 million a quarter. They lost in the vicinity of $1.85 billion over 2 years, and during that time with corporate reshuffling their Stock fell over 50%. Apple also had an $7 billion annual break-even point (Conservative number), so things weren't looking so rosy especially with less then a 3% market share. So maybe the $150 million didn't quite save the whole farm but I am sure it didn't hurt.

Oh and beyond that initial investment, Apple also announced a cross license agreement with M$ that was somewhere around another $150 million (although the final amount was never disclosed). M$ also agreed to continue development of the Apple OS verion of Microsoft Office for 5 years, so maybe M$ might have thought it was a worthwhile venture to keep Apples running MS office. So it wasn't all a freebie. And today $150 million wouldn't put a dent in Apple's marketing cost.

This type of investments isn't something new to M$. Around the same time they invested $220 million into NBC and around $1 Billion into Comcast.

Although no one can deny that the true Apple savior is Stevo. He brought the company back with a vengence and made it what it is today.

Now back on Topic. A proper display port that would output Audio would be great. And one that preferably could output true HD audio. Heck it can be done with HDMI.

 

Yeah. WTH. DisplayPort has plenty of bandwidth for audio. Yet we sit here twiddling our thumbs.

 

well more like looking for that damn adaptor cable

 

You can put a feature in one or two models and call it pioneering; I was talking about carrying something across a whole line. Like removing floppy drives and really pushing USB - Apple may not have been the first, but they did it across their whole line first, and I'd argue were the first to make any real impact.

Bill Gates and Jobs go back a long way, and at one point the rivalry was friendly, an "us against the world" which didn't understand personal computing at the time competition. I bet Gates, if he cares anything about MS any more (seems a lot more involved with playing bridge these days), regrets that loan immensely.

 

I still think the best days of computing were back when Microsoft were using their monopolistic ways. In the 90s, we went from text UI editors to GUI editors with spellcheck and grammar check!!

From 2000 to 2009 we went from GUI editors with spellcheck and grammar check to........ GUI editors with spell check and grammar check.

Seriously. The 90s was the birth of technologies like Visual Basic and COM. Internet Explorer and Media player standardized the platform that came on every PC. Plug and Play, Windows update, even Ajax was given birth in the 90s by Microsoft. All these technologies we take for granted. The <strike>year</strike> decade of 2000 gave birth to MySpace and....... that's it!

The problem with making new technologies is getting them widely adopted. There are a lot of good ideas, but the only companies with the clout to force adoption of them are Microsoft and Intel....... 200 companies working against each other isn't going to solve this problem.

Natural monopolies have existed for years. My goodness, think if we had 10 power companies competing against each other. Each company would be trying to push their own friggin lamp plugged into their own friggin plug design powered by their own type of powerlines on their own powerpoles.

It is a nightmare we are living now.

I say bring back the Microsoft monopoly!!!!!!!!

:noteworthy:

 

I bet you liked operator assisted phones, too!

"Say, Mabel, I need to talk to Fred, where is he?"

It isn't an Andy Griffith world any more; even Opie's hair, what's left of it, is going grey...

I'm all for nostalgia but the MS monopoly times were hardly the "good" old days.

 

I'm not talking about nostalgia. I'm talking about the rate of innovation, which has been lacking this decade.

 

Things like BOB?

 

The Apple Ego is getting very old.

The ads need to stop, filled with 90% lies (simply works? what about the geust account issue with SL, that took 1+ month to fix?) about how M$ can not make an OS that doesn't have issues.

Hardware wise, Apple is ahead and behind the game when they do something. When Apple does a true hardware refresh, it takes half a year or more for most PC makers to catch up. Yet they don't do true hardware refreshes that often (mainly clock speed bumps).

Oh and lightpeak could rock. I think that is why Apple is not going to do USB 3.0 and HDMI.

 

Every company has problems and tries to cover them up while exposing the weaknesses of the competition. Its not ego, its marketing and some do it better than others.

 

It is marketing, but Apple seems to go above the M$ ads. Just the flat out lies is kinda to much. Ego I guess would not be the right word, arrogance would fit better.

 

Look at the Scoreboard. We can make a list of Apple's 8% industry wide contributions versus Microsoft's 92% industry wide contributions anyday of the week.

We can compare Powertalk to Exchange, A/UX to Win32 all day.

 

Anybody else tired of the use of the word "Monopoly" whenever someone wants to bash Microsoft? Last time I checked, Microsoft never had a "monopoly" on anything, even in the 90's. What the US and European govts. were and are concerned about is Microsoft's market share and their ability to use that influence to push products ahead of competitors with the INTENT of creating a monopoly in certain markets or product families.

Sad thing about this is two fold - Morons who just wanna talk down about Microsoft use the word without even understanding its definition, and Microsoft has never forced anyone to buy their products, its just that there are some people and governments who don't believe that in capitalism there can be no market leadership.

Sorry for the rant, but this is a valid post about Apple marketing perception that "went there" with the MS Monopoly statements, so I had to clarify.

 

Don't remember where I read this saying, "creativity is new combinations of old ideas", and this is the best explanation for how Apple products attracted so many consumers.

 

Come on though.

