“I can only infer that Steve Jobs has a vision for the future of Apple Computer. I say this because after spending more than an hour with the Apple CEO recently, I walked away knowing more about what Apple won’t do than what it will do. Here’s an example of what Apple won’t do: Steve says Apple will not get into the home entertainment business–not during the next 24 months, anyway. You won’t find Apple doing a personal video recorder, à la TiVo or Replay, or an advanced set-top box, à la Moxie. According to Jobs, those devices have yet to catch on, a fact perhaps best borne out by Microsoft’s recent staff cuts and reorganization of its UltimateTV unit. TiVo has had its problems, too.” Read the rest of the editorial at ZDNet AnchorDesk.
What Steve Jobs Won’t Do at Apple
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Jobs is a bright guy who has really matured into an absolute gem for Apple in these difficult economic times.
ciao
yc
I love apple…….I have a G4 running OS X, and I want to get a Tipowerbook, but it just seems so expensive for what you get……you look at a VAIO and you get juat as much power and almost as good hardware, but for $700 less.
if it was $300 or $400 I could get the Ti for the coolness factor, but $700 just seems to out weigh the coolness…especaly when I have to get VPC so I can run VS6 for school……that brings the difrence even higher.
perhaps in 2 years………
Apple always has been, and doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon. For the actual computing power you get for the price, it’s just not good :/ If they were more in line with the Intel/AMD offerings out there, then I’d truly be a happy camper …
>>If they were more in line with the Intel/AMD offerings out there, then I’d truly be a happy camper …<<
what exactly is Intel/AMD offering???
me confused !@#$%^&*?
Okay, I got a TiBook G4/550 a few weeks ago that came with 256M of RAM, 20G hard drive, gigabit ethernet, 2 USB, 1 FireWire, modem, and 1 PC Card slot. I paid $2000.
Let’s see, I could have gotten a Dell Inspiron 8100 with a 1.1GHz Pentium III-M, 128M RAM, 30G hard drive, fast (not gigabit) ethernet, and otherwise pretty comparable hardware. A faster CPU (although not dramatically so in practice), less memory, more hard drive space, chunkier design, weight over two more pounds, and an hour less battery life, all for… $2100.
Oh, did I mention I got a free external CD-RW unit with my TiBook?
I suppose I could have gotten a ThinkPad A30p, which’d have the 256M of RAM and a hard drive over <em>twice</em> as big as mine. It’d still be heavier and still have less battery life, of course, but I’d pay $3000 for it! Look at the savings!
No, wait. Don’t.
A sony VAIO PCG-GR300:
$1679.98
1GHz P3
256 MB SDRAM
20 GB HD
15.0″ XGA TFT LCD screen
CD-RW/DVD combo drive
fast ethernet
3 USB ports
S-vid out
tv-out
i-link port
Word 2002
ETC.
plus:
a VAIO notebook backpack
this is almost perfectly comparable to the TiPowerbook.
you save a lot of money and get nice style……..
like I said before, I Love Macs, their lowend stuff is realy competative, even their mid range stuff is competative, but the Highend stuff is not. if the powerbook was just about $200 cheaper, I would get it because the coolness factor is much higher and OS X is way better than Win XP.
It’s nice that more laptops are using 1394 connectors. But my problem is that most of the PC ones use the i.link sytle 4 pin one. That’s great for using a 1934 DV cam, but it won’t bus power my 2.5″ external FireWire hard drives
I actually like that Apple ships the Ti PowerBook and iBook models with the 6-pin connector.
Apple iBook
$1,499.00
12.1-inch TFT XGA display
600MHz PowerPC G3
System bus @ 100MHz
256K L2 cache @ 600MHz
128MB SDRAM memory (256MB +$50)
20GB Ultra ATA drive
AirPort ready
Up to 5 hr. battery life
Ports and such…
Built-in 56K V.90 modem (RJ-11 connector)
Built-in 10/100BASE-T Ethernet (RJ-45 connector)
Built-in antennas and card slot for optional 11Mbps AirPort Card; IEEE 802.11b compliant
Two 12-Mbps USB ports
One 400-Mbps FireWire (IEEE 1394) port
16-bit CD-quality stereo sound output minijack through AV port
Built-in stereo speakers
Built-in microphone
Support for external USB audio devices such as microphones and speakers
VGA video output port for video mirroring on an external display or projector (24-bit color)
Composite video output to TV or projector through AV port (requires optional Apple AV Cable)
Software…
Mac OS X v10.1, Mac OS 9.2, QuickTime, iMovie 2, iTunes 2, AppleWorks, Mac OS X Mail, Microsoft Internet Explorer, AOL, World Book Mac OS X Edition, Otto Matic, PCalc, Acrobat Reader, FAXstf and EarthLink Internet access software.
Only 4.9 pounds
Not bad for something small and very portable!
the iBook mentioned above is a CDRW/DVD Combo… sorry
Hmmm not to bad…I think I would go with the 14.1 inch screen though.
My cousin has last years iBook with a 500MHz G3, I put OS X on it and it ran dog slow, even with 38- some megs of ram……so I am warry of the iBook as a performer, especialy since I need MS VS6 and will need to purchase VPC to run it…….it seems under powered when just running Classic in the background.
>>My cousin has last years iBook with a 500MHz G3, I put OS X on it and it ran dog slow, even with 38- some megs of ram……<<
I think alot of it has to do with the 66 MHz system bus, I bought an iBook last summer, had it 3 days and took it back due to the slowness, but Mac OS X 10.1 wasn’t out yet (that was the other factor). Of course now the iBook has a 100 MHz system bus and I actually played with an iBook with the upgraded bus when I went to the AppleStore to purchase my Ti-Book and I noticed it was alot faster than the one I had last summer. But at the end of the day the Ti-Book just can’t be beat and I love it!
I am reading this on an iBook 500 under OS X.1. OS X *is* dog slow when launching apps, or, especially, launching CLASSIC apps. But I find it plenty fast even with a measly 128 Meg of RAM once the apps. are loaded. I have been happy with X– zero system crashes in the two months I have used it. Recognizes my VST external 1394 drive. Built in SMB. Terminal.app lets me log in to my UNIX account. It works for me. If you held a gun to my head, I guess I could live with a Viao. But I wouldn’t like it unless I loaded LINUX on it. Windoze and I don’t mix very well.
well, not like I love windows either, everything just seems overly complicated and underpowered.
but got to use what you got to use I guess.
>Built in SMB
This is a *great* feature, I agree, except that they somehow managed to make SMB as slow as molasses. Over our 100baseT from my friend’s TiBook to my WinXP machine, we were getting about 150k/sec. Over FTP, it went up to about 3 megs a sec. From my WinXP machine to our Linux samba server is also about 3 megs/sec. Not to mention that Mac OS X throws dotfiles all over the place.
OS X is great, budding technology, but it’s still not completely ready. Can’t wait for OS X version 2 or whatever it’ll be called.
I don’t find SMB that slow… I am using it accross 3 networks, Windows NT, Linux and a Solaris. I have to admit that Mac OS X has made my life a whole lot easier working in a cross platform environment. I can admit the dotfiles can be a pain. I am even tempted to write an AppleScript to delete those files every so often, unless Apple decides to fix the problem! I have been having an easier time with file and print sharing than my Windows XP running colleagues at the moment, but I imagine they’ll find their fixes soon enough
man that is a great application….give the workgroup name and BAM!!!!! you are connected at each boot up…..no addresses or anything……they evebn have free student licences, you can only connect to one Server at a time with it though, if you want to have a bunch of connections for a work environmnet, you should buy a licence.
I’d go out and get myself an Ibook or TiBook, but they really are way too expensive. 6 months ago, I got a new KDS laptop from a computer show with 256 M Ram, 1280×1024 capable display, 10 Gig hard drive, 56k modem, 10/100 NIC, 16x dvd, 2 usb ports, tv out, 2 PCMCIA card slots, stereo speakers, and all the other necessary ports and it’s a p3 800 with win2k installed….took that home, set it up for dual booting with win2k and slackware Linux 8.0, how much did I pay? $1,200…and that was about 6 months ago!