You can't ignore the fact that software development moved at a breakneck pace in the 90s compared to today. Today, it seems like all the new copyright laws are stifling innovation. Every time I turn around, some troll is suing because they have a patent for "all stuff that is blue" or "Making stuff out of words."

Oh, the list of people I want to drop kick keeps getting longer and longer.

 

I wouldn't say NEVER. MS was deemed a Monopoly until an appeal overturned it not on facts but how the case was handled.

http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm

I do agree with surfasb that software development has slowed due to lawsuits.

 

You gotta hand it to Microsoft though. During its "monopolistic" practices, hardware was struggling to keep pace with software developments. By adding Internet Explorer to the platform, you are guaranteeing every computer will have a browser. By adding Media player, you guarantee that every computer will have MP3 playback.

The Office Suite developed at a breakneck pace. No one seems to remember the pains of getting Lotus 123 tables into a Wordperfect document. It got better with Quattro Pro. But Microsoft really made it happen in Office 6.0. From then on, everyone was playing catchup. Things we take in for granted like source/destination formatting, common file menu structures, OLE, and COM came from that era.

My point is there are plenty of new and brilliant ideas out there. For everyone to adopt them, they have to gain a critical mass in audience. Otherwise, the idea will eventually fail. No other company out there has the clout to bring brilliant software to the masses with the speed or the stability like Microsoft. It's like benching your best player because you want everyone else to have playtime.

You will see the same thing in fashion. Any trend will need to hit a critical mass otherwise it will fade into oblivion.

 

It isn't Apple's Ego so much as Steve Job's Ego.

He has a Vision for the consumer electronic product (whether Computer, Iphone, Ipod whatever) - and it's his way or the highway.

Some of his visions are just bad though (the list would be very very lengthy).

 

MS does have the platform currently but it doesn't guarantee success. It took 2 generations of game consoles and they are still losing to Nintendo. I won't even get started on Windows Mobile and Zune. I actually like Microsoft overall, I just hate Windows currently. Although MS made me mad today when my 360 flashed the red ring of death 1/2 hour into Modern Warfare 2. Its currently boxed up waiting for shipment to get repaired.

 

I thought we were talking about the 90s. Zune and xbox aren't 20 century items.

We aren't talking about lack of failures anyways. The topic is about clout, adoption, and critical mass. The government has a long long history of failed social programs. Yet it is counted on to change healthcare. Why? Because it has the clout to force adoption by pushing the measure pass critical mass.

I'm pretty sure you are misunderstanding my previous posts.

 

No, I understand. MS still has clout but cannot always push things on people. BOB is still a valid example of MS failing to influence the market. I was just being too lazy to research a better example. Please don't start on healthcare and politics though. Mac Vs PC gets heated enough.

 

This discussion isn't even PC v Mac.
Nor is it heated.

Like I said before. I think you are misunderstanding the discussion.

It is about giving good ideas the momentum to reach that critical mass. History is full of good ideas that failed to become mainstream because there wasn't enough momentum behind the idea.

And healthcare/politics are an example. Just use another example.

Lets say you wrote a great script. You want to pitch it to some production companies. The production companies aren't sure about the script. They don't want to buy the script unless a famous actor or director endorses it. The same actors and directors don't want to endorse the script unless there is a production company willing to produce the movie. It's a catch 22. You need something big to give it enough momentum

While Bob is an example, so is TCIP, Truetype, and Plug n Play.

The discussion doesn't even have to be about Microsoft. My point is the only software company with the market share and reputation to push widespread adoption of an idea is Microsoft. If it was Adobe, then Adobe. But Adobe doesn't run on 90% of the world's computers. If it was friggin Blizzard, then Blizzard. Any good idea that stands to reach wide spread adoption must have the support of Microsoft. Otherwise, it stands to be alienated in one swift stroke.

Edit:

This is how I know this is totally over your head. There is no mention of any kind of Apple bashing in my previous posts. Yet some how you conjure up this idea that Apple is getting hated on. How incredibly vain.

And WTH does this discussion have to do with Microsoft failures in the 90s? I can give you a list right now. Efing Doublespace. Encarta.

And the biggest piece of crap? Clippy from '97. But wth does any of these failures have to do with clout and critical mass? There. I saved you some researching.

 

My comment about healthcare and Mac vs PC was a joke, hence the " ". I never accused you of bashing Apple in this thread. My joke was about this forum in general boiling down to heated Mac vs PC discussions at times. The recent healthcare debate and politics in general can get heated as well. Perhaps I did not make that clear enough.

I agree that having MS behind a product HELPS but it is currently not as important as you think. We both agree that in the 90's it was more important. Maybe I am too vain, stupid or some other derogatory term to understand your superior intellect. Have a nice day.

 

Oh, so your previous post was a stab at sarcasm.....

Sorry bud, but usually sarcasm comes with exaggerations, understatements, ironies, puns, etc. I see none of the above



Oh one day. Apple will adopt Blurays. Or something of that nature.

 

Is there something else going on I don't know about? You seem to be wound up extra tight today. I pretty mostly conceded to your point, pointed out the item that you took offense to was a joke and not accusing you of anything. What's with all the insults?

 

We're done here.