In response to CattBeMac:
I don’t find SMB that slow…
What you “find” is quite irrelevant. I have concrete evidence of it, and I must admit, it was quite a pain when transferring 2-gig video files.
I have to admit that Mac OS X has made my life a whole lot easier working in a cross platform environment.
It’s certainly better than nothing, but is less than acceptable at this point. No graphical interface for going to Samba shares, pathetic transfer speeds, no “auto-login” possibilities (whee! I have to manually connect to all the servers I use every time I boot!), and incorrect rounding of filesizes. Samba is a great thing to have, but anyone bragging about OS X’s having it has either:
a. Never tried it
b. Incredibly low standards
I have been having an easier time with file and print sharing than my Windows XP running colleagues at the moment, but I imagine they’ll find their fixes soon enough
Exactly what problems have they encountered? For me on WinXP, it’s two clicks to share a folder (something you can’t even *do* in OS X), and two to share a printer. And I’ve had no problems sharing them with Win2k or Win98 users. Not to mention that the Mac can’t even print to SMB printers, whereas all of us using Windows were able to add the printer by merely double-clicking on it. Your little jabs at Microsoft’s products seem rather unfounded, and I wonder whether you’re completely making it up (or exaggerating things to a point where you might as well be)?
In response to Jeremy:
man that is a great application
Not to take away anything from Sharity, but quite frankly, it’s an application that shouldn’t exist. The base OS should provide quick, reliable, and seemless network filesharing. Since it’s the minority OS out there, it’s critical that it natively support the most popular sharing format natively, and currently it doesn’t.
Don’t get me wrong; the pitiful SMB support in OS X doesn’t make OS X horrible or anything like that. Just that while it’s better to have than nothing, it’s certainly not something one should brag about. It’s a taint on the system, not an accolade.
I was not realy praising OS X, but I hope that SMB is exactly likesharity in X.2 and I hope it runs faster….though most of the home users do not transfer huge files like yourself, so I am sure that Apple thought about that when they decided to release SMB support….”well it is not perfect, but it is good enough to swap word documents” etc….
perhaps you should send in an E-mail to the development team at Apple….they like to hear User responce to what they have created.
>>What you “find” is quite irrelevant. I have concrete evidence of it, and I must admit, it was quite a pain when transferring 2-gig video files.<<
Well you can keep your evidence since it is irrelevant in my case. As we speak I am modifying various files and replacing them on the NT server and it is almost like if I was pushing the files to my local hard drive itself!
>>no “auto-login” possibilities (whee! I have to manually connect to all the servers I use every time I boot!),<<
Yeah this sucks, but only takes 10 seconds to do since Mac OS X’s ‘Connect to Server’ remembers my shared drives, so all I do is select, enter Workgroup/domain and my username and password, helk I have to do that anyways when I initially log onto the work PCs anyway when I login, so who cares!
>>Exactly what problems have they encountered? For me on WinXP, it’s two clicks to share a folder (something you can’t even *do* in OS X), and two to share a printer.<<
Well the various problems they seem to have encountered are print sharing the ‘postscript’ printers on the Linux server, now this is not a problem for Windows as per say, but with XP in general. Also other problems have been them accessing the shared drives on the NT server and they can’t access the Solaris/Linux servers at all… one guy said he can see the network drives, but can’t seem to be able to access them?! I can access everything thus far from the all the printers to file sharing on all our servers (Solaris/Linux/NT). My closest friend and colleague reverted back to Windows ME until further notice (well until they fix the printing problem)!
>>Your little jabs at Microsoft’s products seem rather unfounded, and I wonder whether you’re completely making it up (or exaggerating things to a point where you might as well be)?<<
Actually this seems to be exactly what you’re doing here, but I don’t care since I take what you say with a grain of salt and then go on my merry way because I know you’re biased!!!
Well you can keep your evidence since it is irrelevant in my case. As we speak I am modifying various files and replacing them on the NT server and it is almost like if I was pushing the files to my local hard drive itself!
That makes sense; we’ll judge a product by seeing if it works for a user with very low needs. Geez. I could just as easily (and wrongly) say that any security problems in Windows don’t matter, since I’m protected being NAT.
Yeah this sucks, but only takes 10 seconds to do since Mac OS X’s ‘Connect to Server’ remembers my shared drives, so all I do is select, enter Workgroup/domain and my username and password, helk I have to do that anyways when I initially log onto the work PCs anyway when I login, so who cares!
When I log onto my Windows XP box, I type in one password and it nicely automounts all my network shares for me (the ones I want it to, that is). You say “who cares” as if a user won’t notice the difference between entering one password versus clicking on multiple servers and entering the username/password for all of them.
Actually this seems to be exactly what you’re doing here, but I don’t care since I take what you say with a grain of salt and then go on my merry way because I know you’re biased!!!
Because I say that Windows XP is a strong product (speaking from experience and nothing else) and that OS X’s Samba support is rather poor (again, speaking from nothing but experience), I must be biased. Makes sense. I’m a long-time BeOS user, previous MacHead, and recently even finished up an internship at Apple.
Being “biased” means you do not see problems for what they are, or that you find problems in the competition that do not exist. Reading our respective posts here (and on other OSAlert sections), I think it’s rather clear who’s guilty of this.
I am also finding the SMB feature much less useful than Thursby software’s “DAVE”, but SMB is new a new thing to be including in an Apple OS. They put the ability to read PC volumes (e.g. floppies) into the OS eons ago. I am sure OS X’s SMB implementation will rock within a few updates. I am glad they are working on it.
>>That makes sense; we’ll judge a product by seeing if it works for a user with very low needs. Geez. I could just as easily (and wrongly) say that any security problems in Windows don’t matter, since I’m protected being NAT.<<
!@#$%^&*?… I am not even going to go there!
>>You say “who cares” as if a user won’t notice the difference between entering one password versus clicking on multiple servers and entering the username/password for all of them.<<
Actually to be more politically correct my username is already sitting in the Dialog prompt when I connect… I just have to enter the domain and password!
>>Because I say that Windows XP is a strong product (speaking from experience and nothing else) and that OS X’s Samba support is rather poor (again, speaking from nothing but experience), I must be biased. Makes sense. I’m a long-time BeOS user, previous MacHead, and recently even finished up an internship at Apple.<<
Well for one I wasn’t doubting your claims, though I am speaking of complaints from my fellow colleagues. I have had my pleasure to play with XP and have mixed feelings on the subject. I too am a previous Windows user (at home) from the 95 era and left due to disatisfaction, though I still work with Windows on a professional basis (among other OSes), it being Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 5)! I also am a BeOS freak and still have a soft spot for it!
>>Being “biased” means you do not see problems for what they are, or that you find problems in the competition that do not exist. Reading our respective posts here (and on other OSAlert sections), I think it’s rather clear who’s guilty of this.<<
Well if I disliked Microsoft products so much, then I probably wouldn’t have Microsoft Office v. X installed on my computer now would I?! I will say that I dislike their Windows product due to user experience and what I’ve said above. I work in the space industry as a programmer and I have the luxury to woork around the likes of some nifty software/hardware and have been since my military days. Microsoft may produce good enough products and they have their place in certain areas, but Microsoft doesn’t have all the perfect solutions unfortunately. Though I can agree with you on some of the issues with the SAMBA implementation that Apple has integrated into Mac OS X (if you didn’t notice in my forums), I disagree on others. It is not the greatest, but it works for me and the environment that I deal with 50+ hours a week. My job criteria is a weird one and I am either writing documentation to writing software and what other crazy projects they throw at me, and I brought Mac OS X into my work environment to make my life easier, and it has done exactly that! If it hasn’t for you, then so be it… we’re different people who have different needs.
Oh remember this;
Opinions are like arseholes… everybody has one!!!